Bashan and I

by Thomas Mann

I look upon him—my Bashan—and I am reminded of a time during which he lost all his pride and his gallant poise, and was once more reduced to that condition of bodily and mental dejection in which we first saw him in the kitchen of that tavern in the mountains, and from which he so painfully lifted himself to a faith in his own personality and in life. I do not know what ailed him—he began to bleed from the mouth or the nose or the ears—even to-day I have no clear idea of his particular malady. But wherever he went in those days, he left marks of blood behind him—in the grass of the hunting-grounds, in the straw of his kennel, on the floor of the house when he entered it—and yet there was no external injury anywhere visible. At times his entire nose seemed to be covered with red paint. Whenever he sneezed he would send forth a spray of blood, and then he would step in the drops and leave brick-red impressions of his paws wherever he went. Careful examinations were made, but these led to no results and thus brought about increased anxieties. Were his lungs attacked? or was he afflicted by some mysterious distemper of which we had never heard?—something to which his breed was subject? Since the strange as well as unpleasant phenomena did not cease after some days, it was decided that he must go to the Dog’s Hospital.

Kindly but firmly Bashan’s master imposed upon him on the day following—it was about noon—the leathern muzzle—that mask of stubborn meshes which Bashan loathes above all things and of which he always seeks to rid himself by violent shakings of his head and furious rubbings of his paws. He was fastened to the braided leash and thus harnessed was led up the avenue—on the left-hand side—then through the local park and a suburban street into the group of buildings belonging to the High School. We passed beneath the portal and crossed the courtyard. We then entered a waiting-room, against the walls of which sat a number of persons all of whom, like myself, held a dog on a leash—dogs of different breeds and sizes, who regarded one another with melancholy eyes through their leather muzzles. There was an old and motherly dame with her fat and apoplectic pug, a footman in livery with a tall and snow-white Russian deerhound, who emitted from time to time a dry and aristocratic cough; a countryman with a dachshund—apparently a case for orthopedic science, since all his feet were planted upon his body in the most crooked and distorted manner, and many others. The attendant at this veterinary clinic admitted the patients one after the other into the adjoining consulting-room. At length the door to this was also opened for me and Bashan.

The Professor was a man of advanced age, and was clad in a long, white operating coat. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, his head was crowned with gray curls and his whole manner was so amiable and conveyed such an air of wise kindliness that I would immediately have entrusted myself and my family to him in any emergency. Whilst I gave him my account of things, he smiled paternally upon his patient, who sat there in front of him and turned up to him a pair of humble and trustful eyes.

“He’s got fine eyes,” said the doctor, without allowing Bashan’s hybrid goatee to disturb him, and declared that he was ready to make an investigation at once. Bashan, quite helpless with astonishment, was now, with the aid of the attendant, spread upon the table. It was moving to see how the old doctor applied the stethoscope to the breast of the tiger-striped little manikin and performed his auscultation, just as I had seen it done in my case more than once. He listened to the swift workings of the tiny canine heart, and sounded his entire organic internal functions from different points of his exterior. Hereupon, tucking his stethoscope under his arm, he began to examine Bashan’s eyes with both hands, his nose as well as the roof of his mouth, and then ventured upon delivering a preliminary prognosis.

The dog, said he, was a trifle nervous and anæmic, but otherwise in good condition. It might be epitaksis or hæmathemesis. But it might also be a case of tracheal or pharyngeal hemorrhage—this was by no means precluded. For the present one would be most inclined to call it a case of hæmoptysis. It was necessary to keep the animal under careful observation. I should do best to leave him here and then call and inquire again in the course of a week.

Thus instructed, I expressed my thanks and gave Bashan a farewell pat on the shoulder. I saw how the attendant led Bashan across the courtyard towards the entrance to a building at the rear, and how Bashan, with a bewildered and anxious expression on his face, looked back at me. And yet he should have felt flattered, just as I could not help feeling flattered by hearing the Professor declare him to be nervous and anæmic. No one who had stood at his cradle would ever have imagined that it was written in his horoscope that he was one day to be said to be suffering from two such fashionable ailments, or that Medical Science would be called in to deliberate over him with such gravity and solicitude.

From that day on my walks were to me what unsalted food is to the palate—they gave me little pleasure. No silent tumult of joy burst upon me when I went out—under way no proud, high, mad helter-skelter of the chase surrounded me. The park seemed to me desolate—I was bored. I did not fail to make inquiries by telephone during the interval of waiting. The answer, communicated from some subordinate quarter, was to the effect that the health of the patient was as good as could be expected under the circumstances—circumstances which, for good reasons or for bad, one did not trouble to designate more clearly. As soon as the day arrived on which I had taken Bashan to the veterinary institution, and the week was up, I once more made my way to the place.

Guided by numerous signboards with inscriptions and pointing hands, liberally affixed to walls and doors, I managed, without going astray, to negotiate the door of the clinical department which sheltered Bashan. In accordance with the command upon an enamelled plate on the door, I forbore to knock, and walked in. The rather large room in which I found myself gave me the impression of a wild-beast house in a menagerie. The atmosphere incidental to such a house also prevailed here, with the exception that the odour of the menagerie seemed to be mingled here with all kinds of sweetish medicinal vapours—a cloying and rather disturbing mixture. Cages with bars were set all around the walls, and nearly all of them were occupied. Resolute barks saluted me from one of these. A man, evidently the keeper, was busy with a rake and a shovel before the open door of one of these cages. He was pleased to respond to my greeting without interrupting his work, and then left me for the present entirely to my own impressions.

My first survey of the scene, whilst the door was still open, had at once revealed to me the whereabouts of Bashan, and so I went up to him. He lay behind the bars of his cage upon some loose stuff which must have been made of tan-bark or something similar, and which added its own peculiar aroma to the odour of the animals and of the carbolic acid or lysoform. He lay there like a leopard, though a very weary, very disinterested and disappointed leopard. I was shocked by the sullen indifference with which he greeted my entrance and advance. He merely gave a feeble thump or two upon the floor of his cage with his tail, and only after I had spoken to him did he deign to raise his head from his paws, but only to drop it again almost immediately and to blink moodily to one side. A stoneware vessel full of water stood at the back of his cage. Outside, attached to the bars of his cage, there was a small wooden frame with a card, partly-printed, partly hand-written, which contained an account of Bashan’s name, breed, sex, and age. Beneath this there was a fever-index curve.

“Bastard setter,” I read. Name: Bashan. Male. Two years old. Brought in on such and such a day and month of the year—to be observed for occult hemorrhages. And then followed the curve of Bashan’s temperature, drawn in ink and showing no great variations. There were also details in figures regarding the frequency of Bashan’s pulse. So his temperature was being taken and even his pulse counted—nothing was lacking in this respect. It was his frame of mind which occasioned me worry.