It is a very nice law which forbids shooting in England on Sundays. Here in Italy, on the contrary, you would think there was a law ordering every Italian to let off a gun as often as possible. Before the eyelids of dawn have come apart, long before the bells of the tiny church jangle to announce daybreak, there is a sputter and crackle as of irritating fireworks, scattering from the olive gardens and from the woods. You sigh in your bed. The Holy Day has started: the huntsmen are abroad; they will keep at it till heaven sends the night, and the little birds are no more.
The very word cacciatore, which means hunter, stirs one’s bile. Oh, Nimrod, oh, Bahram, put by your arrows:
And Bahram, the great hunter: the wild ass Stamps o’er his bed, and cannot wake his sleep.
Here, an infinite number of tame asses shoot over my head, if I happen to walk in the wood to look at the arbutus berries, and they never fail to rouse my ire, no matter how fast asleep it may have been.
Man is a hunter! L’uomo e cacciatore: the Italians are rather fond of saying it. It sounds so virile. One sees Nimrod surging through the underbrush, with his spear, in the wake of a bleeding lion. And if it is a question of a man who has got a girl into trouble: “L’uomo e cacciatore” — ”man is a hunter” — what can you expect? It behoves the “game” to look out for itself. Man is a hunter!
There used to be a vulgar song: “If the Missis wants to go for a row, let ‘er go.” Here it should be: “If the master wants to run, with a gun, let him run.” For the pine-wood is full of them, as a dog’s back with fleas in summer. They crouch, they lurk, they stand erect, motionless as virile statues, with gun on the alert. Then bang! they have shot something, with an astonishing amount of noise. And then they run, with fierce and predatory strides, to the spot.
There is nothing there! Nothing! The game! La caccia! — where is it? If they had been shooting at the ghost of Hamlet’s father, there could not be a blanker and more spooky emptiness. One expects to see a wounded elephant lying on its side, writhing its trunk; at the very least, a wild boar ploughing the earth in his death-agony. But no! There is nothing, just nothing at all. Man, being a hunter, is, fortunately for the rest of creation, a very bad shot.
Nimrod, in velveteen corduroys, bandolier, cartridges, game-bag over his shoulder and gun in his hand, stands with feet apart virilis- simo, on the spot where the wild boar should be, and gazes downwards at some imaginary point in underworld space. So! Man is a hunter. He casts a furtive glance around, under the arbutus bush, and a tail of his eye in my direction, knowing I am looking on in raillery. Then he hitches his game-bag more determinedly over his shoulder, grips his gun, and strides off uphill, large strides, virile as Hector. Perhaps even he is a Hector, Italianized into Ettore. Anyhow, he’s going to be the death of something or somebody, if only he can shoot straight.
A Tuscan pine-wood is by no means a jungle. The trees are umbrella-pines, with the umbrellas open, and bare handles. They are rather parsimoniously scattered. The undergrowth, moreover, is allowed to grow only for a couple of years or so; then it is most assiduously reaped, gleaned, gathered, cleaned up clean as a lawn, for cooking Nimrod’s macaroni. So that, in a pineta, you have a piny roof over your head, and for the rest a pretty clear run for your money. So where can the game lurk? There is hardly cover for a bumble-bee. Where can the game be that is worth all this powder? The lions and wolves and boars that must prowl perilously round all these Nimrods?
You will never know. Or not until you are going home, between the olive-trees. The hunters have been burning powder in the open, as well as in the wood: a proper fusillade. Then, on the path between the olives, you may pick up a warm, dead bullfinch, with a bit of blood on it. The little grey bird lies on its side, with its frail feet closed, and its red breast ruffled. Nimrod, having hit for once, has failed to find his quarry.
So you will know better when the servant comes excitedly and asks: “Signore, do you want any game?” Game! Splendid idea! A couple of partridges? a hare? even a wild rabbit? Why, of course! So she arrives in triumph with a knotted red handkerchief, and the not very bulky game inside it. Untie the knots! Aha! — Alas! There, in a little heap on the table, three robins, two finches, four hedge-sparrows, and two starlings, in a fluffy, coloured, feathery little heap, all the small heads rolling limp. “Take them away,” you say. “We don’t eat little birds.” “But these,” she says, tipping up the starlings roughly, “these are big ones.” “Not these, either, do we eat.” “No?” she exclaims, in a tone which means: “More fools you!” And, digusted, disappointed at not having sold the goods, she departs with the game.
You will know best of all if you go to the market, and see whoie yard-lengths of robins, like coral and onyx necklaces, and strings of bullfinches, goldfinches, larks, sparrows, nightingales, starlings, temptingly offered along with strings of sausages, these last looking like the strings of pearls in the show. If one bought the birds to wear as ornament, barbaric necklaces, it would be more conceivable. You can get quite a string of different-coloured ones for ten- pence. But imagine the small mouthful of little bones each of these tiny carcasses must make!
But, after all, a partridge and a pheasant are only a bit bigger than a sparrow and a finch. And compared to a flea, a robin is big game. It is all a question of dimensions. Man is a hunter. “If the master wants to hunt, don’t you grunt; let him hunt!”