Bashan and I Thomas Mann (carter reed txt) 📖

not see each other; they scarcely turn their heads, merely squinting towards the rear, straining the eyeball back as far as possible. Even though they are already separated by some short distance, the tenacious, sinister tie still holds and neither of them is sure whether the moment of liberation has arrived. Both would like to move off, but some inscrutable, conscientious anxiety prevents them from leaving the spot. Until at last⁠—at last!⁠—the ban is broken, and Bashan, redeemed, and with the air of having just been granted a new lease of life, goes bounding off.

I mention these things in order to indicate how strange and alien so close a friend may appear under certain circumstances⁠—times when his entire nature reveals itself as something eerie and obscure. I brood upon this mystery and find no answer save a shake of the head. It is only by intuition and not by reason that I am able to identify myself with it. Otherwise I am well acquainted with Bashan’s inner world, and am able to meet its every manifestation with sympathy and with cheerfulness⁠—to understand his play of features, his whole behaviour.

How well, for example, a solitary example, do I know that chirruping yawn to which he has recourse whenever he has been disappointed in the results of a walk. It may be that the walk was all too short or else barren of events in a sporting sense⁠—as sometimes happens when I have begun my day’s work a little later than usual and have gone into the open air with Bashan for a brief quarter of an hour before sitting down at my desk. He walks beside me then, and yawns. It is a shameless, impolite, wide-angle yawning⁠—the yawning of the beast, of the brute, and it is accompanied by a whistling, guttural note and by a hurt and bored look. It says, as clearly as words:⁠—

“A nice sort of master I’ve got! I went and fetched him from the bridge last night. And now he goes and sits behind that there glass door, and I’ve got to wait till he goes out, and me a-perishing with impatience. And then at last when he does go out, he turns round again and starts back home before I’ve had a sniff at a single bit o’ game! A fine sort of master, eh? And what a mean trick to play on a hound! Why, he ain’t fit to be called a master at all!”

Such are the sentiments expressed with rude clarity by these yawns of his⁠—and there is no mistaking them. I am also aware that he is perfectly right in cherishing such sentiments and that in his eyes I am guilty. And so my hand steals towards his shoulder for a pat or two, or I proceed to stroke the top of his skull. But he has no use for caresses under such circumstances. He refuses to acknowledge or accept them. He gives another yawn, and this still more rudely than before, if that be possible, and withdraws himself from my conciliatory hand. He withdraws himself, even though he is extremely fond of such caresses, in accordance with his earthy, all too earthy sentimentality, and in contradistinction to the impervious Percy. He particularly appreciates being scratched upon the throat, and he has acquired a droll but adroit energy in guiding one’s hand to the proper place by means of short movements of the head. That he ignores all tendernesses at present is due not only to his disillusion and disappointment, but also to the fact that he has no interest for such fondlings when in a state of movement, that is, a state of movement coordinated with mine. He is then obsessed by a masculine mood and spirit, and scorns all feminine touches. But an immediate change takes place as soon as I sit down. Then his heart expands and he becomes receptive to all friendly advances, and his manner of responding to them is full of rapturous and awkward insistence.

Often, when I chance to be seated on my chair in the angle of the garden wall or in the grass with my back against some favourite tree, reading a book, I am happy to interrupt my literary occupation in order to speak and play with Bashan. I repeat⁠—to speak with him. And what do I find to say? Well, the conversation is usually limited to repeating his name to him⁠—his name⁠—those two syllables which concern him more than all others, since they designate nothing but himself, and thus have an electrifying effect upon his entire being. I thus stir and fire his consciousness of his ego by abjuring him in different tones and in different degrees of emphasis to consider the fact that he is called Bashan and that he is Bashan. By keeping this up for a short time I am able to throw him into a state of veritable ecstasy, a kind of drunkenness of identity, so that he begins to rotate upon his own axis and to send loud barks towards heaven⁠—all out of sheer inner triumph and the proud compulsion of his heart. Or we amuse each other in that I flick him upon the nose, whilst he snaps at my hand as at a fly. This forces both of us to laugh, yes, even Bashan must laugh. This laugh of his⁠—to which I must instinctively respond, is for me the most wonderful and touching thing in the world. It is unutterably moving to see how his haggard canine cheek and the corners of his mouth quiver and jerk to the excitement of the teasing, how the dusky mien of the dumb creature takes on the physiognomic expression of human laughter, or how a troubled, helpless, and melancholy reflection of this appears and vanishes again to give way to the stigmata of fear and embarrassment, and then how it once more makes its wry appearance.⁠ ⁠…

But it is best to pause here and not involve myself deeper in