Cow

by Beat Sterchi

‘Don’t worry. Mother, I’ve got my hazel switch to hand. The moment Blösch leaves the stall. I’ll go and see that they keep well away.’ But Grandma’s mind would not be set at rest, and she went on to complain piteously about this unnecessary releasing of the cows, which had always been an unpleasant business, and especially when Hans was going about geeing up the nervous creatures to the extent that, my goodness, no sooner will they have taken a dozen steps outside the shed than they’ll all be jumping the garden fence. Yes, it was true, she said to the farmer’s wife, she could look disbelieving all she liked, but she knew how it was, and how it would probably be this time too; it would take some misfortune, a child trampled, a broken leg, before they saw sense. And that Spaniard, he simply frightened the wits out of her.

  In fact, though, the red-and-white hides of the Knuchel cows were already curry-combed to top shine, and for some days now, the farmer, Ruedi and Ambrosio had been preparing the animals for their move out on the pastures. The hooves were all trimmed, the horns rubbed down with oily rags. ‘We’re not having our cows leave the shed in the filthy condition of the Boden farmer’s animals. We’d be ashamed of ourselves,’ the farmer had said.

  The cow bells were ready too. Ambrosio, who was continually astonished at the habits and customs in the prosperous land, had been polishing them according to Knuchel’s instructions. In the loft over the cowshed, now swept empty of the last shred of hay, Ambrosio had taken rags, shoe polish and SIGOLIN, and had polished away for hours at the cast bronze bells, and the tin chimes, and the neck-straps that went with them. Their weight had amazed him, the way the cows’ names were already cast into them, the way they were ornamented with little crucifixes and laurel wreaths.

  And now the heavy instruments were to be distributed among the cows. Who would get which bell to wear? The farmer and Ruedi were not agreed in every case, so there were discussions and trials. Which young cow should have her newly burgeoning ambition reinforced by a somewhat larger bell, and which old lady should have her now rather overweening notions dispelled by a smaller one? Since the last pasturing the previous autumn, the pecking order in the Knuchel shed had changed, that was a fact, and the whole twelve-tone Knuchelglockenspiel would have to be retuned accordingly.

  The farmer well knew that a judicious allocation of bells could avert a possible argument, because the cows should make good use of the valuable pasture time, and not waste their energy in unnecessary bickering, still less in bitter in-fighting. ‘No, let them bite into the grass and eat, that puts fat on their bones and milk in their udders,’ he said.

  Ruedi was in favour of once again giving the second biggest bell to Gertrude. After all, she was the oldest cow in the shed, and she’d been rather unenthusiastic lately, he argued. His father replied, the bigger the bell, the more upright the walk, that was so, Ruedi was perfectly right, but Gertrude, that blasted cow, she’d already been sick once, and that hadn’t left her unaffected, and her milk was getting less, if anything, even though she’d just freshened, no, she just wasn’t what she once was, she could scarcely justify it, you could give her a big bell and all the patience in the world, and get nothing in return.

  Several decisions were taken in a provisional way, and tomorrow, when they’d seen the whole herd on the pasture, then they would have a better idea of where things stood, said the farmer, and when the last neck-strap had been buckled, and Ruedi went over to Blösch’s stall to start unchaining her, then Knuchel opened the lower half of the shed door, and picked up the whip he’d left to hand.

  Blösch took her time. As though to try out the bell first, she tossed her head, then raised it so high that her horns almost touched the ceiling. She mooed quickly, bent her back in order to be able to turn round more easily, and slowly emerged from her corner. The manoeuvre was a demanding one for an enormous cow, and she had little room in which to execute it, so little that she couldn’t avoid brushing against her neighbour Mirror with her own dewlap all the way down her back. After that unintended caress, her bell finally and fully sounded, and the lead cow of the Knuchel herd promptly stopped and bulked widely and mightily in the doorway. Only her head and neck were over the threshold, in the open.

  Before Blösch took her next step forward, she mooed three times in succession, at first deeply, like an alpenhorn, but then more piercingly, in challenge. The sound that emerged from deep inside the cow through her outstretched throat was a cantankerous bellow, and at the same time an authoritarian trumpeting that scattered all the doves and sparrows, made Prince start barking, caused the farmer’s wife to hurry out of her kitchen, hazel switch in hand, and served as a signal of departure to the entire Knuchel herd.

