My Leopard

We used to have two watch dogs in the villa, to guard us from the unknown world outsine, a couple of alsatians that lived their little life either closed in a cage  (when we had visitors) or in and about the big green garden, best friends of us, the little ones. I loved them all, beacause I could speak to them the language of real life, that has no words or grammar, but most of all beacause they had fluffy ears that I could curl and shake. But Iago, let me say it, Iago big, blond, grand in his doggy way, was the king of them all. He   borrowed his name from a shakespirian play and was to share it, many a years after, with the newborn of one of my brothers...

Iago was fierce and noble and beautiful and he did bite many a person, uncaring if prince or butcher. He bit them all, as democratic as death. One fine may morning, with the sky as blue as a chinese painting, while I was still, cosy, in bed (being it a sunday morning) I heard, out of the blue, the clitter clatter of tragedy and discontent. My mother shouting, someone else running along the entrance lane. "Iago, Iago", yelled one of my brothers. I wa up and awake in a twinkle, and I dashed, in my white and pink nightgown, down the lane, towards the entrance gate that was red and a bit rusty. There I saw a big man, with a jolly face, white curls pasted on his powerful head,a nose made out of dough. I recognised him on the spot: as being Luchino, a real sicilian prince, nourished in pure  blue blood. I walked slowly closer and he said, with a big, pink smile: "Hello Ester, Iago has tasted me". I turned around because I heard yells and shouts, but that smile, how can I ever forget it...