“We’re not taking it?” asks Tristan, pointing to the decapitated hen the dogs were attacking.
“No,” replies Dumestre. “It’ll get shit all over everything. Apologize, Farnèse.”
“Why should I apologize?” retorts Farnèse, chin thrust out, rifle pointed at Dumestre.
“Say sorry to the hen.”
Peretti laughs softly. He says, “Come on,” in a voice so low that no one hears him.
“It’s my fault,” Tristan asserts, trying to interfere.
The sun, which has just risen above the horizon, poses a golden accusative finger on Farnèse’s face. He squints.
“Sorry, hen,” he mumbles, the barrel of his gun pointed toward the ground. And then, after a moment, “Sorry, Mother Nature. Sorry, Diana the huntress, goddess of the forest. Sorry—”
“That’s enough,” says Dumestre. “Stop your nonsense. You fire like a barbarian, you say sorry. That’s all. We’re not pigs. We’re not criminals. There are rules. We’re not monsters. We’re not maniacs.”
“We’re nice guys,” Peretti concludes, his smile glued on his face.
Tristan feels like something has gone amiss in his initiation. He had dreaded killing, but the spectacle he’s watching now is more complicated than death.
“What do we do now?” he asks.
“We keep going,” Dumestre answers.
They all follow him. No one speaks. The dogs, their muzzles covered in blood, rub up against their masters’ legs and perform carefree, risky slaloms, just short of causing the firm-jawed hunters to stumble.
The ice melts little by little and their boots slip on the muddy leaves. The forest opens and closes, from clearings to leafy tunnels. Nothing more can be heard other than the men’s jerky breathing and the birds’ disorderly and harmonic racket—trills and whistles, cackling and cooing. Do they understand each other? Tristan wonders, listening to the babel in the tall trees. He sticks his hand into his gamebag, strokes the rabbit’s belly, feeling reassured by the touch of his fur, thinking that once the sun reaches its zenith, everything will be over, he will go back home, leave the mysterious world of virile fraternity for one much more familiar: the couple.
Living with a woman—isn’t that what he has always known, after all? With his mother when he was growing up, and now with Emma. He knows too much about women’s bodies and too little about men’s. But he’s going to learn. His determination is strong; it carries him with each step. He watches Dumestre, imitating his gait.
After a few hundred yards, the four hunters come to a halt. They’ve reached the overhang. They squat, kneel, and lie down in the undergrowth. Before their eyes, a green valley, similar to a vast pool of mist. They release the dogs. Without yapping, stealthy like their fox cousins, like their wolf brothers, they sink their delicate paws into the earth without disturbing a twig, without lifting a leaf. They start to encircle the area. Tristan dozes in the suspension of the moment. Nothing to do but wait.
And if the world stopped there, on the verge of killing, but without firing a bullet? Isn’t this moment the best, the most fruitful? The perfection of the act in its conception. Doing inevitably means failing. Doing is destroying. For him, the idea is always preferable. That’s what Emma criticizes him for. It’s the reason she wants to leave him. I’m done, she says. With you, nothing is possible, we’re not going anywhere. Love isn’t enough. You have to fit in. She repeats this continuously, from morning to night, sometimes gently, often with cruelty. Fitting in, what’s that?
It’s living according to the laws of your species, the rabbit answers. It’s doing what your instinct dictates. Take me, for example. I have three responsibilities: feeding myself, reproducing, escaping from predators. For you, it’s more complicated: your lives are longer, as are your loves. I don’t understand how you do it.
Me neither, thinks Tristan. But I haven’t always been this lost. As a child, I used to soar along a clearly marked trajectory, a ball thrown into the air, with a clear kinetic gift.
You were following your instinct.
Exactly. When I was hungry, I’d eat; when I was tired, I’d sleep.
Did you want to break free?
No.
You should have.
Why?
Psst. Psst. Slowly, the rifles settle in the crooks of their shoulders. Suddenly, the dogs spring out from everywhere, barking. Immediately, the misty grass valley is lacerated with furry and feathered projectiles, chased out of their shelters, terrified. The deafening shots rip through the air. Tristan clamps his hands over his ears and watches the little bodies snatched up by nothingness in midflight. A few minutes later, the ground is strewn with the remains. The dogs fulfill their duty as undertakers. Docile, calm, hypnotized by their mindless domestic loyalty, they carry the carcasses to their masters, without licking up a drop of blood.
They’re full, Tristan says to himself. The headless hen must’ve been fat.
No, says the rabbit. It’s not that. They’re trained. Trained to devour the scraps and bring back the catch. They never confuse the two, afraid of being beaten. For us, these are very strange creatures. They’re not really animals, and yet not men either.
The hunters pat their doggies, congratulate themselves, smile, rub their hands together in satisfaction. Tristan imitates them.
It’s time to uncork the wine, cut the dried sausage. Everyone chews. Tristan dreads conversation. Dumestre brings up public road maintenance, criticizes Peretti, who’s on the town council, for not speaking up enough, for letting himself be bamboozled. The topic moves on to the mayor’s secretary, her chest, then her handicapped son, which puts a damper on things. It takes four seconds for them to jump from this awkward subject to a banal one.
“Hey, this wine’s not too bad!”
“Yeah, it’s some good shit.”
Tristan rolls himself a cigarette.
“Those things’ll kill you, you know,” says Farnèse, drinking straight from the bottle.
“Hey, boozer, nobody asked you,” says Dumestre.
This is going to end badly, thinks Tristan, sticking his cigarette in his gamebag. He doesn’t light it. The rabbit sniffs the tobacco, wrinkles his nose, sneezes. No one hears.