After this, the first real job of the day is to split the carcass. Ed does this, sawing through along the backbone from top to bottom. The two halves swing apart. Each is still hefty, muscle packed against the curve of ribs, the heavy back haunch and leg hooked to the chain and the front shoulder and leg dangling below, but each one is manageable at least, light enough to handle between us. The meat has firmed up during the night. We’re ready to butcher.
We set up a table on open ground in front of the house. We’ve bought a thick, bright yellow plastic cover for it, like a picnic cloth, and when we’ve pinned this round and laid out the knives and bowls and bags – blues and greens, more yellow – the whole thing has the air of a party. I’m wearing a scarlet coat and woolly hat, a stripy apron; we’ve cracked through the winter greys: it could be preparations for a summer barbecue.
We unhook the first of the sides and lug it round together from the scaffold, across the front yard to the table. We begin: the hacksaw for dividing the half-carcass into sections; the cleaver for breaking through bone joints, separating ribs; the large knife for the heavy mass of flesh; the small knife for delicate work. We pore over the meat for hours like the most intricate of surgeries. It’s fascinating; frustrating. Where do the chops end, then, and the ribs begin? What about the belly? What’s this big bone here?
All the meat is for our own use. We don’t need to be exact about the butchering cuts: in principle, anything will do as long as it fits into freezer bags. But having got this far, we’d like to end up with something approximating good-quality pork, rather than hacked roadkill. And I’m enjoying the complexity and propriety of the task. I like the way the texture and colour of the meat changes as we work through the carcass: darker here at the shoulder and dense, paler and looser at the rump; threaded with fat in places, lean in others. I like the milky translucence of clean bone. I like the feel of the knife carving out sharp lines without effort. This is not like yesterday’s thrashing pig and heaving innards. This is a puzzle: you can stand back and scrutinize it, work it out, explore bit by bit with the tip of the knife. It’s neat, cold, precise; un-animal.
But it’s time-consuming, too, and we don’t finish butchering the first side until after lunch. There’s still the other to do, and already we’ve got a great deal of meat in bags: lots of big joints from the leg, chops and ribs, many piles of scrappy offcuts. The trotters are wrapped, stewing bones bagged, slabs of thick, white back-fat put aside for rendering into lard, and kidney-fat stripped off for suet. In places where the hairs were still too dense and spiky, we’ve peeled off the skin and discarded it; some of the larger stripped bones will be thrown away, too. But almost the entire half-carcass has been divided and subdivided on the party table, identified (more or less), and transformed into a state for storing and eating. This seems like an achievement of sorts. But it’s only half a carcass. Now we have to do it all again.
It’s the last Sunday of Advent, a few days before Christmas. This evening I’m singing in a concert at one of the local churches; at three in the afternoon there’s a rehearsal. I have a solo part and can’t miss either. We sloosh down the table and bring round the second side of meat from the scaffold, just as the clock strikes two. We’ll work more quickly this time, now that we know what we’re doing, and we’ll be less distracted by the magnificent physiology of the animal we’re dissecting, but there’s absolutely no way we’ll get this second side done together. Almost as soon as it’s laid out and trimmed, I have to go. ‘Just take out the fillet before you head off,’ Ed pleads. And so I ease the tip of the knife along the bone one more time and draw out another handful of flesh.
I’m late; the last to arrive in the village. The church is on top of a hill, the houses clustering down the slope around it, a network of narrow alleys, cobbles and steps. There’s nowhere to park nearby and I leave the car some distance away on the road and clatter up the deserted street, my footsteps echoing in the cold. When I turn under a stone arch on the flagged path that winds up to the church, there’s a huge bough of mistletoe above me, stuffed with berries. It makes me pause. Christmas. I’d completely forgotten. In an instant I’m transported from close work on a dead pig to the anticipation of celebration, with all its memories and associations and nostalgias. I’m unsteady on the steps.
The church is small, austere, beautiful. There are one or two pieces of artwork in the recesses along the vaulted nave and some stained-glass windows in the apse, but mostly it’s plain, a repetition of local stone, a larger version of the caselle huts in the fields. The walls are worn and patched, discoloured in places, evidencing centuries of use and poverty. Above the hewn altar there’s an Occitan cross constructed from fluorescent light tubes which, when the church is fully dark, glows yellow, casting the entire place in lovely light, but in the winter afternoon it hangs, grey and dated, like something in an abandoned electrical shop.
