by Beat Sterchi
Then Pretty Boy Hügli intervened. He removed the net membrane – a transparent coating of greasy linings resembling a spider’s web – hung it on the rack over the slaughtering bay, put his knife away, and helped Piccolo pull out the paunch. When all the entrails were lying on the handcart, Hügli tore the duodenum in two to free the intestines from the stomachs, and take them across to one of the tables by the wall.
—Here! So you have something to work on, and don’t fall asleep again, he said to intestine specialist Hans-Peter Buri, who prodded the splattered mass with his fingertips and made a face expressive of disgust.
—All shat out. And inflamed with it. It’s ancient stuff, don’t even bother giving it to me.
—Buri, don’t talk crap! Are you an intestine expert, or aren’t you? Any Italian can strip a nice juicy beef intestine. Show what you’re made of! Hügli had soiled himself with dribbled stomach juices. He wiped his hands on his apron.
—Bunch of crap, growled Buri. He plucked at the guts, and the intestines of a diseased animal, one suffering from an inflammation of the intestines, will often be red, swollen and sticky, and finally Buri just shook his head. No, Hügli, with one of these, you’re rarely left with anything usable. You can put on kid gloves, strip them in warm water, and still be left with a few rags at the end of it.
And while Blösch’s intestines were flying in a high arc into the container for condemned material, her stomachs were sliding about on Piccolo’s two-wheeled hand-cart. The surface of it was greasy with blood and slime, and the heavy paunch threatened to slip in front of the axle. Piccolo swore. This could be dangerous. It had happened before, one of those vast fodder bags had tipped the handles upward, and lifted him off his feet. Once a rumen weighing 150 kilos had fallen out and flopped onto the floor in front of a cow that Krummen was bringing in. First the cow, then Krummen, had slipped on it. There’d been blue murder afterwards.
Piccolo gripped the handles still tighter and manoeuvred the cart out of the back door of the hall, and into the abattoir yard.
He made for the entrance to the tripery, and in the trade ruminants’ stomachs are termed: tripes. A blast of hot air sent swathes of steam his way. There was the loud hum of electric lifting gear. In every corner there was boiling, gurgling and hissing. Drops of condensation fell from the ceiling, here everything was either red hot or ice cold, and all of it was wringing wet. In two rows by the wall were vast boilers the size of camp kitchens, only visible in outline, because of the steam. This was Fritz Rötlisberger’s territory. He was the master of the tripery, and he was just now hauling some of yesterday’s batch from one of the boilers. They’d had the smell and the toughness boiled out of them for fourteen hours. Like the catch in an enormous eel-net, Rötlisberger held them suspended in a metal basket in mid-air. With an iron hook, he grappled at the hot metal, and towed his prize along an overhead rail to a water trough, where he let the whole lot go. The cooling water overflowed and splashed through the entire shambles.
—Porco Dio! Fridu! Que cosa fai tu? Piccolo jumped back.
Rötlisberger giggled. Here, hold this, he said and gave Piccolo his lit BRISSAGO. I’m going to wash my face. He dipped his hands like a ladle into the rinsing water and washed the sweat off his face. Not only did Rötlisberger eschew rubber boots in favour of real wooden clogs of cow leather and young oak, he also declined to tie a rubber apron round his waist. Instead, what he preferred were burlap aprons, of which he wore five at a time. The inner one of these was the driest, and it was this he used to wipe his face on.
—You molto crazy, said Piccolo, and glancing at the paunch in the cart, Rötlisberger asked:
—You expect me to make tripes out of that? Those old shitbags? Let Krummen clean them himself. Or, you know what? You can take the whole lot across to the office. Dump it on Frau Spreussiger’s desk.
—You molto crazy, said Piccolo.
—That’s right, porco Dio. Niente comprendere, eh? Rötlisberger giggled again and set to work: he slung Blösch’s stomachs out of the cart onto the tripe table, and snip-snap, all the containers were slit open and flip-flop, they were all tossed inside out, and Rötlisberger scraped the fodder and the stinking debris out of the honeycomb, out of the villi of the stomach walls, and the contents of the rumen of slaughtered animals may be used as fertilizer, and the air was filled with never-belched gases.
