Fifteen Rabbits

by Felix Salten

  Hops and Plana scampered almost between the dog’s legs. They did not recognize him. They were in too frantic haste.

  They heard how He shouted, “Iago! Come here! You damned runaway! Iago! Iago!”

  But they understood nothing of it. The roaring terrified them, for it was very close.

  Then they broke through. They were already free, and fled like mad through the forest.

  Iago howled under the blows of the whip, cowered on the ground and was kicked.

  The two fugitives heard his tortured voice. “Have mercy!” they heard. “Have mercy! I am old! I beg you to have mercy!”

  It was still ringing in their upraised ears when they reached the protecting thicket.

  They remained, sitting breathless. Their hearts were pounding against their ribs which were sticky wet. It leaped almost into their parched mouths. It hammered in their buzzing temples. But Hops and Plana looked at each other and were happy.

  “The poor thing . . .” Plana said finally.

  Then the thunder crashed again, crashed and crackled sharper than before.

  Hops remembered. “Where is mother?” he asked.

  “Your mother?” Plana answered anxiously. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Wasn’t she behind us?” asked Hops, worried.

  “I don’t know.”

  Hops started up suddenly, shouting, “Here she comes!”

  True enough, his mother came bounding up, trailing a little cloud of powdered snow behind her. When she reached the thicket, she stopped for a moment.

  “So you’re saved, my dearest son!” she said in a panting voice. “I’m so glad! I’m so glad!” She rushed away immediately.

  “Mother,” Hops begged, “rest for a little while! Only for a little!”

  “Impossible,” she answered as she ran. “Never mind me! We’ll see one another again!” She was gone.

  Afterward Hops and Plana found drops of blood along his mother’s trail.

  Outside, meanwhile, the circle had grown narrower. The less dangerous Hes, who carried only sticks, had retired. Only those with the thunder-arms remained. They were raging horribly among the rabbits.

  At the very last minute, when the circle had grown very tiny, and every moment within it meant certain death, a huge old hare leaped out of it. The thunder crashed behind him, the snow spurted up under the driving hail of buckshot. But the old hare reached the forest uninjured. It was Fosco.

  The evening began to darken, a mournful gray. Soon night fell, not completely dark, for the snow glistened too brightly.

  Here and there, faint and pathetic, sounded the last cry of some wounded rabbit, that had lain silent in its agony and now was being killed. Fox and weasel were picking up the crumbs.

  Deep in the forest Hops and Plana were sitting beside Fosco.

  In a troubled voice Hops told about his mother.

  “Where can she he?” he asked plaintively. “What can have become of her?”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Fosco comforted him. “Believe me, she is not badly off.”

  But there was no comforting Hops. “If one of our enemies attacked her . . .”

  “None of them will ever find her,” Fosco assured him, “none of them! Your mother is very clever! Very clever! It would be difficult even for me to find her!”

  “How did you manage to escape, Fosco?” Plana changed the conversation.

  “I don’t know myself,” he answered.

  “It was a dreadful day,” sighed Plana.

  Fervently Hops agreed, “An unforgettably terrible day!”

  Fosco was silent for a while. Then he said softly and thoughtfully, “The lifetime of a rabbit lasts seven years—eight years at most. And while it is beautiful, it is also full of terror and flight . . . Be happy that you are alive, my children!”

  Chapter Twenty

  OUTSIDE ON THE FIELDS IT grew more silent than ever. Many of the rabbits were now afraid to venture out on that vast, white expanse. For days the terrible hecatomb was written on the snow in letters of spattered red. As far as the enormously broad, snow-laden fields extended, the soaked-in, sprinkled blood stood out sharply on the glistening white surface, admonishing, recalling, and distilling an acrid smell into the cold air. The horror of that day had given place to a dull sorrow. None of the rabbits said a word about the terrors they had been through, no one mentioned the fallen. Only, when two of them chanced to meet, even if they had not known one another before, or perhaps but very slightly, they greeted cordially. In the lively wiggling of their ears, in the violent twitching of their whiskers, all the joy of the saved lay unspoken.

