This dog was with Miguel Serrano for almost ten years.
I do not need to explain my anguish. All those that have a dog as a friend, all those that once have had one, will understand me. I begged to avoid the veterinary to give her the injection; I asked them to wait for me, because I would get her better. I contacted airlines to get a flight to Austria the very same day, but it was impossible. I could only flight next day at dawn the earliest.
I spent the night in the Benedictine Monastery of Montserrat. I arrived when the monks were officiating a Choral Mass of pure and majestic beauty. In the middle of the dark in the old Basilica, I asked to the black virgin of Montserrat (Isis, really) for Dolma. Despite my anguish I felt like if my dog, over there far away, was cheering up to know I was thinking on her and that soon after we would be together again.
Life, looks like, repeat its sequences, itself. Many years ago I also found myself in a Benedictine convent in my fatherland trying to comfort my heart when a very especial loved one passed away. The Chilean monks were extraordinary. The father Subercaseaux and the Abbot (I do not remember his name any longer) put a balsam of sympathy on my soul. I wished to find something similar among the Spanish monks. I was sat down along with one of them by the shadow of an ancient arcade and the legendary stones. He listened my story. When I finished I asked him:
–Father, where dogs go once they pass?
He looked at me as doubting, almost with suspiciousness. He remained silent.
–My dog is dying, I said. Is it possible to die forever? Is there a difference between a dog and a person?
Now he talked:
–There is a big difference, a tremendous difference, he said.
–Yes! I replied, a big difference, dogs are better than men.
Spanish people are weird! They do not love animals, they neither love trees (Chileans have inherited this). They murder bulls; they feel contempt for dogs… At the airport of Barcelona a police man (from Andalucía) to whom I begged to watch for my car, that I left in a random place, because I had to leave immediately to meet my ill dog, he looked at me as I was a being of another world, as an eccentric.
–Are you taking a flight for a dog? He asked me.
I arrived to Vienna. Dolma was dying even though I could not believe it. She did not eat and could hardly breathe. Once she saw me, she was happy and vigorous again, trying to show me she was still the same, happy to have retrieved me; as if she was saying “now you will not leave me, we will not separate any more…”
What a terrible decision! She was alive a minute ago. Suddenly, she was no more. I never will be able to understand Death. What is it? A sort of spring is turned, and everything is over… Having Dolma in my arms, I wait for the doctor to complete the injection. She was staring at me, as inquiring me. I was talking, telling her many things, words, preventing to her to realize she was going to die. She died looking at me, she extinguished, bending her little curly head, just like the blue flower, the one of pure magic, the one that does not exist, the one that never will be again…
Why I loved so much this puppy? Is It because of loneliness? Or could be memories from the childhood when my best friends were animals? How easyly a child and animals understand each other, through their dialogue of silence! Only those men that are no longer like kids, those peoples that have lost their childhood, or those men that take themselves so seriously and so dramatically as men, those do not love animals.
It was a Sunday. I was walking in the rain in the Old Vienna, towards a telegraph office. I sent two telegrams to India, land of my dog. One telegram to the Dalai Lama, and other one to Indira Gandhi. I was telling them that my companion in Tibet and India had died that day, asking them to think on her. In this way Dolma was saying goodbye to both.
I felt that from somewhere Dolma got merry.
