Chapter 25 - The Hunter

Standing on my four legs, I, a Lion from the tribe of Judah, listened to the sounds of the desert. It was morning and I wanted to satisfy my hunger. My ears tried to pick up every rustle and squeak.

That night I had slept, curled up like a tangle, in a sheltered place, at the foot of a mountain range that sloped deep down to a river, there were more trees and loot there, but also more people, and from him no danger, even if I come to kill each of them with a blow of my paw. At night I sometimes sleep so softly to their houses that the guard dogs did not notice me, and then sniffed the maddening scent of food.

I didn't know how people got their food, if they didn't hunt, and I came to the conclusion that they ate each other, according to some formula, probably eating the sick and weak in the first place.

I was the most important animal in the environment.

I walked slowly away from the rocks to a clearing and heard a lizard moving under a layer of dry grass, hoof it immediately and pressed it to the ground with a boot, it jerked free and fled, however, with two jumps I had caught the lizard beer and bit its head off. Then I had him all over. That, of course, was too little for a full stomach. The day lay ahead of me, and to survive it I would irrevocably need new strength, which I got from the living creatures that were eaten me.

My head was full of all kinds of knowledge of the world. Sometimes I even thought I understood why people existed, but I could not focus on that thought. I found people repulsive. But their voices annoyed me even more, when they shouted something to each other or to their God, in which these sounds embodied complacency and death.

Sometimes I would lie under a lone tree at the edge of a steep rock, my front paws outstretched and waving my tail, I would peer out into the desert and see the dark clouds, like accumulations of thousands of mosquitoes, moving Paul above the earth through the hot air. They were words, secreted by humans. They made a noise like that of a swarm of wasps. Sometimes I tried to figure them out and catch them, but it was impossible.

I slowly descended the mountainside to the stream, where green bushes could be seen, there I could catch a mouse or an unsuspecting bird.

I step across the open plain; if something happened, I had nowhere to hide, but a Lion did not feel the need to do so, where he was the undivided ruler.

I felt my own strength, but an ancient instinct nevertheless whispered to me that I should be on my guard, and so I remained standing from time to time, looking around intently and sniffing. The most unpleasant thing I could smell was the smoke of nomad fires, then the scent of another Leon, if it had entered my territory. But I understand that earlier that day no rival had entered my part of the desert and had not left his scent, and what had happened before that had no meaning in our memoryless world since in each lived not merely by the day, but by the moment when he could either become victor, or victim.

My eye caught a hefty, appetizing spider, I shot at it, but it managed to quickly enter a crevice. A little further on I heard rustling behind a stone, storming towards it. It was a jumping mouse, but it also managed to dive into its burrow in time. I took out my nails and stuck my paw into the burrow, but it was too well and too deep, and the jumping mouse made it out alive. That worked up a bit of my annoyance, a stupid jumping mouse not understanding that he was more useful when I, a big and beautiful wild animal, the ruler of these regions, was eating him. And he hid in his useless opening.

After this I walked cautiously, because a little to the left, on the other side of the small gorge, people often appeared, lighting fires and setting up tents of goatskins. There a black stone the size of the crown of a small tree waits. In doing so, those people were dealing with their big boss. The stone helped them. Sometimes, hidden among the rocks, I would watch as the people knelt before the black stone, uttered something and then chipped off pieces of it and took it away. Dark masses of words circled around the stone, but people did not see it.

I looked cautiously around the corner of the rock: at the moment there was no one at the stone, it towered above a large crowd of ordinary stones, which without the humans had been played with any power.

Probably once, during a storm, he had rolled down the mountain and stayed like this, pondering whether to drop all the way down or stay here.

Its top was finished by bird droppings.

I struggled through the dry, thorny bushes, then walked with inaudible gait through a wild reed bed, hoping to suddenly find prey at the water's edge, but there was nothing, just the tracks, in the clay near the water, of a wild goat buck, and there were a few gray feathers that a bird had probably lost while cleaning its beak. I smelled the feathers.

Right beside me the transparent water murmured over the stones. I never drank water or bathed in the stream like some animals did, even the thought of lowering my boat into the water put me off, it was as if I would be instantly wet through and all my strength and skill would be obliterated.

I heard a soft rumor, lifted my head and saw a living dark cloud hovering over the opposite high bank. It was rapidly changing contours, these backward and sideways, only a small part of it remaining that already looked so:

NI'X

I knew immediately what it meant: the cloud warned me that there was an enemy there. I could have fled, but did not, for I was a mature Lion, a ruler, and I had to prove that to myself, to the inhabitants of the desert, the living word cloud and my as yet unseen enemy.

I was not afraid of him because I was not afraid of death. And I was not afraid of death because I never divided the world into living and inanimate objects, that is, I saw no particular difference between a snake and a stick, a stone and a bird, between a dead and a living human being. If you wanted to show guts you didn't have to recognize in your mind the strength of the opponent, and if he remained dead just an innocent part of the landscape, victory was yours.

