The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe Read Online Free PDF

Wild West. Mr Gurdin was watching Bonanza and he pointed the rifle at the screen before resting it on his outstretched legs. ‘Mr Cartwright,’ said the young man on the screen, ‘there’s two things I can handle – horses and women. In that order, of course.’ Mr Gurdin let go of the gun and slapped his thigh, before holding up his bottle and toasting the show. The guest star Ben Cooper was thrown to the ground by a horse and the music went all strange. Nick leaned forward. ‘My legs, Mr Cartwright!’ said Ben Cooper. ‘I can’t move them! I can’t even feel them!’ Then the titles began and Bonanza ’s theme tune filled the bedroom.
‘This,’ said Mr Gurdin, looking across the room at me through tired eyes, ‘is a very beautiful show. A very very beautiful show, I tell you that for free, Dogville.’ I walked across the carpet and he lifted me onto his knees, the cold barrel of the rifle pressing into my side. Looking at him I felt Nick’s face was a small tragedy. ‘You are a nice person,’ he said in a slurred whisper. ‘A nice little dog and I’ve got one thing to tell you. Watch out for the Reds. They will take your food and leave you out in the rain.’
I nuzzled his hand. Pity can be a fairly civilised way of feeling good about yourself. He wore a pair of dirty white bucks, the shoes of someone who’d seen better days.
‘Out in the rain,’ he said. ‘That is how it goes with such people.’ I turned and sat on his lap for a second and we watched an advert for Swanson 3-Course Dinners. ‘Dis gusting,’ he said. ‘Khrushchev food for people who want to live in the outer space.’
The doorbell rang downstairs and I jumped off his lap and made my way down. Nick got up and slammed the door behind me. But it wasn’t Sinatra, it was Natalie, arriving early to talk to her mother about problems she was having with the new house on North Beverly Drive. ‘How perfectly adorable,’ said Natalie when I appeared at her feet in the hall. ‘Oh, Muddah – is this the one for Frankie? It’s got to be, okay?’
‘Dah,’ said Mrs Gurdin. ‘I know he loves an entertainer and this one has been in the world before, I’m telling you, Natasha. Even in England, the other dogs sat in the basket. This one was out. He is the friendly one.’
‘Oh, how completely sweet.’ Natalie lifted me up and involved me in her beauty for a few seconds. I nuzzled her neck and she smelt of some excellent floral thing, Joy, I would have said, yes, Joy by Patou, jasmine, tuberose, a philosopher’s notion of the perfect flower. * Her eyes were so dark you felt they must hold secrets, including the darkest secret, but only a perverse dog could speak of anything but life when speaking of Natalia, Mrs Wagner, Natasha, Natalie Wood, in her prime, only months before she starred in both Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story . Her lovely face concealed a nest of hostile feelings; I absorbed that as she stroked me and put me down, the daughter preparing for battle with Muddah and all she presumed to understand. Life is a movie anyhow, but no one played it like Natalie, rolling the dialogue in her mind before she spoke.
She took out a holder, lit a cigarette, and gave Muddah the full up-and-down treatment. ‘We have frogs,’ she said. ‘The new swimming pool is crawling with frogs. They’re all dying. You argued for a salt-water pool, Muddah. Better for the circulation, you said. Now we have a fucking biblical plague down there. Isn’t that just dandy? I tell you we’re the talk of Higgins Canyon. It is not a Beverly Hills smell, Muddah. Dead frogs is not a fucking Beverly Hills smell!’
‘Don’t swear, Natasha,’ said Mrs Gurdin. ‘It is very common to swear.’ Natalie looked down and enlarged her eyes for dramatic effect.
‘Not in front of the puppies, huh?’
Natalie spun round and walked into the living room, looking for an ashtray as if underscoring a point. Without pause, she reeled off a list of