Fifteen Rabbits Page 6

  “Blood,” piped the weasel, “blood! Has any of you any idea how delicious it tastes?”

  “Delicious, indeed,” the shrew-mouse agreed, and sat elegantly erect. “Whoever is weak must die,” she cried in a delicate piping voice.

  “Whoever fails to watch out must die,” the weasel agreed.

  “Whoever gets caught must die,” the ferret gloated.

  “Whoever is born to feed us must die,” purred the fox.

  Everyone grew silent and shuddered. Even the crows, the jays, the magpies kept quiet. The squirrel fled several branches higher and sat almost rigid, balancing with his bushy tail.

  “And that’s how we live,” Hops whispered to Plana, “constantly surrounded by danger and death.”

  “And we never do harm to anyone,” Plana replied.

  “What good does that do us?” Hops said. “The less you hurt others, the more you get hurt yourself.”

  But the woodpecker called down to the fox, “You’re not threatening me, you old scoundrel, you’re not threatening me! I despise you, you and all the others who cling to the earth.”

  Suddenly a splendid stag was standing in the midst of the assemblage.

  He had come so noiselessly, so entirely against the wind, with such ineffable surprise, that not one of all the watchful, constantly listening, ceaselessly snuffing creatures could understand his appearance.

  Wonderful, lofty antlers still crowned his head that shimmered silvery on his brow.

  “You miserable creatures,” he said slowly, “what is the matter with you? Don’t you know that there is never any truce in the forest, only constant pursuit, constant flight?”

  It was perfectly silent round about.

  “We must watch and ward,” he said, “each after the fashion of his kind. And each one will make his own fate.”

  He had disappeared before the others realized it. Nobody could say how or where he had vanished.

  Plana sat upright, her ears raised high. “Who was that?” she asked.

  Hops sat, his forepaws in the air, and repeated dazedly, “Who . . . was . . . that?”

  Old Fosco raised his head and whispered respectfully, “He? That was Bambi!”

  High overhead, on the topmost, swaying branch of the beech, the blackbird began to sing.

  Chapter Ten

  THINGS WON’T STAY THE WAY they are now . . .” Hops was talking softly to himself.

  With Plana he had gone quite early from the field into the woods. They were lying close together, closer than the other rabbits, lying on their accustomed beds while the day grew brighter.

  “What do you mean?” Plana asked casually and drowsily.

  “A change is ahead . . .” Hops replied, “a great change.”

  Plana grew more awake. “What makes you think so?”

  “I feel it,” Hops sighed, “I have a feeling . . .”

  Plana tried to calm him. “You’re always so worried, my dear . . . much too worried . . .”

  “We rabbits can never be too worried.”

  “Nothing at all will happen,” Plana asserted, but she immediately began to feel anxious. She saw how upset Hops was, and his concern, like a spark, kindled her own fears.

  “Many things will happen,” Hops muttered. He held his head bowed, tucked between his forefeet, and did not stir.

  All of them were larger now, Hops and Plana, as well as the other young rabbits, their comrades. Of course, it would still be some time before they were as stately as Hops’ mother or the old fellow, Fosco, but they had grown.

  “Many things will happen . . .” Hops repeated. “Don’t you notice the bittersweet taste that everything we eat now has?”

  “Yes, that’s true.” Plana was surprised.

  “Every leaf, every blade of grass, every stalk,” Hops declared, “everything tastes different. Everything has less sap, everything begins to be a little dry . . . and everything smells earthy.”

  “Oh,” Plana objected, “there’s still plenty . . . plenty of fresh things . . .”

  Hops blinked. His ears, laid flat along his back, stirred almost imperceptibly.

  “Fresh things?” he said. “Thanks.” After a while he added, “That kind of fresh things . . . always makes me feel bad when I taste them.” After a pause he inquired, “Would you eat the pale blue flowers on the short, weak stems that have appeared all over lately . . . ?”

  Plana was silent.

  He pressed her, “Would you?”

  A shudder ran down Plana’s spine. “No,” she cried, “I can’t stand their smell. Aren’t they poisonous?”