  Then the snow fell again, blotting the bloody traces from the white expanse, veiling the episode forever. Among the rabbits a vague feeling grew stronger, that from now on He would leave them in peace. At the same time their need for food grew catastrophically, drove them, in spite of everything, into the open fields, and from the fields back to the forest. It was incredible, all that the rabbits ate at that time in order not to starve. They gnawed wood, they munched withered leaves, they chewed dry tufts of frozen grass. These even seemed exceptional delicacies to them.

  The winter wore on. It grew bitter cold, and the rabbits had to preserve the little of their own decreasing warmth that remained to them.

  Hops and Plana had found a little spot in the forest. There the wind had swept the ground clean of snow. There were roots, little dry twigs, remnants of all sorts of things, of lettuce and strawberry leaves. Everything that had once been flourishing, filled with fragrance, sap and tastiness, was now frozen solid, watery and poisonously bitter. Though he struggled against it manfully, Hops was overcome with nausea.

  “Eat very little,” he said, “just as little as is absolutely necessary . . . eat very little!”

  Plana had never been as cheerful as at present. Of course, it was not really a genuine, but often an assumed, cheerfulness, yet it helped both of them over the worst places. “Let’s run,” she would propose. “Let’s run, Hops! That makes you warm!”

  So they would run, in little circles, bouncing one after the other as in their childhood days.

  “Catch me, Hops,” she would cry and rush away, Hops after her.

  “I’ll get you,” he would threaten jestingly. “I’ll catch you in a minute!”

  But things were not as before; their once rapid movements were feeble. They would soon sit down again, tired out; they had grown short-winded. They panted, their flanks heaved.

  “Hard times!” the worried Hops complained.

  “What of it?” Plana retorted. “They’ll pass. The hard times will soon go. It’s nothing after all.”

  “Nothing?” Hops was doubtful. “Suppose we go first . . . ?”

  Plana’s ears flew up. “We go? My Hops talking like that? My clever, reliant, determined Hops?”

  “No,” he objected, “I’m no longer clever, and I’m no longer reliant.”

  Plana bounced close up to him. Her whiskers quivered tenderly; her ears lay flat along her back. “What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”

  Hops winced a little under the blow her question gave him. He looked at Plana. She was as pretty as a picture, but she looked emaciated, poorly. She was touching and careworn. But her maiden grace moved him the more powerfully.

  “I?” he stammered. “I . . . am all right, but my fear for you torments me.”

  “You needn’t fear for me,” Plana went on proudly. “You have no reason to think so for a single moment. Come, come along!”

  She sprang away. Hops went after her and they tumbled over each other, so that a cloud of white powder hid them.

  “Enough,” Hops begged, breathless.

  “No,” Plana answered, “not by a long shot. You’re too lazy for me.”

  She danced and tumbled about as though she were perfectly fresh. “Catch m . . .” Then she sank over her ears in a drift of loose snow. Suddenly she was no longer there. Hops stood up, surprised, on his hind legs, staring in ala
rm, his ears erect.

  Plana was kicking free. The snow spurted up in a powder around her. Slowly she made her appearance again, gasped for breath, tried to speak. “It’s jolly . . .” she managed to say. Then she lay down, stretched at full length, quite still and breathing hard. She was completely exhausted.

  Hops sat beside her and muttered, “You see! You see!”

  She comforted him in an almost toneless voice.

  In the meanwhile, however, it grew steadily worse.

  The cold set in sharper and sharper. The air seemed to be perfectly thin and as clear as glass. And, like brittle glass, the stems of the bushes, that had once been so pliant and elastic, broke in two at the slightest touch.

  The deer sank up to their necks in snow, were no longer able to clear it by the momentum of their leaping, and here and there they could be heard complaining in the forest.

  Even the elk pushed their way through with difficulty; everywhere they gnawed the bark from the trees.

  There were nights when the forest grew rigid in the icy grip of winter, and seemed dead. At such times flight was difficult for the birds when they awoke in the morning. Their plumage was caked with ice and would not buoy them up; their legs were stiff.

