Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

What made Herr Adamowski’s entrance embarrassing was the fact that he had taken off his jacket. It was a warm day, and he was carrying it draped on his arm when he stepped through the gate by the dvornik ’s hut and headed through the garden to the house, his beret slanting over his head and his monocle sparkling in his left eye. Everyone expected him to put it back on before entering the room, but he hung it up in the hall along with his beret, and brought his cane inside instead, though that could hardly be held against him, on account of his clubfoot. The man also exuded a fairly pungent odor, although that, too, could be forgiven, considering how much effort it took him to keep going with his physical defect. However, the dogs, which were always close at hand, refused to leave him alone, and he had trouble fending off their friendly attention. Once inside the room, he was introduced to all the relatives one by one, and made his rounds rocking from one side to the other, passing his cane from his right hand to his left in order to shake hands, and then taking it back with in the right, until he finally came to a place where he could sit down between our mother and the aunt from the country. At that point the dogs were energetically shooed away and he was offered a cigarette, which he politely accepted. With the stilted gestures of the newcomer who senses that he is being offered an opportunity to shed his awkwardness, he lit it and inhaled, but then immediately had a coughing fit. Everyone overlooked his clumsiness.

Meanwhile, he felt put on the spot, the focus of a deference that lasted too long and was at best ambivalent. Our country relatives were people happily filled with their own simple self-assurance, and although they were considered open-minded, in reality they viewed whatever was outside their immediate range of vision, or else what didn’t have to do with the joys and limitations of their unpretentious life, with blank incomprehension, before proceeding along in their narrow way of thinking. They were devoted to each other in an entirely uncomplicated and somewhat coarse way, and were not at all shy about criticizing each other, or recounting the occasional vicious disagreement, so that a complete stranger had no choice but to feel excluded from the intimate sphere they never seemed to leave. The rustic isolation in which they lived, with no children, had led them to the habit of listening only to each other. When, for instance, Uncle Hubert said, “It’s horrible how much time you waste in the city. We spent the whole morning running around from one place to another just because we needed a permit to import a new reaper-binder,” Aunt Sophie paid careful attention to his every word, even though she had been present on this errand, which could not have been particularly entertaining — just in case she had to complete his report by reminding him of something he had left out, or even simply to paraphrase what he had already reported. “We set off at five-thirty in the morning, were in the city by nine o’clock, and even though we went straight to the permit office before doing anything else, by noon we still weren’t done.” As predicted, the couple paid little attention to Herr Adamowski. What’s more, whenever our mother tried to fill this gap by interrupting Uncle Hubert’s report with a question or comment, Aunt Sophie would cut her off: “Listen to what Hubi’s saying, it’s very interesting.”

What Uncle Hubert was saying was not the least bit interesting, but it did have the calming effect of the straightforward narration of simple events.

“Now, I’ve ordered a gun rest for the stag season,” he said, for example. “Because, well, it’s like this: I can hardly see anything with my right eye anymore, since I was wounded in the war. So I ordered a telescopic sight from Zeiss so I could shoot with my left eye. Except I can hardly hear with my left ear. So when the gamekeeper locates a stag, he has to go to my left, to hand me the rifle with the sight and point it in the direction of the stag so I can see it. Then he has to step behind me over to my right, where I can still hear, and whisper how many points the stag has, because I can’t see that while I’m hurrying to look through the sight. I mean, of course I see it when there’s time to. Then I can give him a good looking-over, but mostly there isn’t enough time, what with the thick underbrush out where we are, not like what you have, with those tall fir stands; but where we are it really is like a brush. So when I don’t have enough time for a proper identification, the gamekeeper has to tell me what it is I’m shooting at. After all, you don’t want to be shooting the wrong thing, do you? And then he starts whispering in my right ear, and as it is I can barely understand the man, what with his pipe in his mouth …”

“So now Hubi’s told him he can’t bring the pipe anymore when they’re out together,” seconded Aunt Sophie. “But that man always has something in his mouth — he’s always either chewing on a blade of grass or a button or something …”

“And he stinks on top of that …”

“He stinks like you can’t imagine. I’ve already asked Hubi if he doesn’t ever bathe, but Hubi says the animals prefer it that way …”

“Well, they always say you’re not supposed to scrub yourself too thoroughly when you go hunting, because soap stinks even more to the game than an unwashed man does to us. You can see that whenever you give a dog something that smells good — smells good to us , I mean …”

“That’s right, and what smells good for a dog doesn’t smell good to us, right? But you wanted to tell about that new shooting rest you’re having made.”

“Well, so if the man next to me stinks that much, the gamekeeper I mean …”

“And Hubi has a nose like a fox, I’m telling you, it’s so sensitive that if one of our servant girls smells just a little bit I take care of it right away, though I can’t be checking their armpits first thing every day or God knows what else. But you know what works best?” She turned past Herr Adamowski to ask our mother. “Permanganate. Make them take a permanganate bath because that takes care of things for a long time. Remember that, it’s bound to be of value to you. I learned about it from Olga.”

“Yes, of course, potassium permanganate, that takes care of it right away. But I can’t put the gamekeeper in a tub of bichromate of potash. In the first place he doesn’t have a tub at home, and in the second place the man is busy throughout the rutting season listening to the calls: he’s been sleeping outside for days, that’s a tremendous strain, the rut, for him …”

“Well, he stinks even outside the season. But never mind that, finish telling about your shooting stick, because we’ll have to be on our way soon.”

“Can’t you stay for supper?” asks our mother.

“No, dear, thanks very much, but Hubi has to write tonight and in the morning he has to make it to the station because the new thresher has come in and he insists on being there while they unload it so nothing happens to the parts, we’ve already put a fortune into the thing. I’m telling you, if we didn’t grow what we need to live off we’d starve to death, sure as shooting.”

“Well, sooner or later we’ll amortize the costs of the machine, right …”

“Sooner or later, Hubi, it will be amortized. But who knows if we’ll live to see that day — in other words, we might just starve to death if we didn’t have everything, at least to eat I mean, believe you me. But now go on and listen to the rest of Hubi’s story about his new shooting rest …”

“So, like I was saying, when the man is whispering in my ear, and he always has something in his mouth, then I can’t help turning my head to him in order to hear him better, after all, you get worked up in a moment like that, with the stag standing over there, ready to move off at any moment, or else he spots you and then he takes off, oh yes, that’s happened to me a few times, that I’ve lost him from my sight, and you know how that is, when you try searching around with that, I can’t send the gamekeeper to the other side to set up the rifle again, that would make too much noise, would take too much time, even the most trusting deer isn’t going to stand there that long, of course …”