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

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 tanbark 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 handwritten, 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.

“Is that one yourn?” asked the attendant who, implements in hand, had in the meantime approached me. He was a stocky, round-bearded and red-cheeked man, wearing a kind of gardener’s apron, with brown, somewhat bloodshot eyes, the moist and honest glances of which had something astonishingly doglike in them.

I answered his question in the affirmative, referred to the order I had received to call again today, to the telephone conversations I had carried on, and declared that I had come to see how everything stood. The man cast a glance at the card. Yes, he said, the dog was suffering from occult hemorrhages, and that kind of thing always took a long time⁠—especially if one didn’t know where the hemorrhages came from. Well, wasn’t that always the case? No, one didn’t know anything about it as yet. But the dog was there to be observed and he was being observed. The hemorrhages were still occurring, were they? Yes, they came on now and then. And they were being observed? Yes, most carefully.

“Has he any fever?” I asked, trying to make something out of the chart hanging on the bars. No, no fever. The dog had quite a normal temperature and pulse, about ninety beats in the minute⁠—that was the normal number, that was about right, they ought not to be less, but if they were fewer, then he would have to be observed still more sharply. The dog⁠—if it wasn’t for these here occult hemorrhages, was really in pretty good condition. Of course he had howled at first, a full twenty-four hours, but after that he had got used to things. Of course, he didn’t eat much, but then he got very little exercise, and it was also a question of how much he was accustomed to eat. What food did they give him? Soup, said the man. But as he had already remarked, the dog didn’t eat much of it.

“He has a very depressed look,” I said, affecting an expert air. Yes, no doubt of that, said the man, but then that didn’t really mean much. For it wasn’t very nice for a dog to have to be cooped up in that way and be observed. They were all depressed more or less, that is to say, the good-natured ones, but there were some as got mean and nasty. But he couldn’t say as this here dog had. This dog of mine was a good-natured sort and wouldn’t think of biting⁠—even though one were to observe him till Doomsday. I agreed with what the man said, though indignation and anxiety gnawed at my heart. How long, I asked him, did one think it was necessary to keep Bashan here? The man cast another glance at the chart. Another week, he remarked, would be necessary to observe him properly⁠—that’s what the Professor had said. I might come after another week and inquire again⁠—that would