  The snow was very hard and coated with ice. When a deer walked or leaped over it, the icy covering would give way. Then its splinters slashed the deer’s tender feet. There were many deer limping around with bloody legs. The cold burnt like hot fire into their torn flesh.

  In silence the winter reigned, without storms, without changing humors. Pitiless, stubborn, cruel, annihilating, silent.

  The wild geese flew farther on to more southerly, milder stretches of the sky. The wild ducks followed them, and all kinds of arctic birds that were trying to escape the polar winter and had been overtaken by it. The river courses were frozen many feet deep; the pools and ponds were ice to the bottom, so that all living things in them perished miserably.

  The frost began to hum in the air. It was a lingering whine, like a lament, like a song for the dead. At night the fox would bark at it and howl from hunger, and still more from the cold.

  But a time came when the fox was almost harmless. No one was afraid of him. For suddenly there was food in plenty. Everywhere in the forest lay rabbits and deer, rigid, frozen to death. Even a young elk was found stretched out one morning on its white bed. The fighting of flocks of crows and fluttering magpies would always indicate the occurrence of such an event.

  “That pack is always provided for,” said Hops, gasping with the cold. “They can turn everything to advantage.”

  “What do you expect?” answered Plana. “They are strong. They have no dislike for our blood . . .”

  Hops sighed. “And we have to help them out, have to give our lives so that crew can survive the winter. And afterward they murder us all the more skillfully.”

  Plana shook her pretty head. “We are poor . . .”

  “It isn’t right,” Hops said. “Things are not well managed in this world . . . it’s easy to become embittered . . .”

  “Embittered! Why?” Plana was astonished. “Just think how radiantly beautiful the world is! Just remember!”

  Hops sat up. He had not heard what Plana said. He sat erect and tense. “Do we really have to stand for it? If we could get together, we rabbits and all the deer, all the oppressed and the hunted! If we were to get together . . .”

  It was night, and the cold bit into their lungs, into their bones, took away their breath, stuck in their throats.

  Plana grew sick at heart.

  “Come!” She bounded up. “Come, let’s have another race.”

  Hops refused. “I won’t run. I’ll just sit here.”

  “But you must,” Plana interrupted, “it keeps you warm.”

  She ran. She hardly noticed at first that Hops was not following her. She ran straight on until the forest lay behind her, and she came to the open fields. Then she perceived that she was alone. But she ran on.

  She felt weak, strangely tired, and experienced a great longing simply to lie down and sleep. For that very reason she ran on in a remarkable state of semi-consciousness at the bottom of which lurked desperation. A supreme danger was threatening her. Plana sensed it vaguely; only she did not know just what it was.

  She did not know, either, that she was running more and more slowly. On the contrary, it seemed to her as if she had never run so fast before, for she was exerting all her strength and had to make a tremendous effort.

  Presently the fields, too, lay behind her. She had penetrated into a strange world.

  In a garden surrounded by a fence a small house was standing. A lamp was burning behind the curtained window, casting a soft gleam into the dark.

  Plana had never seen anything like it before.

  She was running with the slight wind, so she smelt no scent when she stopped, stood up on her hind legs and snuffed.

  Only the biting, icy air rasped her nose and the top of her mouth. Everything pained her, her legs, breast, belly, neck. Everything in her was quivering and longing for a little warmth, a little rest.

  Plana tottered forward.

  Suddenly she realized: He was there.

  But she was not frightened. Vaguely she felt her need as a kind of protection. Vaguely, as through a mist, she felt it was her right to come even to Him. She could not think; everything was one to her now.

  As she slipped through the fence and hopped forward painfully, she came upon an unfamiliar sight! A doghouse!

  Plana stopped short. But even then she was not frightened as she snuffed in the poisonously bitter scent of the dog. The scent was pouring out of the opening in the front of the kennel, which was curtained with rags. It smelt warm.

  Plana did not stop to consider: she found herself in a state where all her old instincts and fears were numbed.

