Tres páginas del diario de un cazador

En la crónica de sucesos de un periódico acabo de leer un drama pasional. Uno que la ha matado y se ha matado después, es decir, uno que amaba. ¿Qué importan él y ella? Sólo su amor me importa; y no porque me enternezca, ni porque me asombre, ni porque me conmueva, ni me haga soñar, sino porque evoca en mí un recuerdo de la mocedad, recuerdo extraño de una cacería en que se me apareció el Amor, como se aparecían a los primeros cristianos cruces misteriosas en la serenidad de los cielos.

Nací con todos los instintos y emociones del hombre primitivo, muy poco atenuados por las sensaciones y los razonamientos de la civilización. Amo la caza con pasión, y la bestia ensangrentada, con sangre en su plumaje, ensangrentándome las manos, me hace desfallecer de gusto.

Aquel año, al final del otoño, se presentó impetuosamente el frío, y mi primo Karl de Ranyule me invitó a cazar con él, a la alborada patos magníficos en los pantanos de su posesión. 

Mi primo, un buen mozo de cuarenta años, encarnado, con mucha vida en el cuerpo y muchos pelos en la cara, semibruto y semicivilizado, de alegre carácter, dotado de ese esprit gaulois que tan agradablemente vela las deficiencias del ingenio, vivía en una especie de cortijo con aires de castillo señorial, escondido en un amplio valle. Coronaban las colinas de la derecha y de la izquierda hermosos bosques señoriales, con árboles antiquísimos y poblados de caza excelente. Algunas veces se abatían allí águilas soberbias, y esos pájaros errantes, que raramente se aventuran en países demasiado poblados para su azorada independencia, encontraban en aquella selva secular asilo seguro, como si reconocieran en ella alguna rama que en otros tiempos les acogiera durante sus excursiones sin rumbo.

El valle estaba cubierto de exuberantes pastos, regados abundantemente, y señalando con la gradación en el calor el camino del pantano, allá a lo lejos, casi en el fondo de Ia finca. Mi primo lo cuidaba con esmero digno del mejor de los parques, y con razón, pues era aquel pantano la mejor región de caza que he conocido. Entre aquellos innumerables islotillos verdes que le daban vida había trazados arroyuelos estrechos, por los que se deslizaban las barcas, mudas sobre el agua muerta, frotando los juncos, ahuyentando los peces y los pájaros, que desaparecían, éstos entre las espigas, aquellos entre las raíces de las altas hierbas.

Soy admirador apasionado del agua: el mar demasiado grande, demasiado vivo, de imposible posesión; los ríos que pasan, que huyen, que se van, y, sobre todo, los pantanos en que bulle la vida indescifrable de los animales acuáticos. Un pantano es un mundo sobre la tierra, un mundo aparte, con vida propia, con pobladores permanentes y con habitantes de un día; con sus ruidos, con sus voces, y singularmente con un característico misterio; nada que tanto turbe, que tanto inquiete, que tanto asuste algunas veces. ¿Por qué ese miedo singular que se siente en esas llanuras cubiertas de agua? ¿Será por el rumor vago de las aguas, por los fuegos fatuos, por el silencio profundo que lo envuelve en las noches de calma, por la bruma caprichosa que viste con sudario de muerte a los juncos, por el hervor casi imperceptible de aquel mundo tan dulce, tan fugaz pero más aterrador a veces que el estruendo de los cañones de los hombres y de las tempestades del cielo? ¿Qué será de lo que semeja los pantanos de los países del ensueño, a esas regiones espantables que ocultan un secreto inescrutable y peligroso?

No. Otra cosa es lo que de allí se desprende; un misterio más profundo, más grave, el que flota sobre aquellas brumas: ¡el misterio mismo de la creación quizá! ¡No fue en el agua sin movimiento y fangosa, en la humedad triste de la tierra, mojada bajo los colores del sol, donde vibró y surgió a la luz el primer germen de vida!

* * *

Llegué por la noche a casa de mi primo. Hacía un frío que se helaban las piedras.

