Once on the coursing field in Manerba, I confessed to being unfamiliar with the CACIL proceedings:
“I never went coursing like this…”
“What??” – Was the rather indignant and slightly derogatory reply by one of the participants – “And you have sight hounds!”
I could not help looking at the soft, smooth terrain, then at the well-groomed, well-behaved hounds, with their well-dressed owners in their designer sun glasses, and think of how different this was from the day of the hunt.
The Hunt at Portavaud Bay
The sun was all white light and no heat, that April afternoon, while the crispy, cold ocean breeze was still burdened with the weight and smell of the heavy rains that were arising from and diving back into the big waves out at sea. On that spring day, the rains seemed to be reserved, nearly shy, and would do their dance like banshees, far away from the coast, on the open ocean, where the sun goes to rest. Like Ulysses’ sirens, they seemed to be aware of this young, feeble star’s destiny, and would patiently wait for the sun to join them at the end of his journey.
The day, though, was still sharp. The light was blinding, the rocks shiny as coffins. It was a day that would decide of life and death, on the last nip of Irish land that would not give in to the Atlantic ocean.
The enormous, flashy, shiny vehicle of the traveller and his boy arrived slowly to the gathering, pulling an old dog cart as it followed the windy, stony coast road that would lead to the local grocery store. The foreigner was walking along the same road, with his Russian hound, the girl following with the young lurcher. They met, exchanged a few words, and proceeded towards the meadows that ended with the dark, mossy cliffs, where the wind never ceased to howl. The traveller and the boy were holding their lurchers, an older brindle bitch and a red dog of about the same age as the girl’s, and equally covered with scars and bald patches. They had a black, rough terrier too, a tiny tireless hunter whose sole desire seemed to be dedicating his foundling’s life to that of his travelling deity.
The wind was salty, and was gathering up the first clouds when the terrier started his search. Had it been up to the borzoi, the terrier’d been the first to lose his little, insignificant life on those meadows. But the foreigner held on to his hound, and followed the traveller across the fields, on top of the rocks and around the thorns that held the dry walls of ancient stones clasped together.
The girl was following too, with her brindle lurcher. Suddenly, the terrier, having gone ahead, caught their scent and yapped.
“He’s opening up” - the gypsy cried – “They’re there. Faster, now!”
The terrier was delirious with excitement, while the traveller’s lurchers sprang forward. The borzoi pulled, crouched, whined, nearly howled with frustration, as the foreigner would not trust him loose, knowing his hound would go for the nearest kill first. And so would the gypsy, if anything happened to his lurchers. Thus, he quickly passed the frantic borzoi to the girl, and snatched the lurcher's lead out of her hands. Shaking with excitement, breathless with urgency, he took the thick, wide collar off, wrapped the red nylon lead around the dog's neck holding the two ends between his thumb and finger, ready to let go. He knew their lurcher would not listen as well as the traveller's, and decided to slip as late as possible.
While the traveller's lurchers rushed on, holding their snake heads higher than the grass, the man kept an eye on the terrier, and told the foreigner to do the same. Until the first hare sprang, a brown knot of speed and terror, of blood and despair rushing through veins that suddenly seemed too narrow for so much fear, anguish and horror to flow through. The traveller’s bitch sprinted after it, mad with desire, while the terrier – aware of his task – followed her with an intent look but then carried on searching the ground, while the hunters wouldn’t take their eyes off him. Until the second one bolted. Decisions were made, within seconds. The traveller took after his bitch, following the chase while running uphill towards the wider meadows, shouting orders to the boy. The boy spurred his lurcher on while the foreigner started running with his own shouting encouragement until he was sure the dog had seen it. Then he slipped.
The two dogs had never met before but worked at unison, ignoring the nearby flock of sheep.
The gypsy's lurcher took wide, jumping on a group of rocks, to the left of the cliffs. The foreigner's lurcher took right, climbed over a smaller wall and through the thorns, streaking his flanks with blood, and then with mud, as he crawled under a cattle gate, and darted towards the second, higher wall, at the far end of the enclosure. It was there, half way through the second meadow, as if aware of the wall being there at the end of it, that the hare attempted a last, erratic twist when the foreigner’s lurcher bent, stretched, grabbed, fell to jump back on its feet, deepened its bite and shook. The hare squeaked, slipped away, fell on the ground, attempted a few steps on the legs that were still unbroken, was caught again, and again it cried, this time with a longer, feeble and shrill cry that penetrated the foreigner’s pores, prevailing on the sound of the roaring waves down the cliffs, the whistle of the incessant wind, the voice of the girl who refused to look, and the howl of the borzoi that was longing for the kill. Within seconds, the boy’s lurcher joined in, demanding his share of that life slipping away, while the boy - ecstatic, wild, travelling bird of prey that he was – arrived on the spot of the kill shouting to the foreigner to free the hare, to ‘let it loose, let ‘em dogs have another go’, another catch, a longer agony, one more deadly shake.
The foreigner’s rush decreased, the girl’s voice reached them, the ancient fury and joy of the hunter began to ebb away, and before the boy would attempt anything, he made one more decision. He grabbed the hare from the lurcher’s mouth, held it by its hind legs with his left hand, head down, and hit its cervical vertebrae with his bare right hand, like he had seen his grandfather do with rabbits before slitting their throat, down South, among the vines. The hare bent its spine upwards, its eyes shooting out of their cavities, its head shaking, nostrils twisting and mouth gasping, while its front paws frantically jerked up and down, as if seeking the ground for a last, hopeless leap.
The foreigner stood there, shivering, shaking, as if after waking up from a wild dream, uncertain whether with pleasure or horror, a raw joy rushing through his limbs as a high fever seizes a child. So he stood a few steps from the cliffs on one side, with the dead hare in his left hand, first looking at his blood-stained, ecstatic hunter panting beside him, then watching the boy, staring into his mad gypsy eyes. He stood there waiting for the traveller to join them, and finally turned to the ocean that hailed the hunt, the sky that had turned black, the wind that had soaked with water and salt as if ready to cover the prey’s cries. The foreigner looked at his dog’s catch: it was a male, big and mature. The gypsy arrived, excited, proud with the pride of an ancient, out-cast loneliness, smiling behind his steel blue eyes, with his long thin black hair loose on his shoulders. He had called the bitch back, while the terrier was waiting to resume the search. He took the hare from the foreigner's hand and said:
“Who done it? Fen. Cute one, this Fen.”
Then he looked into the foreigner’s eyes, as if to prepare him for a moment of some significance, some ritual from his outdated gypsy world:
“I want you to have this, later. We leave it for now. I’ll show you".
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, looking a bit embarrassed for having no knife, punched a hole between the hare’s tendon and bone, in its skin, slipped the other foot and leg into the hole until the stifle was through, as to form a loop, and hung the beast head downwards on the highest thorns.
“Ay, it’ll keep the foxes away till we come back. We’re hunting now”.