Piccolo turned up his nose. He had stayed standing next to Rötlisberger to admire his nifty handiwork. Rötlisberger had hands that had cleaned the tripes of generations of cows and bullocks, and they had mutated accordingly. By dint of working on the spongy green membranes of innards, by dint of the permanent moisture and the continual alternation of hot and cold, they had grown larger and larger. They had evolved into starfish paws, and when Rötlisberger kept them idly at his side it sometimes looked as if he had three faces, and sometimes three fists.
When Blösch’s stomachs had been scraped clean, and splashed into the boiler for sub-standard tripes, Piccolo took up his cart again. As he left, he turned round once more:
—Hey, Fridu! No si fuma gui! he yelled, and so doing, backed into Krummen who, on the way from the pens to the slaughtering room, cow in tow, had just stepped into the tripery. Foreman Krummen swore mercilessly and went on. The cow followed him tamely, as on leading strings.
—Rötlisberger! Where are you? Bössiger wants to see you! You hear? Thick steam enveloped Krummen and his cow.
Rötlisberger moved another metal basket full of tripes from the boiler to the rinsing trough. Chains rattled, the lifting gear hummed, Rötlisberger could hear nothing.
Then the outline of a cow loomed up in front of him. A pair of horns were coming towards him.
—Christ! Now they’re bringing the tripes in on the hoof! But no dice! He grabbed a ladle, and doused the cow with tripe-water.
Jesus fucking Christ, damned idiot!
Krummen flipped.
—So you have to take the fellow a personal invitation, and he goes and flings boiling water all over you! Goddamn it, that does it! You’re just clowning around in here! And you hold up the Italian. For Jesus Christ’s sake! One of them walks out, another one comes in here and hides, the dealers don’t deliver the goods, and the boneheads from town can’t even be bothered to fucking shoot the beasts!
—Now give it a rest, will you! And what are you doing with a cow in here anyway? I mean to say. And shouting at me. I never saw you!
—Yeah, sure. I believe you. Cunning old bastard. You were there yesterday, though, weren’t you? Whipping them up, that’s right. But enough is enough, you wait. As if there wasn’t enough aggro with the foreigners anyway. Now you go and see Bössiger in his office! Read me? Krummen had to yell again. Rötlisberger had opened up the pressure valves on a boiler and turned on the lifting gear again. When the hook had come down far enough to pick up the wire basket in the boiling water, Rötlisberger stopped the loud buzzing with the push of a button, and asked:
—What’s that?
—Go to Bössiger! You’ll know what it’s about.
—Oh yeah? And why doesn’t he come in here then? It’s the same distance. Or is he worried about getting his nice shoes wet?
—Ask him yourself, you old buzzard! Krummen turned away. He yanked the rope. The cow bucked. Krummen tugged harder. It was a narrow space between the boilers and the troughs and carts, and the floor was slippery. The cow was nervous. She couldn’t move, she felt trapped. She refused to go forwards or back. Krummen swore and smashed his fist in her muzzle. Rötlisberger grabbed some tongs, nipped her tail, and let go. The cow leaped up in the air, landed with one hoof in a bucket, tore the rope from Krummen’s grasp, and set off at a gallop out of the tripery. The bucket clattered against the floor. Krummen set off in pursuit. Rötlisberger laughed and went up to the door.
Immediately above him on the wall hung a barely recognizable cow skull. Moth-eaten and spider-webbed, a hideous yellow-grey colour. Only the horns were still intact.
&n
bsp; Rötlisberger took a PUFF at his BRISSAGO.
*
Seven forty-five.
Huber and Hofer have got that devil’s cow under their hydraulic knives. They pull at the hide, stretch the inside of it, and get their knives in. Skinning is hard going. Hofer sticks the tip of his tongue out of the left corner of his mouth. When he does another cut with the knife, it goes back into his mouth.
The cutting-tool hum.
The meat on the flanks parts reluctantly from the inner fell, which is scarred, tick-drilled, diseased.
Like a pair of trousers, the skin hanging down round her ankles.