  Now the unchained cows grew animated, no more bored glooping at locked feed cribs. All turned at once, barged into each other, tinkled and clanged with their chimes and cow bells, whisked their tails, and mooed impatiently back.

  ‘Whoah, whoah!’ said the farmer. ‘Don’t overdo it, the grass isn’t going to run away from you.’ But no sooner had Blösch vacated the doorway than Mirror and Stine wedged themselves into it with their great bellies and for a moment were stuck, unable to go forwards or back. Once in such a situation, though, no other cow had Mirror’s ability to cowpush and wrangle in the national style. The more junior Stine had no alternative but to take a step back into the shed. That in turn earned her a jab from Gertrude’s horns, to which she directly replied with a kick.

  More massive cowbodies were barged aside by others, more rear hooves slipped into the drop where they sought vainly for footing, and in their flailing and panic they splashed slurry everywhere, and worsened the scramble. There was a grazed knee for Bossy when she stumbled over the threshold, before the whole herd had finally crossed the planks over the cesspool and was driven out of the yard.

  Unlike Farmer Knuchel, Ambrosio had stayed behind in a corner of the shed. He hadn’t been able to see where he might usefully intervene with his stick. It had all been too quick for him. A little bemused, he followed the exuberant herd, but then the sight of them soon delighted him. The red-and-white cows formed a horizon of flesh and blood, contrasting prettily with the blueish morning sky. The heads and horns and silhouetted bodies looked not unlike the mountain chain that they obscured from Ambrosio’s sight. Vacas como montañas, he thought.

  The farmer’s wife had hurried down to the orchard ahead of the herd. ‘Hurry, children, out of the way!’ she called. ‘The cows are coming!’ She picked up little Hans in her arms, and shooed Stini and Thérèse behind the protection of an apple tree. Their toys had been left lying in the grass, and Blösch once more brought about an interruption in the progress of the Knuchel herd to the pasture. The brightly painted wooden animals and toy cars on the ground caught her eye, and drew her away from the path. She thrust out her neck, dipped her muzzle into the thick grass and sniffed and licked the toys. She moved her jaw and larynx as though swallowing something that had caught in her throat and choked her.

  A crack of the whip to the base of her tail got her moving again. But no cow had dared overtake her, she was the lead cow, and had to be the first out onto the pasture. Nevertheless, there had been some disturbances towards the rear of the herd. Bossy and Flora had galloped off together, bells clanging wildly, and stupid Baby had managed to slip down to the vegetable patch after all, where, while not expressing herself among the cabbages in the way anticipated by Grandma, she had still managed to do considerable damage simply by lying down on the soft ground.

  Once they were on the near pasture, the usual jockeying for position started, with all the cows wanting to graze in the middle of the herd. The animals used all sorts of tricks to try and outwit each other. None of them actually butted, but they were all squinting to left and right, all watching how the others responded to their bells, and voicing claims and threats by changes of direction and little menacing movements of the head. A step to the left, half a step to the right, a quick tongue flick to a conqueror’s shoulder or udder on the part of the loser, in su
ch subtle and civilized ways were the positional quarrels of Knuchel’s cows fought out.

  The farmer watched all of this from the paddock. He listened to the chimes and bells. After a while, he pointed at the herd with his whip, and observed to Ruedi: ‘The clover looks so fine, you wouldn’t mind being a steer yourself for a while, and biting into that, but what do those cows do? Nothing but squabble! You’d hardly notice it, but that’s what they’re up to, each is out to score off the others.’

  For his part Ambrosio was more interested in the newly erected Knuchel fence. He’d worked on it for days, sweating and swearing at the enormous piles and the hard ground, and now nothing had happened, the barrier had not even been tested, none of the cows had so much as brushed one hair against the barbed wire. Ambrosio wondered why the whole thing had had to be so deeply anchored in the earth, and so solidly put together, when the Knuchel cows were only going to stay in the middle of the pasture anyway?

