Bashan and I by Thomas Mann (best black authors .TXT) 📕

him, causing him to leap to the right and the left and turn himself half around his own axis, it always seemed to me as though he were attempting to catch a glimpse of himself and inquiring: “What am I? Who am I? Am I really I?” At the very moment in which the corpse of the duck fell upon the water, Bashan made a leap forward, towards the edge of the escarpment, as though he wished to go down into the riverbed and plunge himself into the water. But then he thought of the current, clamped the brakes upon this sudden impulse, grew ashamed, and once more confined his efforts to staring.

I regarded him with anxiety. After the fall of the duck, I was of the opinion that we had seen enough, and proposed that we should go on. But he had already sat himself down upon his haunches. His face, with ears erected to their utmost extent, was addressed towards the other bank, and when I said to him: “Well, Bashan, shall we go on?” he merely gave a flirt of his head in my direction, as though one should say, not without a certain rudeness: “Please do not disturb me!” and kept on looking. And so I gave in, crossed my feet, leaned on my stick, and also went on watching to see what might now take place.

The duck⁠—one of those very ducks which had so often in impudent security rocked itself on the water before our very noses, was driving on the water⁠—a wreck⁠—no one could tell which part of the bird was bow and which stern. The river is quieter here; the fall is not so great as farther upstream. Nevertheless the carcass of the duck had been seized at once by the current, whirled about its axis and was beginning to float off. It was clear that if our good man was not merely concerned with having made a good potshot and a killing, but also with a more practical purpose, then he would be obliged to put his best leg forward. This he did without losing a moment⁠—everything happened with immense rapidity. No sooner had the duck landed in the water than the man leaped, scrambled, almost tumbled down the escarpment. He carried the shotgun in his outstretched arm, and once more I was reminded of the opera and the romantic novel, as he went leaping down over the stage-like setting of the stone slope⁠—like some robber chieftain or smuggler bold in a melodrama. With careful calculation he kept a little to the right in an oblique direction, for the drifting duck was being carried away from him and it was necessary to head it off. This he actually succeeded in doing with the butt of his double-barrelled gun⁠—extending this towards his kill with his body bent far forward and with his feet in the water. He managed to halt it in its downward course. And then carefully and not without much effort he steered and piloted it against the stones with the guiding gun-butt and so drew it ashore.

The job was done and the man drew a breath of relief. He laid his gun upon the bank beside him, pulled his rucksack from his shoulder, stuffed his booty into it, drew the sack shut by its cords, slung it upon his shoulders. Then supporting himself on his gun as on a cane, and thus pleasantly laden, he climbed complacently up the loose stone of the slope and made for the covert.

“Well, he’s got his bit of roast game for tomorrow,” I thought approvingly, yet not without envy. “Come, Bashan, let’s go⁠—there’s really nothing more to see.” But Bashan simply stood up and turned himself once around himself, then sat down and stared after the man, even after he had already left the scene of action and vanished among the bushes. I did not again ask him to come along⁠—I refused to do this as a matter of principle. He knew where we were living, and if he thought it reasonable to sit here still longer and stare, after everything was over and there was absolutely nothing more to see, well that was his own affair. It was a long way back, and I, for my part, was going to return. And then at last he gave ear and came.

During this exceedingly painful journey homeward, Bashan refrained from all further inclination to indulge in the sport of the chase. He did not canter on ahead of me in a diagonal direction as was his wont when he was not in the right mood for trailing and beating-up the game. He walked a little behind me, keeping regular step and drew down his mouth in a way which I would be bound to notice when I turned around to look at him. This might have been tolerated, and I was not going to let it ruffle or upset me⁠—on the contrary, I was disposed to laugh and shrug my shoulders. But then every thirty or fifty steps he began to yawn, and it was this which embittered me. It was this shameless, wide-angle, rudely bored yawning, accompanied by a little piping guttural sound which clearly said: “My God! talk about a master! Why, he isn’t a master at all. He’s simply rotten!” This insulting sound nearly always disturbs me, but this time it was sufficient to shake our friendship to its very foundations.

“Go!” I said, “go away! Go to your master, the man with the thunder-club, and join up with him. He does not appear to own a dog, and so he might give you a job. He may need you in that business of his. He is, of course, only a plain man in corduroys and no particular class, but in your eyes, no doubt, he is the finest gentleman in the world⁠—a real master for you. And so I honestly advise you to go and make up to him⁠—now that