Death in Venice and Other Stories (32 page)

Then he lies down, careful never to lose contact with my foot. He lies there, perpendicular to me, in that age-old posture of animal idolatry typified by the Sphinx: head and chest held high, limbs tucked underneath his body, paws extended parallel. Having gotten a bit overheated, he opens his jaws, and in the process all cleverness of countenance dissolves into bestiality, his rapidly blinking eyes narrow to slits, and from between his powerful white canine teeth a long rosy tongue flops forth.

H
OW
W
E
O
BTAINED
B
AUSHAN

It was through a sympathetically stout, dark-eyed woman—who, with only the help of an almost grown-up, likewise dark-eyed daughter, runs an inn in the mountains near Tölz—that we made Baushan's acquaintance and acquisition. That was two years ago, when he was only six months old. Anastasia (the woman's name) no doubt knew that we had to have our Percy, a Scottish sheep dog and harmlessly loony aristocrat, put down in his old age after he had contracted a painful and disfiguring skin disease, and that we had done without a watchdog
ever since. With this in mind, she telephoned from her mountain abode to inform us that a dog, as fine as any we could ever want, was presently in her care and commission and could be viewed at our convenience.

The very next afternoon, the children having pleaded with a curiosity that was shared almost as much by the adults in the family, we trekked up to Anastasia's inn. We found the proprietress amidst the warm nutritious smells of her spacious kitchen, where, red-faced and sweaty, sleeves rolled back from her round arms, dress open at the neck, she was preparing supper for her guests, her calm industrious daughter moving about to and fro lending a hand. We were greeted warmly: to our credit it was noted that we hadn't put things off but had immediately made our way there. And in response to our inquisitive glances, Resi, the daughter, took us around to the kitchen table, put her hands on her knees and directed some flattering words of encouragement under its surface. There, tied to the table leg with a worn rope, stood a creature whose presence we hadn't noticed in the smoldering dusk of the room, but at whose sight, however, we couldn't help but break out in pitying laughter.

He stood there on long spindles of legs, his tail between his thighs, his four feet close together and his back hunched, and shivered. He may well have been shivering with fear, but it seemed that a more likely cause was lack of warming bodily insulation, for the poor creature was hardly more than a skeleton—a rib cage and backbone on four stilts—over which some ragged fur had been stretched. His ears were flat—a pose that never fails to extinguish all glimmers of intelligence and spirit in a dog's face and that indeed rendered his otherwise quite puppylike countenance inexpressive of anything but stupidity, hopelessness and an urgent appeal for understanding. To make matters worse, what might today be called his Van Dyck seemed much larger back then in proportion to the rest of him, injecting a hue of sour melancholy into the overall wretchedness of his appearance.

All present bent down to offer this picture of misery some words of encouragement and reassurance. Over by the stove, Anastasia added to the expressions of sympathetic glee from the children with a series of personal footnotes concerning her boarder's personal history. His name for the time being was Lux, she said in her pleasant, matter-of-fact tone, and he was the son of good parents—she had been personally acquainted with the mother and had heard only good things about the father. Lux had been born on an agricultural conservatory in Huglfing, and it was only because of unavoidable circumstances that his owners had decided to put him up for sale at such a bargain price and had brought him to her, thinking of the profuse traffic at the inn. They had come in their little cart, Lux running undaunted all twenty kilometers between its rear wheels. She had thought of us immediately as people looking for a good dog and was almost positive that we would decide in his favor. Should we be agreed, all parties would benefit. We would certainly receive great enjoyment from him, he in turn would no longer be alone in the world and would have found a nice home, and she, Anastasia, could rest easy knowing he was in good hands. We shouldn't let ourselves be deterred by the face he was making. He was just feeling uneasy and uncertain of himself on account of his strange surroundings. In no time at all, it would be evident that he came from parents of exceptional stock.

—Yes, but apparently somewhat ill matched.