The choir is moving benches. There’s discussion about where we should stand; someone has made droopy red fabric flowers to pin on the black-and-white of the usual uniform but some singers don’t want a part in such foolishness and a clique of malcontents is plotting in the corner near the vestry. I find a seat on a wooden chair on my own. I take off my gloves and stare at my hands. The skin between the fingers is rubbed off to leave raw red weals, a result of yesterday’s battle with pig hairs; on my palms and index fingers there’s a busy network of bleeding cuts and fluttering wisps of skin: each time the sharp blade of the small butchering knife has so much as brushed my hand it’s left a small, clean wound. I hadn’t really noticed the pain but I begin to now, as the cold and the adrenalin subside and as I look at the mess. A friend from the tenor section comes up to me and stands alongside for a moment. He, too, looks at my hands. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’
Do I admit to it? I look around; we’re alone. I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I didn’t want to talk about this yet, and not here. But I can’t help myself. ‘I’ve been killing a pig,’ I say.
Almost immediately we’re called to our places. I give him a few whispered details. I tell him about the scaffold, about the butchery, about the cold, dirty skirmish with the bristles, above all about those last moments of Big Pig’s life, those moments of happiness that vindicated our decision to undertake such a task. This way, making a sensible account of a justifiable act of violence, I hope he won’t think I’m mad. But I’ve been busy all day, for two days – not thinking, hardly talking – and it’s only as I begin to wrench this thing I’ve done into a conversation that I’m struck by its odd other-worldliness, its brutality and visceral power, and I realize that I probably sound mad, after all, because I’m whispering in church about the quick plunge of the knife and my hands are covered in blood. I pull on my gloves again. I ease the slaughter from my thoughts and put it to one side, tuck it into a niche somewhere in one of the side chapels. I can’t think about it; I wish I hadn’t talked about it. I examine my shell for cracks. Then I follow the line of sopranos along the length of the nave to the altar. We start to sing. I concentrate on the sound as it rises in the old church, filling it, fading into the battered stone, lingering in the rafters where the vaulted roof leaks damp. My throat and chest are tight; my hands tremble; my mind seems to have dislodged itself, prised out on one of the high notes and drifting away with the echo. Here it is, then: I’m about to cry. But I don’t, not quite, not now. I sing instead.
When I arrive back home, dark is falling and Ed is clearing up scraps from the table. He looks pale and weary but the carcass has been butchered. I take Mo with me down the garden to check on Little Pig: he’s standing as close to the fence as he can, his head pushed out over the top, grunting at us with attitude. Mo sniffs with him for a while. I step over the wire to fill the food trough and break the ice already forming at the edges of the water tray. The mud clogs around my wellies. It’s a bleak place to be; I can’t help thinking of First World War trenches. Smoke from our chimney sinks towards the garden and drifts across as Ed goes
inside to stoke the fires, and for a moment the impression is stronger. Mud and cold and death. I spend a while scratching Little Pig on the head, on the tuft of thick hair that sticks up between his ears. He nudges me. I scratch some more. He seems utterly lost, forlorn. He’s never been on his own, ever: always he’s had the reassuring grumble and scuffle of at least one other black pig. Lonely Little Pig makes me sad.
There’s little more than an hour until I have to leave again for the concert. Ed and I spend the time labelling bags of meat and trying to arrange them so that they’ll freeze quickly. Bits of pig slide away into drawers and pack into Tupperware; the final disintegration. All that remains is the head. ‘We should use it,’ Ed says. ‘We should butcher that, too. Or boil it up.’ There’s good meat on the head, especially in the cheeks. Pigs’ ears are a delicacy at the Thursday market, both raw and cooked, piled in trays with flaps of unidentified skin and roasted hearts, or chopped into glutinous casseroles. But the head is still in the state it was first thing this morning. We haven’t touched it since rolling it away from the rest of the body under the scaffold. It’s still lying there in the scruffy grass. And we can’t face beginning again; we don’t even know where to begin again. A head. A black hairy head. Slicing into such a thing seems a step too far at the end of an exhausting weekend of slaughter and butchering. The thought of it makes me squeamish for the first time. And so we make a decision: we’ll just throw it away.
