Candide Gets a Puppy
By Mike
Eight years had elapsed since Voltaire abandoned Candide on a suburban farm outside Constantinople, leaving him to contemplate vegetables, mortality, and his Netflix queue. The author was bored with his creation—a occupational hazard when you invent characters more optimistic than golden retrievers on antidepressants.
Cunegonde, Candide’s wife, had curdled like milk left in summer heat, her former beauty had fled and now she made gargoyles weep. Her temperament followed suit, souring into perpetual dissatisfaction that turned polite dinner conversations into war crimes tribunals. Yet Candide loved her still, because naive men possess an alarming capacity for devotion that evolution should have bred out centuries ago.
Dr. Pangloss continued his philosophical masturbation, stroking his theories about "the best of all possible worlds" while reality repeatedly kicked him in his metaphysical teeth. The man could witness a plague of locusts devouring orphans and somehow conclude that providence had arranged this spectacle for humanity's moral education – in other words, all bad things that happened were actually the best things for us.
Old Martin tended radishes and pessimism with equal dedication, fully convinced each harvest faced imminent apocalypse. His worldview resembled a weather forecast written by Edgar Allan Poe: permanently overcast with a chance of doom. He watered plants while muttering about cosmic injustice, creating the world's first existentially depressed vegetables.
The one-buttocked crone who served as Cunegonde's lady-in-waiting had grown crustier than week-old bread, her missing posterior serving as a daily reminder that life specializes in taking things you need and leaving you with architectural problems. She hobbled through her duties trailing complaints like a comet trails space dust.
Cacambo dreamed of red sheep and El Dorado while hauling turnips to market, his merchant's soul yearning for adventures more exotic than comparing his carrot’s prices to Turkish vendors. Adventure calls to certain men the way slot machines call to gamblers—irrationally, persistently, and usually at inconvenient moments.
Brother Giroflée and Paquette conducted their tempestuous romance like a dinner theater production of domestic dysfunction, finding passion between the tomato plants and existential angst among the eggplants. Former clergyman and reformed prostitute, they'd discovered that gardens provide excellent venues for both cultivation and copulation, though the timing requires careful coordination to avoid scarring the vegetables.
Candide himself had embraced agriculture with the fervor of a convert discovering religion. "Truth lives in dirt," he proclaimed to anyone within earshot, as if soil possessed mystical properties beyond its ability to grow food and stain clothing. But Candide remained fundamentally naive—a condition Voltaire had programmed into his DNA as a cosmic practical joke.
His ears, however, functioned perfectly. Evening breezes carried his companions' complaints across the garden like pollen, and Candide recognized the symptoms of terminal dissatisfaction. His friends suffered from that peculiar human condition: the inability to appreciate present blessings.
Candide sought counsel from Murriado, the neighborhood dervish who'd previously dismissed Pangloss's philosophical inquiries with the contempt they deserved. The old mystic possessed that rare quality: wisdom unmarinated in academic pretension.
"Master," Candide began, settling cross-legged in the dervish's chamber while accepting mint tea that tasted like enlightenment served warm, "my companions cannot find satisfaction in the truth I've discovered in dirt."
Murriado stroked his beard—a magnificent white cascade that had witnessed more revelations than most libraries—and smiled with patient amusement. He’d heard this question over seventeen thousand times.
"Truth doesn't inhabit dirt," he replied. "Dirt merely exists, like Tuesday or gravity. People who claim to find truth in soil usually discover they've been talking to earthworms, and earthworms are terrible conversationalists."
He continued, "Truth itself remains an illusion, albeit a persistent one. Like love, justice, or the belief that politicians serve public interests rather than private bank accounts."
"Then how does one achieve satisfaction?" Candide asked, his optimism wavering like a candle in existential wind.
"Two methods exist," Murriado replied, his eyes twinkling with mischief that would make Buddha giggle. "First, embrace illusions wholeheartedly. Pretend the world makes sense, that good triumphs over evil, and that your ex-lover really means it when they say 'let's remain friends.'"
"And the alternative?"
"Get a puppy."
Candide departed cradling an eight-week-old beagle who radiated more genuine joy than all of philosophy's collective wisdom. Candide whispered to his new companion, "Voltaire, you magnificent fool, you should have gotten a puppy."
The beagle licked his face, which translated roughly to: "Duh."