Festus points to one of Auntie Wilhelmina’s whelps that’s trying to mount another of Auntie’s whelps and says, “That dog’s penis is too big.” Festus says things like this, things you might think but never say. Mid-morning break and us watching it. The dogs in the puddle beneath the standpipe, failing at it. The one dog, the mangle-eyed one, trying, trying again. His terrible red penis. It wasn’t that she was averse.
The dog, front paws paddling the air again, hind legs surging forward, a feeble dance. He’s on again. Whoops. No go.
Why remember this? Why relate it? Things that are not worth telling force themselves out in the open anyway. Like that sad dog’s unrequited erection. Animals fail to fuck and we get a half hour’s free entertainment. Antoinette damns us all to yet another level of hell. We liked to think Festus wasn’t as complicated as we were. He had too great a love of obvious observation. Things you were looking right at. But he was right, wasn’t he? That dog’s penis was too big.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” Mavala says.
“Oh, it’s possible,” Pohamba says. “Either that or her Switzerland’s too small.”
The triangle jangled and we all went back to class, left those dogs to themselves. Except Festus, who stayed to watch.
Later, after school, he told us that she finally gave up on him and bit Mr. Big Cock in the neck. And that’s when I tried, Vilho-like, to yank a moral out of it. I said, There’s something sad about those two unashamed dogs. The public nature of such doomed love. Their complete lack of grace. Those dogs are us, our own pathetic natures, our own fundamental inability to connect . . .
Festus taught science. He said it wasn’t sad.
“What, then?”
“A matter of proportionality. It will never fit. I waited. I watched.”
“And if they love? Isn’t it sad that —”
Festus stared at me for a moment. “It doesn’t fit,” he said. “That’s all.” Then he scratched his belly and walked off toward his house, toward Dikeledi, and we watched him, squat and round, walking away. Festus was said to be trying to emulate the principal’s stomach. In this he was succeeding. And we thought of how unfair it all was, of a house free of sadness, of a floor free of sand, of soft underwear (Antoinette, who did our laundry, was morally opposed to fabric softener), of those waiting Dikeledian arms . . .
I turned slowly to Pohamba. This our revenge? That Festus and Dikeledi can’t consummate? That no sexual congress convened in the purple house we’re all so jealous of?
Even we don’t wish this on Festus. We tried to think only happy thoughts. Nothing too big, nothing too small. Finally, Pohamba couldn’t help himself.
“Oh, that poor poor poor girl.”
“Don’t you go save her.”
“Do you think I am that low?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “Never to friends.” He brightened. “Wait—Festus isn’t a friend.”
“Close.”
“Close isn’t a friend, friend.” And he bopped off toward the quarters and his waiting bed.