But fuck it! I can’t get into it. Not the rhythm, not the forgetting, not the losing yourself in the work. I have to see everything, hear it, smell it. Today I don’t dissolve in the bustle of it.
I try to keep up, get ahead: ambitiously. With blunt knives. With a shaking hand.
I whet and sweat.
What are you staring at?
Surely you’re allowed to sharpen your knife once in a while.
Überländer comes and stands over my cow.
Give me the knife! Sharpen it, don’t brush it. You could sit on that with your bare arse.
I splutter vainly.
The rings. The iron rings.
It’s on account of...
You can’t see them, for all the scraps of skin on the floor. Or you slip. The edge is gone.
Grind it?
Now?
As if I was allowed simply to go off and sharpen my knives while working.
Mishaps come about with bad tools.
Überländer is insistent. Working with blunt knives! No thanks. Now off you go and sharpen it. Before you cut yourself.
How can I rage? Hate? Punch?
I press harder on the handle. Flesh and hide resist me.
Go. Click. Like a slaughterman. Butcher’s pride.
I gulp.
My lips flap against one another. Every muscle in my face is loose. I can feel my pallor. The lump in my throat.
It should go.
Up and out.
I should stand up.
Stand up, roar and clear off.
I toss my head the way Hügli does, and don’t feel any bigger.
I press my lips together the way Huber does, and don’t feel any more secure.
I thrust out my jaw the way Hofer does, and don’t feel any stronger.
I narrow my eyes the way Krummen does, furrow my brow, turn my chin aside, tense the sinews in my throat, clench my teeth, and don’t feel any more aggressive.
Luigi gapes at me and shakes his head.
Porco Dio.
Bloodied nostrils drip. I hear the bellowing of cattle. One ring fixed in the floor, the other in the nose. Harnesses buckled tight. The ring cuts into the mucous membrane. The rattle of chains, spring-hooks, blinkers, slaughtering masks, beatings. Muzzles foam, spittle flows, eyes roll white. The nose-ring cuts harder. The horns. The neck, curved and upright like the comb of a cock. Two tonnes and more of tamed steer’s flesh. And the axe splinters the obtuse head, the brains squirt out, and every second animal refuses to lie down. Another blow. Same again. You wait... a snuffle: The mighty head shakes. Shears! The whorl of tight curls on the wide brow. Hair to a thickness of five fingers dampened the blow. The curls fall. The axe bites, and the broad back goes under like a proud ship at sea.
For crying out loud! What’s the matter with you?
That grovelling Überländer has gone and fetched Krummen.
His hand.
It sweeps in a wide arc round his whole bulk, digs in, burrows in the seat of his pants.
Bit pale, aren’t you? Don’t you ever go to bed? Get a decent night’s sleep!
He checks my knife. Passes it over the hairs on his left forearm. Jesus. A kitchen knife! Are we butchers or aren’t we? Use a reed like that and you’ll only get hurt.
I get to my feet.
The throat below me stretches. The cow trembles.
Get your tools in order! Right away! Got it?
He turned round once again. And be sure you sharpen it properly the way you were told. Don’t fuck around with it like a scythe. Or else, Jesus.
Not many cows had nose-rings. The lighter ones were held in a slaughterman’s grip. The bigger ones were tied down. The rope passed round the horns three times, a loop flicked through the floor-ring, and the hammer was raised.
The lockable peace of the toilet beckons.
Door’s shut. Bolted: occupied.
If you have to go, you have to go.
I’ve got no more toilet tokens any more.
The urinal doesn’t tempt me.
With my index finger I press the wart on my right thumb. A feeble electrical pulse through my hand. A trained wart pain with every heartbeat.
I like the tiled walls of the abattoir passages. Just walk on. Thirty seconds of bare wall.
The noise, the sticky dampness of the hall, left behind.
Sleeping as I walk; sleepwalking through the slaughterhouse.
At the canteen, they’re unloading beer.
A chilling-room is open.
I go in between the hanging half carcasses. Hundreds of them, rank and file, arse by arse. All of them weighed and stamped, the backbone sawn in two. And now you’re waiting for the muscles to stiffen. The lactic acid is going to demolish your cell walls. Tenderize you.
