Bashan and I

by Thomas Mann

These two weeks, at the veterinary high school, as I have already said, had reduced him to the very condition in which I had first found him in the foot-hills. Perhaps I ought to say that he was only the shadow of himself—if this would not be an insult to the proud and joyous Bashan. The smell of the dog-hospital which he had brought with him, vanished in the wash trays, after several ablutions with soap and hot water—vanished—all save a few floating and rebellious whiffs. A bath may be said to exercise a spiritual influence, may be said to possess a symbolic significance to us human beings—but no one would dare to say that the physical cleansing of poor Bashan, meant the restoration of his customary spirits. I took him to the hunting-grounds on the very first day of his home-coming. But he went slinking at my heels with silly look and lolling tongue, and the pheasants were jubilant over a close season. At home he would remain lying for days as I had last seen him stretched out in his cage at the hospital, and staring with glassy eyes, inwardly limp and without a trace of his wholesome impatience, without making a single attempt to force me to go forth for a walk. On the contrary I was forced to fetch him from his berth at the tiny door of his kennel and to spur him on and up. Even the wild and indiscriminate way in which he wolfed his food, reminded me of his sordid youth.

And then it was a great joy to see how he found himself again, how his greeting gradually took on the old, warm-hearted, playful impetuosity, how, instead of coming towards me with a sullen limp, he would once more come storming upon me in swift response to my morning whistle, so that he might put his forepaws on my chest and snap at my face. It was wonderful to see how the joy in his mere body and in his senses returned to him in the wide spaces and the open air—and to observe those daring and picturesque positions he would assume, those swift plunging pounces with drawn-up feet which he would make upon some tiny creature in the high grass—all these things came back and refreshed my eyes. Bashan began to forget. That hateful incident of his internment, an incident so absolutely senseless from Bashan’s point of view, sank into oblivion, unredeemed, to be sure, unexplained by any clear understanding—something which, after all, would have been impossible. But time swallowed it up and enveloped it, even as time must heal these things where human beings are concerned, and so we went on with our lives as before, whilst the inexpressible thing sank deeper and deeper into forgetfulness. For some weeks longer it happened that Bashan would occasionally sport an incarnadined nose, then the phenomenon vanished, and became a thing of the past. And so, after all, it mattered little whether it had been a case of epistaksis or of hæmathemesis. . . .

There—I have told the story of the clinic—against my own better resolution. May the reader forgive this lengthy digression and return with me to the chase in the hunting-grounds which we had interrupted. Ah, have you ever heard that tearful yowling with which a dog, mustering his utmost forces, takes up the pursuit of a rabbit in flight—that yowling in which fury and bliss, longing and ecstatic despair mix and mingle? How often have I heard Bashan give vent to this! It is a grand passion, desired, sought for and deliriously enjoyed which goes ringing through the landscape, and every time this wild cry comes to my ear from near or far, I am given a shock of pleasant fright, and the thrill goes tingling through all my limbs. Then I hurry forwards, or to the left or right, rejoicing that Bashan is to get his money’s worth to-day, and I strive mightily to bring the chase within my range of vision. And when this chase goes storming past me in full and furious career, I stand banned and tense, even though the negative outcome of the venture is certain from the beginning, and I look on whilst an excited smile draws taut the muscles of my face.

And what of the rabbit—the timid, the tricky? He switches his ears through the air, crocks his head backwards at an angle, and runs for dear life in long, lunging leaps, throwing his whitish-yellow scut into the air. Thus he goes scratching and scudding in front of Bashan, who is howling inwardly. And yet the rabbit in the depths of his fearsome and flighty soul ought to know that he is in no serious danger and that he will manage to escape, just as his brothers and sisters and he himself have always managed to escape. Not once in all his life has Bashan managed to catch a single rabbit, and it is practically beyond the bounds of possibility that he ever should. Many dogs, as the old proverb goes, bring about the death of the rabbit—a clear proof that a single dog cannot manage it. For the rabbit is a master of the quick and sudden turn-about—a feat quite beyond the capacity of Bashan, and it is this feat which decides the whole matter. It is an infallible weapon and an attribute of the animal that is born to fight with flight—a means of escape which can be applied at any moment and which it carries in its instincts in order to put it into use at precisely that moment when victory is almost within Bashan’s grasp. And alas, Bashan is then betrayed and sold.