We make one other decision – or rather, it’s forced upon us. We give Little Pig a temporary reprieve and decide to postpone the slaughter. We haven’t done it this afternoon, as we first proposed, and now it’s only a matter of days until Christmas. We have family arriving tomorrow evening at the airport, expecting a cosy quiet celebration, and we can’t do it while they’re here. Besides, who slaughters a pig on Christmas Day? We’re also frazzled by the work so far; the thought of another two days of pig-labour is too much. We’ll wait a week or two. He’ll be fine. One dead pig, one live pig. It’s not ideal. It’s not what we’d planned, but it seems the sensible thing. We don’t foresee any problems.
And so I drive back to the concert with a pig’s head wrapped in black bin bags on the seat alongside me. At a point in the lane where it sweeps down across open land, I pass a small white stone slab which marks the boundary between one commune and the next; in this case also between one département and the next. On one side, where we live, we have weekly bin collections from the house; on the other there are large communal bins lined up in the lay-bys and at junctions, and residents have to take their rubbish to one of these for disposal. I drive to the first of these depots, which is tucked away under some trees, deserted in the dark, the litter of frosted cardboard and broken glass twinkling in the car headlights. There are five or six containers, some for recyclables and some for other refuse. I push back the plastic lid of one of the all-purpose bins and chuck in the head. It flips free of the bin bags and lands upside down. I hurry away.
I’m ashamed of this act of profligacy; I know how my neighbours would shudder at such waste. And I feel I’ve betrayed Big Pig. It’s the head, after all, the recognizable part of him; the big, solemn, dignified head. I’d rather have boiled it in a pan for hours and skimmed off the scum and cooled the gelatinous liquid for stock and picked the meat from the bones and let Mo have the ears for a treat; I’d much rather have used it, all of it, as proper recognition of his Big Pig-ness. But I’ve been beaten by time and tiredness, by choir concerts and the sting of my hands and the inglorious, queasy realization that I don’t want to meddle with brains and eyes and snouts and the too-familiar shape of the skull.
The concert happens. We sing. Christmas sweeps in on familiar melodies. I have to breathe properly to make the notes come right and it makes me wonder whether I’ve breathed at all since the moment I drew a white chalk cross in the middle of Big Pig’s forehead. It feels as though my breath has been trapped inside me, festering.
Afterwards there are cakes and mulled wine in the draughty salle des fêtes but I slip away and drive home. I pull the car into the front yard and park. When I get out, I walk round to lift the boot to take out my music and bits and pieces in a carrier bag; I place my hand on the latch and I stop.
I look up at the huge black sky, the stars piercing in the cold, and my poor illusory defensive shell explodes into a million little pieces which fall away from me and leave me soft and small and bewildered. I begin to cry. I cry painfully, tightly, not able to take my eyes off the stars. The church bells strike the hour, carrying clearly in the chill air. I continue to cry, wrenching out strangled sobs. I’m not sure what I’m crying for. I don’t think I’m mourning Big Pig; I’m not actually remembering the death; I’m no longer reeling from the work on the carcass. But I’ve rarely broken down like this, with such sudden passion, and I feel alone and tiny in the unforgiving bitterness of winter.
Ed has the fire roaring in the living room and Mo is curled under a blanket and there are lovely smells in the kitchen. The shutters are closed to keep out the cold. Everything is cosy and safe and warm. This, then, is the end to the weekend, not standing outside weeping at the stars but sitting at the table, sharing a meal.
We’re eating roasted tenderloin fillet, le filet mignon. It’s one we butchered earlier today. I remember the struggle to take it out from under the bone and the anxiety about trying to ease it out whole. There are cuts all over my hands from the knife work. They still sting. Normally, this is one of my favourite pieces of meat, but this evening it tastes strange. We both eat for a while without mentioning it. I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me; reacting to the weariness, perhaps, and the upset, the associations. Yesterday this was Big Pig, today it’s a slice of pork on my plate. Perhaps it’s no wonder it tastes strange.