  “I haven’t seen a honey or a bumblebee or a wasp near those things,” Hops said almost peevishly. “A great change is ahead . . .”

  “Well, ask your mother . . .”

  His whiskers quivered. “Mother? It’s a long time since she’s been here . . . a very long time. I hardly know her anymore. Who knows if she’s even still alive?”

  “Then ask Fosco,” cried Plana.

  Hops shrugged. “Fosco? The old folks won’t tell anything. They won’t tell anything at all. Or they simply give you hints that make you even more nervous.”

  Presently the others came hurriedly bouncing up—Murk, Mamp, Ivner, Nella, almost all of them. A small, transparent gray cloud was traveling close to the ground in the thicket and spreading a scent that bit into their noses, that bit so sharply into their eyes that there were tears in them, and they had to close the lids. Beyond in the fields the potato stalks, piled by the peasants, were smoldering.

  Within the thicket a gentle whispering was going on, a delicate pattering that frightened the rabbits and gave them no peace. The leaves were falling from the trees silently, detaching themselves from the branches, spinning slowly down, turning and circling in the motionless air, then at last, very softly, very delicately touching the ground. It was as imperceptible as falling asleep. They lay everywhere on the brown earth, that was becoming more and more bare and bore more and more of the dead leaves. Rusty-red, brown, yellow, almost green leaves that quickly grew as withered as the rest. They rolled around on their edges; they bent in upon themselves. They grew warped, then lost their shapes in the spasm of death.

  Many pheasants came running in from the fields, still showing traces of some fear they had suffered. Theirs was the astonished haste of furtive creatures, together with their constant, never-ceasing watchfulness. In running they craned their iridescent necks and rolled their little, expressive, inquisitive eyes. They stopped and ran on again. Only under their elegant, hurrying steps did the dead leaves rustle loudly.

  Several stags came bounding in, with long, graceful leaps, checked themselves and turned to stare out over the fields, their heads held high. Their eyes, too, and the play of their ears, told of something troubling their sense of security. Then they turned round again toward the interior of the forest and bounded on until they disappeared.

  One stately buck paused longer. He gazed out across the field. Lifting his legs proudly, he strode to a hazel-bush and angrily scraped the ground, so that bits of earth flew up in a spray. With furious blows his antlers struck the poor hazel-bush again and again, tore the leaves from the branches, wounded the trunk until the whitish-yellow interior wood was visible, while he panted, “Never a moment’s peace! Never a moment’s peace!”

  Everyone who was nearby heard him, saw him, and understood his angry outburst. They all admired with what muscular grace his neck bent in the motions of that savage beating, how his head shimmered, crowned with majesty, and the beautiful somberness of his features.

  “If he’d only do it again,” Hops murmured, “just once more!”

  But the buck very shortly relinquished the hazel-bush and vanished in the deep thicket.

  Magpies flew from limb to limb, chattering excitedly.

  Jays screeched loudly, mischievously, over and over again.

  Alarm!

  With heavy wing-beats the crows rose from the fields, veered in the direction of the fores
t, alighting high among the treetops and screaming to one another, “He! He!”

  “What’s coming now?” whispered Plana.

  “You hear them,” Hops retorted. “He.”

  “Ah! He!” Plana crouched down comfortably in a heap. “Then we rabbits need not worry. He never does anything to us . . .”

  “How do you know that?” Hops crouched still flatter.

  “Well,” Plana answered, “didn’t little Epi say . . . ?”

  “Epi . . . ?” Hops wiggled his whiskers violently. “Epi . . . ?”

  But Plana insisted, “Little Epi was very clever . . . very clever . . . he watched and . . .”

  Hops interrupted her. “Where is Epi?”

  Plana grew silent, frightened.

  There was quiet for a while. Only the chattering of the magpies, the screeching of the jays, the slowly receding cawing of the crows continued and made the silence more pronounced and tense.

  With a rushing leap a squirrel dashed down through the big branches of the beech. In the midst of his mad career his shrill voice rang out by fits and starts.