Durante la comida en la vasta sala, donde los muebles y las paredes y el techo estaban cubiertos de pájaros disecados, y donde hasta mi primo, con aquella chaqueta de piel de foca parecía un animal exótico de los países helados, el buen Karl me dijo lo que había preparado para aquella misma noche.

Debíamos ponernos en marcha a las tres de la madrugada, con objeto de llegar a las cuatro y media al punto designado para Ia cacería. Allí nos habían construido una cabaña para abrigarnos de ese viento terrible de la mañana que rasga la carne como una sierra, y la corta como una espada, y la hiere coma una aguja envenenada, y la retuerce coma unas tenazas, y la quema como el fuego.

Mi primo se frotaba las manos. —Nunca he visto una helada coma esta— me decía. Y a las seis de la tarde teníamos 12 grados bajo cero.

Apenas terminada la comida, me eché en la cama y me quedé dormido, mirando las llamas que regocijaban la chimenea.

A las tres en punto me despertaron. Me abrigué con una piel de carnero, y después de tomar cada uno dos tazas de café hirviendo y dos copas de Cognac abrasador, nos pusimos en camino acompañados por un guarda y por nuestros perros: Plongeon y Pierrot.

Al dar los primeros pasos, me sentía helado hasta has huesos. Era una de esas noches en que la tierra parece muerta de fría. El aire glacial hace tanto daño, que parece palpable; no lo agita soplo alguno; diríase que está inmóvil; muerde, traspasa, mata los árboles, los insectos, los pajarillos que caen muertos sobre el suelo duro y se endurecen en seguida par el fúnebre abrazo del frío.

La luna, en el último cuarto, pálida, parecía también desmayada en el espacio; tan débil, que no le quedaban ya fuerzas para marcharse y se estaba allí arriba inmóvil, paralizada también par el rigor del cielo inclemente. Repartía sobre el mundo luz apagadiza y triste, esa luz amarillenta y mortecina que nos arroja todos los meses al final de su resurrección.

Karl y yo íbamos uno al lado del otro, con la espalda encorvada, las manos en los bolsillos y la escopeta debajo del brazo. Nuestro calzado, envuelto en lana a fin de que pudiéramos andar sin resbalar por la escurridiza helada tierra, no hacía ruido ninguno: y yo iba contemplando el humo blancuzco que producía el aliento de nuestros perros.

Pronto estuvimos a la orilla del pantano, y nos internamos por una de las avenidas de juncos que la rodean.

Nuestros codos, al rozar con las largas hojas del junco, iban dejando en pos de nosotros un ruidillo misterioso que contribuyó a que me sintiese ya como nunca poseído por la singular y poderosa emoción que hace siempre nacer en mí las proximidades de los pantanos. Aquel en el cual nos encontrábamos, estaba muerto, muerto de frío.

De pronto, al revolver una de las calles de juncos, apareció a mi vista la choza de hielo que habían levantado para ponernos al abrigo de la intemperie. Entré en ella, y como todavía faltaba más de una hora para que se despertaran las aves errantes que íbamos a perseguir, me envolví en mi manta y traté de entran un poco en calor.

Entonces, echado boca arriba, me puse a mirar la luna, que, vista a través de las paredes vagamente transparentes de aquella vivienda polar, aparecía a mis ojos con cuatro cuernos.

Pero el frío del helado pantano, el frío de aquellas paredes, el frío que caía del firmamento, se metió hasta mis huesos de una manera tan terrible que me puse a toser.

Mi primo Karl, alarmado con aquella tos, me dijo lleno de inquietud: —Aunque no matemos mucho hoy, no quiero que te constipes; vamos a encender una lumbre. Y dio orden al guardia para que cortara algunos juncos.

Hicieron un montón de ellos en medio de la choza, que tenía un agujero en el techo para dejar salir el humo; y cuando la llama rojiza empezó a juguetear por las cristalinas paredes, éstas empezaron a fundirse suavemente y muy poco a poco, como si aquellas piedras de hielo echaran a sudar, Karl, que se había quedado fuera, me gritó: —Ven a ver esto. Yo salí y me quedé absorto de asombro. La choza, en forma de cono, parecía un monstruoso diamante rosa, colocado de pronto sobre el agua helada del pantano. Y dentro se veían dos sombras fantásticas: las de nuestros perros, que se estaban calentando.