The dark cloud above the other bank of the stream, where someone else's territory began, the territory of another apprentice, whom I had never met, but from the scent trails he had laid out, I knew of his existence. Guts and curiosity won out over caution, I leaped across the Brook, seeing my long, muscular body reflected in the water for a moment, and I ran up the steep clay bank, trying to get to know my enemy as quickly as possible.

It was a big beat. Brown, with black spots. He was waiting for me in an open, flat spot, like a small arena. He had long understood that I was nearby and could have hidden, crawled into a dark crevice, but also found such a flight beneath the dignity of his life experience. The snake watched haughtily as I approached.

He made a lightning fast attack, four up a cloud of dust in the process, but was still too far away to reach me. I shot aside and sat down next to a small rock, which I could jump onto in case of an emergency. I pretended the snake didn't interest me and lay down at my leisure to lick my paw. The snake also kept dead still, not letting me out of its sight. A few minutes passed, the snake could no longer contain itself and slowly crawled away to the pile of stones behind it, between which it could feel safe. But I would not let the snake escape. In three jumps I was around the heap and had closed the way to the rescue starting stones. The snake pretended to crawl down to the creek, but suddenly it jumped at me again, Anne this time I could only just turn away.

The danger only inflamed me, and I ran around the snake, at times getting closer and then jumping back again, when I understood that at any moment he might renew the attack. I could move easily, but in order not to lose sight of me, at some point he had to either move his whole, long body, which was not very convenient, or twist his head, and if the snake chose the latter, the moment he turned away I got the chance to strike something under his head with my paw and jump backwards again. I felt something of drunkenness as my sharp nails darted into his skin, without otherwise doing any serious damage. But I did so successfully time after time, and the snake became angry, began to lose his patience, and this feeding prevented him from concentrating and placing the only proper attack. The amount of venom in his white teeth could have ended badly for me.

During our juxtaposition, which did treasure something of a plan, the snake's body took the form of several menacing letters. We exchanged signs, in deadly conversation.

When I had dodged a bite for the umpteenth time in one of his outbursts, but he had not yet had a chance to take it here his defensive position in the form of the letter 𐡎 I waited for the right moment, approached, grabbed him by the throat and pressed his jaws together as hard as possible. His hiss sounded at my left ear, he squirmed like one possessed, but I placed my paws as wide apart as possible to avoid falling and waited until he was at the end of his strength. I had to wait a long time, but finally the snake suddenly slackened. I let go of its jaws, shaking my head at the same time, to throw the snake off me, and jumped in the other direction, because it could have held itself dead. But the snake was dead, its fat brown body lying motionless. And appetizing.

I plunged into my hay and began to devour it, growling, my maw smeared with blood and entrails in the process. At that moment I felt the power of my lineage, thousands of my ancestors roared in me, I was the personification of their endless victories, their endurance and wit. They could not talk to God, as humans, but their ferocious fury was better than any prayer. I wanted to emit a victorious roar, but instead a hoarse hiss came from my maw, as if it were the spirit of the slain serpent that began to speak within me. I thought that my quiet and largely solitary lifestyle had made me forget to roar as befitted a Lion.

Of the snake only the head was left. Its eyes were half closed, its mouth with the hideous teeth was rigidly clamped together, before its death it had set its teeth desperately into the void.

I returned to my own territory, jumped over the stream once more, but this time I miscalculated and landed in the water with my hind legs and my state. Once on shore, I looked at my tail, which was soaked and looked pitiful.

Along the mountainside I walked up to the plateau. I was so full of the snake that I had trouble walking. The duel had lasted a few hours that had seemed like minutes. The sun had made the desert so blisteringly hot by noon that the stones would change my paws if I stayed still or moved forward too slowly, so I gathered all my strength together and set out on a run.

There, further on, among the rocks, was a secret God hidden from the eyes of outsiders therein I decided to sleep a little and digest food. I had triumphed, victory over the serpent had further assured me that the whole area was indeed my territory, my home, there I was free to kill, or to grant mercy, when I was satisfied and at rest. On the left, I noticed a burly scorpion in the sand, who stopped dead still, having smelled me. At another time I would have caught it and eaten it, having rejected its venomous angel beforehand with a lightning-quick move, but now my head was not on it. My recent victory was too important to be distracted by a scorpion. And this victory demanded some continuation. I decided to sleep out in the cave and at night, when it was cooler, I would go even further south, there beyond the hill began the territory of a lioness. The main thing was that she still knew who I was and was not in the company of another lion. I had not seen her for a long time, since the desert had bloomed for a few days after a rainstorm.

