The Boar Hunt - Ernst Jünger
Complete
“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.
Now everyone surrounded the prey in an oval, the marksmen with their rifles around their necks, the beaters with their axes shouldered. The boar lay on the white bed as if asleep, its little eyes looked at the conquerors almost mockingly. The men admired the impressive head that lay as if on a pillow. The rifles gleamed in a fierce curve like old ivory. Where the broad neck set in, the (fore)legs, which Moosbrugger called the front hammers, stared stiffly into the air. The dark, bristly coat was shot through with rust, with only a single pure black streak running down its back. A large bloodstain still remained, fading around the edges.
At this sight Richard felt anguish; it seemed almost inappropriate that eyes were feasting on the hunted. Never had a hand touched him. Now, after the initial amazement, they grabbed him by the ears and legs and turned him back and forth. The boy tried to defend himself against the feeling that was growing in him: the boar was closer to him at this moment, more kindred than his hunters and stalkers.
After admiring and groping the prey, they remembered the lucky shooter who had brought it down. The count broke off a spruce branch and dipped it into the wound, then placed the bloody branch on the butt of his rifle, while Moosbrugger blew the hunting horn. The young man stood among them with modest pride, pinning the twig to his hat. The eyes rested on him with benevolence. At court, in war and among hunters, one appreciates the happy coincidence and attributes it to the man. This is a good start to a career.
They held out a round bottle filled with fruit water, from which the Count took the first sip and then, after a shudder, handed it to the student. Everyone tried to have a word with him, and he never tired of telling how he had met a boar. A very good shot, one must admit, an enviable one. He told how he heard the sow and how it jumped at him. How he didn't fully hit the chest, but slightly behind because it disappeared at a sharp angle into the wood. But he could clearly see that it was hit. Moosbrugger praised him to the skies.
Only Richard was hesitant; he thought he was the only one not up to the occasion. He was astonished to hear that Breyer had understood it quite differently and had to believe him, for the boar lying before him testified to this. Here for the first time he learned that facts change the circumstances that led to them - it upset his ideal world. The rough shouting of the hunters made him feel uneasy. And again it seemed to him that the boar was highly superior to them.
Moosbrugger took the knife out of its sheath and checked its sharpness by rubbing it on his thumb. Even in harsh frost, the boar could not be left in the rind, its blood was too hot for that. The hunter's countenance now became antique, lit by a sort of solemn grin, that stretched the deeply tanned folds vertically . He knelt on one of the boar's hind legs and grasped the other with his left hand. Then he cut the stretched rind with his knife and slit it open to the breastbone. First he removed two formations that looked like mirror-blue goose eggs and tossed them behind him while the beaters laughed approvingly.
"The fox gets them for dinner."
Then he followed the trail cautiously. The mist that enveloped the beast became biting, and the men retreated, cursing. Moosbrugger searched the abdomen with both hands and penetrated the chest cavity, pulling out the red and blue cloth and separating the precious innards. The heart had been ripped open by a bullet; with this wound the boar had done another ninety steps. A hunter's boy cut the rumen open to wash it in the snow; it was filled with crushed beechnuts. Soon the mutilated body turned into a red bath, from which blood continued to gush out into the frosty air.
Moosbrugger tied a noose around the upper jaw behind the tusks, and the beaters set to work dragging the bristly carcass away. The hunters lit the pipes and joined the procession, chatting quietly. The hunt was over.
It was the first night Richard had fallen asleep without thinking of the guns, now the boar found its way into his dream.