—Not at all, insofar as they had been truly exceptional animals. He possessed the best attributes of both—that much she, Anastasia, could guarantee. What's more, he was unspoiled, moderate in his requirements, which was important nowadays. Until now, potato peelings had been his exclusive diet. She suggested that we take him home for a few days to start out, on a trial basis with no commitments. If we found our hearts hadn't warmed to him, she would take him back and refund the small asking price. She made this offer without hesitation since she wasn't worried about our taking her up on it. From what
she knew about him and about us—i.e., both parties—she was convinced that we would come to love him and would never think of parting from him.

She made many such arguments in her calm, fluid, pleasant voice, as she went about her business at the stove, every once in a while rekindling the flames before her face like a witch. She even came over and opened Lux's jaws with both hands to show us his beautiful teeth and, for some reason, the pink-channeled roof of his mouth. To the expert query of whether he had already had distemper, she replied somewhat brusquely that she didn't know. To the question of size, her quick-witted response was that he would get about as big as our dearly departed Percy. There was much discussion back and forth, much warmhearted recommendation on Anastasia's part, which found support in the children's entreaties, much half-convinced uncertainty on our own. Finally we asked for some time to think things over, which she gladly granted, then made the pensive trip back down to the valley, examining and evaluating our impressions along the way.

Naturally the four-legged wretch under the table had gotten to the children, and all our adult pretense toward laughing at their lack of discrimination was in vain. We, too, felt a pang in our hearts and realized how difficult it would be to erase the image of poor Lux from our memories. What would become of him if we rejected him? Into whose hands would he fall? A mysterious and terrible figure took form in our imaginations: the knacker, from whose horrible clutches we had previously rescued Percy with a couple of genteel gunsmith's bullets and a proper grave at the edge of our yard. If we had wanted to abandon Lux to his uncertain, probably gruesome destiny, we should have taken care in the first place not to make his acquaintance and to study his puppy's face with its Van Dyck. Now that we were aware of his existence, a responsibility seemed to lie upon us, which we could only disavow with heartwrenching difficulty. — The third day after our initial meeting saw us once again making our way up that gentle Alpine foothill. We hadn't
exactly decided upon his acquisition. But we saw only too clearly that the matter as it stood could hardly have any other outcome.

This time Anastasia and her daughter were sitting on either end of the near side of the kitchen table drinking coffee. He who was for the time being called Lux sat in front of them—sat then just as he sits now, his shoulder blades twisted like a peasant's, his paws pointed inward—with a little corsage of wildflowers stuck behind his shabby leather collar. This gave him a decidedly more festive look, something of a village lad in his Sunday best or a hillbilly bridegroom. The younger woman, herself looking quite done up in her traditional dirndl and bodice, said that she had put it there in honor of his new home. Both mother and daughter assured us that they had never been so certain of anything as that we would return to pick up our Lux, and what's more, that it would be this very day.

Thus, from the moment we walked in, any further debate proved impossible and superfluous. Anastasia thanked us in her pleasant way for the nominal price we handed over, which totaled ten marks. It was clear that she had asked it of us more for our own benefit than hers or the conservatory owners', so that Lux might have a positive monetary value in our eyes. We understood this and gladly concluded the transaction. Lux was untied from the table leg, I was handed the end of the rope, and best wishes and friendly promises accompanied us as we made our way back across Anastasia's kitchen doorstep.

The approximately hour-long trek home we made with our new cohabitant was no victory parade. The bridegroom soon lost his corsage in the general bustle, we could read the reactions in the faces of the people we met, and the instances in which we were confronted with not only congenial amusement but mocking contempt multiplied as our route home passed through the marketplace, indeed through the entire marketplace. To top matters off, it turned out that Lux had apparently been suffering for some time now from a diarrhea that required us to linger for long intervals under the eyes of
the townspeople. We stood in a protective circle around him in his most intimate misery, wondering whether this was not, in fact, distemper announcing its first symptoms. However, our fear was unwarranted, for it emerged in time that we were dealing with a fundamentally sound and durable constitution, one that to this day has proved immune to every plague and pestilence.

As soon as we got home, the maids were ordered to appear so that they, too, could meet the newest member of the family and offer their modest opinion. One could see them preparing to be amazed. Once they had gotten a look at him and read the dubious expressions on our faces, however, they let out a harsh laugh, turned their backs on the sad staring creature and dismissed him with a wave of their hands. This strengthened our doubts about their capacity to understand the benevolent rationale behind the small sum Anastasia had charged us, so we told them we'd gotten the dog for free and took Lux out to the veranda for a welcoming dinner of nutritious scraps.

