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

the prospective passenger and watches and waits. And almost at the very moment at which the bell tinkles, the ferryman comes out of his little house, just as though he had stood or sat behind the door, merely waiting for the signal. The ferryman, I repeat, comes out⁠—and in his walk there is something which suggests that he has been set in motion directly by the pressure upon the push button⁠—just as one may shoot at a door in a tiny hut among the targets in the shooting-galleries. If you chance to make a bull’s-eye, it flies open and a tiny figure comes out⁠—say a milkmaid or a soldier.

Without showing the slightest sign of undue haste the ferryman walks with swinging arms through his little garden, crosses the footpath, descends the wooden steps to the river, pushes off the ferry, and holds the rudder whilst the pulley runs along the taut wire, and the boat is driven across by the current. The boat bumps against the other bank; the stranger jumps in; upon reaching the hither bank he hands the ferryman a nickel coin and leaps up the wooden steps with alacrity. He has conquered the river, and turns either to the right or to the left. Sometimes when the ferryman is prevented from being at his post, either through illness or more urgent household affairs, then his wife or even his child will come out of the house and fetch the stranger across. They are able to perform this office as well as he⁠—even I could attend to it. The job of the ferryman is an easy one and requires no special capacity or training. Surely he is a lucky man, this ferrymaster, in having such a job and being able to live in the neat dwarf villa. Any fool would at once be able to step into his place, and the knowledge of this keeps him modest and grateful. On the way back to his house he greets me very politely (with Grüss Gott) as I sit there on the wooden bench between the dog and the rooster. It is clear that he wishes to remain on a good footing with everyone.

A smell of tar, a wind brushing across the waters, and a plashing sound against the wooden sides of the boats. What more could I desire? Sometimes I am seized by another memory of home. It comes upon me when the water is deep and still and there is a somewhat musty odour in the air, and then these things take me back to the Laguna, back to Venice, where I spent so many years of my youth. And then again there is storm and there is flood, and the everlasting rain comes pouring down. Wrapped in a rubber coat, with wet and streaming face, I brace myself against the stiff west wind along the upper way, a wind that tears the young poplars from their poles and makes it clear why the trees here incline away from the west and have crowns which grow only from one side of the branches. When we go walking in rains such as these, Bashan frequently stands still and shakes himself so that he is the dark centre of a dull, gray flurry of water. The river at such times is a different river. Swollen, murky-yellow, it comes rolling on, wearing upon its face an ominous catastrophic look. This storm-flood is full of a lurching, crowding, tremendous haste, an insensate hurry. It usurps the entire reserve channel up to the very edge of the escarpment, and leaps up against the concrete walls, the protective works of willow boughs, so that one involuntarily utters thanks to the wise forethought which established these defences. The eerie thing about these flood-waters is that the river grows quiet, much quieter than usual, in fact it becomes almost silent. The customary surface rapids are no longer visible; the stream rolls too high for these. But the spots where these rapids were, are to be recognised by the deeper hollows and the higher waves, and by the fact that the crests of these waves curl over backwards and not forwards⁠—like the waves of the current. The waterfall no longer plays a part, its glistening curved body is now flat and meagre, and the pother at its base has vanished through the height of the water level.

So far as Bashan is concerned, his astonishment at such a change in the aspect of things is beyond expression. He remains in a state of constant amazement. He is unable to realise that the places in which he has been accustomed to trot and run should have vanished, should have utterly vanished⁠—think of it!⁠—and that there should be nothing there but water⁠—water! In his fright he scampers up the escarpment in a kind of panic⁠—away from the plunging, spattering flood and looks around at me with waggings of his tail, after which he casts further dubious glances at the water. A kind of embarrassment comes upon him⁠—and he gives way to a trick of his⁠—opening his mouth obliquely and thrusting his tongue into the corners⁠—a play of feature which affects one as being as much human as it is animal. As a means of expression it is somewhat unrefined and subservient, but thoroughly comprehensible. The whole effect is about the same as would be conveyed by a rather simple-minded yokel in the face of an awkward situation, provided he went so far as to scratch his head as Bashan scratches his neck.

Having occupied myself in some detail with the zone of the river, and described the whole region, I believe that I have succeeded in giving my readers a picture of it. I rather like my own description of the place, or rather the place as presented in my description, but I like it still better as a piece of nature. For there is no doubt that as a piece of living nature, it is still more diversified