Part 4 — The dog brought home from the shelter refused to enter my house, but one look from him forced me to stop

The door opened as though someone wanted to tear it off.

Dato entered. He was a tall man in a black jacket and wet shoes. Two police officers stood behind him.

“Where is the dog?” he asked.

The employee stepped in front of him.

“First we have to check the documents.”

“I already have the documents. Bubu is my property.”

There was such certainty in his voice, as though the word “property” settled everything.

I stood in front of Bubu. He was curled up at my feet, and the medallion was quietly touching the floor.

“Did you bring this dog here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“In this woman’s name?”

“The woman had problems. I was helping her.”

The woman raised her head.

“You forged my signature.”

Dato looked toward her.

“You could no longer control yourself then.”

“I was not going to give up the dog.”

“But now you handed him over to someone else.”

“Temporarily.”

Dato chuckled.

“Temporary abandonment does not exist.”

Those words fell into the room like a heavy stone.

One of the police officers took the folder.

“It says here that the dog belongs to you. But here is also the woman’s statement that the signature is not hers. This will require an examination.”

“She simply changed her mind,” Dato said. “Bubu must come with me.”

“Do you not care about Bubu’s opinion at all?” I asked.

Dato looked at me coldly.

“Dogs do not express opinions.”

At these words Bubu raised his head.

For the first time I saw how his face changed. Not with remorse. With irritation.

“Then why does he not come to you?” I asked.

Dato approached the bars.

“Bubu, come.”

The dog stepped back.

“You see?” I said.

“He is afraid. Dogs are sometimes afraid.”

“Of you.”

“Nonsense.”

The employee turned on the computer.

“We have cameras. The recordings are kept for ninety days. The day Bubu was brought here has also been saved.”

The color slowly disappeared from Dato’s face.

“The camera was broken.”

“Only that day?” I asked.

The woman lowered her eyes. The police officer signaled the employee to play the recording.

The shelter entrance appeared on the screen. The time was seven in the evening. A car stopped. Dato got out, opened the back door, and forcibly pulled Bubu out by the leash.

Bubu was turning back toward the car.

Dato struck him.

The woman leaned against the wall.

“No…” she whispered.

In the recording Dato was talking on the phone. The voice could not be heard clearly, but the employee turned on the audio as well.

“We will tell your sister that she handed the dog over to someone else. If she asks for him back, the sale will no longer work. We will still need the money.”

Dato looked at the screen.

“This recording is illegal.”

“You yourself said that the camera was broken,” the police officer replied calmly.

“I was only helping.”

“Hitting a dog is not called help.”

Dato took a step backward.

The woman approached Bubu, but did not come closer.

“Forgive me,” she told him. “I could not protect you.”

Bubu looked at her for a long time. Then he slowly came up to me and placed his head on my knee.

He made his choice.

The police officer took Dato’s documents.

“You will come with us now. An investigation will begin into forgery and cruel treatment of an animal.”

Dato looked toward me.

“All this is happening because of you.”

“No,” I answered. “All this is happening because of your words and actions.”

He tried to make another call. The lawyer answered, listened for several seconds, and then told him:

“I cannot continue defending you in this case. I saw the recording.”

For the first time Dato was left completely alone.

But the hardest moment of that day was still ahead.

In the evening, when I took Bubu home, the telephone received a message. The sender was Luka’s mother.

“May I come tomorrow and simply see him?”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I looked at Bubu. He was already asleep, but even in sleep his ears trembled slightly.

“You may come,” I wrote back. “Only if you understand that this time Bubu will make the decision.”

The next day the woman came alone. In her hand she held a small yellow hat.

“It belonged to Luka,” she told me. “He often wore it together with Bubu.”

Bubu sniffed the hat. Then he looked at the woman.

They stood facing each other for a long time.

The woman did not extend her hand.

Bubu did not approach either.

But he did not run away.

Sometimes forgiveness is not an embrace. Sometimes it is simply remaining in the room.

Dato’s investigation lasted several weeks. The shelter records, the camera video, and the signature examination confirmed everything. The woman no longer demanded to take Bubu. She officially signed that the dog would remain with me.

“I love him,” she told me in front of the courthouse. “But love is sometimes also admitting that now you can no longer protect him.”

I nodded.

“He still remembers you.”

“I know. That is why I no longer want to turn my pain into his fear.”

It was her hardest and kindest decision.

Three months later Bubu no longer slept by the door.

In the first weeks he jumped at every noise. If a key turned in the lock, his body tensed. If I put on my coat, he stood in the corner and asked me with his eyes whether we were going to leave again.

I always told him the same thing:

“We are going for a walk and will come back together.”

Every time.

The same words.

With the same calm.

In spring he chose a new bed for the first time. At first he only put his front paws on it. Then he lay down, but his eyes were open. I watched him from the kitchen and even slowed my breathing.

The next day he was already sleeping in the bed with his whole body.

In the third week, one morning he came into my room and touched the edge of the blanket with his nose.

“What happened?” I asked.

Bubu wagged his tail.

Warm rain was falling outside. The sound of cars could be heard in the streets, while the clothesline on the neighbor’s balcony swayed in the wind. It was an ordinary morning.

But not for me.

Bubu woke me himself.

In the following months our life was built out of small habits. We walked at seven in the morning. In the park he stopped at the same tree and sniffed the ground for a long time. When we returned home, he drank water and then lay by the window.

One day, when a little girl drew a dog on the road, she held the picture out to Bubu.

“Is this you?” she asked.

I smiled.

“Yes. Only he is more beautiful.”

The girl looked at Bubu’s neck.

“Why does he have this little plate?”

I touched Bubu’s copper medallion. We never restored the inscription completely. Only the letter “B” could be seen.

“This is his past,” I told her. “But his home is the present.”

In summer Luka’s mother wrote to me once more.

“Today would have been his birthday. May you send me a photo of Bubu?”

I sent her a photo. Bubu was lying in the yard, a patch of sunlight playing on his nose, and his favorite red ball lay beside him.

She replied:

“Thank you for leaving him to me not as a living memory, but as a happy being.”

I cried for a long time.

Not because the past had disappeared.

Because for the first time the past no longer controlled us.

One autumn evening I received a letter from Dato. After his imprisonment he avoided responsibility, but now he sent a short text.

“I want to see Bubu. Just once. Now I already know that he is well with you.”

Bubu was lying at my feet. His head was still resting on my knee.

I read the letter and put the telephone aside.

The answer was only one sentence:

“He no longer needs to see the person from whom he had to escape.”

After that I turned off the telephone.

Bubu exhaled in his sleep and shifted slightly.

The first snow was falling outside. Snowflakes struck the windowpane and disappeared in the light of the streetlamps.

I went to the door and checked whether it was locked.

Then I looked at Bubu.

By the same door where he had once lain for hours, his bed now stood. I placed the copper medallion on the bed—the one we had removed from the old collar. Under it I put a small sheet of paper on which one word was written: “Home.”

Bubu stood up, came slowly, and touched the medallion with his nose.

Then he returned to me.

This time he did not even look at the door.

And I realized that the greatest miracle was not that he trusted me again.

The miracle was that at last he allowed himself not to wait for leaving anymore.

Bubu is sleeping.

The house is silent.

The medallion no longer jingles.