The afternoon disappeared into a mournful, barely audible triple pianissimo, at once sardonic and ethereal, a solitude which was itself almost art.
The Professor had drawn himself up in a perspiring, quivering glower, his tone hyperboreal.
“I believe, sir, our business is concluded.”
Father seemed taken aback.
“You’re going away, then?”
“Yes, I must see about the horses.”
“Very well, very well. Why must you. . Do you find it dull here?”
“You will excuse me.”
“Very well, then. I thought you would stay with us a little longer. A few hours. . It’s rather little, Berganza, rather little.”
“Sir,” the Professor stammered, his jaw jutting and rattling, “you ridicule me, sir, and have insulted the only comfort of my old age. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: people do not love you for what you know!”
Flinging open the study door, he barged past us spies down the stairs, as Father gave a start and clutched at his chest.
The horses were at the door. The Skopje in high felt boots sat listlessly in the box, his soft, fleshy torso and smooth, puffy face bloodless in the twilight, while his white scarf and shirttail blazed purity. In one hand he held the reins within a white cloth, in the other a popular illustrated magazine. His face had the yellow cast of a burning manuscript. Lun and Jofi sat chained on either side of him, white dressings stained with gore about their necks, and muzzled with bows of white satin ribbon. The dogs stared impassively to the east with reddened, slanted eyes, their faces reminiscent of those hirsute teenage fanatics whose passport photos hung in every postal guild, with eyes which neither see nor mirror, just places to take hold of the skull like a bowling ball. As the wind turned the poplar leaves silver, Father continued his efforts at repair, as he assisted the Professor in mounting the carriage step.
“You have taken on a complicated history, my friend. These dogs, you must understand, are the only hunting dogs native to China. There’s mastiff in them, and Samoyed, no doubt. But they were never used for guarding their honorary patrons. They pointed and retrieved, if you can believe it: a lion stalking a golden quail — now there’s a mandarin bit for you,” he said with a false laugh. “And then as the civil wars ceased they were used for herding. Thousands of years denied their natural function, and only later, when the Tartars took them, did they become natural assassins. So you see there’s some confliction here, which no doubt appeals to you. Their very lack of balance might be turned to an advantage, who can say? No one ever knows how a dog might assist a man.”
Then he reached up to shake his hand, but the Professor refused to acknowledge him.
“One final thing you ought to bear in mind as far as upbringing goes,” Father went on, grasping the coattail of his only male friend in Klavierland, “is the westernizing that these dogs have suffered.” He reached up and ruffled Lun’s fur to show the straightened rear leg. “Shortened thigh bone, yes?” And then he squeezed the roll of fat behind her neck. “This we owe to our British fanciers. If this were a human fetus, Professor, what would be your diagnoze?”
The Professor said nothing.
“Professor,” my father said, his untaken hand almost shaking, “an interpretation, please! Here’s a hint: an ugly synonym for certain Asiatics. .” There was a long harsh pause, then through the Professor’s silence, the word appeared crisply in my father’s throat:
“Mongoloid.”
Then he nodded and stepped back, waving to the Skopje to be off.
“One last thing, Herr Doktor.” He grinned mischievously, “The chow carries its tail over its back. As long as it’s up the weather’s fine. But if it ever drops, even a centimeter, run like a lunatic.”
Then he offered his hand again. But the Skopje cracked his whip, bellowing out in a high falsetto:
“Stand clear, ye warmints!”
The wheels spun gravel and the kennels issued a baleful, incandescent roar. As the carriage door slammed on Felix’s hand, from within the cab there came only a hiss:
“I walk out of your heart!”
My father ran alongside the carriage for perhaps a mile, only his apologetic white thumb visible in the black doorframe. He felt lonely as that little finger when, at a sharp turning of the road, he was flung into a ditch.
The village clock did not sound but showed such a time as perhaps never comes.
HISTORAE ASTINGAE: Sport (Aufidius)
No country offers as much variety in hunting as the great pied-à-terre of Cannonia. An hour’s drive in any direction will give the Sportsman an unlimited extent of moor and forest where he can range at will, whilst taking all manner of bodily relaxation in jorrocks, jaunts, and jollities. The visitor who is able to ride cross country, drop birds, take the tiller of a yacht, play rackets with skill, lure a great salmon to an artificial fly, keeping it in play for hours on the trace of a single gut, will have little difficulty in securing an invitation to a shooting party.
It is nevertheless advisable to put yourself under the expert guidance of one of the peasant nimrods of your district. They are capital walkers, generally amusing companions, and by no means despicable shots. Seek a good cragsman, untiring and dependable, clammy of brow with good lungs and heart, and a hand which when called into play, shows no tremor.
The shooting season commences on the fifteenth of July at the intersection of our sixteen migratory routes, which comprise the complete trajectory, song line, and career of every bird alive. First come the willow grouse, hazel grouse, woodcock, grate, single, and jack snipe, golden plover, curlew, corn crake, et alia. The double snipe arrive about the twelfth of August, but a night’s frost will drive them southwards. Then come the incantations of Asia: duck, teal, thrush, titmouse, swallow, sparrow, swan, fieldfair, wildgoose, nightingale, plover, raven, lark, lubber, goldfinch, seagull, and merganser. (Also cranes and white pelican, though these are not considered at the head of the game list.)
The foreign minister of the country, Count Moritz Achilles Zich, founder of the famous antlers collections in Munich, often leaves his estate at eleven at night, shoots his birds high in the mountains, and is back for his daily duties at seven. At Scipsi, in 1895, he shot eleven hundred and twenty pheasants in one day, dispensing twenty-five thousand Purdey cartridges, and near Chorgo he had the good fortune to bag thirty-two duck with a single discharge of his gun. His estate at Malaka includes eagles, vultures, and flamingoes on the jealously preserved game list, though in middle age his most esteemed sport is the killing of skylarks with golf balls.
The ibex was reintroduced to Cannonia by Victor Emmanuel and was carefully preserved there by his son, King Humbert, until his assassination. The golden pheasant was provided to several forests by a former Marquis of Breadalbane, and the mouflon is from an unknown donor in Hungary. The American rainbow trout and turkey were imported in the 1890s, as were the great gray wolf from Iskalisia; oryx and coubain hail from the Grand Duke Serge’s estate in the Caucasus. One can replicate here the equivalent of Turkish sea fishing, a goose shoot at Seville, the ibex stalking of Novgorod, an otter drive in the Pontine Marshes, or the dolphin shooting off Cattegat.