Un graznido extraño, graznido errante, perdido, se oyó allí en lo alto, por encima de nuestras cabezas. El reflejo de nuestra hoguera despertaba a las aves salvajes. No hay nada que me conmueva tanto como ese primer grito de vida que no se ve y que corre por el aire sombrío, rápido, lejano, antes de que se aparezca en el horizonte la primera claridad de los días de invierno. Me parece, a esa hora glacial del alba, que ese grito fugitivo, escondido entre las plumas de un pajarraco, es un suspiro del alma del mundo.

—Apagad la hoguera—decía Karl—, que ya amanece.

Y en efecto, comenzaba a clarear, y las bandadas de patos formaban amplias manchas de color, pronto borradas en el firmamento.

Brilló un fogonazo en la oscuridad; Karl acababa de disparar su escopeta; los perros salieron a la carrera. 

Entonces, de minuto en minuto, unas veces él, otras yo, nos echábamos la escopeta a la cara en cuanto por encima de los juncos aparecía la sombra de una tribu voladora. Y "Pierrot y "Plongeon, sin aliento, gozosos, entusiasmados nos traían, uno tras otro, patos ensangrentados que, moribundos, nos miraban melancólicamente.

Había amanecido. Había amanecido un día claro y azul; el sol iba levantándose allá, en el fondo del valle; y ya nos disponíamos a marcharnos, cuando dos aves, con el cuello estirado y las alas tendidas, se deslizaron bruscamente por encima de nuestras cabezas. Tiré; una de ellas cayó a mis pies. Era una cerceta de pechuga plateada. Entonces se oyó un grito en el aire, grito de pájaro, que fue un quejido corto, repetido, desgarrador; y el animalito que había salvado la vida empezó a revolotear por encima de nuestras cabezas mirando a su compañera, que yo tenía muerta en mis manos.

Karl, rodilla en tierra, con la escopeta en la cara, la mirada fija, esperaba a que estuviese a tiro. —¿Has matado a la hembra?..dijo.... El macho no se escapará.

Y en efecto, no se escapaba. Sin dejar de revolotear por encima de nosotros, lloraba desconsoladamente. No recuerdo gemido alguno de dolor que me haya desgarrado el alma tanto como el reproche lamentable de aquel pobre animal, que se perdía en el espacio.

De cuando en cuando huía bajo la amenaza de la escopeta, y parecía dispuesto a continuar su camino por el espacio. Pero no pudiendo decidirse a ello, pronto volvía en busca de su hembra. 

-Déjala en el suelo—me dijo Karl— verás como se acerca.

Y así fue; se acercaba, inconsciente del peligro que corría, loco de amor por la que yo había matado.

Karl tiró: aquello fue como si hubiera cortado el hilo que tenía suspendida al ave. Vi una cosa negra que caía; oí el ruido que produce al chocar con los juncos, y "Pierrot me la trajo en la boca.

Metí al pato, frío ya, en un mismo zurrón... y aquel mismo día salí para París.

7 de diciembre de 1886

THREE PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN'S BOOK

I have just read among the General News in one of the papers, a drama of passion. He killed her and then he killed himself, so he must have loved her. What matter He or She? Their love alone matters to me; and it does not interest me because it moves me or astonishes me, or because it softens me or makes me think, but because it recalls to my mind a remembrance of my youth, a strange recollection of a hunting adventure where Love appeared to me, as the Cross appeared to the early Christians, in the midst of the heavens.

I was born with all the instincts and the senses of primitive man, tempered by the arguments and the feelings of a civilized being. I am passionately fond of shooting, and the sight of the bleeding animal, with the blood on its feathers and on my hands, affect my heart so, as almost to make it stop.

That year the cold weather set in suddenly towards the end of autumn, and I was invited by one of my cousins, Karl de Rauville, to go with him and shoot ducks on the marshes, at daybreak.

