Bashan and I, Thomas Mann [to read list .TXT] 📗

the left, accompanies me, snorting deeply, and ejaculating short, confused high notes which seem to arise from the tremendous tension in his interior, as I walk along the fence of the garden, and then he begins to jump back and forth over the pickets of the adjacent public park. These pickets are rather high, and he groans a little in his flight through the air out of fear lest he hurt himself. He makes these leaps impelled by a kind of desperate gaiety, scornful of all hard facts, and also to bribe me, to work upon my sympathies by his cleverness. For it is not yet quite impossible⁠—however improbable it may seem⁠—that I may nevertheless leave the city path at the end of the park, once more turn towards the left and lead him on to liberty⁠—even if only by way of the slightly roundabout way to the postbox. This happens, it is true, but it happens only rarely. Once this hope has dissolved into empty air, Bashan settles down upon his haunches and lets me go my way.

There he sits now, in yokel-like, ungraceful attitude, in the very middle of the road, and stares after my retreating form, down the whole long vista. If I turn my head, he pricks up his ears, but does not follow me. Nor would he follow me if I should call or whistle⁠—he knows this would all be to no purpose. Even from the very end of the avenue I can see him still sitting there, a small, dark, awkward shape in the middle of the highroad. A pang goes through my heart⁠—I mount the tram with an uneasy conscience. He has waited so long and so patiently⁠—and who does not know what torture waiting can be! His whole life is nothing but waiting⁠—for the next walk in the open⁠—and this waiting begins as soon as he has rested after his last run. During the night, too, he waits, for his slumbers are distributed throughout the entire twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution, and many a siesta upon the smooth lawn, whilst the sun beats upon his coat, or behind the curtains of his hut, must help to shorten the bare and empty spaces of the day. His nocturnal rest is therefore dismembered and without unity. He is driven by blind impulses hither and thither in the darkness, through the yard and the garden⁠—he runs from place to place⁠—and waits. He waits for the recurrent visit of the local watchman with the lantern, the heavy thud of whose footfall he accompanies against his own better knowledge with a terrible burst of heralding barks. He waits for the paling of the heavens, the crowing of the cock in the nearby nursery-garden, the stir of the morning wind in the trees, and for the unlocking of the kitchen entrance, so that he may slip in and warm himself at the white-tiled range.

But I believe that the torture of this nightly vigil is mild, compared to that which Bashan must endure in the broad of day, particularly when the weather is fair, be it winter or summer, when the sun lures into the open, and the desire for violent motion tugs in every muscle, and his master, without whom, of course, there can be no real enjoyment, persistently refuses to leave his seat behind the glass door.

Bashan’s mobile little body, through which life pulsates so swiftly and feverishly, has been, so to speak, exhausted with rest⁠—and there can be no thought of sleep. Up he comes to the terrace in front of my door, drops himself in the gravel with a sob which comes from the very depths of his being, and lays his head upon his paws, turning up his eyes with a martyr’s expression towards heaven. This, however, lasts only a few seconds, the new position irks him at once, he feels it to be untenable. There is still one thing he can do. He may descend the steps and pay attention to a small tree trimmed in the shape of a rose-tree and flanking the beds of roses, an unfortunate tree which, owing to these visits of Bashan, dwindles away every year and must be replanted. There he stands on three legs, melancholy and contemplative⁠—the slave of a habit, whether urged by Nature or not. Then he reverts to his four legs, and is no better off than before. Dumbly he gazes aloft into the branches of a group of ash-trees. Two birds are flitting from bough to bough with lively twitterings⁠—he watches feathered ones dashing away swift as arrows, and turns aside, seeming to shrug his shoulders at so much childish élan of life.

He stretches and strains as though he intended to tear himself asunder. This undertaking, for the sake of thoroughness, he divides into two parts: first of all, he stretches his front legs, lifting his hindquarters into the air, and then exercises these by stretching his hind legs far behind him. He yawns tremendously both times, with wide, red-gaping jaws and upcurled tongue. Well, now he has also achieved this⁠—the performance cannot be carried on any further, and having once stretched yourself according to all the rules of the game, it is inconceivable that you should immediately repeat the manoeuvre. So Bashan stands and gazes at the ground. Then he begins to turn himself slowly and searchingly about his own axis as though he wished to lie down and were not as yet certain as to the way in which this should be done. He changes his mind, however, and goes with lazy step to the middle of the lawn, where with a sudden, almost convulsive movement, he hurls himself upon his back in order to cool and scour this by a lively rolling hither and thither upon the mown surface of grass.

This must induce a mighty feeling of bliss, for stiffly he draws up his paws as he rolls and snaps into the air in all directions