I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered. I had described the dog that the children had brought home one day. They had found it at the park where they met their friends in the afternoon; it was ownerless – didn’t have a dog tag anyway – and they had taken it into their hearts. It was really social; my wife liked when she sat on the sofa and it lay down next to her with its head on her leg, and she called it her warm little bundle. I made sure that we did not keep it. I was bothered by the dirt it brought into the house, the mess when the children played with it, and the damage to our Biedermeier sofa, which, when my wife wasn’t there, it would sometimes bite and lick; and the thought of having to take it for walks when the children grew tired of it. No one complained when it was gone.

I have always seen myself as a generous husband and father. My wife got all the help she wanted in the house, and her own car as well, and whatever the children needed, they got – even when they only thought they needed something, but it turned out they did not. Had I, in small things, been a little petty sometimes? How did I know that my children would grow tired of the dog? How did I know that losing him didn’t upset my wife and children? Did I hear no complaint from them only because we talked so little? What else was left unsaid?

My wife’s accident came to mind. I lay on my back, arms crossed behind my head, and looked at the sky. I knew the Southern Cross from the Australian and New Zealand flags; I looked for it, but could not find it. The Milky Way got me thinking of my mother, of whom I have almost no memory; I do know that my birth was by caesarean and that she didn’t breastfeed me, because at the time doctors advised against it after a caesarean. A tiny, bright dot arced through the sky; I followed it with my eyes and fell asleep.

11