Then that liminal figure who sings and dances suddenly flies up, rising as always with his breast upwind, not from fright but in laughing sadness, to settle on a rock, soft with lichen, where he may better copulate. And one feels that miraculous exhilaration which hunters have experienced from the beginning of time. The world ceases to exist, and nothing else matters but this perpetually alert encounter on the bulge of the horizon — a delectatio nervosa. Thus the sunken world arises.
Black Game forever foresees the hunter and lives forever in the hunter’s eyes. We hunt each other’s favors, but keep score by different rules. And the truth is, man promiscuously hunts whatever crosses his path, so why not devote ourselves to a first-rate quarry? Life is a grandiose torment and something of a joke, but we together, fellow hedonists and fellow victims, may for a moment outwit existence.
As the day wears on and you fail to hold your sights even on a haystack, the sundry violent hisses are repeated as two knives whetting against one another, until further acceleration seems impossible. Finally, often between five and six p.m., the male closes with a distinct smack. (Before the amorous ditty ceases, all must be still as the grave, as the twilight reveals the hunter, his dog calmly backing him, balancing on one leg in the final approach: the anspringen.)
When he emits his smack, the bird is entirely deaf for a moment and his eyes shut for three or four seconds, just time enough for a man to make a large jump toward him. Even the greatest Sportsman will turn away his head as he pulls the trigger in partial disgrace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLES NEWMAN (1938–2006) was born in St. Louis and grew up in the Chicago area. In 1964 he became editor of TriQuarterly, which he nurtured into a journal with an international reputation. Newman’s own novels have been compared to the work of both Thomas Pynchon and J. D. Salinger, and his two works of nonfiction are both classics of the form. Newman was a professor at Washington University in St. Louis from 1985 until his death.