I’m reading this book called The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst. Its about a man who looses his wife when she falls out of an apple tree in the backyard while he’s at work and the only witness is their dog. Her death is ruled an accident, not suicide, despite the fact that there is no explanation for why she was in the tree in the first place. Her husband is a linguistics professor named Paul, and he decides that he’s going to teach the dog to talk so that he can find out what actually happened.
Paul takes a leave of absence from his teaching position to focus all of his effort on this project of teaching his dog to talk. All of his colleagues ridicule him with the exception of his closest friend, another linguistics professor, who instead questions his sanity.
I’m a little over half way through the book, and a story is slowly unraveling that reveals his wife to be dark and emotionally complicated, and Paulto be intensely devoted to her and deeply in love with her. He spends the better part of every day working with the dog to achieve communication, but is making little progress.
At one point his best friend comes over with his wife to do a kind of intervention. The wife cleans the house and opens drapes and puts food in the freezer etc, as the two men talk. The best friend asks Paul what he’s hoping to accomplish with his “research.” Paul eventually confesses to all of these “clues” he’s found since his wife’s death that reveal that all was not as he thought it was in the days/hours leading up to her death. He tells his friend that the dog is the only witness, the only one who can really know what happened on that morning that put his wife into that tree, and so he has to find a way to get the story out of the dog.
In response the friend suggests that Paul seek professional counceling. And this is when I had my random thought about friendship: A true friend would get down on the floor next to Paul and help him try to get the dog to talk.
Obviously the likelyhood that the dog is going to talk is slim, to say the least. But just as obvious is the fact that this is the way that Paul is choosing to process his grief, to understand the sudden loss of his wife. How can his friend, if truly his friend, not understand this and not help? Because that is exactly what I would do, and what I think my best friends would do for me.
(I also feel the need to mention that this is a beautifully written book and I highly recommend it.)
