VERSANT

crouched low, examining him, but Jack remained seated directly on
the injury, his face noble and solemn despite the indignities being
suffered. Austin scratched his head and stroked his graying muzzle,
then recoiled from the smell of his own hand. “Fishy,” he said, and
ducked inside to wash. Dali went about her chores, shuffling from barn
to farmhouse to kitchen-house, bearing sacks of potatoes, shoveling
manure patties out of the courtyard in the wake of the cows’ breakfast
march to pasture. Harried with the tasks of the day, and the constant
delightful burden of her big-stomached American guests, she had
little time to attend to Jack’s condition, and showed little concern as
she scooted by, all shawl and rubber boot.
And Nino, who’d guided us safely to the village along a perilous sixhour
drive into the heart of the Western Caucus Range, over collapsing
roads and between sheer canyon drop-offs, was similarly demure on
the subject of Jack. Treatment of any serious kind wasn’t an option,
she shrugged, as no veterinarians resided in the village. Whatever the
cause, there was no specialist to diagnose it — and traveling across
Svaneti in search of one was too expensive and time-consuming for
the taxed family.
But this wasn’t the reason that Jack continued to suffer untreated,
or that Nino’s uncle Nukri was preparing to kill him today. No, the
root cause sat inside the kitchen-house, nursing a cup of warm fresh
milk and regarding us keenly through smudged window panes. Bebu
was ninety and the senior member of the household, and while her
feelings and opinions remained unspoken on most matters these days,
there was one subject about which she was both fiercely expressive and
decidedly uncompromising, and that was Jack.
When he came close to the kitchen house, she rasped a sharp rebuke
and rose, trembling, to her feet. When he persisted, lingering by the
doorstep, she produced from a darkened corner a naked broomstick,
and, raising it high over her squat frame, brought the weapon down
full-strength on his thick skull. He took the hint, withdrawing into
the courtyard, where it had begun to drizzle. There, he seated himself
oh-so-gradually in the mud, while Bebu returned to her stove-side
bench and eased onto her haunches.
Jack, very simply, was Bebu’s nemesis, and vice versa. It was in certain
ways a fitting pairing. They were of similar size and length, Jack
having perhaps 10 pounds on her, Bebu maybe 6 inches in length.
Their dispositions were also markedly similar: in states of repose, both
Jack and Bebu possessed a great ruminative capacity, and one might
happen on either of them staring off into the middle distance, body
still, expression engaged and vacant somehow at once. But they shared
a fierce and instant temper, too — one which, once triggered, could
send Bebu railing against offending chickens or cows (or, on many
occasions, her sad-eyed squatting rival) with a naked broomstick, and
which sent limping Jack roaring off against transgressing cars on the
dirt street just up the hill from home, snarling and biting at the rattling
metal hulls of Ladas and Marshrutkas with furious abandon.
And there was the matter of their respective maladies. Jack’s wound
was the more glaring, to be sure, and responded badly to his automotive
assaults, issuing unrestrained spurts of bright red blood from his
rump as he trotted back to the courtyard. But Bebu’s left hand was
nothing to dismiss: sheathed in a cracked, oversize ski glove at most
hours of the day, it would emerge at rare moments to be soothed by
her right hand’s firm grip, revealed in the pale light to be nearly double
its natural size, inflated from within by some malignant force, arthritis
or cancer or Godknowswhat, plump and near bursting beneath
taught frail skin.
With no proper diagnosis or medicine on hand for Bebu’s condition,
it stood to reason that she begrudged the loathed Jack any better. And
surely his sanguineous leakage posed a sanitary issue that demanded
a certain amount of domestic diligence. But even as simple a thing as
an affectionate stroke of his forehead’s dirty scruff triggered a look of
sour disdain on her face. What might have once transpired between
them, months or years ago, in a state of youthful misbehavior, it was
impossible to imagine. But it needn’t have been much. For here, in the
wilds of northern Georgia, was a place of grudges everlasting. Blood
feuds that divided households for centuries, that racked up bodies as
steadily as families could conjure them forth. Too far removed to be
troubled even by the most ambitious of feudal lords, the peoples of
Svaneti engaged in their own domestic warfare, waged among handfuls
of wind-hardened souls over offenses long forgotten and never
forgiven. (Until the 20th century, a proposal was made when a young
man threw a bullet into the front yard of the family of his desired girl
— a promise that if such a wedding was not accepted, there would be
much blood shed.)
In this place, dogs were not bred for affection but for utility. They
lived among the livestock, fending off ravenous mountain creatures
and silhouetted thieves alike, trading their lives for scraps and the
shelter of a damp barn. The only recreational function of Svan dogs
was their engagement in organized fights, which were both legal and
exceedingly popular in the high-country villages near the Abkhazian
border. In this setting, too, affection for a dog was an inconvenience
at best, a dangerous limitation at worst.
And so Bebu marveled at the kindness her nemesis received at our
hands, gloved hand flexing absently in her lap, while Dali and Nino
maintained the comfortable indifference appropriate for such an occasion
as Jack’s execution dictated. It was, in the end, Uncle Nukri who
caved. Emerging from the farmhouse empty-handed, he looked us
over, the expectant foreigners, and muttered in Svan. Nino’s translation
was similarly pointed. “Jack looks better. Not killing him today.”
Uncertain whether celebration was warranted, we looked down to
see how he took the news. A single tail-thump sounded on the hard
slate path. Inside, Bebu’s eyes twinkled. We patted his gnarled furry
head goodbye, and set out to climb a mountain.
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