The Mad Dog · I

On March 20 of this year, the residents of a town in the Chaco region of Santa Fe pursued a rabid man who, in the act of discharging his shotgun at his wife, shot and killed a farmhand crossing in front of him. The armed residents tracked him through the scrub like a wild beast, finally finding him perched in a tree, still holding his shotgun and howling in a horrible manner. They found themselves obliged to shoot him.

March 9—

Today marks thirty-nine days, hour for hour, since the rabid dog entered our room at night. If any memory is to endure in my mind, it is that of the two hours following that moment.

The house had no doors except in the room inhabited by Mama, for as she had taken to being frightened from the very beginning, I did nothing during the first days of urgent installation but saw planks for the doors and windows of her room. In ours, awaiting more ample leisure for work, my wife had contented herself—though admittedly under a bit of pressure from me—with magnificent burlap doors. As we were in the middle of summer, this detail of rigorous ornamentation did no harm to our health or our fear. Through one of these burlap curtains, the one leading to the central hallway, is where the rabid dog entered and bit me.

I do not know whether the shriek of an epileptic gives others the sense of a bestial clamor outside of all humanity that it produces in me. But I am certain that the howl of a rabid dog, persisting at night around our house, will evoke in everyone the same funereal anguish. It is a short, metallic, agonizing cry, as if the animal were already gasping for breath, and steeped entirely in all that is lugubrious about a rabid dog.

It was a large black dog with cropped ears. And to make matters worse, it had done nothing but rain since our arrival. The scrub closed in by the water, the rapid and terribly sad afternoons; we scarcely stepped out of the house, while the desolation of the countryside, in an unremitting storm, had overly darkened Mama’s spirit.

Added to this were the rabid dogs. One morning the farmhand told us that one had wandered past his house the night before and bitten his dog. Two nights earlier, a brindle dog had howled ugly in the scrub. There were many, according to him. My wife and I did not attach much importance to the matter, but not so Mama, who began to find our half-finished house terribly unprotected. Every moment she stepped out onto the hallway to look down the road.

Nevertheless, when our boy returned from town that morning, he confirmed it. A fulminating epidemic of rabies had broken out. An hour earlier they had just pursued a dog in town. A farmhand had had time to deal it a machete blow on the ear, and the animal, drooling, its snout to the ground and its tail between its front legs, had crossed our path, biting a foal and a pig it found along the way.

More news still. In the farm neighboring ours, and that very dawn, another dog had tried in vain to jump the cattle corral. An immense, thin dog had chased a boy on horseback along the old port trail. Still in the afternoon, the agonizing howl of the dog could be heard from within the scrub. As a final piece of information, at nine o’clock two officers arrived at a gallop to give us the description of the rabid dogs seen, and to recommend the utmost care.

There was more than enough for Mama to lose the rest of the spirit she had left. Although possessed of a foolproof serenity, she has a terror of rabid dogs, on account of certain horrible things she witnessed in her childhood. Her nerves, already sickened by the constantly overcast and rainy sky, provoked in her true hallucinations of dogs trotting in through the gate.

There was a real reason for this fear. Here, as everywhere where poor people keep many more dogs than they can feed, the houses are prowled every night by starving dogs, whom the dangers of the trade—a gunshot or a well-aimed stone—have given the true demeanor of beasts. They advance at a walk, crouched, their muscles slack. Their march is never heard. They steal—if the word has any meaning here—whatever their atrocious hunger demands. At the slightest sound—they do not flee because that would make noise, but rather move away at a walk, bending their legs. Upon reaching the grass they crouch down, and wait thus, quietly, for half an hour or an hour, to advance once more.

Hence Mama’s anxiety, for since our house was one of the many prowled, we were naturally threatened by the visit of the rabid dogs, which would remember the nighttime path.

Indeed, that very afternoon, while Mama, a little forgetful, was walking slowly toward the gate, I heard her cry:

“Federico! A rabid dog!”

A brindle dog, with an arched back, was advancing at a trot in a blind straight line. Upon seeing me arrive it stopped, its back bristling. I stepped back, without turning my body, to unhook the shotgun, but the animal left. I walked the path in vain, without finding it again.

Two days passed. The countryside remained desolate with rain and sadness, while the number of rabid dogs increased. As the children could not be exposed to a terrible encounter on the infested roads, the school was closed, and the highway, now without traffic, thus deprived of the school commotion that enlivened its abandonment at seven and twelve, acquired a lugubrious silence.

Mama did not dare take a step outside the courtyard. At the slightest bark she looked anxiously toward the gate, and as soon as dusk fell, she saw phosphorescent eyes advancing through the grass. Once dinner was over she locked herself in her room, her ear attentive to the most hypothetical howl.

Until the third night when I woke up, very late already: I had the impression of having heard a cry, but could not pinpoint the sensation. I waited a moment. And suddenly a short, metallic howl of atrocious suffering trembled beneath the hallway.

“Federico!” I heard Mama’s voice pierced with emotion. “Did you hear?”

“Yes,” I replied, slipping out of bed. But she heard the noise.

“For God’s sake, it’s a rabid dog! Federico, don’t go out, for God’s sake! Juana! Tell your husband not to go out!” she cried in desperation, addressing my wife.

Another howl exploded, this time in the central hallway, in front of the door. A very fine rain of chills bathed my marrow down to my waist. I do not believe there is anything more profoundly lugubrious than the howl of a rabid dog at that hour. Rising behind it was Mama’s desperate voice.

“Federico! It’s going to enter your room! Don’t go out, my God, don’t go out! Juana! Tell your husband!...”

“Federico!” my wife grasped my arm.

But the situation could become very critical if I waited for the animal to enter, and lighting the lamp I unhooked the shotgun. I lifted the burlap of the door sideways, and saw nothing but the black triangle of the deep outside darkness. I had scarcely time to stick my body out when I felt something firm and warm brush against my thigh; the rabid dog was entering our room. I violently threw its head back with a blow of my knee, and suddenly it snapped at me, missing in a clear clack of teeth. But an instant later I felt a sharp pain.

Neither my wife nor my mother realized that it had bitten me.

“Federico! What was that?” shouted Mama, who had heard my stopping short and the snap in the air.

“Nothing: it wanted to come in.”

“Oh!...”

Once again, and this time behind Mama’s room, the fateful howl exploded.

“Federico! It’s rabid! It’s rabid! Don’t go out!” she cried crazily, feeling the animal a meter away from her.

There are absurd things that have all the appearance of legitimate reasoning: I went outside with the lamp in one hand and the shotgun in the other, exactly as if looking for a terrified rat, which would give me complete freedom to place the light on the floor and kill it with the end of a pitchfork.

I walked the hallways. Not a sound was heard, but from inside the rooms the tremendous anguish of Mama and my wife followed me as they awaited the blast.

The dog had gone.

“Federico!” exclaimed mother upon sensing my finally returning. “Did the dog go?”

“I think so; I don’t see it. I fancy I heard a trot when I went out.”

“Yes, I heard it too... Federico: could it be in your room?... It has no door, good Lord! Stay inside! It might come back!”

Indeed, it could come back. It was twenty minutes past two in the morning. And I swear those were two hard hours that my wife and I spent, with the light on until dawn, she lying down, I sitting on the bed, watching without ceasing the floating sacking.