Fifteen Rabbits

by Felix Salten

  But before he even knew what had happened or how it happened, Pasto charged into his side. While Brabo was staring vacantly into space, fog before his eyes and his brain reeling, a mighty thrust tore a gaping rent in his mane, a second blow ripped open his shoulder. He sank to his knees. He felt the red sweat running hot down his leg.

  Then frenzied fear, such as he had never known, gripped him. Everything vanished in the torrent of his fear—pride, love of power, everything. If he could only get away! Only save himself! It bore him up, helped him to recover, allowed him to avoid Pasto’s fresh, murderous attack. It made him capable of fleeing, despite the sharp pain that burned in his neck and shoulder. In his wild haste he leaped toward the near-by thicket, as majestically, and with as much male grace as if he were unhurt, safe and sound. But it was best not to look at his face which was distorted with terror, or his eyes that were filled with grief. A few steps and he heard his pursuer behind him. Then he heard the thunderous roar of triumph of him who from now on would be lord.

  Brabo was lord no longer.

  Humbled, ashamed, humiliated, he tottered through the undergrowth. Where it closed most impenetrably above him, Brabo sank heavily to the ground. The fever from his wounds mounted and shook him. More painful than the fever, the sense of his own powerlessness shook him. Like a bitter, dream, the memory of his season of glory swept over his soul—how he had been the foremost, the most powerful in the whole range of forest; how he had chosen his princesses and had made them queens; how everyone who had contested his lordship had been forced to flee or been laid low; how everyone drew back in awe before him. Past! Even the place he had just filled as lord of all, even his princely predilection for the contrary little Astalba now seemed to him remote and past.

  He was old. A half hour ago he had not known it. He could not quite grasp it yet. Nevertheless there could be no doubt of it: he was old. He would no longer love the world, or the love that had spurred him on, and yet had cast him down. He would abide alone.

  When Hops and Plana had crept very softly past Brabo’s couch, Plana halted a moment to ask, “Did you notice that his eyes were full of tears?”

  Hops hurried on. “No!” he said quickly and ran.

  He did not want to talk about it: he was too much upset.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AT THE WINDOW OF THE room in which Epi was pining in captivity hung a little birdcage. In the cage was a linnet that had been caught outside in the forest.

  Epi lay quietly on the bare board bottom of his narrow box, a couple of cabbage leaves always in front of him.

  The linnet sprang restlessly to and fro in its narrow prison. From perch to perch. There were only two. But the linnet hopped from one to the other all day long.

  The people of the house were delighted and said, “How lively he is!”

  But the linnet was by no means lively. He was desperate and half-mad with longing for freedom, with yearning for his kind.

  What had happened, how he had come to be there he did not know, he did not care to know. But the mortal terror that had paralyzed him when the dreadful hand clutched, closed round, and released him only in that tight, transparent prison, still shot quivering through his body.

  At first he fluttered wildly against the cord bars, hurt himself, ruffled his plumage against them and broke several feathers. Little by little he grew tired, feebler. Finally his fluttering ceased, but he could not quiet himself. Early in the morning, on waking, he dreamed of his free life, and in the evening, too, when he put his head behind his wing to sleep. Those wings were no longer of any use to him. They no longer bore him up as once they had. When he recalled how he used to dart through the air in the fragrance of the flowers, in the warmth of the sun, in the coolness of the shadows, he thought he would die of sorrow. Then, in the torturing confines of his prison, began that tormented and endless hopping from one perch to the other. Between times now and then, there would be a brief fluttering—but very seldom and only when some mistake made him think his prison gate was open. For hope never left the linnet’s breast: some day there would be a hole in the prison, some day a way out would appear. Constantly, confidently the little bird waited. The hope kept him alive. But when his homesickness for the forest threatened to strangle him, he began to sing.

  Before the linnet became his companion by the window, Epi had lived a sad and lonely existence. He had become quite dull and gloomy. All day long and all night long Epi dozed; his rapid movements ceased.