  Yet before he had reached the lowest branch, the thunder that they all knew crashed five or six times, one peal after the other, on the fields outside. But it was a weaker, fainter thunder. It crashed thinly, unsteadily, scatteringly.

  Hops looked but. His heart grew heavy within him.

  Some distance away across the fields He was striding along. Seven of Him, at short intervals from one another, so that His line reached across the narrow side of the field. Before Him two hounds were running back and forth, were standing with one leg lifted, rigid, head and neck pointed up straight. From the tip of their tails to their muzzles was one straight line.

  Then He came nearer, in a row. The dogs sprang free. The line of partridges whirred up. Immediately after, the thunder cracked, and three, four dark bodies fell heavily from among the flying flocks of partridges.

  “There, you see,” Hops turned to Plana. “He’s murdering our little, friends. He won’t spare us either.”

  “No,” Plana contradicted, “He won’t hurt us.” She held firm to this hope. “He won’t hurt us. Think how He saved you from the fox!”

  Hops kept silent, troubled.

  “And you know,” Plana went on feverishly, “you know, that very day I was sitting close to Him . . . right near . . . then I passed right beside Him . . . passed right next to Him . . . not even fast, for I was paralyzed with fear. Well, did He do anything to me?” She was triumphant.

  On whirring wings the partridges soared again outside. Five or six times the low, thin thunder crackled again. Three partridges dropped to the ground. The two rabbits watched the ghastly drama somewhat closer at hand. They saw how the bodies that had been hit, twitched and then lay motionless. They saw how one stricken hen beat her shattered wings in agony, struggling to rise, frantic with terror.

  A hound leaped on her and seized the little fluttering body in its jaws. It did not stir again.

  “I tell you . . .” Hops began with a shudder.

  But Plana wanted to dull completely the fear that was beginning to awaken in her.

  “Don’t tell me anything,” she cried, “I believe what Epi . . .”

  Hops interrupted her. “Epi! Stop it! Didn’t He capture Epi?”

  Plana bowed her head. “That’s true . . . true,” she repeated almost weeping.

  Hops muttered, “He was the first of us to go . . .”

  “Right . . .” Plana whimpered, “. . . right!”

  At that moment the loud, whirring flight of the partridges reached the thicket. The sharp thunder came rolling in seven, eight times, one peal after another, from the fields. “If we could only have got in here at once,” their gentle voices twittered. “The only thing now is to go on,” others urged. Still others complained, “We can’t go on . . . we’re tired.”

  A hen-partridge fell to earth from among the hunted flock—right beside Hops and Plana. Both were shocked by the way the little thing struck the ground, so suddenly and so hard; by the way it slowly rose and sat up weakly.

  “Is that you?” Plana asked terrified.

  The partridge did not answer, but held its short neck bent backward. Its tiny head was tilted upward and its slender bill hung open in pain.

  “Are you hit?” asked Hops, terror-stricken.

  The response was infinitely gentle, “I . . . don’t . . . know.” It was a dying voice.

  Hops and Plana gazed fascinated at the little partridge that was sitting, struggling before them. Its eyes had grown larger than usual from fear, from anxious expectancy. Its head remained in its rigid position, without moving. Only its opened bill seemed to want to scream forth the torture that was rending its little body, or to cry for help.

  Plana couldn’t stand it any longer. “Can I get something for you?” she whispered across to the partridge, though she did not know exactly what she could get.

  But the partridge’s consciousness was already far removed from intercourse with other living things. Its consciousness had buried itself deep in its wounded breast, or very far away. Somewhere. The eyes of the partridge no longer spoke of expectation or fear: they spoke another, a strange, sad language. It was their farewell to this world. The convulsive attitude of its tiny head relaxed. It drooped slowly, very slowly, with an infinitely wistful, infinitely eloquent gesture, and sank down, gently slipping, limp on its breast. That is how the partridge died.

  Outside on the fields, He was drawing nearer in a row.

  “Shall we get away?” Plana’s whole body was trembling and her ears were fluttering restlessly up and down.