  When they returned to the farmyard to see the calves, which had stayed behind, little Hans began crying loudly in the paddock. He sat in the grass among the toys, sobbing. On his way past, the farmer asked what the trouble was. He wasn’t going to stop for him. Ambrosio, though, bent down to the little boy, picked up one of the carved wooden animals, and mooed a few times, to cheer him up. But that made little Hans cry even more bitterly. He didn’t want to play with a cow. ‘I want my car. My car’s gone. Give me back my car,’ he screamed.

  *

  As the cows were only allowed to graze in the daytime, because it was still cold at night, it took all of two weeks before the Knuchelglockenspiel started to sound harmonious to the farmer’s ears. But to the farmer’s wife, going about her business in the yard, there still seemed to be too much wild pealing from young cows gadding about, or even jumping for joy, which didn’t consort with her standards of decorum for the Knuchel herd. There was still a little too much discord in it for her liking.

  Where Gertrude was concerned, Ruedi had been proved right. With the second biggest bell round her neck, the old cow started to perk up, and gave more milk too.

  It was Flora who created near-insoluble difficulties. Here was a cow so ambitious and so immoderate that she simply couldn’t find her place in the herd. By pressing for a rank at least two places too high, she drew the anger of all the other cows. She even went so far as to challenge Spot, who was four years older than herself, and much heavier. She was injured, and while the farmer nursed her, the farmer’s wife was incensed. A blinking cow like that needed to be brought down a peg. She should be locked up and given starvation rations. That meant no more PROVIMIN for starters, no more lavishing that on greedy Flora.

  ‘Young blood,’ said Knuchel, who, after his wife’s vehement words, was once again trying to master the situation by means of a subtle exchange of bells. But he could only put an end to Flora’s escapades by sending her out to pasture with no ornamentation at all, no bell, no chime, not so much as a goat bell round her neck.

  Flora apart, the herd calmed down quickly after the first two days’ grazing. The older cows in particular were happy to concentrate on assuaging their limitless appetites. In the morning they came out and then looked and ate their way down the slope, neatly fanned out, until their plumped udders reminded them of milking, and they reassembled at the top of the slope, to be led back down to the cowshed.

  But as yet, Blösch wasn’t on heat again.

  Until one fine Tuesday morning, Ambrosio – sitting under Knuchel’s lead cow, bucket between his knees, forehead pressed to flank – stopped. Was that all the milk Blösch was giving?

  Ambrosio stroked the cow’s fore-udder, stroked her red hair, clicked his tongue alluringly, but however hard he tried, he could get no more milk worth the mention to squirt from the teats.

  Knuchel saw the bucket, barely one-third full. He sat down under his lead cow, scratched his throat, and said: ‘Well, well, so she won’t give any more? That would figure, with all the mooing and tailflicking. She’s been nervous all morning.’

  And later: when the Knuchel cows, after milking, were unchained for watering and grazing, Blösch straightaway shifted her weight onto her hindlegs, mooed, and in the tight confines of the shed, tried to rear up, her forelegs kicking, and mount Mirror. Her horns smashed into the ceiling, and her tail brought down cobwebs. Dust was everywhere. Mirror jumped aside, and banged into Gertrude. Bells and chimes clanged, there were loud moos of protest. The farmer weighed in with his whip until the whole herd had followed Blösch outside.

  No sooner were the cows standing peacefully once more by the well to drink, than the farmer’s wife, just stepping out of the kitchen for a moment, cried out: ‘Hans, Hans! Quick! Look at Blösch!’ Without resisting at all, Knuchel’s lead cow had permitted herself to be mounted by Flora, no, she even arched her back as though receiving a bull, and thereby gave further evidence of her heat.

  ‘Well, well. First a milk strike, well, we’ve seen that before. And there I was thinking the bloody cow was playing up again. It seems you have to watch her like a hawk twenty-four hours a day.’ Knuchel took Blösch by the bell-rope. ‘All right, finish drinking now, but then we’re taking you back to the shed,’ he said. And, again to his wife: ‘It’s unbelievable with this cow. Do you remember she was bulling once, and wanted to get on top of me? Luckily, there was a post in the way, otherwise – I don’t know what. If you left her to herself, she’d probably jump the highest part of the new fence in her impatience. Then she’d trot up through the wood, and take some puny village bull on board in the middle of a potato field.’