  Warmth! Warmth! That was all she sought. . . . And warmth came pouring out of the kennel.

  Plana shoved her nose among the rags that hung before the opening. They yielded and she crept in.

  Had she, in her state of half-frozen exhaustion, been capable of thinking at all, she would have thought this was the luckiest hour of her life. But at first she could not even speak. Noiselessly she sank down on the silken soft, deliciously warm straw; breathed in, wonderfully refreshed, the tepid air that filled the narrow place with vapor, and snuggled against the strong, warm body of the dog, who awoke at her entrance.

  “Ha! How cold you are!” whispered the dog, at the same time beginning to lap Plana with his long, warm tongue.

  Plana lay without stirring. The smell of the dog, that had formerly seemed menacing and repulsive to her, as to all the other rabbits, did not disturb her in the slightest now. The thought that she might be bitten to death presented itself as usual, but only vaguely, and, for some strange reason, held no terrors for her. Plana lay quiet, enjoying the caresses of that long, warm tongue on her back, her flanks, her face, her ears. It was wonderful, it was exactly what she needed, it was the reviving sense of life.

  “You poor thing, you!” whispered the dog. “You poor little thing! Are you still cold?” He continued lapping her without stopping.

  Plana was quite damp; her fur clung all over her body in thick strings. Her whole body began to steam. Full of a blissful comfort, she snuggled up close to the dog’s chest.

  “Yes, yes,” said the dog and passed his tongue over her eyes. “Yes, you, you trust me; of all the creatures out there in the forest, you alone trust me . . .”

  Plana was in a delicious semi-conscious state; she hardly heard what the dog was saying.

  “I received you more kindly,” he said, “more kindly than you in the forest received me—old Iago . . .”

  The name had a familiar ring. “Iago?” she asked softly. “Iago?”

  “Of course,” the dog answered, “of course, I’m Iago.”

  Plana was about to confess, “I didn’t know that,” but she suddenly fell asleep.

  The
dog didn’t notice and told her his story. The contempt with which they had repulsed his attempts at reconciliation in the forest had driven him home again. Added to that, of course, was his hunger, the cold and the unaccustomed, strange ways of a free life. The rabbit hunt had overtaken him. He was cut off with the rabbits and partridges, without knowing it. Think of what his bewilderment had been! Think of his terrible dilemma—love, longing drove him to his master; fear, jealousy and his injuries held him back. He ran aimlessly around the wide circle, regretting his whole life, desperate.

  At last his master had called him. At last! Joyful but afraid, he had rushed up to Him.

  Oh! what a beating he received, what a murderous beating!

  But it was a shorter one than usual. His master could not spare much time for Iago. And most remarkable of all—his beating, his reunion with Him, his decision, everything together had strengthened Iago. He suddenly felt strong, serious and brave. He immediately settled accounts with his enemy, Treff. Toward the end of the hunt, when Treff was far from his master, on the trail of a wounded rabbit, Iago fell upon him.

  Recalling all his old roughhouse tricks, Iago threw the astonished Treff violently on his back in the snow. Raging with long restrained fury, Iago had pressed Treff down, held him by the throat and snarled, “I’ll kill you, you scoundrel, if you make a sound! I’ll kill you, you blackguard, if you don’t let me alone in the future!” Whining feebly, Treff had promised everything.

  Plana awoke just as Iago reached the end of his story. Shortly after, she heard him say, “So, you see, little one, now I am left in peace, at least . . .”

  But Plana, who was stretching luxuriously, was hungry, with a gnawing, rumbling hunger.

  “Come outside with me,” Iago suggested, “my dish is still half full. Perhaps you’ll find some thing . . .”

  They crept out of the kennel. It was still dark, and the cold gripped them with redoubled sharpness. However, in Iago’s bowl there were several boiled potatoes, for he had eaten only the meat from his supper.

  Plana tried a potato. It tasted strange, but it tasted good. It had a scent that was disagreeable, but Plana’s hunger overcame that. She ate greedily. She gorged herself as she had been unable to gorge herself for a long time.