My cousin, who was a jolly fellow of forty, with red hair, very stout and bearded, a country gentleman, an amiable semi-brute, of a happy disposition and endowed with that Gallic wit which makes even mediocrity agreeable, lived in a house, half farmhouse, half château, situated in a broad valley through which a river ran. The hills right and left were covered with woods, old seignorial woods where magnificent trees still remained, and where the rarest feathered game in that part of France was to be found. Eagles were shot there occasionally, and birds of passage, those which rarely come into our over-populated part of the country, almost infallibly stopped amid these branches, which were centuries old, as if they knew or recognized a little corner of a forest of ancient times which had remained there to serve them as a shelter during their short nocturnal halting place.

In the valley there were large meadows watered by trenches and separated by hedges; then, further on the river, which up to that point had been canalized, expanded into a vast marsh. That marsh, which was the best shooting ground which I ever saw, was my cousin's chief care, who kept it like a park. Among the number of rushes that covered it, and made it living, rustling and rough, narrow passages had been made, through which the flat-bottomed boats, which were impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over the dead water, brushed up against the reeds and made the swift fish take refuge among the weeds, and the wild fowl dive, whose pointed, black heads disappeared suddenly.

I am passionately fond of the water; the sea, although it is too vast, too full of movement, impossible to hold, the rivers, which are so beautiful, but which pass on, flee away and go, and above all the marshes, where the whole unknown existence of aquatic animals palpitates. The marsh is an entire world to itself on earth, a different world which has its own life, its settled inhabitants and its passing travelers, its voices, its noises, and above all its mystery. Nothing is more disturbing, nothing, more disquieting, more terrifying occasionally, than a fen. Why should this terror hang over these low plains covered with water? Is it the vague rustling of the rushes, the strange Will-o'-the-wisps, the profound silence which envelops them on calm nights, or is it the strange mists, which hang over the rushes like a shroud; or else it is the imperceptible splashing, so slight and so gentle, and sometimes more terrifying than the cannons of men or the thunders of skies, which make these marshes resemble countries which none has dreamed of, terrible countries concealing an unknown and dangerous secret.

No, something else belongs to it, another mystery, more profound and graver floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the mystery of the creation itself! For was it not in stagnant and muddy water, amid the heavy humidity of moist land under the heat of the sun, that the first germ of life vibrated and expanded to the day?

* * *

I arrived at my cousin's in the evening. It was freezing hard enough to split stones.

During dinner, in the large room whose sideboards, walls and ceilings were covered with stuffed birds, with extended wings or perched on branches to which they were nailed, hawks, herons, owls, nightjars, buzzards, tiercels, vultures, falcons, my cousin, who himself resembled some strange animal from a cold country, dressed in a sealskin jacket, told me what preparations he had made for that same night.

We were to start at half past three in the morning, so as to arrive at the place which he had chosen for our watching place at about half past four. On that spot a hut had been built of lumps of ice, so as to shelter us somewhat from the terrible wind which precedes daybreak, that wind which is so cold that it tears the flesh as if with a saw, cuts it like the blade of a knife and pricks it like a poisoned sting, twists it like a pair of pincers, and burns it like fire.

My cousin rubbed his hands: "I have never known such a frost," he said; "it is already twelve degrees below zero at six o'clock in the evening."

I threw myself onto my bed immediately after we had finished our meal, and I went to sleep by the light of a bright fire burning in the grate.

At three o'clock he woke me. In my turn, I put on a sheepskin, and I found my cousin Karl covered with a bearskin. After having each of us swallowed two cups of scalding coffee, followed by glasses of liqueur brandy, we started, accompanied by a gamekeeper and our dogs, Plongeon and Pierrot.

From the first moment that I got outside, I felt chilled to the very marrow. It was one of those nights on which the earth seems dead with cold. The frozen air becomes resisting and palpable, such pain does it cause; no breath of wind moves it, it is fixed and motionless; it bites, pierces through you, dries, kills the trees, the plants, the insects, the small birds themselves that fall from the branches onto the hard ground, and become hard themselves under the grip of the cold.

The moon, which was in her last quarter and was inclining all to one side, seemed fainting in the midst of space, and so weak that she did not seem able to take her departure, and so she remained up yonder, also seized and paralyzed by the severity of the weather. She shed a cold, mournful light over the world, that dying and wan light which she gives us every month, at the end of her resurrection.