  ‘Well, maybe not quite that bad. No need to exaggerate,’ said the farmer’s wife, across the backs of the cows as they drank.

  ‘What do you mean, exaggerate? I know her!’ Knuchel defended himself. ‘Last year I had to secure her with the two heavy chains. And even then she tried to smash half the feed crib. But we’ll take her up there today, and I’ll see that she’s coupled with Gotthelf himself.’

  The farmer’s wife opened her mouth to draw breath. To say that there were other bulls worth looking at, that Gotthelf wasn’t the only one by any means. But as the cows lifted their heads just then and stepped back from the well with muzzles dripping, she contented herself with just shaking her head.

  Calling ‘Ho!’ and ‘Hup!’, Ambrosio drove the Knuchel herd minus Blösch down the paddock onto the meadow. Gertrude took over the lead. Only Mirror was unhappy about this new disposition. But in an attempted breakout, she was so greatly handicapped by her chime, which hung round her neck like a tin sack, that she thought better of it after a couple of bounds.

  *

  Before going into the kitchen, Knuchel held onto the doorpost to kick off his dung-covered gumboots, and also remove the upper part of his farmer’s green work clothes. ‘As soon as supper’s over. I’m taking Blösch along to Gotthelf,’ he said. ‘She has to be covered today. Ambrosio can drive her for me.’

  ‘Are you going to get changed just for that?’ asked the farmer’s wife, who was peeling potatoes at table with Grandma.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t have to be Sunday best, no, but a fresh overall wouldn’t come amiss. This one’s already quite, you know, and people might think we had to economize on the laundry. I wouldn’t go into anyone’s house wearing that, and once you’re in the village, there’s always one thing and another. And I should look in on the post office too.’ Knuchel hooked his thumbs under his braces and opened the parlour door. Before he had quite disappeared, the farmer’s wife asked what he had to go to the post office for, whether the milk was already on the way up to the village, and where the children had got to.

  ‘The children went along to the cheese dairy with Ambrosio,’ said Knuchel without turning round and with his thumbs still tugging at his elasticated braces. ‘And to the post office because it’s something Ambrosio asked about. I think he’s wanting to send money home to Spain. The first time. It’s best if I go with him to the postmaster!’

  Grandma l
ooked up from her work.

  The farmer’s wife began turning the potatoes round faster in her hands. She dropped them in the earthenware bowl only half-peeled. Suddenly she stood up, plunged her hands into her apron, and entwined her fingers as though trying to graft them together. ‘You know, I don’t like seeing the way the children seem to follow Ambrosio round the whole time, and I don’t know, Hans, I haven’t said anything, and you must continue to do what you think best, I don’t mean to butt in at all, of course not, but really, I think you know what I’m getting at, don’t you? It’s none of my business, you know what you’re about, but does it really always have to be Gotthelf?’

  Farmer Knuchel, who had stopped in the doorway and looked over his shoulder at his wife, snapped his braces and went back into the kitchen.

  She wasn’t about to get mixed up in his business, no, the farmer’s wife continued. But he could see for himself what the upshot had been for the last three years. Not a great deal. And at the same time, it must have been particularly hurtful to him, and what with the tendinitis, one had to bear that in mind too. Sometimes it was too much for her, to see the terrible way he clawed at his throat. ‘Well, what do you say?’

  ‘Well, what? I’m not happy with the way things turned out either. But you can hardly give Gotthelf the blame for it, and you won’t find a finer bull in a hurry.’

  ‘Oh, but Hans, take Pestalozzi, now he’s got just as much flesh on his neck if not more. And he’s agile, you know, round the flanks. Last week, when they were taking him up through the village past the shop, I saw him. He’s so healthy-looking and strong. And Frau Gfeller said he’s the best bull the community ever bought. I can’t remember a finer-looking bull, anyway. Hans, if only for a try, just once,’ the farmer’s wife said beseechingly. ‘Just once. And he’s agreeable, too, Pestalozzi, everyone says so, and when he’s covering a cow he’s better than Gotthelf, not so choosy anyway, I mean the way he behaves is sometimes not good to watch, from what I hear. Sometimes he thinks no cow’s good enough for him.’