The Farmer's Son

by John Connell

  Hitler’s Auroch

  It is a strange thing that a beast that lived thousands of years ago could occupy the mind of the Nazis, but then, they were not ordinary men.

  Hitler’s fascination with genetics has been well noted. His Nazi ideology was underpinned by eugenics and the idea that the impure and the unclean would be removed from the genetic pool, that effectively selective breeding would create a pure, Aryan race.

  These fantasies extended not just to people, but to animals too. And so it was that the auroch, that majestic beast, was to be exhumed from the past and resurrected by Nazi scientists. Its story is a sad episode in the history of the cow, and one we should not forget.

  In the 1930s, the politician and military leader Hermann Göring recruited a zoologist named Lutz Heck and his brother Heinz to bring the auroch back from the dead. This ancient forebear was to be bred for hunting by leading Nazi Party members, so that they could re-create the old German legends wherein Siegfried, the central hero of German mythology, hunted the aurochs, amongst other primeval European animals, including the elk and the wisent (a type of buffalo).

  Such was the commitment to this romanticized past that a location for the newly resurrected herd was identified in advance of the conquest of Poland. The aurochs would be set loose in the Białowieża Forest, Europe’s last extant wilderness, which already held stocks of Eurasian buffalo, elk and wolves. It would serve as the exclusive hunting ground of the German elite.

  When the Germans did finally take the forest in 1941, twenty thousand of its residents—many of them Jewish—were rounded up and expunged or deported. The Jews of Białowieża were amongst the very first victims of the Holocaust, cleared from their homes to make room for an Aryan cow. The Jewish community of Białowieża was wiped out.

  Heck cattle on Schiermonnikoog Island

  Working independently, the Heck brothers created their aurochs through a process they called breeding back, crossing several breeds of European cow—including Spanish fighting bulls, Highland Scottish cattle and primitive breeds from Corsica and Hungary—to draw out their muscularity and strength. The program was not able to replicate the massive size of the original aurochs, but its characteristics were exactly as the Nazis wanted: aggressive, powerful, dangerous and wild.

  Although the aurochs were eventually introduced into the Polish forest, the Allied victory in 1945 ensured that the great Aryan hunts never took place. The defeat of the Germans also signaled the end of the back-bred cows. The partisans and locals destroyed all the creatures they could find, seeing them as an abhorrence, a symbol of evil, a living Minotaur.

  Today the Heck aurochs number just two thousand, and they shall not be mourned when they die out.

  Despite their support of the ethnic cleansing of Białowieża Forest, neither of the Heck brothers was ever charged or found guilty of war crimes.

  It is Shabbat today. I don’t much want to look at the cows anymore.

  Luck

  Our luck has changed. I cannot put another word to it. The gods that rule farming have been kind to us with the cattle and the sheep, but now, now they have turned their backs on us. The Irish are still a superstitious people, but at times as these, I too believe. I have interceded with Saint Francis, lit candles, but still the deaths come. Death has begun its grim harvest and I am powerless.

  It began when I missed my alarm a week ago. For twelve nights straight, I had been on call. Twelve nights when there was only the yard and my incessant walk back and forth through the darkness to check on the sheep. Thankfully the cows were not calving as well, not yet at least.

  My body was worn out and I slept through the three a.m. alarm, and the four a.m., and when I finally woke at six I walked out to the yard to find the best lamb of the year dead. He lay on the open ground, still wet with the fluids of birth, twice the size of any of his fellows that were already weeks old. His mother cried and pawed the dirt in an attempt to make him rise, but you cannot raise the dead. The sight of his perfect but lifeless body broke me in a way, and I questioned the very nature of life, the spark, the divinity, the soul and its absence from this lamb. His loss brought up others in my life, and my heart was suddenly sore, and I was no longer sure whom I was mourning for. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, perhaps something else, but, like his mother, I now tried to will life into the lamb once more, hoping that, like some Lazarus, he would rise from the straw. And why not, I thought; didn’t Christ begin in a barn, a stable?

  “Fuck it anyway,” I muttered, for these thoughts were madness.

  I carried him from the large pen and placed him inside an empty fertilizer bag. I cursed myself for sleeping through the alarm, for I could see that if I had been here, he would be alive. I think of all the mistakes I have made, of the loves I have lost, the lives I have left behind, Canada, Australia, roles I have inhabited and abandoned, the journalist, the producer, the writer. And now, as a farmer too, I have failed. There was so much wrapped up in this lamb. His death was the counterpoint to the calf I had delivered triumphantly by myself months ago. The dark to its light.

  “It’s not your fault,” Mam said when I returned inside.

  “It is my fault.”

  “You were tired. It can’t be helped,” she said. “If they’re going to be lucky, they’ll be lucky.”

  I say nothing.

  “You’ve had such a good run with them,” she added.

  “I’m going back to bed.”

  It was still early and I was exhausted. I slept until ten, but I did not dream.

  When I came out again, Da didn’t say anything about the missed alarms and there was no fight. He too knows the emotions of death and understands the loss. The sheep, these cows, they’re something we share.

  “It’s only a lamb,” he said.

