Bashan and I - Thomas Mann (best e book reader .txt) 📗

devoid of all resentment at my cruel faithlessness, even though I had utterly neglected him today and reduced all his hopes and expectances to naught. So I am loud in my praise of him as I pat his shoulders and we turn towards home. I tell him that he has acted nobly, and deliver myself of momentous promises with regard to the day which is already under way. I assure him (that is to say not so much him as myself) that we shall go hunting together tomorrow without fail, no matter what the weather. Amidst resolutions such as these, my mood of universality evaporates, seriousness and sobriety slink back into my soul, and my fancy, now full of the hunting-grounds and their loneliness, is seized by apperceptions of higher, secret and wondrous obligations.

But I am moved to add further details to this transcript of Bashan’s character, so that the willing reader may see it in the nth degree of vivid verisimilitude. I might perhaps proceed with more or less skill by drawing a comparison between Bashan and the lamented Percy, for a contrariety more sharply defined than that which distinguished their respective natures is scarcely conceivable within one and the same species. As a basic consideration one must remember that Bashan enjoys perfect mental health, whilst Percy, as I have already intimated, was⁠—as is not uncommon with dogs of blue-blooded pedigrees⁠—a perfect fool his whole life long, crazy, a very model of overbred impossibility. Mention of this has been made in a more momentous connection, in a previous chapter.

I would merely mention here as a contrast Bashan’s simple and popular ways as these manifest themselves when going for walks or when making salutations⁠—occasions upon which the enunciation of his emotions remains within the bounds of common sense and a sound heartiness without ever touching the limits of hysteria⁠—limits which Percy often transgressed on these occasions and that in the most disconcerting fashion.

But the whole antithesis between the two creatures is by no means exhausted in this⁠—for this antithesis is in truth a mixed and complicated one. Bashan, you must know, is somewhat crude, like the common people themselves, but, like them, also soft and sentimental, whilst his noble predecessor combined more delicacy and possibilities of pain with an incomparably prouder and firmer spirit, and despite his silliness, far excelled that old yokel Bashan in the matter of self-discipline. It is not in defence of an aristocratic cult of values that I call attention to this mixture of opposite qualities, of coarseness and tenderness, of delicacy and resolution, but purely in the interests of life and actuality. Bashan, for example, is just the man for spending even the coldest winter nights in the open, that is on the straw behind the coarse burlap curtains of his kennel. A slight affection of the bladder prevents him from spending seven hours uninterruptedly in a locked room without committing a nuisance⁠—a weakness of his which caused us to lock him out during the inhospitable time of the year, setting a justifiable faith in his robust health. Only once, after a particularly icy and foggy night, did he make his appearance with moustaches and goatee miraculously frosted and iced and with that jerky, one-syllabic cough peculiar to dogs⁠—but a few hours, and lo, he had conquered the cold and was none the worse for it.

But never would we have dared to expose the silken-haired Percy to the inclemency of such a night. On the other hand, Bashan stands in great fear of even the slightest pain, and every twinge wrings from him a response, the whining complaint of which would arouse aversion, if its naive, folkish quality did not disarm one and set the springs of gaiety aflow. Again and again, during his prowlings in the underwood, I have heard him squeal aloud⁠—a thorn had chanced to prick him, or a resilient branch had switched him across the face, and if he happened to have scratched his belly a little in vaulting over the fence, or sprained his foot, I have been treated to an antique hero’s chorus, a three-legged limping approach, an uncontrollable wailing and self-lamentation. And the more sympathetically I talked to him, the more insistent his clamour became⁠—though in a quarter of an hour he would be swooping and running about as madly as before.

Percy was of a different metal. Percy would grit his teeth and keep mum. He feared the rawhide whip just as Bashan fears it, and unfortunately he got a taste of it oftener than Bashan; for, first of all, I was younger and more hot-tempered during his epoch than I am at present, and secondly, his heedlessness often assumed a wanton and sinister aspect which simply clamoured for chastisement and urged me to it. When, driven to extremities, I would take down the whip from the nail, then, it is true, he would crawl under the table or bench and make himself small, but never a howl passed his lips when the blow, and perhaps yet another, came humming down upon his back; at most he gave a low moan, in case the whip bit too hard. But Bully Bashan begins to shriek and whimper when I merely raise my arm. In short, he is without pride or dignity, without self-restraint or self-discipline. But his activities seldom call for armed punitive intervention⁠—the less so since I have long ago ceased to demand achievements from him which are contrary to his nature and insistence upon which might lead to a collision.

Tricks, for instance, I never expect from him⁠—it would be futile. He is no savant, no marketplace miracle-monger, no poodle-like valet⁠—no professor⁠—but a hunter-lad, full of go and vitality. I have already emphasised the fact that he is a splendid vaulter. If it be necessary, he will balk at no obstacle⁠—if it be too high, he will simply take a running jump and climb over it, letting himself drop down on the other side⁠—but take it he will.