Karl and I went side by side, our backs bent, our hands in our pockets and our guns under our arms. Our boots, which were wrapped in wool, so that we might be able to walk without slipping on the frozen river, made no sound, and I looked at the white vapor which our dogs' breath made.

We were soon on the edge of the marsh, and we went into one of these lanes of dry rushes which ran through this low forest.

Our elbows, which touched the long, ribbonlike leaves, left a slight noise behind us, and I was seized, as I had never been before, by the powerful singular emotion which marshes cause in me. This one was dead, dead from cold, since we were walking on it, in the middle of its population of dried rushes.

Suddenly, at the turn of one of the lanes, I perceived the ice-hut which had been constructed to shelter us. I went in, and as we had nearly an hour to wait before the wandering birds would awake, I rolled myself up in my rug in order to try and get warm.

Then, lying on my back, I began to look at the misshapen moon, which had four horns, through the vaguely transparent walls of this polar house.

But the frost of the frozen marshes, the cold of these walls, the cold from the firmament penetrated me so terribly, that I began to cough.

My cousin Karl became uneasy. "So much the worse if we do not kill much to-day," he said, "I do not want you to catch cold; we will light a fire." And he told the gamekeeper to cut some rushes.

We made a pile in the middle of our hut, which had a hole in the middle of the roof to let out the smoke, and when the red flames rose up to the clear, crystal cloisons they began to melt, gently, imperceptibly, as if these stones of ice had sweated. Karl, who had remained outside, called out to me: "Come and look here!" I went out of the hut and remained, struck with astonishment. Our hut, in the shape of a cone, looked like an enormous diamond with a heart of fire, which had been suddenly planted there in the midst of the frozen water of the marsh. And inside we saw two fantastic forms, those of our dogs, who were warming themselves at the fire.

But a peculiar cry, a lost, a wandering cry, passed over our heads, and the light from our hearth showed us the wild birds. Nothing moves one so much as the first clamor of life which one does not see, and which is passing through the somber air so quickly and so far off, before the first streak of the winter's day appears on the horizon. It seems to me at this glacial hour of dawn, as if that passing cry which is carried away by the wings of a bird, is the sigh of a soul from the world! 

"Put out the fire," Karl said. "It is getting daylight."

The sky was, in fact, beginning to grow pale, and the flights of ducks made long, rapid spots, which were soon obliterated, on the sky.

A stream of light burst out into the night; Karl had fired, and the two dogs ran forward.

And then, nearly every minute, now he, now I, aimed rapidly as soon as the shadow of a flying flock appeared above the rushes. And Pierrot and Plongeon, out of breath but happy, retrieved the bleeding birds for us, whose eyes still, occasionally, looked at us.

The sun had risen, and it was a bright day with a blue sky, and we were thinking of taking our departure, when two birds with extended necks and outstretched wings, glided rapidly over our heads. I fired, and one of them fell almost at my feet. It was a teal, with a silver breast, and then, in the blue space above me, I heard a voice, the voice of a bird.

It was a short, repeated, heartrending lament; and the bird, the little animal that had been spared began to turn round in the blue sky, over our heads, looking at its dead companion which I was holding in my hand.

Karl was on his knees, his gun to his shoulder watching it eagerly, until it should be within shot. "You have killed the duck," he said, "and the drake will not fly away."

He certainly did not fly away; he turned round over our heads continually, and continued his cries. Never have any groans of suffering pained me so much as that desolate appeal, as that lamentable reproach of this poor bird which was lost in space.

Occasionally he took a flight under the menace of the gun which followed his flight, and seemed ready to continue his flight alone, but as he could not make up his mind to this, he soon returned to find his mate.

"Leave her on the ground," Karl said to me, "he will come within shot by and by." And he did indeed come near us, careless of danger, infatuated by his animals' love, by his affection for that other animal which I had just killed.

Karl fired, and it was as if somebody had cut the string which held the bird suspended. I saw something black descend, and I heard the noise of a fall among the rushes. And Pierrot brought it to me.

I put them--they were already cold--into the same bag, and I returned to Paris the same evening.

December 7, 1886