Flash of white and gray. Footfalls swift on the concrete. On Andrés Bello, you see him for a second on the other side of the Mapocho, its current pulsing weakly onto the cobbled walls with their painted red symbols. You see him for a second before he’s off. He takes the alleyway, dodging the morning’s black puddles that line the street, four, five blocks off the main road now, quick paws shuttering along the one-floor meat shops and Dr. Simi’s pharmacy, the gated gray-dust apartments, and the sleeping nightclubs of Providencia. Past the supermarket swollen with pedestrians, past the metal cars paused in traffic, past the bewildered tourists looking on—he’s more local than you are, and prideful about it. Follow west to see where he leads. With him, you are nobody: a light, freeing feeling. See how he sees, the towering naked trees, leaves and plastic cups soaking the sidewalk, sun cracking open every dark, dank corner of the city. How he eats, now tunneling into a sidestreet dumpster, the smell of leftovers mingling onto the open road.
When he’s had his fill, he drifts into the Metropolitan Park, where he’ll spend another few hours lounging around the picnickers, lovers, and the smoking students, eying their chips and tomatoes, chasing the pink-chested pigeons. He feels the July wind-chill over his coat of fur and scruff, and soon he’ll have to leave. But he leaves easily. He leaves no trace. West, and further west. Through Plaza Baquedano, the metro roars beneath his paws, vibrating with hot metal, with coursing, molten minerals, with history. Through the universities and hospitals, through the ancient hills and new monuments, he is not the city but its undercurrent, relentlessly pushing west. At La Moneda, you see him scampering around the square, now with others, his kin. In the afternoon light, you can’t tell if it’s actually him, though it feels like him, you think, and of course, he is not one, but many. But those colors, and that hitch on the ear. You draw nearer. What has he been trying to say? You imagine his life before: that he did once belong to a human, or his forebears did. But this is his home now, indecisive in its stillness. His city, its grimy hands and oily skin. Without land you lack form.
Astray, you think of yourself. Closer to him now. Making eye contact. He is young but an old beast. And he will not tell you more than you already know. Glancing toward the sun, he follows the other dogs as they roam toward the street, into the intersection. What do you know, now as they blend into the horde of government workers streaming from their offices, weaving in front of a woman fishing out her earbuds, around the carabineros posted at the street corners, the laugh-crying children, the evening vendors, and onto the movement of the main road. You cannot know his city-sense or his bone-chill, his adventure or his lazy spots in the sun. Less of his night encounters, his ruts in the dark, his diseased, boiling heart. The city is strange in the fading sunlight, casting long shadows. You reach out to touch, but there is no dog now, no pretense. Just soot in your hands.
2025