Feed My Dear Dogs. Emma Richler

says she won’t come with him tomorrow, so much to do. He misses her, he has known her for ever, she used to be so funny. Things will be different soon, tomorrow, she will be different. Maybe even let him back in. He just wants to smell her again, but he can’t say it, he can’t find the right words, and something else, something he’ll never tell her, how he hates this moment each night, unfolding his camp bed in the kitchen, the ringing in his ears suddenly so loud, a sound like bells, and then always the same thing, this sound of other men unfolding other beds around him, other men not there. He wants it to stop.

      At the Salvation Army Foundling Hospital, they are expecting him, he has an appointment. This morning he is immaculate, he walks a firm line, his step is light, no shuffling, back straight, he is a soldier. Eyes right, eyes left, the nurse following on, take your time. Thank you, Sister. The soldier is looking for someone, he will know her when he sees her. Yes. That one.

      She is six months old, fully formed, with large blue eyes, and dimples, and she is smiling at him, he could swear to it, but it’s not only that, he can’t describe it, a rattle in his guts, not fear, something new, and so he chooses her or she chooses him. No, that’s silly. He chooses, he thinks so. Never mind.

      ‘Yes, please. Her, please.’

      When he scoops her up, he is worried someone will stop him. You can’t have her, stop there. But no one stops him and he holds her in his corded arms, tight not too tight, as he remembers holding a man once, feeling the looseness in the man’s neck, limp as a dead pigeon, knowing it was nearly up with him, how he tried not to hurt the other soldier, just hold him a while without hurting him, tight but free, like they are just one body. What was his name? He doesn’t remember that. Don’t think about that.

      Please sign here and here.

      He hands the baby to the nurse and this worries him also, he might never see her again, the big blue eyes on him still, the dimples, the dark hair. Silly man. Pull yourself together. The soldier signs for her, there, and there, he does it proud, he makes an X, like a leaning cross, it’s all he knows.

      Hope is not a problem for him any more.

      Science, says Carl Sagan, is what we call our search for rules, and the ideal universe is a place governed by regularities of nature as well as the experimental, somewhere, I guess, between stasis and motion, between knowledge and abandon.

      Into the dangerous world I leapt.

      Carl writes there are 10¹¹ neurons in the brain, circuits in charge of chemical activity, circuits and switches. A neuron has close to a thousand dendrites, these are wires, connections. If one connection corresponds to one piece of information, then the brain can know one hundred trillion things, 10¹⁴, not very many things, Sagan says, as one hundred trillion is only 1 per cent of the number of atoms in a grain of salt.

      Watson: You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae.

       Holmes: I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses!

      I want to tell you, Mrs Rosenfeld, about something I read in the Book of Ruth, something concerning the transfer of shoes, and redemption, and how this offering of shoes is symbolic, it’s a symbolic act. With this shoe, I redeem you, I redeem her, him, this house, this debatable land. I am in a fever to tell you about it, I am not sure why, perhaps because Israel is your country, and it might be mine. I need to tell you this thing about shoes, Ruth 4:7.

      Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour; and this was a testimony in Israel.

      I am in a fever to tell you, but when I arrive and lie down, I think about lying down, how it is a symbolic act, a sign of grief, as is walking barefoot, I read that also. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground. Job 1:20.

      I remember it, how I walked barefoot, to and fro, to and fro, and how it happened, the thing I did, my experiment in escape velocity, and how I fell upon the ground, seeing stars. My hair was cut, not quite shaved and now I am here, because hope is still a problem for me.

      —It’s very difficult for you to talk to me today. I wonder what’s going on.

      —I am writing a monograph upon the tracing of footsteps!

      —Ah. Do you want to tell me about it?

      —No! I need to ask something. Did you choose me or was I assigned to you? Did you choose me? Did you choose me, did you choose me? I don’t see why you can’t answer that question.

      —No, you don’t see.

      —What if I die from this? I think I am going to die from this and no one can stop me, you can’t stop me.

      —That is true. But you can let me try. I can try not to let it happen.

      Then pluck off your shoe, Mrs Rosenfeld. Pluck off your shoe.

       THREE

      Holmes: How are you? You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.

       Watson: How on earth did you know that?

       Holmes: Never mind. The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?

      If the brain can know one hundred trillion things, can a person ask one hundred trillion questions? That’s one. Here’s two. Why don’t you wear the red dress any more, the one I saw you in when I was born, the one you wear every Christmas until now, red you, falling snow, you’ve stopped wearing it, I want to know why. Red, white.

      Whoa, the Moon.

      The Earth has one natural satellite, the Moon, its twin, born around the same time, 4,600 million years ago. The Moon is almost all rock, with an iron-rich core, the haem in haemoglobin. It has no atmosphere, gravity at the surface being too weak, only one-sixth that of the Earth. Early in its lifetime, the Moon was bombarded by asteroids, so its surface is scarred and crenellated and distinguished by plains and seas. Birthmarks. Because tidal forces have slowed the rotation of the Moon, it is locked in orbit around the Earth and shows the same side always, completing one orbit every 27.322 days, at a distance of around 1.3 light seconds, showing this same face always. Are you there? Whither thou goest, I will go. Where thou diest, will I die.

      A star the same mass as the Sun, at the end of its life, will collapse into a white dwarf, though a white dwarf is not really white at all, ranging in colour from blue to red, depending on the temperature at the surface. A star collapses because nuclear fusion at the heart of it can no longer sustain it, the white dwarf now an ember of itself, a stellar remnant, shedding the last of its heat into space, cooling and fading and compressing until its surface is so close to the centre, the beginning so close to its end, gravity at the surface is 100,000 times that of the Earth and light has to fight an uphill struggle to escape, and because light always travels at the same speed, it shows this loss of energy in increasing wavelengths, the light redshifting. Red, white.

      One hundred trillion things.

      According to a rabbi writing in fourteenth-century Spain, the Talmud states that the father ‘contributes the semen of the white substance’ that makes up the bones and sinews in a body, the nails, the brain, the white of the eye. The mother contributes the semen of the red substance that is flesh, hair, blood and the black of the eye. God’s contribution is the soul, but it is only on loan. The red and the white stuff dies with you, but the soul is up for grabs, or the Rightful Owner calls it in, no interest. It depends how you look at it.

      In alchemy, red and white are the colours of man and bride and they ought to be together, masculine and feminine, in one same person, between two people, in Nature itself, it