“Here, take this,” says Dumestre, walking through the brambles. He hands Tristan a partridge—elegant black coat with white spots. “That’ll please your wife.”
Tristan shakes his head.
“I can’t accept it,” he says, fearing that the immobile rabbit—probably asleep in his gamebag—would be crushed, horrified by the carcass on his back. “I didn’t shoot it. That would be cheating.”
“We always do this,” insists Dumestre, resolute, jovial, continuing on his way. “We never know who shoots what, so we share, like brothers. Really, my pleasure.”
Tristan feels it would be dangerous to refuse. He looks for a cover, a pretext. But suddenly, Dumestre disappears.
Midsentence, partridge in hand, he is swallowed up by the ground.
“Shit! Where’d he go?” cries Peretti, who was walking behind them.
They hear cracking noises, muffled sounds, a tumble, then nothing more, not one cry. For a moment, the three men remain at once speechless, amused, and horrified. It seems like a prank, a magic act. They can’t believe their eyes. Farnèse rushes forward; Peretti pulls him back.
“Watch it, don’t you fall too! It could be an old mine shaft. Dumestre!” shouts Peretti, still holding Farnèse by the sleeve. “Dumestre? Can you hear us? Say something. Fuck, Dumestre, say something.”
Tristan, after twisting his gamebag around to his back in order to avoid crushing the rabbit, squats down and crawls toward the spot where Dumestre disappeared. With his arms out in front of him, he tests the terrain. The ground crumbles under his fingers.
“There’s a hole,” he says, looking at the other two.
“Go on, go a little farther,” says Peretti, who has gotten down onto his knees to grab Tristan’s feet. “I’ve got you. See if you can make anything out.”
Tristan crawls forward cautiously, until his forearms are in the void. He lowers his head. A black tunnel opens up before his eyes. He doesn’t know how deep it is; he can’t see the bottom.
“So?” Farnèse inquires anxiously.
“I can’t see anything,” Tristan mutters. “You wouldn’t happen to have a flashlight?”
“And why not a torch while you’re at it,” says Farnèse in a trembling, whimpering voice. “Oh, fuck. Fucking hell. This can’t be happening.”
“Stop your whining,” orders Peretti. “We have to think. We can’t panic.”
Tristan, still hanging over the edge of the hole, listens carefully.
“Dumestre,” he calls in a very gentle voice. “Dumestre? We’re here. Don’t worry. We’re going to take care of you. Can you hear us? Dumestre?”
A groan rises from the depths of the earth. Weak, then stronger.
“He’s alive,” Tristan tells the other two. “He’s alive. That’s what counts. We’re not going to panic. We’ll call for help. They’ll send a helicopter.”
“How’re you gonna call them?” asks Peretti. “We don’t bring our phones when we go hunting. The last thing we need is our dear wives on our backs.”
Tristan wiggles gently back out and stands up a few yards from the hole.
“I have my cell phone,” he says with a smile. “It’s fine.”
“Shit,” says Farnèse, hugging him. “Man, you’re a hero. I have to say, I wasn’t too thrilled about you coming in the beginning. After all, you’re not from here, we don’t know squat about you. But then, you pull out your phone. Shit, that’s pretty great.”
Tristan takes his phone out of his pocket, opens it, and realizes there’s no service.
“Move, move,” cries Peretti. “Go on, run over there, toward the clearing. It has to pick up a signal somewhere.”
Tristan obeys and starts to run, phone in hand, checking the screen from time to time. He retraces his steps. Runs in another direction. Comes back. Starts again. Runs farther, panting.
In the gamebag, the rabbit wonders what the young man is up to. He recognizes the panic, the zigzagging, the desperate rush. Has he turned into a rabbit? What’s gotten into him? Is he being pursued, hunted? Are there guns aimed at him? The rabbit would like to tell the young man that flight is futile, that it’s better to wait, to lie low in the moss, without moving, almost without breathing.
After ten minutes of haphazard running, Tristan returns to his companions.
“We’re wasting time,” he tells them, out of breath. “If he’s injured, we need to do something fast, as fast as possible. This isn’t getting a signal anywhere. Go back to the car and get down to the village. Here, take my phone. As soon as you’re on the main road, you’ll be able to call. That’s the best thing to do.”
“The hero thinks he’s a hero,” mumbles Farnèse.
“What’d you say?” asks Peretti, teeth clenched. “I didn’t hear that very well. What did you say?”
He points his rifle at Farnèse’s thin chest. Farnèse steps back, trips over a root, falls backward.
“Nothing, I said nothing. Don’t get all pissed off. Don’t do something stupid.”
Peretti lowers his weapon. “We have to calm down,” he says. “Calm down, now. Let’s go. You’re right, kid. We’ll go on foot. You stay here with Dumestre. Okay? Talk to him. Deal with this.”
Tristan nods and watches the two men jog up the hill as they leave: Peretti, plodding along, as if the ground were sucking up the soles of his shoes; Farnèse, light and limping, like a wounded fawn. Around his neck, stirred up by the wind, a silk Indian scarf with a green-and-pink pattern unwinds its serpentine tail. Tristan notices this detail without dwelling on it. Hey, he says to himself, Farnèse is wearing a scarf, and something in this observation resonates like an enigma.
The sun has risen, imperceptibly warming leaves, branches, pebbles, skin.
Once Peretti and Farnèse are out of sight, Tristan sits on the ground and, very delicately, opens his gamebag. The rabbit’s eyes, like two polished hazelnuts, stare at him.
“Today, you’re the winner,” he whispers, stroking the animal. “I’m going to free you.”
He slips his hand under the animal’s warm, soft, and supple stomach, touching the fragile, almost brittle ribs with the tips of his fingers.
“I’m gonna die,” yells a voice from the bottom of the hole.
Tristan stuffs the rabbit back in his gamebag and closes it over him, then crawls once more toward the entrance of the tunnel.
“Dumestre? Dumestre? Help is on the way. Don’t worry. It’s fine. In twenty minutes, an hour at most. Are you hurt?”
“Shit, I’m gonna die.”