But it’s not just me imagining things – in the end we look at each other and confess: the flavour’s a bit odd, isn’t it? Not off, as such, or even particularly unpleasant, but just odd. We’ve read that such fresh meat can have an unfamiliar taste, and it could be simply that we’ve never eaten anything so recently taken from a live animal. The enzymes haven’t had much time to act on the tissue, working on the proteins and carbohydrates, releasing the familiar flavour. And it could be that we’re unaccustomed to such dark, gamey pork. On the plate, the meat could be mistaken for beef. Perhaps the chestnuts and the acorns and the pears have infused the meat with this flavour and we’re just not accustomed to it. But I’m recalling the weight of the pig innards in my arms and the battle to release them and the anxious, delicate work with the knife in and around the intestines and the implacable warnings: don’t, whatever you do, don’t puncture the gall bladder. And so there’s another doubt which we finally admit. We look at each other across the table and whisper it. Could it be that we’ve messed up somehow, and the meat has acquired a taint? Could it be that Big Pig is spoiled, after all? An entire carcass ruined, after everything? We brush the idea away. It’s too miserable to contemplate. It’ll be fine, just fine, we’re sure of it. We’re being foolish. And besides, what can we do? We’ll just have to wait and see. There’s no way of knowing yet.
6.
We move Little Pig out of the mud. He’s plastered in clay: as his legs sink into the mire, his tummy flops into the squelchy ground until the entire bottom half of his body is caked hard and brown. It must be heavy and uncomfortable, and I can’t help thinking how much more difficult it will be to scrape such a filthy carcass.
He can’t stay on the vegetable patch. It’s already cratered and bare; now that we’ve postponed plans for his slaughter, we’ll have to move him somewhere better for a couple of weeks, with solid ground and new foraging. But everything’s been dismantled back at La Graudie and I’m anxious about trying to walk him too far on his own, without Big Pig’s steady influence, so we simply fence off the bottom half of the garden, an uneven grassy strip dotted with molehills and mouse holes, divided by a rickety wooden fence from Solange’s rocky land which abuts it. Our visito
rs have arrived and we enlist their help to create a new pen in the shelter of the mature pines and conifers which pack the corner nearest the lane. It’s an original way to prepare for Christmas and we all pile in to help. In the flurry of activity, I try to forget my distress after the concert, the sudden tears that took me by surprise. But I find myself thinking a lot about that moment under the stars. And the more I think about it, the more special it seems to me. It was prompted by tiredness catching up with me, of course, and relief at having got through the physical challenge of the weekend, and no doubt the so-familiar carolling, a brush with sentimentality. But it was also the point at which I came to understand deep down, in a way without words, what it was I had done and how it was to take a life; it was a genuine, non-clichéd moment of truth; the culmin-ation of the many things I’d thought and read and experienced about the pigs, the year-long effort and deliberation and anxiety and play, their significance to our small territory here and my place within it, all this distilled to nothing, to tears-without-thought which were, in fact, everything. Even now, especially now, sloshing through the mud of Little Pig’s shabby enclosure, it’s a moment I treasure, and which I understand will stay with me for the rest of my life, one of those rare, beautiful, disturbing, fleeting crises that will somehow affect who I am and what I do and how I think about the world.
But my feelings are still too recent, too not-quite-exposed, for me to understand in any meaningful way and for now, there’s a shelter to be dismantled and rebuilt. Me and my dad, in woolly hats and thick gloves, take down the old structure on the vegetable patch and heave planks and corrugated iron back and forth to the new location. We choose a sheltered corner among the pines and conifers, where the ground is reasonably dry, and we begin the task of stacking and balancing and buttressing. The plastic sheet is holey, torn ragged at the edges where the pigs have chewed and rummaged, but it’s serviceable. We use the tree trunks to support and wedge. In an effort to give Little Pig a more desirable residence – perhaps to make some amends for such a miserable situation – we drag the heavy wooden picnic table from the front of the house and use this to create a solid central den. Another shelter: the fourth. Like a Blue Peter presenter, I’m adept now at turning scraps, debris, rag-and-bone into something useful. There’s clean, dry straw; a draught-free nook. Practice makes perfect: it’s perhaps the best shelter yet.
Big Pig, Little Pig: A Tale of Two Pigs in France Page 22