  But we know it is so much more.

  Death the Leveler

  The week has not improved. There have been four more deaths. First, there were twin lambs I delivered, but they were small and premature and the birth was difficult. Their mother was a first-timer, and this brings with it problems. It took me more than thirty minutes to take the first, and when he came out his neck was broken. I do not know if I killed him in the process. The second lived for a pace, and even suckled, but he too passed a few hours later.

  When the next set of twins died the following day, my heart hardened. They had come in a jumble of legs. And I thought for a time I should have to cut them out.

  Soon, the fertilizer bag was full of their lifeless forms. I took the bodies to the knackery yard. I have seen too much of that place this year.

  On Thursday, we had a day without death and we thought our troubles had ended. But at noon on Friday, they began again.

  One of the younger ewes went into labor; she was a good strong Suffolk and I expected her to carry. But after twenty minutes her water sac failed to emerge. In the birthing of a lamb there are different stages, and if any should fail, we know that something is wrong. We must be vigilant with Suffolks especially, for their lambs are big and strong and so harder to birth.

  This ewe had ring womb, which means her muscles had not relaxed and her cervix would not open. With careful massage and liberal use of birthing gel most ewes will dilate and a normal assisted delivery can occur. Rubbing and spraying and massaging, I began the procedure. I moved quickly, for I knew time was against me. I would perform this chore for five minutes, give her a rest for five minutes, and then repeat. But after the maneuver was finished, she was still tight and clenched. I could fit but two fingers inside her, and I knew that she would never now open.

  “There’ll be no lamb come out this way,” I said to Da.

  “What do you mean?” he replied.

  “I mean she needs a vet. There’s nothing I can do. She’s locked down tight as a jail.”

  Broken now too from our week of failure, he fought with me.

  “She’ll open herself.”

  “I’m telling you she won’t. You need the vet or you’ll h
ave two dead lambs.”

  After more cursing from me, the vet was called. I was scared that the ewe was also in danger, and that in this, death would claim a triptych.

  The vet was a stranger to me, a woman from the North, from another practice, for Gormley was not available. She instructed that the ewe be placed on her side and her feet bound. I did as I was told and then began to pluck the wool from her flank so that her skin was visible and clear. It was pink and raw like that of a man. A small pool of wool littered the pen. I rubbed the ewe’s muzzle, and with that the vet began her work.

  “She’s a fine ewe,” she said.

  “Aye, she’s not too bad,” Da answered.

  I did not speak, for I did not want to jeopardize the operation. After the last few days, I had invested everything in this moment, in the hope that life might be rescued and our failing fortunes reversed.

  The scalpel cut the various layers of skin and then we saw the first lamb. Slowly the vet took him from the open womb and handed him to Da. He cleared the mucus from the creature’s nose and then shook him three times to clear the fluid in his lungs. The lamb shook his head and cried, and we smiled, for he was alive. Da handed me the lamb and I poured water in his ears to fully wake him to the reality of this world.

  The vet returned to her work and pushed and cleared and took the second lamb and again the procedure was repeated, but our smiles turned quiet as the first and then the second lamb started to fade. I performed chest and heart massage, but both died.

  “Ack, Tom, I’m sorry,” the vet said, and she began to close and sew the ewe shut.

  We didn’t speak much after that. I walked the vet back to her jeep. Da put the lambs in the bag. We counted only the cost of her visit now. We counted only the mistakes we had made. We did not fight anymore that day, for the dead were not worth that.

  “If the ewe makes it through the night, I’ll get her a lamb,” he said.

  “Right,” I replied.

  We waited for Sunday. Next week would be better, we told ourselves. It was all we could say.

  Overnight

  The bad week is over at last and I am staying with Granny tonight. Uncle Davy and his family have gone down to their caravan in Sligo for a night away and have asked me to stay at the house with her. I am not minding Granny, for even though she is ninety, she needs no help.

  “It’s just the company I like,” she says, and she prepares a supper of fried eggs for us.

  “That’s no bother, Granny,” I say.

  “These are my eggs,” she tells me.

  “They’re lovely.”

  After we have eaten and supped our tea, we sit down to a good hour or two of solid criticism of the world. Granny is getting tired of the 1916 Rebellion celebrations. It is a hundred years since the beginning of the Irish journey to freedom, and though Granny is the last woman to receive an IRA widow’s pension from the war, she says the whole thing is overkill.

  “We’ll be sick of it at the end of the year.” She laughs.

  “We will.”

  The general election happened a few days ago and it seems the county has no member of parliament, which annoys her too. She made sure to vote, but she will tell none of us whom she voted for. That is her business. When we have run out of news, we begin to discuss the neighbors and talk of who has died.

  Granny listens to the death notices on the local radio each day. It is part of her life, for many of her friends have gone now. We never talk seriously of her own mortality. I joke that she shall live to be a hundred; she says she hopes that is not the case. I do not like to think of that day, but I know that she is quite ready for death.