  During the early days, amid the terrors that surrounded him, he kept thinking constantly of Hops and Plana. What the two of them were probably doing, how things were going with them out there in the forest.

  He passed many hours during which he considered and again considered the error he had committed and through which he had got into this horrible situation.

  “I shouldn’t have waited so long,” he thought, “but Hops and Plana stayed on their beds, too . . .” No, he rejected that. “Hops and Plana were up and away at the right moment.” He brooded over it. “I should have been up and away, too. Hops was always preaching that . . . for us rabbits it must always be up and away! Next time they won’t catch me . . . not me! Next time . . .” There he faltered.

  Presently he was lost in dreams again. How he would bound away! Out into the fields! He would find his way to the forest! He would surely find his way! He would run toward the smell of the forest. Sometimes the wind, that breath of the forest, blew into the room. Sometimes something like the smell of the forest earth, a message from the thickets, was wafted through the window. Then Epi would raise his ears quickly, his whiskers would quiver feverishly, his eyes would roll around in his head. He would bound out of his box, frisk about the room, become almost daring as he tried the limberness of his legs—until they caught him and put him back into his box once more.

  How he loathed those bare boards, soaked through with uncleanness. How he hated the cabbage leaves, the pieces of potato, the turnips they flung him for food. Everything was contaminated by His touch, stank of Him, for whom Epi felt such oppressive fear, such deep aversion. He ate always with a choking disgust.

  A wasp blundered about the room. Epi listened with rapture to the whirring of its wings.

  “Do you come from the forest?” he asked.

  “Forest?” hummed the wasp, “I don’t know . . . maybe . . .”

  “Oh, no,” Epi murmured wistfully, “Oh, no! If you were from the forest, you’d know it.”

  Another time a beetle hummed in.

  Epi started up.

  “Are you from the forest?”

  “From the what?” answered the beetle. “The forest? From the dungheap!”

  “Miserable creature!” thought Epi, and paid no further attention to him.

  Again a butterfly fluttered over the sleeping Epi. He heard the delicate whish of its wings, awoke and cried, “I greet you . . . you are from the forest, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” answered the butterfly and capered in the air. “Yes, I do come from there.”

  “Oh!” Epi was so moved that he could not speak.

  “What do you know about the forest?” said the butterfly.

  “I? I?” Epi stammered. “I beg you,” he was completely unstrung, “I beg you, settle down for a moment.”

  The butterfly alighted, opening and shutting his wings. “But only for a moment,” he said.

  “Please wait,” Epi was pleading, “I must tell you . . . I want to ask you . . .”

  “Impossible.” The butterfly rose. “I can’t stand it here!” He capered high into the air again. “How did I ever come to get in here?” he called down to Epi.

  “Only listen to how I came to get here . . .” Epi called beseechingly to him.

  “That’s none of my concern,” answered the butterfly. He fluttered gaily to the open window.

  “Are you flying back to the forest?”

  But the butterfly no longer heard him. He was already outside, in freedom.

  E
pi sank back into his despondency. At times it seemed to him as if the whole world, Hops and Plana, the other rabbits, all that had not actually been real, but merely a dream of his longing—and one that was darkening. Epi let it darken. He no longer possessed will enough nor sufficient desire for life to cling to what had been.

  But when the captive linnet in its narrow cage was set upon the window sill, Epi once more awakened from his torpor. He raised his ears bolt upright, he snuffed inquisitively in the direction of the little bird. He sat up on his hind legs, and his whiskers, which had become yellowish, brittle, insensitive, twitched more violently than ever. For the linnet came from the forest. Epi smelt the gentle odor given off by the tiny bird’s plumage, that unforgettable breath of freedom, of the treetops, of the uncontaminated branches, the never-profaned leaves. It was very, very faint, that smell. It grew fainter with every hour and finally vanished altogether. But Epi had breathed it in passionately. That freshness, that glorious message from his home pierced Epi to a heart that was bursting and throbbing with the memory of it.