After a right turn, I approached the place where people hid their dead in stone Christians. I don't understand why people did that, after all, there were always wild animals or birds to be found that wanted to eat a dead body: jackals, ravens, vultures. Why put a body on the earth? Moreover, sometimes there were people who buried their dead and a few days later others came and dug it up again, to strip it of its clothes and decorations. Pathetic people, they were ashamed of their nakedness and were fond of dressing themselves with as many inedible valuables as possible, which had no net other than their shine.

Sometimes I saw groups of letters hanging above fresh graves. They united into words that man had used in his life. The sight of some words was so hideous that you not only had no desire to find out their meaning, but did not even want to look at them. This living cloud over a grave disappeared when all the words the deceased had used were listed. Usually the curses came last, the supplications, the accusations, the silly requests and the questions to the gods, then by the wind all came away, like chaff.

Once, over the grave of an old man, whom people held to be holy, for three days the word insignificant rang out

I walked around the killing field and already wanted to jump over a narrow if deep gorge of my own, to take behind it a path known only to me through the white hills, level and utterly deserted, but there was a westerly wind and on its hot air the smell of fresh meat reached me. That surprised me, and I stood still.

No meat was allowed in my territory, because there were to be no hunters other than me. Perhaps a four had brought his loot from somewhere in his paws to here? But then why was it fresh meat? Who had dared to do that?

I wanted to reach the cool cave, which I shared with bats, as soon as possible and put myself to sleep, but now it was necessary to find out what was happening on my domain, and so I turned west and ran, head weighted toward the ground, toward where the smell was coming from. I understood that I would have to make a loop, but that was inevitable, you had to lose North control of your own territory, you couldn't let anything run its course. If you put something in front of you, the enemy immediately took advantage of it.

Everything you had, challenged you and your territory. Guard those. Be extremely vigilant.

I stopped at a barren tree that rose from the ground like a giant bony paw, and sniffed again. The age of flesh had grown stronger. Long ago, even before I was born, a house had once stood on this spot, with a garden. Had a human lived here. With a family perhaps. Probably he had wanted to stay as far away from his peers as possible, and so was drawn into the desert. I understood him. I myself hated humans and lived alone. Maybe I could even feel sympathy for these people, with his dislike of other people, because then he was a real change.

Of the garden he had cultivated only this naked tree was left, which was so useless that in the middle of the day it did not even provide a shade yup therein you could hide from the sun. In this hermit's house had turned into a pile of gray stones, only a wall with a small window at the top remained. The smell of meat came from somewhere behind it.

I once walked closer to that new one and smelled that another one had joined that of flesh, but I couldn't pinpoint which one. And at that moment I get an itch in my balls.

Somewhere nearby the enemy could be waiting for me, I was not allowed to be distracted, but the itching became so intense that I no longer gave out, stay put, sat down, raised my hind leg to heaven, made my eyes blink, and with my rough tongue did begin to quietly lick my balls, growling with pleasure.

Probably a lion boasts an unusual sight at this occupation. What was a spotted hyena or an ichneumon thinking when he found the king of the desert in such an attitude?

So did they hate me even more than usual? Or did that actually bring us savages closer together in each other's eyes? I was curious if there was a being who loved me. Or could you only admire me, the ruler of the hot rocks, from afar, from a safe distance? The mice I usually conceive of probably didn't love me. The humans probably didn't either. Other lions? The lioness I decided to seek out tonight? You couldn't call her relations with me love, they just humbly agreed to become intimate with me, either out of fear or boredom.

I don't think love exists at all. There is only the desire to keep oneself free from fear and boredom, though some creatures are so stupid that they know no boredom, theirs remains only the tireless occupation (something like the eternal digging of dens) and fear. I know of the word ahava, coined by men because it often flashes up in the glowing hot air of the desert, belonging to no one and scaring away the birds. The letters Alef, Chet and Bet, of which it consists, disappeared each time and were replaced by other letters, and then you get something else, for example the word zahav, which indicated the metal for which the living people dug up the dead.

Licking my balls. Sometimes you were so absorbed in the process that it was as if life itself stopped when you stopped licking. I also possess the ability to ignite passions, I thought, all the while working with my tongue, the ability to turn into a compulsion, to be unapproachable and force people to perform strange actions (climbing a tree, for example, to run away from me), after all, my fur had a golden color for a reason, even if it had become a little sallow lately. I had gotten black streaks here and there, as if from the blows of God.

Suddenly rustling sounded really close, I shot up, on my four legs, but I saw the giant people too late. There were two of them, they dived up from behind the wall. The closest four nets out, I did a jump on him, but got tangled a moment later I was hanging in it, like in a bag.

'There we have him, the desert cat!' Said the man, who had just been holding. 'The little boss will be pleased. That's how she wants one, with stripes. Look how angry he is, Mordechai. And what ears! I didn't think we'd get him so easily.'

'I didn't doubt it, I told you he would absolutely come down on the meat,' the other man replied.

I made a hoarse sound and started floundering, trying desperately to free myself from the net, and they burst out laughing.