  After the news, we watch a traditional music program on TG4, the Gaelic-language station. The Chieftains are in concert and we enjoy the jigs and reels. We smile and point out the players we know. We allow “O’Sullivan’s March” and “The Foggy Dew” to roll over us. It is at times like these that we know who we are: this music, the language, is part of our legacy as a people. Granny’s people were all musical; her brother was an all-Ireland winner on the mouth organ. I have never asked if she can play or sing, but I should not be surprised.

  We talk of old times before bed. She knows that I am in a way collecting the memories of the long ago for the next generation of the family. We discuss again the story of Kate Mullen and the Titanic. Granny has the telling of it, and, like Da, she is a natural.

  “Did you ever know her, Granny?”

  “We got her letters and parcels home, but she never came back herself,” she says.

  Kate Mullen was but a young girl when it happened. She was on her way to America to make a new life in New York and work in service. It was 1912, and Granny was not yet born.

  When the ship went down, Kate was trapped behind the metal gates, and it was a local man called James Farrell who freed her. He sacrificed himself in the process. Hollywood scenes have been made around that moment. Kate was placed in the last lifeboat just before the ship sank, and in his final act James Farrell threw her his hat, saying, “I shall see you in eternity.” Like so many others who perished on that cold dark night, James’s body was never found. Kate lived out her days in Long Island and never set foot on the ocean again. She passed in 1970, an old woman.

  “She dined out on that story for many a year,” Granny says.

  In James Cameron’s film, the character of Tommy Ryan, the Irish friend of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack Dawson, is based on Farrell. His family came from America when they unveiled a monument to Kate Mullen in our local parish, right by Father Seán’s house. The Farrells were good people. They had not forgotten their roots.

  “They called it the unsinkable, but it went down,” Granny concludes, and switches off the telly.

  “We’ll get an early night.”

  “We will.”

  In the morning, she has already fed her hens and has breakfast waiting for me. We have tea and salute the new day. I linger for a while and we talk of our sleep and what work I have planned. As I leave, I joke that she is the unsinkable lady of Soran. Long may she sail.

  A Break in the Clouds

  We have brought home some of the cows from Clonfin, for the rain has gotten worse and they are not happy. They were not hard to move and were happy to return inside. We will feed them extra nuts until they are ready to calve.

  The flooding has subsided in the west of the country and the daffodils have begun to bloom along the lane. Spring, it seems, is here at last.

  The first batch of calves are thriving now. The illness that has dogged them has lifted, there are no more cases of scour, and for that we are thankful. They have become bold in their age and play and prance in the yard. They chase and are chased by Vinny. The cows must smell the change in the weather, for they too seem restless. The fields are still wet, however, so we must be careful when we release them. Soon they will all be out in the meadows, but not yet.

  Our fodder is holding. I have counted the bales and I think we have enough to last for another month, as long as we are not wasteful. We also have hay enough for the sheep.

  The second batch of lambs are coming on well. We decide to move them over the road to the small paddock in front of my brother’s house. It is fenced for sheep and they will not be able to escape. Not all the land is fenced for them, and I remember our first attempt at sheep all too well. It was years ago and I was but a boy. I was our dog then too and chased those same sheep through fields and ditches. It was a disaster.

  “We’ll put them out where we’re set up,” I tell Da.

  He nods and agrees.

  I take feeders over for them and will continue to take them nuts to aid in their growth. Each bag of feed costs ten euro, but it is money well spent, for I can see the change. The lambs in the upper ground are growing strongly now too; they are thirty kilos or more. They eat their feeder empty every few days.

  We have faced what this winter has had to throw at us, and though we are damaged, we are not broken. I allow myself a brief sm
ile. The work has been hard and the rain long, but perhaps things are at last on the up.

  It will be a few days until the next cows start calving or the third batch of lambs begin to arrive. I can allow myself to rest. For a week I have no night shift to attend. The bags around my eyes will fade and I will look more human again.

  Mam is listening to her rebel songs on the radio, and so I know that she too is in a good mood. Everywhere there are little miracles, graces of spring. Blooms are appearing on the early flowers and trees like messages from heaven, signs from the other world that life will continue for another year.

  I come in from the yard and take a standing mug of tea.

  “There’s a kindness in that day,” I say.

  “We could be over the worst.” Mam smiles. “What have you on for now?”

  I list my chores and suggest then that I may go to see the Heslins. It’s been a few weeks since I saw them last, before the height of the calving and lambing started.

  “They will have wondered what happened to you.”

  I agree and leave her to the rousing chorus of “A Nation Once Again.”

  The Heslins

  Willie and Deirdre Heslin are dear friends. They are the parents of my best friend, Liam. We have known each other for nearly twenty years. I’ve been calling over most weeks since I have been home and it breaks both our schedules. They too are farmers and we share our trials and tribulations. Liam has chosen a different path in life and is an actor. It was a big step for someone from rural Ireland to strut the stage, but he has been driven to do so since we were boys. He is on a world tour at the moment. I would be jealous if I were not so happy and proud. His rise has been as if it were my own, for we both dreamed of a time when things would fall into place and our big break would come.

  “That’s a grand day,” I say as I step out of the jeep.

  “Arra, John, we thought you were dead,” says Deirdre.