  Hops, too, was in a tumult, but he remained motionless. “No,” he answered firmly, “He won’t enter the thicket. Lie quiet! See if you can keep your ears still.”

  Plana waited stolidly in her hollow.

  A rabbit sprang up outside and ran along in front of His line into the woods. He ran circle after circle.

  The thunder crashed. The rabbit kept running. Twice, three times it crashed again. The rabbit kept running. The thunder pealed a fourth time. The rabbit gave a start but kept on running.

  Breathless, he ran into the bushes, ran as far as Hops and Plana, and they saw that his flank and his white belly were all red and clotted with blood and dust.

  “Rino,” screamed Hops.

  “Rino,” screamed Plana at the same moment.

  “I must go on,” Rino panted. But at that instant he fell, as if struck by lightning, and kicked a few times, as though he imagined, lying there on the ground, that he was still running. Then he lay still—a small, brownish-white streak on the dark brown earth of the forest.

  “What’s the matter with him?” asked Plana timidly.

  Hops kept silent.

  He sat up on his hind legs and raised his ears erect. His features were troubled and his eyes had a careworn expression. “Now’s the time for us,” he said.

  Plana was sitting up like her companion.

  Suddenly she whispered, “Look, over there! Over there! Isn’t that Trumer?”

  Hops glanced out and let his ears drop. “Yes, it certainly is.”

  “Strange that he should have remained out there so long,” Plana said in surprise, “he of all persons!”

  Meanwhile Trumer was running in at terrific speed, while the soil of the field rose in a dust behind him, in the frenzy of his flight. Cunningly he ran big and little circles. “Everyone for himself! Everyone for himself!” was the thought that bore him forward as though on wings.

  One short, sharp crash of thunder sounded, only one.

  Trumer turned a somersault, then another, for the momentum of running carried his dead body along with it.

  He lay stretched out in a furrow on the field, the white wool on his belly turned up to the sky.

  Hops and Plana hurried away. Deep into the forest.

  They were already far off when the hounds came rummaging through the thicket to fetch Rino and the little partridge.r />
  Chapter Eleven

  A TIME CAME WHEN THE sun rose late and set early in the evening—a sun that seldom shone at all. All day long the sky would be covered with thick, gray clouds. Rain poured down in torrents so persistently that there was not a dry spot in the whole forest.

  The rabbits sheltered themselves under the washed-out roots of trees, crept into narrow holes and were nowhere visible.

  Then violent storms roared again through the forest, tearing, lashing, rending and snapping trees and branches together. The rabbits were still more terrified by this tumult. But the storm-wind dried the ground, dried the trees. Drops no longer fell from the branches and the rabbits were not compelled to live in constant nervous terror.

  But the nights grew colder and colder. In the mornings a white shimmer lay over the short, yellow meadow grass that grew more and more withered.

  The leaves on the treetops and the bushes turned yellow, brown, rusty-red. The great change that Hops had forecast began to take place. The pattering down of falling leaves was a steady whisper through the lovely days, through the still nights in the forest.

  Nowhere was there any quiet now.

  Even when the ground was only partially dry, Hops and Plana would roam out onto the meadow at the edge of the forest, where the bare, broad stretches of the earth ran, grass-covered and straight, into the distance. Those stretches bore many suspicious tracks, and many an arousing scent, left only recently, clung to them. Sometimes, too, He came that way as Hops and Plana were sitting among the tansy. But it was not dangerous, for they could hear Him from far off. There on the broad fields He moved without the cunning stealth that they had come to associate with Him, and which made Him so terrifying. For this was obviously His world. Hops and Plana began to love those broad stretches, in spite of His tracks and in spite of His scent. They would go there in the evening and remain all night. In that way they were spared the weird whisper of the falling leaves. Here there was nothing but the fields on which now and again they searched for forgotten potatoes. If morning surprised them, they had to watch carefully because of the hawk, but they soon reached the sheltering forest. Moreover, the crows and magpies, which they no longer needed to fear, gave them signals of warning. Even at night they could see the owl from afar and could hide ­themselves.