Death in Venice and Other Stories (41 page)

Finally, I would also like to address a few words to the hunting of one last sort of game, aquatic fowl. This only takes place in winter and in the colder months of spring—before the birds relocate from their provisional stop in the city on behalf of their stomachs to the mountain lakes—and isn't as exciting as chasing hares can be. It does, however, have its own appeal for both hunter and dog, or rather, for hunter and master. The appeal for me is largely scenic, since hunting fowl entails immediate proximity to running water, but it also entertains and amuses me to observe the subsistence routines of these amphibious creatures, forgetting in the process my own, to take imaginative part in theirs.

Ducks enjoy an easier, more stolidly bourgeois
existence than gulls. They almost always look full and seem to worry little about getting food, for what they require will most probably be there for the taking, and thus their table is always set. As far as I can see, they will eat just about anything: worms, snails, insects, even mouthfuls of pure slime. This leaves them plenty of time to sit on the stone riverbanks in the sun—bills tucked under their wings, napping and greasing their feathers, so that the water practically never touches them but rather beads up and runs off the surface—or just to swim around for fun on the rapid current, their tails in the air, spinning and turning with complacently shrugged shoulders.

In contrast, there's something wild, ragged, bleak and drearily monotonous about the gulls' existence. An aura of coarseness that only comes from a life of hunger and theft surrounds the great cawing flocks of them that circle the waterfall nearly all day, their flight paths crisscrossing that spot where the brown runoff from distant sources gushes from a drainpipe into the river. Diving for fish, as this or that one does from time to time, never yields enough to satisfy their roving mass hunger. Often, even if their crooked beaks are able to snatch something from the river and carry it to shore, they must content themselves with nothing more than some unappetizing tidbit. The gulls aren't especially fond of the riverbank. But they do huddle in dense packs on the outcroppings that protrude from the river during the low-water season, so that these are blanketed by their whiteness, just as the rocks and small islands of the northern seas are often covered with white swarms of nesting eider geese. It's splendid to see how they start cawing and take to the air
en masse
when frightened by the menacing barks that Baushan directs from the riverbank across the intervening water. They needn't feel threatened—there's no real danger. His natural aversion to water notwithstanding, Baushan wisely and understandably exercises caution around the river's current, to which his strengths would never be equal and which would sweep him off downstream to God knows where, perhaps all the way to the Danube, leaving him in certainly rather grotesque
shape by the time he arrived. The bloated corpses of the cats we always see after winter storms are sufficient proof of that, and he never wades past the point where the water washes over the first rocks. Though he may be tantalized by the impulse to give chase and indeed acts as if he were about to plunge into the river swells, the very next instant, without a second to spare, you can count on good judgment asserting itself over passion. The attack goes no further than a pantomime running start and some extreme-looking preparations—nothing but bluff, not dictated by passion, but rather cold-bloodedly calculated to scare his web-footed adversaries.

And in the end, the gulls have too few brains and too little spine to laugh off his machinations. There's no way Baushan can get at them, but he can send his threatening bark across the water in their direction. It makes contact, being also a kind of physical presence, and the attack is too frightening for them to withstand for long. No doubt they try to maintain their position, but a nervous shudder runs through the group. They look over their shoulders; first one, then the other lifts its wings just in case; and then suddenly the whole congregation takes to the air under bitter and dire squawking like an opaque cloud. Back on the rocks, Baushan jumps this way and that in order to disperse them and keep them in motion, for movement is all he cares about: they can't be allowed just to sit there—they have to fly, either up- or downstream, so that he can give chase.

He sweeps along the strand, dashing its entire length, far and wide, and everywhere he goes, disdainfully relaxed ducks, their beaks under their wings, take flight before him. Thus he does indeed sweep this stretch of sand and stir up an amusing cloud of dust. With a splash, though, the ducks glide back down to the water, in whose safety they rock back and forth and spin round; or, alternately, they fly away with outstretched beaks above Baushan's head, while he runs along the bank measuring his honorable legs against their wings.