Here they come shooting diagonally through the woods, flash across the path on which I am standing, and then go dashing towards the river, the rabbit dumb and bearing his inherited trick in his heart, Bashan yammering in high and heady tones. “No howling now!” I say or think to myself. “You are wasting strength, strength of lung, strength of breath, which you ought to be saving up and concentrating—so that you can grab him!” I am forced to think thus, because I am on Bashan’s side, because his passion is infectious—imperatives which force me to hope fervently that he will succeed—even at the peril of seeing him tear the rabbit to pieces before my eyes. Ah, how he runs! How beautiful it is, how edifying to see a living creature unfolding all its forces in some supreme effort. My dog runs better than this rabbit; his muscular system is stronger; the distance between them has visibly diminished—ere they are lost to sight. I leave the path and hurry through the park towards the left, going in the direction of the river-bank. I emerge upon the gravelly street just in time to see the mad chase come ravening on from the right—the hopeful, infinitely thrilling chase—for Bashan is almost at the heels of the rabbit. He is silent now; he is running with his teeth set, the close proximity of the scent urges him to the final effort.

“One last plunge, Bashan,” I think, and would like to shout to him—“just one more—aim well! keep cool! And beware of the turnabout!” But these thoughts have scarcely flashed through my brain than the “turnabout,” the “hook,” the volte-face, has taken place—the catastrophe is upon us. My gallant dog makes the decisive forward plunge—but . . . at the selfsame moment there is a short jerk, and with pert and limber swiftness the rabbit switches aside at a right angle to the course—and Bashan goes shooting past the hindquarters of his quarry—shooting straight ahead, howling, desperate and with all his feet stemmed as brakes—so that the dust and gravel go flying. By the time he has overcome his momentum, flung himself right about and gained leeway in the new direction—whilst, I say, he has done this in agony of soul and with wailings of woe, the rabbit has won a considerable handicap towards the woods—yes, he is even lost to the eyes of his pursuer, for during the convulsive application of his four brakes, the pursuer could not see whither the pursued had turned.

“It’s no use,” I think, “it may be beautiful, but it is surely futile.” The wild pursuit vanishes in the distances of the park and in the opposite direction. “There ought to be more dogs—five or six—a whole pack of dogs! There ought to be dogs to cut him off on the flank, dogs to cut him off ahead, dogs to drive him into a corner, dogs to be in at the death.” And in my mind’s eye, in my excitement, I behold a whole pack of fox-hounds with lolling tongues go storming upon the rabbit in their midst.

I think these things and dream these dreams out of a sheer passion for the chase, for what has the rabbit done to me that I should wish him to meet with so terrible an end? It is true that Bashan is closer to me than the long-eared one, and it is quite in order that I should share his feelings and accompany him with my good wishes for his success. But then the rabbit is also a warm, furry, breathing bit of our common life. He has played his trick upon my hunting dog not out of malice, but out of the urgent wish to be able to nibble soft tree-shoots a little longer and to bring forth young.

Nevertheless my thoughts continue to weave themselves about the matter and about. As, for example: “It would, of course, be quite another matter, if this”—and I lift and regard the walking-stick in my hand—“if this cane here were not so useless and benign an instrument, but a thing of more serious construction and constitution, pregnant with lightning and operative at a distance, by means of which I could come to the assistance of the gallant Bashan and hold up the rabbit, so that he would remain flop upon the spot—after doing a fine salto mortale. Then there would be no need of other hounds, and Bashan would have done his duty if he had merely brought me the rabbit.”

The way things shape themselves, however, it is Bashan who sometimes goes tumbling head over heels when he tries to meet and counter that damnable quick turn, and sometimes it is also the rabbit who does the somersault, though this is a mere trifle to the latter, something quite in order and inconsequential and certainly by no means identified with any feeling of abject misery. For Bashan, however, it means a severe concussion, which might some time or other lead to his breaking his neck.