  At first the linnet would not be talked to. He beat like mad against his bars and heard nothing. And his wild desperation drove Epi back into even more desperate sorrow. He sat silent, gnawing inward at himself, kept his poor, sorrowful eyes fastened on the linnet, that was fluttering to pieces against its cage, while Epi’s whole being raged and raved with the little imprisoned bird.

  Epi seemed very quiet when one looked at him. But his small, unhappy soul was lashed by a storm of longing, of impatience, of the bitterest complaint and chafing. In those few hours Epi declined more than he had in weeks.

  The linnet gave up its senseless fluttering and began its ceaseless hopping to and fro.

  Epi called up to him, “Do you come from the forest?”

  Again and again he asked. No answer. Epi did not lose patience. He sat erect on his hind legs as long as he was able, which was not very long. He raised his ears and let them fall again. He snuffed with his nose, twitching violently to catch the last vestiges of that beloved smell of home. And he did not cease to repeat his question, “Do you come from the forest?”

  At last the linnet peeped, “How does that concern you?”

  Tenderness shone in Epi’s eyes as he replied gently, “I, too, am from the forest.”

  “How does that concern me?” The words sounded morose and angry.

  Epi was completely crushed. For a long time he sat bowed and silent. Presently he sighed, “The forest is beautiful.”

  Then the linnet began to sing.

  Epi listened. He felt agitated to the point of bursting, he felt tranquilized to the point of bliss, he was glowing through and through with rapture, and yet felt cruelly depressed.

  Later there were conversations between the gentle Epi and the contrary linnet.

  “Do you know Plana and Hops?” Epi inquired.

  The linnet replied curtly, “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Epi persisted gently. “Just think for a . . .”

  The little creature repeated abruptly, “No.”

  Epi was astonished. “How can that be possible? You come from the forest and don’t know Hops . . . don’t know Plana . . . ?”

  “Who are they?” the linnet permitted himself to ask.

  “They are relatives of mine,” said Epi with pride, “my good friends.”

  “Do they look like you?” the linnet demanded.

  “Oh!” Epi cried, deeply moved. “Oh! They are much handsomer, they are truly beautiful.”

  The linnet sprang to and fro. “It may be so . . . it may be so. We, we who fly, we pay very little attention to what crawls on the ground.”

  Epi felt ashamed. All that day he brooded in silence. But the next morning he said, as though he were giving an answer to something he had just heard, “. . . and yet even you were captured . . . just like everyone else . . .”

  Again the linnet began to sing and again Epi was plunged into that strange intoxicated mood in which all the vitality of his life seemed to ebb away.

  They often talked with one another, the two captives, more fully and amiably. The linnet began to have an understanding of the earth-bound creature that could not fly or sing, of its simplicity, of its sorrows and its joys. Epi learned to know the life of the winged songster that could see from on high and knew the raptures of unbounded space.

  But this very rapture, that in the anguish of his heart he could just divine, made him more and more incapable of enduring his fate.

  “You’ll bear it longer than I . . .” he said.

  “Why?” peeped the linnet.

  “Because . . . because . . .” Epi stuttered, “because you . . . your song is enough to . . . free . . . your heart . . .”

  Even then he spoke with difficulty. All day long he sat there, never taking a bite of food, trembling in every limb. Once the little girl who had captured him bent over and noticed that his food remained untouched and that he was shivering. She lifted him up gently, held him in her arms, stroked the poor rabbit, who merely trembled more violently, and said to him, “What’s the matter with you?”

  She called her mother. She came, stroked Epi and said, “What’s the matter with you?”

  For quite a while they both fondled him, and both kept repeating over and over, “Well, well, what’s wrong with you?”

  The everlasting question that human beings ask dumb animals, quite tenderly and altogether without understanding. The everlasting question which never takes into account the mistreatment suffered, doesn’t want to, and is satisfied, in some mysterious way, that it remains unanswered.