He's overjoyed and grateful as long as they fly and
provide him with the opportunity for a grand old race up and down the river, whereas they, in turn, are familiar with his desires and can exploit them, if that seems advisable. Once I saw a mother duck with her brood—although it was spring and the river was empty of fowl, she had stayed behind, watching over her little ones, who weren't yet able to migrate—in a slimy puddle left over from the last flood in a hollow of the otherwise dry river bed. Baushan stumbled across them there—I watched the scene from the path above. He jumped into the puddle and started barking as though wild, which sent the duck family scurrying. Naturally he did no harm, but he did throw an immeasurable scare into its members so that the ducklings fled in every direction, flapping their stumpy wings. The mother was then seized by that maternal heroism which blinds her kind to all risk, inspires it to defend the brood against even the fiercest enemy and often succeeds with a preternatural, trancelike display of courage in chasing off the intimidated adversary. With outspread wings and hideously gaping beak, she counterattacked, flying at Baushan's face, throwing herself heroically upon him again and again, hissing all the while. But though the perverse spectacle of such fanaticism indeed caused her enemy to retreat, dumbfounded, she was never able to make him withdraw once and for all. He kept on barking and advancing anew, so the mother duck changed tactics and tried guile where bravery had failed. Perhaps she was acquainted with Baushan from before and knew his weaknesses, his childish susceptibilities. In any case, she abandoned her offspring—or rather, she gave the
impression
of abandoning them. She fled to create a diversion, flying off over the river, “driven” by Baushan (as he probably thought, though he was actually being led by his own hyperactive nose). She flew first with, then against the current, farther and farther, while Baushan raced down below in leaps and bounds, until finally both dog and duck had traveled so far from the puddle with the ducklings that I lost sight of them. Only later did the
fool find his way back, absolutely frantic and breathless, to me. But the previously besieged puddle, by the time we passed it again, was deserted . . .

That was what the mother duck did, and Baushan counted himself grateful to her for it. Normally, he hates ducks with their bourgeois complacency who refuse to play along with the hunt, who simply slip from the riverbank into the water whenever he comes storming up and sit rocking back and forth in disdainful safety directly before his nose, unperturbed by his mighty voice and, unlike the nervous gulls, not fooled by his pantomime running starts. We stand side by side on the rocky riverside, Baushan and I. Two steps before us the duck bobs up and down in the insolent security of the waves, its beak pressed to its breast with affected dignity, reasonable and sober, utterly indifferent to Baushan's enraged voice assaulting its ears. It paddles against the current, more or less holding its position, but nonetheless drifting downstream little by little. One meter off to the side is whitewater, one of those lovely frothing eddies, toward which it turns its smugly uplifted tail. Baushan braces his front paws against the rocks and barks, and I bark inwardly with him, for I can't help but share to an extent his hatred toward such insolent rationality and wish the ducks ill. Concentrate on our barking, I think, and not on the cataract, so that you get sucked down into the whirlpool. We'll see then how you deal with a truly humiliating and dangerous situation. But this malicious hope, too, remains unfulfilled, for the very second it reaches the brink of the cataract, the impertinent creature flies a short distance into the air, flutters a few yards upstream and glides back down.

When I think of our irritation with the ducks in such situations, I always remember one adventure in particular, which I would like to relate in conclusion to this report. It was an occasion of undeniable satisfaction for my companion and me. However, it also raised a delicate, disruptive and perplexing issue; indeed it even led to a temporary chill in my relationship with Baushan,
and if I had been able to see it coming, I would certainly have avoided the spot where it awaited us.

It happened quite far downstream, beyond the ferry house, where the riverside wilderness meets the upper path. We were walking, I in full march, Baushan trotting along lopsidedly a little bit ahead. Having already tormented a hare that day—or if you want, having already
been
tormented by a hare—and having flushed out three or four pheasant, he was now sticking relatively close so as not to neglect his master entirely. A small group of ducks, necks outstretched, flew in wedge formation above the river, too high and too near the other bank to qualify as possible game. They flew along in our direction, paying us no mind, not even noticing our presence, and only now and then did either of us cast a deliberately indifferent glance up at them.

