Sunday has come again. He and Bev Shaw are engaged in one of their sessions of Losung. One by one he brings in the cats, then the dogs: the old, the blind, the halt, the crippled, the maimed, but also the young, the sound-all those whose term has come One by one Bev touches them, speaks to the comforts them, and puts them away, then stands back and watches while he seals up the remains in a black plastic shroud.
He and Bev do not speak. He has learned by now, from her, to concentrate all his attention on the animal they are killing, giving it what he no longer has difficulty in calling by its proper name: love.
He ties the last bag and takes it to the door. Twenty- three. There is only the young, dog left, the one who likes music. the one who, given half a chance, would already have lolloped after his comrades into the clinic building, into the theatre with its zinc-topped table where the rich, mixed smells still linger, including one he will not yet have met with in his life the smell of expiration, the soft, short smell of the released soul.
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