今日の「お気に入り」。
「 海岸で待っているとき、犬が狂ったように走りまわった。何年もいっしょに働いてきた雌犬だ
ったが、残してゆくことになり、近所の人に世話を頼んでいた。犬は何かおかしいと勘づいた
らしく、砂の上を転げまわりながら不安そうにクンクン鳴いた。そして、キャラム・ルーアの
一家が水際を歩いて小舟に乗り、沖で待つ大きな船へ向かって漕ぎ出すと、あとを追って泳ぎ
はじめた。犬の頭が水をＶ字に切り、その目は去ってゆこうとする家族にひたと向けられてい
た。犬は自分も家族の一員だと思っていたのだ。家族の漕ぐ小舟が、錨をおろした船に近づき、
ゲール語で『帰れ』と怒鳴られても、犬は泳ぎつづけた。泳ぎつづけて、だんだん陸から遠く
離れていったとき、とうとう耐えきれなくなったキャラム・ルーアは、脅しつける声を励まし
の声に変え、身を乗り出して、ずぶ濡れで震えている冷たい体を持ちあげ、舟のなかに引き入
れた。犬は彼の胸をびしょびしょに濡らしながら身をくねらせ、うれしそうに彼の顔をなめま
わした。彼はゲール語で言った。『よしよし、おまえはずっと俺たちといっしょだったもんな、
もうおまえを捨てたりしないぞ。いっしょに行こうな』 」
（ アリステア・マクラウド著 中野恵津子訳 「彼方なる歌に耳を澄ませよ」 新潮社刊 所収 ）
フリー百科事典 WIKIPEDIA には、アリステア・マクラウドさんのことが次のように書かれています。
Alistair MacLeod, OC FRSC (July 20, 1936 – April 20, 2014) was a Canadian novelist,
short story writer and academic. His powerful and moving stories vividly evoke the
beauty of Cape Breton Island's rugged landscape and the resilient character of many
of its inhabitants, the descendants of Scottish immigrants, who are haunted by
ancestral memories and who struggle to reconcile the past and the present.
MacLeod has been praised for his verbal precision, his lyric intensity and
his use of simple, direct language that seems rooted in an oral tradition.
Although he is known as a master of the short story, MacLeod's 1999 novel
No Great Mischief was voted Atlantic Canada's greatest book of all time.
The novel also won several literary prizes including the 2001 International
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
In 2000, MacLeod's two books of short stories, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976)
and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986), were re-published in
the volume Island: The Collected Stories. MacLeod compared his fiction writing
to playing an accordion. "When I pull it out like this," he explained, "it becomes
a novel, and when I compress it like this, it becomes this intense short story."
MacLeod taught English and creative writing for more than three decades at the
University of Windsor, but returned every summer to the Cape Breton cabin on
the MacLeod homestead where he did much of his writing.
In the introduction to a book of essays on his work, editor Irene Guilford
concluded: "Alistair MacLeod's birthplace is Canadian, his emotional heartland
is Cape Breton, his heritage Scottish, but his writing is of the world."
