Story of No Return No. 2
Mario Levrero
A dog,
Campeón. I lived alone with him and at some point he started bothering me. I
took him to the forest, left him tied up with a cord that he could break with a
little perseverance, and went back home.
A
couple of days later I had him scratching at the door; I let him in.
He
became unbearable; I took him to a more distant forest and tied him to a tree
with a stronger cord (I knew that the flaw was not in the cord but in the
animal’s loyalty; perhaps I had the secret hope that this time he wouldn’t get
loose and would die of hunger).
A few
days later he came back.
I
realized then that the dog would always come back; for fear of pangs of guilt,
I didn’t dare kill him; and I thought that even if I managed to lose him, in a
forest more distant still, I would live with the constant fear of his return;
it would torment my nights and cloud my joys; his absence would tie me up more
than his presence.
For
barely a second, then, I hesitated before majesty of the dense forest—shadowy,
imposing, unfamiliar—rising before my eyes; resolutely, I began going into it,
and I went in deeper and deeper until, finally, I got lost.
