The Book of Eels, Patrik Svensson [bill gates best books .TXT] 📗

difference and that it was irrevocable and immutable. A human is something other than an animal.

Eventually, I also came to understand that in addition to there being a difference between humans and animals, there’s also a difference among different kinds of animals. That boundary was even more vague and less defined. The difference seemed to be less about the nature of the animals than about our perception of them. If you looked at an animal and saw something of yourself in it, you inevitably felt closer to it. That didn’t mean killing any animal was easy, or that it should have been easy, just that there was a difference among different animals. Apparently, that was how human empathy worked. An animal looking you in the eye, you can identify with. That animal is harder to kill.

Dad liked animals a lot, but sometimes he killed them. It wasn’t something he enjoyed, he took no pleasure in the violence, but he did what he thought was right. He’d been raised to believe humans have not only the upper hand and the power over other forms of life, but also a kind of responsibility. To let live or let die. It wasn’t always clear how to handle this responsibility, or when it was right to do one thing or the other, but it was nevertheless a responsibility that was impossible to shirk. And it was a responsibility that required a certain level of respect. Respect for the animal, for life itself, but also respect for our responsibility for it.

He kept a shotgun at home. It sat in a closet, locked to the back; he rarely used it. Once or twice a year, he would go hunting with some men I didn’t know. They left in the early hours of the morning, dressed in thick, baggy jackets and green hunting caps. Sometimes he came back holding a dead hare by its hind legs, limp and bloodstained. Sometimes he brought a couple of pheasants. But he seldom seemed to have shot them himself. He always said someone else had held the gun. He said he didn’t like shooting the animals if they were standing still. A hare, flicking its ear, oblivious to the danger. A stock dove cooing in a tree. He stood there and took aim, but couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.

But he did shoot our cat Oskar. That much I know. It was a fat and none-too-companionable black-and-white tom that spent most of the day sleeping on a sofa but slunk out the door every night, not to return until morning. Eventually he grew old and sick and tired, and one morning he was gone and I didn’t really give it a second thought. Mum and Dad said he’d run away. Maybe he’d been run over by a car. I found out only much later that Dad had in fact killed him. He’d shot Oskar with his shotgun. Because he felt it was the right thing to do.

He tried to shoot Nana’s cat, too. It was old and sick and tired as well; Dad took it into the woods to put it out of its misery. He managed to wrestle both the cat and the rifle into the trunk and then drove to a small clearing deep in the forest. Just as he pulled up, he spotted a covey of partridges at the edge of the trees. It was rare to get so close, and his gun was loaded and ready in the back. So he crept around the car carefully, tentatively opened the trunk with one hand and stuck the other inside to pull out the gun without letting the cat escape. But in that moment, the cat—the old and sick and tired cat—somehow got a second wind. Like a dark blur, it streaked out of the open trunk, dashing between the trees, straight toward the covey of partridges. And as the cat disappeared without a trace in the forest, the partridges took flight and raced, terrified, in the opposite direction. And Dad was left standing by the car, rifle in hand. Careless. A failure. He never saw that cat again.

MY FATHER’S VIEWS ON HUMANS AND ANIMALS, AND THE DIFFERENCE between them, had, of course, been with him since childhood. They were considered self-evident, indisputable. For me, it was never so clear cut.

Dad had grown up on a farm and had, since he was a small boy, helped keep the stable free of mice and rats. He’d caught them with his hands and killed them quickly and without fuss by throwing them hard against the stable wall. He’d seen chickens beheaded and kittens drowned. He’d been present when his father slaughtered pigs. He’d seen the pig get anesthetized and seen its throat cut and its blood drained. He’d learned how to scald its skin with boiling water so the thick bristles could be scrubbed off, and how the body was subsequently cut up, turning the living creature into chunks of meat.

As he got older, he continued to help with the slaughter, and once, he brought me with him. I might have been ten at the time. We left at the crack of dawn; when we got to his parents’ the stable door was open and I caught a glimpse of the big tub full of steaming water inside, the knives and brushes on the floor, Grandad leading the pig, a large, pliant animal, up. I was excited and possibly a little bit scared; Dad must’ve noticed, because as we were about to head in and set to work, he turned to me and said: “Actually, I think it would be better if you went inside with Nana.”

There was a graveness in his voice that surprised me, and I felt a pang of humiliation and disappointment. But when he stepped into the stable and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the yard, I was, more than anything, relieved.

Early one morning a few days later, we were down by