Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

“I suppose that when Wolf is stabilized we will accustom him to firearms?” the Professor offered eagerly after the soup.

Father rejoined that any dog could be taught to hunt, but to find game was the point, and Wolf’s reflex heritage was to always be on the defensive, on the off chance that a quail might turn on his pursuer and threaten his family.

“The only usefulness of a gun is the extent to which it can bring out hypocrisy,” he finished, as the vermillion roast arrived. “Also as a pretext, usually the only one, for fathers and sons to discourse on sex and death under the guise of safety regulations.”

“The shotgun is the essence of the bourgeois sensibility, I’m told,” the Professor said laconically, eyeing the fine drillings before him.

“Ah, yes,” Father replied drily, “the rise of the uncomfortable middle class, so much remarked upon and so little explained.” Addressing the hostile intellectual’s inquiry, he then took the occasion to launch into one of his mock dialogues.

“Suddenly a new man appears in the forest!” he chortled. “A new class of foot hunter who disdains the horses, beaters, and specialized pursuits of the nobility. For a time, life is given meaning by nothing more than avoiding the perversions of the English aristocracy! The professional classes then begin to bear arms in the guise of putting food on the table, but as any fool knows, the elegant cylinders which stand in the corner represent only the lost spirit of insurrection. To the naïve, Professor, such weapons might appear as a sign of the residual eagerness of a citizenry eager to protect its liberties, or for the man of the family to ward off the violent, random stranger. But in fact the shotgun is a symbol of failed revolution, a reminder how little private armament matters.”

“A display, really, of terrible fragility and sadness,” Mother added, “for brandishing a gun is only a futile effort to turn your enemy for a moment into a reflective sort, so that you might take him by surprise, slip your hand into the fold, and grab him by the nose! There is nothing more pathetic, really, than the sight of a lone man with a long gun.”

The Professor was all ears as he watched his head float in the vitrine’s reflection, a ghost among the guns. The fact was that Father rarely carried a gun and almost never shot one. He only cleaned and fondled them. This wasn’t for a lack of prowess. He had inherited Grandfather Priam’s unflustered eye along with his armory, but something had happened in his thirties. There was a rumor about a friend accidentally killed on a hunt, but more likely it had to do with the newly systematized slaughter, which made it necessary for him to register a gesture of non-compliance. For a time he hunted alone, but with the increasing number of hunters each autumn, plus the arrival of German dentist sportsmen and Frenchmen who abandoned their dogs in the Hycernian Forest after the season, he gave it up.

I did not understand then that most of the uglier things in our time could be explained not in terms of some tragic accident, policy error, or moral misunderstanding, but simply due to the increase in the number of people about. More people everywhere, even in the deepest forest of the most remote country, blasting away every Sunday. Anyone with two horses was a sportsman, and if he won the race, a noted one. People began to hunt without restraint, killing irrespective of age, sex, or season. The few escaping creatures were then harassed without interval by packs of ill-trained hounds. Bags of the murdered — stiff, hairy, blood-encrusted, with lustrous eyes — were exported by the thousands as the hordes faded into the night with their snifters of cognac, the unscrewed anuses of their horses dropping moist smoking balls on every road.

“And what pleasure can one possibly derive from killing a defenseless animal?” The Professor issued his challenge across the salad. Felix only smiled. Ainoha snorted and rustled her petticoats.

“Unlike us, Doctor, the dog has no blood scent,” Father replied in his patient way. “He works only to please his master, and whether it’s a tennis ball or a golden eagle is of no concern to him. Hunting is a matter of sharing senses, of complementary cooperation, which is intrinsically beautiful. There is no victim, no victor, no bounty, no prize, no score. There is neither sport nor spectator.”

“And not to eat it?” The Professor spat this out between mouthfuls, as if such aesthetical athleticism could be the final word.

“Our guest ought not concern himself so much with food gathering,” Mother interjected not too calmly. “It’s a sort of fetish with you, if I may say.”

“One supposes,” Father continued, sawing away at the roast, “that our shadowy guttural ancestors perhaps hunted for food once or twice in the dead of winter. But they didn’t really begin to hunt in earnest until they endured the great trauma, when the wandering life had been given up and they bought the farm. When every man and every animal has his function in the social order written on his face, that is when the lonely man with his scruffy dog strikes out, not to recover the lost tribe, but to lose it. Do you really believe one could be intimate with something as inexpressive as a bird? That’s why intellectuals hate hunters, because intellectuals are still hunting their own lost tribe. In any event, you are missing the dynamics here. As soon as hunting becomes a spectacle, as soon as our dominion over the prey becomes absolute, it loses its purpose, which is why I gave it up. Intellectuals think hunting is a kind of war without guilt. It only has to do with securing the best places to hunt. Believe me, Professor, there’s no real skill involved. The dog does the work, and the prey consents. Guilt and rejoicing cancel each other out. It’s not a question of smelling, but of giving up your own smell.”

The Professor’s spoon had stopped in midair, but Father was relentless. “You fast, you smear yourself with alien substances to disguise the abominable stench of your humanness! You’re alive without your baggage. It hasn’t a thing to do with food or sport. It’s a way of losing the tribe, of breaking communion. Above all, it’s man’s way of escaping the family. No more powerful idea on this earth, let me tell you. And so history begins, Professor, when the man comes home from his stupid job, yells at his wife and children, kicks the dog in the behind, grabs his gun from the corner, and waves the bloody flag!”

“A most interesting way of putting the case.” The Professor had decided to recuse himself from the debate, but you could see the admiration in his eyes. “And you are no slouch yourself, it seems, when it comes to ideas.”

“What you will learn here is that training is all impulse, energy, and tempo,” Mother added in her deepest registers. “The moment it becomes pedagogy ”—she nearly spat this—”you are finished!” And she threw her napkin in the air.

“But surely the commands are of the utmost importance, if not the ideas, which you so summarily dismiss,” the Professor insisted with increasing determination.

Ainoha quickly took the lead as Felix cut another joint:

“Another misapprehension, my good Doctor! The Astingi are the greatest animal handlers the world has ever known. But they have only three commands: lassa, frieza , and panza , delivered with thousands of different intonations. My dear Professor, believe me, throw any word into the world and you will find a thing for it. The trick lies in preparing the subject to receive the word!”

“Most education is one-third action and two-thirds explanation,” Father adumbrated. “It is inertial, continuing on vaguely and mechanically. For anything to be passed on, that ratio must be reversed. A thought, to have effect, must be ready to rectify its own trajectory, and to attach itself to the reality of what the animal is telling us.”