Then it happened. Suddenly, on the equally steep opposite riverbank, a man emerged from the brush and struck a pose that made both Baushan and me halt and close ranks, our eyes upon him the entire time. It was a fine enough figure of a man, somewhat rough on the exterior, with a droopy mustache, square gaiters and a loden hat slanted over his forehead. His billowy trousers were probably of that coarse material known as Manchester velvet, and his matching jacket boasted various leather belts and straps, for he wore a knapsack and carried a rifle slung over his shoulder. Better yet, he
had
carried it slung over his shoulder, since no sooner did he appear on the scene than he took his weapon in his hands and, with his cheek pressed flat against the butt, aimed it sideways up at the sky. With one square-gaitered leg in front of the other, the gun barrel resting in the hollow of his outstretched left hand, his left elbow drawn in underneath, his right elbow, right hand on the trigger, splayed sideways, and his face angled boldly toward the sky, he took aim. There was something decidedly operatic about the man's sudden appearance there above the river scree, towering against the natural backdrop of the brush, the river and the open sky. Yet we could only
admire this picturesque image for a second—for from across the water came the dull crack of the gunshot that I had awaited with bated breath, so that I flinched when it occurred. At the same time a tiny flame shot up, pale in the light of day, followed by a puff of smoke. The man took one giant operatic step forward, his chest and face arched toward the sky, his right fist firmly gripping the strap of the rifle, while up above, where both his and our eyes were trained, brief aerial pandemonium broke out. The group of ducks scattered, there was a wild flapping like that of loose sails in a gusty wind and an attempt at gliding, then suddenly a form coalesced, the victim's body, plummeting like a rock into the water near the opposite bank.

But that was only half of it. Here I must interrupt my account to train the living gaze of my memory upon Baushan. Many familiar sayings—perennial currency for great events—leap to mind as possible descriptions for his behavior. I might say, for instance, that he'd been hit by lightning. Yet that strikes a false chord and leaves me dissatisfied. Great words, being worn out, do a poor job of expressing the extraordinary. This is better accomplished by using ordinary words to the uttermost extent of their meaning. Therefore let me just say that at the rifle shot, the attendant context and everything that followed, Baushan
stopped short
. It was typical for him to do so whenever something unusual occurred, that I knew. Only this time the arrest of motion was intensified
ad infinitum
. He did a veritable double take that propelled his whole body a step backward, shook him from right to left and jerked his head into his chest with such force that it was practically torn from his shoulders on the rebound. It was like a cry from deep within: “What? What? What was that? Wait one minute!
What was that all about?
” His eyes and ears took everything in with the sort of indignation caused by great amazement, yet despite the novelty of it all, everything was already present somehow, just as it always had been. Indeed, gripped by uncertainty, jerking in great spasms to the right and to the left, halfway around his own axis, he could well have
been trying to examine himself from behind, asking all the while: “What am I? Who am I? Is that me?” The moment the duck hit the water, Baushan sprang forward to the edge of the embankment as though about to jump down to the riverbank and plunge in. But then he remembered the current, checked this impulse and, ashamed, resumed the role of mere spectator.

I looked on uneasily. Once the duck had fallen from the sky, I was of the opinion that we'd seen enough and should now move on. He, however, had settled down on his haunches, ears pricked, facing the other bank, and to my question “Shall we be on our way, Baushan?” he barely turned his head in response—not unlike someone answering in a peremptory tone, “Please leave me in peace”—and kept on watching. Thus I resigned myself, crossed my legs, leaned against my walking stick and watched as things unfolded.

The duck—one of those that always bobbed up and down before our noses in insolent safety—was floating face down in the water, a shipwreck whose front could no longer be distinguished from its tail. The river is calmer down here, its drop less drastic than further upstream. Nonetheless the dead bird was immediately seized, spun round and carried off by the current. If the man had something more practical in mind than just killing his mark for sport, he had to make haste. That he did, without losing a moment, so that everything transpired with the greatest speed. Hardly had the duck broken the water's surface before he came storming down the embankment, jumping, stumbling and almost falling. He held his rifle outstretched in his arms, and once again the scene had all the romance of an opera, with him springing down over the ornamental-seeming backdrop of the river scree like some thief or clever smuggler of melodrama. He struck out a bit to the left, cleverly, for the duck threatened to float away before he could catch it. And stretching out the butt of his rifle and leaning forward with his feet in the water, he actually succeeded in putting a stop to its drift and bringing it under control. Carefully and with considerable difficulty, he managed
to nudge it tugboatlike against the rocks and up onto land.