The Boar Hunt - Ernst Jünger

Part One

“Die Eberjagd”

1952

First published in the journal Story

Translated by Bruno Zimmer

Riflemen lined the access road. Behind them stood spruces with black tops, their branches still touching the ground. The yellowing forest grass was woven into them, holding them down. This gave the impression of dark tents set up, shelter from the storm and cold in the deep snow. Beyond the belt of pale reeds a trench could be seen hidden beneath the snow.

The forest bordered the princely manor. In summer it was hot and stuffy, and swarms of horseflies roamed the glades. In autumn, when the moth webs blew away, legions of mushrooms covered the mossy ground. The berries glistened in the glades like coral.

The snow had just stopped falling. The air was delicious, as if the flakes had filtered through it; it was easier to breathe, and the sound rang out far away, so that one instinctively wanted to whisper. The cool blanket seemed to surpass all notions of whiteness; there was a sense of magnificent but inaccessible mystery in it.

The best spots were where the clearing bordered the forest path. Green thorns barely protruded from the snow. Here the field of fire was perfect. Richard was standing next to Eleven Breyer at a junction where the branches were almost touching, so there was barely a view. It was a bad place, a rookie spot. But the anticipation became so strong that he no longer thought about the details, and even his sadness vanished. He had hoped to the last that his father would give him a rifle; that was what his thoughts and ambition were aiming for. He did not know a hotter, more insistent desire. He dreamed of the blue steel of the gun, the walnut handle, the oak blades engraved on the metal. How light and practical it was, and more wonderful than any toy. In the darkness of the barrel a silver spiral rifle gleamed. It made a dry crackling sound when cocked, as if reliability itself spoke to please the heart. One could fine-tune the shot with a hair-trigger – then it was as if thinking ignited the shot. That this jewel, this wonder, also contained fate, death, was certainly beyond imagination. Richard felt that it concealed for him a consummation, a complete change. Before he fell asleep he sometimes saw himself with it in the woods as in a waking dream – not to shoot, no, just to spend time with it in the green, as if they were lovers. He remembered a proverb he had read on an old jug his father sometimes poured:

Me and you, the two of us

Are enough for us to rejoice.

Even when he closed his eyes, the images continued to unfold. Sometimes they even made him uneasy: he cocked the trigger and wanted to shoot, but evil spells prevented him from firing. His whole will was attached to it, but strangely enough the more fiercely he cocked the trigger the more the gun refused to serve him. He wanted to scream, but there was no voice. Then he woke up from his nightmare. How happy he was when he realised that a dream had deceived him.

On his sixteenth birthday a miracle was going to happen to him. It was not easy for him to keep his patience when he saw young hunters or apprentice foresters, like this Breyer, who was barely two years older and not much taller than Richard. But now the forest was so quiet and clear that all desire and longing was quenched in him. The world was solemnly veiled.

A thin, chirping sound swiped through the grove and disappeared. It was the little goldcrests that made themselves at home in the sombre parts of the forest where they were pecking cones. Then, from the edge of the forest, the calling sound of a horn blew across the white light. The heart began to beat, the hunt had begun.

From afar, turmoil arose in the thickets. The heartbeat increased along with it. The beaters, dressed in heavy leather aprons, were scrambling through the branches and striking the trunks with their axes, while their cries of "hurr-hurr, hurr-hurr, hurr-hurr" could be heard. At first this noise seemed distant and cheerful, but then the voices became coarser and more dangerous. They sounded of pipe smoke, fruit brandy, and tavern brawls – bursting into the mystery of the forest.

Now one heard the rushing and shouting close by – and then a rustling that was different. A shadow crossed the reeds and passed into another shelter, passing directly between Richard and the apprentice forester. Though it flew over the open like an image from a dream, Richard caught the details on the fly: the riders had chased a powerful boar from the camp. He watched it leap across the path as if launched by a bow. The front with its powerful rib cage wedged into the rear. The heavy stubble on its back, which the hunter called feathers, was ruffled into a tuft. He had the impression that the small eyes were glancing at him; the strong, curved rifles gleamed before them. He also saw bared tusks that gave his head an expression of angry contempt. There was something wild and dark about the creature, and a redness like fire. The dark trunk was strangely curved, almost spiralled; this gave an idea of the disgust that this Freiherr felt at the proximity of the human pursuers and their scent. As soon as he saw the two of them, he snorted, but did not deviate from the path.