  Toward evening Epi lay exhausted in his box.

  The linnet was singing.

  In his song the forest took form, with all its wild enchantment; passionate yearning for freedom was in his song, burning desire for the treetops, for the sun, for the cool, green shadows.

  In his bittersweet trance Epi lay spellbound. He began to see his beloved thicket, he thought he was beside Hops and Plana. Many rabbits came running up together to greet him. On the meadow of his childhood the games of tag began anew.

  Epi raised his ears erect, he bounded more wildly than any of the others.

  Actually he merely gave a feeble twitch.

  While the linnet sang, Epi rolled over quietly on his side, stretched out and did not ever stir again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A FEW DAYS LATER HOPS and Plana were wandering in a distant part of the forest far from their haunts.

  All the rabbits were now roving, for there was less and less food, and the expectation that it might be elsewhere drove them on.

  They met Ivner, Murk and Nella.

  Murk had grown big and fat. He looked like an old man. He had lost all his impudence and superciliousness. He was morbidly nervous. He suffered from insomnia and acted with such meekness, was so tremulously and timidly attentive, that all the rabbits who came near him were shocked and embarrassed.

  “Friend Hops,” he said, “friend Hops, forgive me . . .”

  “What shall I forgive you for?” inquired Hops in amazement.

  Murk’s voice was fairly gasping with a sentimental zeal for reconciliation. “Well, once I insulted you.”

  “Me?” Hops was still more astonished. “Me? I don’t remember anything about it.”

  “Yes,” Murk insisted, “of course it was a long time ago. In the old days . . . when we were still young . . .”

  “But we are still young,” Hops consoled him.

  “Ah, no,” Murk interrupted him, “I am young no longer . . . not I.” He shuddered violently in every limb. “Do you recall, friend Hops, how you returned to us? You had something to tell us, something about your adventures with a fox. It was then that I insulted you.”

  “Oh!” Hops parried, “I forgot that long ago.”

  “You are so good,” Murk whined. He turned to Plana. “And you are so beautiful,” he flattered, “you’re wonderfully beautiful.” He burst into contrition. “And to
think I insulted you, too! Yes, yes, to be sure. It was on the same day. I remember distinctly.”

  Plana’s whiskers twitched gaily. “I never think of it any more!” she wiggled her ears. “Don’t think about it either, Murk.”

  “Ah, now that I see you again, I remember,” he said, “and it torments me. Everything torments me . . . everything!”

  Plana crept nearer to him.

  “You had better remember how beautiful it was,” she exclaimed.

  Murk sighed deeply, “Beautiful! They were beautiful times! Glorious times!” He sighed again. “Gone! Gone forever!”

  “Nothing is gone!” Plana raised her ears erect. “Be happy, Murk! You’re so big and strong!”

  Murk disregarded that. “Are you two always together?”

  “Yes,” Plana said simply, “that hasn’t changed either.”

  “No one,” Murk confessed forlornly, “no one stays with me . . . and I can’t endure anybody.”

  He hied himself off at once without farewell, taking lifeless leaps that made a good deal of noise.

  Plana stared after him and shook her head. “Such a monster of a fellow,” she said, “so strong . . . and so spineless.”

  Hops sat brooding and replied, “The scar . . . did you notice the big scar on his back? I wonder what can have made it.”

  Ivner, whom they met soon afterward, had Nella with him. He had grown to be a lean, sinewy fellow, full of incisive energy, and with humorous leanings.

  “My dear little cousin,” he said to Hops, “the main thing is not to become embittered—you have to flee just the same.”

  When Hops suggested that rabbits have it harder than most, Ivner was very much astonished. “In what way?” he cried, his ears erect. “I can’t see it.” He spoke in disjointed sentences because of his excessive energy. “Nonsense! Everyone has to flee at times. Caution is important for everyone! Just recall your fox! And don’t talk rubbish! I wouldn’t care to be anything but just what I am!”