In his timidity he rejected the meal. Though he sniffed at the individual morsels on offer, he shied away, not daring to believe cheese rinds and chicken legs could be meant for him. He didn't, however, turn down the cushion—a potato sack filled with sea grass—that had been placed for his comfort in the hall: he settled down upon it, paws tucked underneath, while, inside, a debate ensued and a decision was reached as to the future name he would bear.

He still refused to eat the following day. Then came a period when he devoured everything that came in the vicinity of his muzzle, gorging himself indiscriminately, until finally his nutritional habits grew more moderate, his taste more discerning. His progressive familiarization with and initiation into bourgeois life is thus described in a single stroke, so I won't lose myself in an overly exact depiction of this process. Only once was it briefly interrupted—Baushan got misplaced. The children had brought him into the backyard and undone his leash to allow him greater freedom of movement,
whereupon in an unwatched moment, he had slipped through the narrow gap between the gate and the ground and got out into the open. His disappearance caused considerable consternation and sadness in our household, at least among its principal members, the servants being inclined either to shrug off the loss of a dog that had been given away for free or to discount it entirely as a loss. A flurry of telephoning broke out between our house and Anastasia's inn, where we hoped and suspected him, in vain, for he never showed his face there. Two whole days passed before her daughter called with word from Huglfing that an hour and a half earlier Lux had turned up at his original home, the conservatory. So that was where he was: pure force of instinct had summoned him back to the land of potato peelings, had driven him to march for days, alone, through wind and weather, retracing the same twenty kilometers he had last covered between the wheels of a wagon! As a result, his former owners once more had to span their little wagon so that he might be placed in Anastasia's temporary custody. After two more days, we again set out to pick up our little Odysseus, whom we found, as before, tied to the table leg, run-down and dishevelled, covered with the muck of the country road. He even showed signs of joyful recognition when he first caught sight of us! Why, then, had he run off in the first place?

A period then ensued in which he had obviously forgotten all about the conservatory but had yet to put down any roots with us, so that in his soul he was without master and thus like a leaf scattered by the wind. In those days we had to keep a sharp eye out whenever we took him for a walk, since the weak bond of sympathy between himself and us tended to tear without warning, causing him to stray into the woods, where, if allowed a life of independent roaming, he would clearly have reverted to the condition of his undomesticated ancestors. Only our careful attention saved him from this dire fate, holding him securely at that high level of civilization that his species has achieved during its several millennia
at man's side. Then, in one fell swoop, a dramatic change of scenery—our relocation to this city, or better yet, to this suburb—did much to reorient him toward us and establish firm ties with our household.

S
OME
I
NFORMATION
C
ONC
ERNING
B
AUSHAN
'
S
L
IF
E
AND
C
HARACTER

A fellow from the Isar valley once told me that this breed of dog could easily become a nuisance, since pointers always stick to their masters' sides. Thus I knew better than to interpret all too personally the obstinate loyalty Baushan soon began to show toward me, and as a result I found it easier to restrain and, when necessary, fend off his expressions of fidelity. There's an age-old patriarchal instinct in all canines that causes them—especially the more masculine, sport-loving breeds—to regard the male head of the family as their primary master, as the guardian of the hearth and the provider. They seek a life of dignity via a special relationship of congenial servitude with him, while maintaining much greater independence from the rest of the family. From day one Baushan held to me in this spirit, gazing at me with eyes manly and true, soliciting commands—which I preferred to withhold since it soon became apparent that obedience wasn't one of his strengths—and attaching himself to my heels in the visible conviction that his inseparability from me was part of the world's divine order. It went without question in the family circle that he would sit at my feet and no one else's. It also went without question on walks that, whenever I broke off from the group to go my own way, he would follow in my footsteps. He also insisted on my company when I was working, and if he found the back door closed, he would take a startlingly sudden leap and spring into the room through the open window, strewing dirt all over and plopping down with a heavy sigh under my desk.