Domício Coutinho | Duke – O cachorro Padre (Duke, the Dog Priest) / 1998, 2009

to the dogs

by Douglas Messerli

 

Domício Coutinho Duke – O cachorro Padre (Recife, Brasil: Bagaço, 1998), translated from the Portuguese by Clifford Landers as Duke, the Dog Priest (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2009)

 

From the very beginning pages of Duke, the Dog Priest the reader is thrown into a debate underlying the absurdity of Brazilian author Domício Coutinho’s premise: for his novel fabulously purports to be the tale of a dog who desired to become a priest—or at least to learn Latin. Most American readers—readers who have encountered few twentieth-century native examples of this genre within the confines of “serious fiction,” outside of works such as John Hawkes’ Sweet William and The Frog, Tom La Farge’s The Crimson Bears, and a handful of other works—may quietly put down this book, send for their children, or read on in the hopes of encountering a lightweight fantasy. Americans have no great literary tradition of animal characters as do the Japanese, for example, with books such as I Am a Cat, or the Brazilians, well acquainted with their early classic—to which this work makes reference—Quincas Borba, Machado de Assis’s story of a philosopher dog.

     Indeed, at times in this remarkable narrative there are fantastical elements—particularly when Duke takes to the street as a free dog, and reencounters a former dog-acquaintance, Poor Devil—that seem almost to belong to the Disneyfied world of Lady and the Tramp. But let the reader be warned: this tale, narrated by Amarante, a Brazilian and former sacristan (“He prepares the altar, lights candles, assists at mass, teaches prayers, aids virgins, widows and abandoned wives. He also secretly tests the virtues and character of the wine”) living in New York (Nova Eboracense), will challenge the most sophisticated of readers in its dazzling mix of priests, brothers, nuns, students, church workers, parishioners, city luminaries and, yes, a dog named Duke and the marvelous tales of their interrelationships. If Duke, the Dog Priest were to have a single theme at its center—and fortunately Coutinho presents an almost perversely diverse and multifaceted world wrapped around dozens of thematic possibilities—it would be that even the smallest of actions affects nearly everyone. And, in that sense, each small tale within this encyclopedic work of stories within stories is as important as the next in its inevitable interconnectedness.

      Recognizing this fact, the wise critic might leave it at that, highly recommending the book to his readers without attempting to unravel the tightly interlinked narratives at the heart of this book. I am a somewhat foolish commentator, I suspect, and accordingly will attempt to share some of my reading experiences, particularly since this is a book which, as a sage publisher, I hope to someday bring to press.

       Duke, the Dog Priest is not truly centered on the adventures of its “central” canine character. Strangely, moreover, given the likeable character of this faithful beast, many of the figures of St. Thecla, a church that was formerly a convent school with an adjoining school run by nuns, find it difficult to tolerate an animal in their midst. Father Thomas would as soon (and later does) kick the poor dog in its haunches as care for it. The kitchen’s dishwasher, Boris, steers clear of the beast. From the start we are told that Father Creus, the church chronicler, is the source of many of the stories concerning the miraculous adventures of Duke, but his relationship with the dog within the fiction itself is minimal. Duke, a vengeful gift from a beautiful three-time widow, is loved and cared for by only two major figures in this fiction (three if we include Dorothy’s cousin, Lourdes, whose own female dog, Lora, is sister to Duke and later—to employ the anthropomorphic language of this book—his “beloved” bitch): Little Fred, a kitchen worker, and the intensely pious Brother Alphonse. The vast majority of stories in this volume reveal the pasts and presents of the whirlwind of figures living within and outside of the religious community.

     Although Duke is not truly at the center of this fiction, his bestial actions are. The reader is led to understand from the beginning how exceptional he is: how, overhearing classroom lessons in church catechism, he desires to embrace the faith; how he wishes to learn Latin, is willing to become a “dog priest”; and how he comprehends the structure of the universe. Yet Duke is unable to follow one of the most important tenets of priesthood: chastity. The major event of the fiction, indeed, is his carnal (and incestuous) mating with his dog-sister Lora, an incident that occurs while Brother Alphonse shops in a store, outside of which he has tied the dog. Upon returning to the street, Alphonse is so shocked (and, apparently, allured) by these animals in sexual frieze that he is unable to take action in order to separate the two. The event, which he confesses to his fellow brothers and priests over dinner, is dismissed as something beyond his control; but as the evening progresses, he comes to realize that his inability to act was in some respect an identification with the animal and an indirect participation in the bestial (and incestuous) act. Unable to approach the severely critical Father Thomas, he seeks, with Duke in tow, outside help, but is refused confession at a nearby church because of the late hour. Sent far uptown on a quest for a place where he can confess, he is tormented by the denizens of the late-night streets, and, after discovering that the church for which he is searching is temporarily closed, he turns back, tortured by self-doubt and what he believes are the devil’s taunts. Encountering a prostitute, (Rosely, formerly a young student of the adjoining school, cast out because of drawing sexual graffiti, including a picture of the brother himself, upon the bathroom walls) he passively accepts her invitation to have sex in her nearby apartment. Returning to the church, having dragged the poor dog behind him in his rush to escape, he hangs himself as punishment. Recognizing his master’s desperation, Duke attempts to save him, but is, after all, only a dog, and, ultimately, can only bark to awaken the other brothers from their sleep—too late.

       The consequences of this terrible act of obsession are numerous: Duke runs away in the process of attempting to follow the funeral cortège; Rosely determines to become a religious novitiate in recompense for her seduction; Father Thomas’s sometimes violent determination is weakened, his faith threatened; Boris gradually falls into madness. Despite the trials and tribulations put before her, Rosely is confirmed, learning at the affair the identity of her mother—and father. Returning for a visit, Amarante discovers that the previously spiritually motivated world has literally gone to the dogs: St. Thecla has been destroyed, the only remaining remnants of the life of the religious community being Little Fred walking Duke’s son, Rex, and Father Thomas now living where few readers might suspect. And Duke? In a terrible storm, he has been lifted up into the stars and now sits at the foot of Sirius, the luminary of the constellation Canis Major, the Great Dog. 

     At times almost a manual of religious precepts, at other times a catalogue of neighborhood gossip, a fable about the ability of both man and beast to overcome impossible odds, a tale of both incredible faith and insufferable doubt, Duke, the Dog Priest reminds us that, like Spanish writer Felipe Alfau’s nearly lost masterwork, Chromos, some of the best of US writing is the gift of its non-native-born residents.

 

Los Angeles, February 8, 2007

Reprinted from The New Review of Literature, V, no. 1 (Fall 2007)