A hare's breath — a winter's evening conversation in the warming room

 “I nearly had you there,” says Brother Thaddeus. “Nearly. I did.”

Father William doesn’t reply. There isn’t really anything to say in response to an observation that runs so starkly counter to any kind of accuracy. He allows something that approximates to a smile to gleam in his eyes, register in his features, hoping he at least looks friendly. He looks into the fire, takes a sip of small beer from his mug. 

Thaddeus broods, frowning at the gently burning logs, the settling ash that veils the crimson glow. “So often,” he says, “so often, there is no more than a hare’s breath between success and victory.”

“What?” Father William glances at him. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

Thaddeus nods sagely at this. “In the grand scheme of things, of course we could say they were. What does it matter if we win or lose? Surely the crucial thing, for a man of God, is how we play the game. Even then, I think most practical men would say success and victory are opposite — oh. I see what you mean. I meant to say success and failure. Or losing and winning. Or victory and defeat. Or triumph and downfall. Or —”

“Yes, Thaddeus. Yes, I get it.” William stifles a sigh, worried he sounded too testy. “Sometimes words get muddled up, don’t they,” he adds, trying to infuse his words with appropriate gentleness. 

This torture happens every week, playing chess with Brother Thaddeus. It never improves, resisting William’s best efforts to explain the moves and communicate the central concepts of strategy and anticipation. Yet despite Thaddeus’s comprehensive inability to conquer even the rudiments of the game, William has to admire his eagerness, his optimism, his willingness to try again. And after his inevitable defeat, there is always this time of puzzled reflection, trying to discern through the mists of obscurity what it could be that went wrong.

“Well, anyway, as I said,” he now reiterates, “there is but a hare’s breath between being bested and worsted.”

Oh God. William closes his eyes. He can’t be bothered.

“Why do we call it a hare’s breath?” Thaddeus is in philosophical mode now. “It’s such an odd expression. I suppose a hare is only a little animal. Bigger than a rabbit, of course, but even so. There’s something fey and moonlit about a hare. I suppose its breath must be the most insubstantial thing, just a tiny vanishing cloud on the frosty air. Just a hare’s breath. Almost nothing. It’s a lovely expression, really — don’t you think?”

William slowly lifts his gaze from the fire to contemplate his brother in Christ, wondering if it’s more unkind to make him feel stupid by telling him, or leave him to roam the world unenlightened, free to make a fool of himself with somebody else.

He hesitates: then, “Thaddeus,” he says, trying to sound neutral, conversational, not dismissive or superior, “it’s not . . . well . . . the expression is a hair’s breadth. Hair like a hair that grows on your head — or for that matter, out of your nose or in your eyebrows. And it’s breadth — as in width — not breath.”

“What?” says Thaddeus. “Are you serious? Well I’m jiggered! Are you sure that’s right?” He thinks for a minute. “I suppose that explains it. There isn’t much breadth to a hair, is there? When you think about it.”

William has no idea what expression his face is supposed to be wearing. Never was a man so glad to hear the bell ring for Compline.