” ‘There they go,’ cried Constance, and then added in a gasp, ‘In Heaven’s name, what are they hunting?’
“It was certainly no mortal fox. It stood more than twice as high, had a short, ugly head, and an enormous thick neck.
” ‘It’s a hyena,’ I cried; ‘it must have escaped from Lord Pabham’s Park.’
“At that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers, and the hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a half-circle and looked foolish. Evidently they had broken away from the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.
“The hyena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness. It had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure. Constance and I and the hyena were left alone in the gathering twilight.
” ‘What are we to do?’ asked Constance.
” ‘What a person you are for questions,’ I said.
” ‘Well, we can’t stay here all night with a hyena,’ she retorted.
” ‘I don’t know what your ideas of comfort are,’ I said; ‘but I shouldn’t think of staying here all night even without a hyena. My home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn’t find here. We had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; I imagine the Crowley road is just beyond.’
Oscar Wilde referred to hunting as ‘the unspeakable chasing the uneatable’ and this succinct summary is rather aptly represented in Saki’s short story, Esme. The Esme tale is woven inside another tale and this act of entwining, gives a delightfully surreal aspect to the macabre exuberance of the narrative. Indeed the exuberance seems to give the reader permisssion to expect the unexpected and to revel in the disrespect for convention.
It is certainly a tale to be passed on, to be exchanged, as its power lends itself to retelling, albeit in a very knowing, arch way!
The tale is narrated on the outside by Clovis, a recurring character-narrator in several Saki tales. Clovis is suitably louche and sardonic and relays many tales of the extraordinary that lurk just beyond the safe threshold of the shrubbery!
This framing device gives a recurring context and authenticity to the casually macabre antics and encounters of the mannered soicety of Saki’s world.
Saki escalates the ludicrous with dead pan ease in Esme and the prominence of the lost hyena serves to remind the reader that earnestness is as much a sin in Saki’s world as that of Oscar Wilde!
Only the resourcefully imaginative survive in Saki.
Lateral lying feeds Saki’s fiction and his narratives follow the direction of the least conventional, the most grotesque or absurd.
Saki dares to say to himself, ‘I wonder…suppose that…’
in Saki’s hyena tale, Esme shows the reader where following the pleasure principle might lead! Miss Prism’s handbag a close tie!