Young cows should have a layer of fat on them. Fat keeps out air and unwanted bacteria, makes for a juicier roast.
A pulley chain rattles.
An iron hook between two ribs, the knife down along the flat bone, the handsaw through the backbone, and you’ve got a quartered cow hanging up there.
A forequarter rides up into the airy heights of the chilling-room.
I hide behind one of the carcasses.
Don’t let it be Bössiger.
The buzzing of the refrigerator plant would drown any cries.
I don’t cry.
I carry on on my roundabout route. I’m yelping inside, I’m amazed my back doesn’t give way. The vertebrae all stacked up on top of each other, like a column of toy wooden blocks. They hold. I walk. I’m falling over myself, but I’m walking. My legs carry me, the column of vertebrae in my back doesn’t collapse.
On, on, along the wall.
Misery.
Like a dog that’s disgusted by its own warty paws.
Oi, you! What a face you’re making.
Rötlisberger.
What’s up? Where are you shuffling off to?
He stops. A stiff-hipped old man, bowed and tired the moment he leaves the tripery. Only wearing one of his burlap aprons. Must have left his strength behind with the other four, on the nail behind the first of his boilers.
What do I say?
My knives are blunt. I’ve got to sharpen them.
Ah? You slipped again? Well, if you don’t concentrate.
He’s bound to be off to pick up more BRISSAGOS from the locker room. They get damp in the tripery. He smokes nine of them every day, nine of those smelly coffin nails. They’d make me puke. They’ve turned him green anyway. Grey-green and ancient he looks.
I’m having to go to the office. Something’s up. So long as it’s nothing to do with that bloody chest.
I think Bössiger’s watching the sticking, in the chilling-room.
That’s all right then, he says.
I’ll go up and wait in the office. Frau Spreussiger’s there anyway. I don’t mind looking at her udder for a bit. Not a bad rump either. And the legs, Christ!
He shuffles off in his wooden clogs, as though on a set of invisible rails.
I should go and whet. Better get toilet tokens in the break. If Krummen allows me my break, that is.
Rötlisberger bends down.
You can see it hurts him like sparks shooting through his back and hips. He puts his BRISSAGO down on the threshold and goes into the office.
* From German, ‘Bube’, boy. Not real French.
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�� cf. Gummstiefel (Germ.)
5
THE FARMER’S WIFE stood at the basin in the Knuchel kitchen. She fished plates and cups out of the dishwater, wiped them with a cloth, now and then scraped off a bit of hardened rösti lard with her thumbnail, dipped them one at a time into the basin full of clear rinsing water, and left them all to drain in a wire rack to her right. At the same time, she kept looking through the open kitchen window to check what was going on in the yard outside.
On the grass under the fruit trees in the orchard, her three little children were playing with wooden animals and tin cars, the Knuchel doves were assembling on the ridge of the barn roof, the sparrows twittered on the telephone wire, there was an expectant hush in the chicken-run, and the dog and the cats were toing and froing in the yard. Prince, panting and wagging his tail, would only sit for a few seconds at a time, and the cats had for once not disappeared into the fields at the end of the morning milking, but were still loitering by the door of the shed. For the Knuchel farmer had decided on this mild almost summery day to let his cows out onto the pasture for the first time, and that in spite of the hoarfrost, which was not without its dangers for limitlessly greedy ruminants’ stomachs.
Muffled bell tones were heard from the byre. The first cow was about to be unchained. The farmer’s wife hurried. She worked fast. So fast that Grandma, who had taken a cloth from the clothesline and had started drying up, first shook her grey head, and then, as she trotted back and forth from the draining board to the kitchen dresser, wiping vigorously at each individual piece, moved her lips in silent disapproval. But when the clanging in the cowshed became more animated, and the bursts of it were heard in rather quicker succession in the Knuchel kitchen, then she did manage to ask the question that preoccupied her, namely whether the farmer’s wife would really keep a close watch on those cows. For she, Grandma, would hate to see some petulant young cow running down into her vegetable patch, and trampling on all the seedlings.