Cow

by Beat Sterchi

  ‘Well, if you think so, we could try him out, but on her account, too, you know, I wouldn’t mind giving Gotthelf another chance, who can say, maybe just one more, and then suddenly we’d have the loveliest heifer in the highlands in our shed. They make a good pair, they go well together, and he always came on as excited as Dung-Hannes on his wedding day when it was Blösch, but if you say so, and Pestalozzi’s one they’ve brought from the outside, I don’t know, he’s not one of ours. But let’s hope for the best.’ Knuchel held onto a doorpost, pushed himself off it, and disappeared into the parlour. His socks left sweat prints on the kitchen floor.

  The farmer’s wife stared at the two stains. She had expected much sterner resistance. For days she had been preparing herself. She had drawn up a long list of reasons to persuade her husband to change his mind on the choice of bulls. And now she was disappointed by the ease with which it had been accomplished. How she would have liked to build up her imposing case for Pestalozzi. There was his Breeders’ Syndicate points’ score, which was only just below Gotthelf’s on the latest league table. And then his far more attractive and less fearsome horns, the evenly patterned hide, the short but droll forelegs, and then, particularly dear to her heart, those tranquil and beautiful eyes. Never before had she seen such eyes on a bull. Pestalozzi had exactly the kind of expression whose absence she so regretted in the younger Knuchel cows. Flora particularly. These seemed to her to be becoming ever more pert, insubordinate, even insolent. Surely things used to be different on the pasture. She hankered after some calmer blood in the byre. But why had the farmer given in to her so quickly? ‘Hans, Hans, what’s the matter?’ she said quietly to herself.

  Grandma sat there and said nothing.

  After supper, Knuchel got Blösch out of the shed, put the long halter on her and set off ahead. Ambrosio followed, cowherd’s stick in hand. But he had no need to drive her. Blösch trotted obediently along behind the farmer. Now and again she mooed, but she was never difficult. She seemed to know where they were headed.

  The mayor, who ran the biggest of the Innerwald farms, and kept the two Breeders’ Syndicate bulls in his shed, had been notified over the telephone by Frau Knuchel. ‘Well, bring your cow over, if it has to be today,’ he had said.

  With his hands in his trouser pockets, he stood in front of his cowsheds, drew at a RÖSSLI STUMPEN and looked himself up and down carefully to check that his clothes really were as clean as his wife had assured him they were. And, to be quite sure there was no untidiness anywhere, he looked round the equipment and the cowshed implements.

  A twig broom lay on the edge of the well. The mayor picked it up and put it away. He rolled up the milking-machine tube more neatly. And there were marks left by the dung-cart outside the byre.

  As he was putting the broom back behind the barn door, Knuchel and Ambrosio were coming up through the village with Blösch. After the greeting, Ambrosio took over the halter. Approaching the shed, the mayor said to Knuchel: ‘Well, I hear you fancy a change,’ and, as he leaned over the lower half of the shed door to open it from inside, ‘and might one inquire why?’

  ‘It’s not that I’ve got anything against Gotthelf, quite the contrary, maybe it’s nothing to do with him, but it’s all those bull calves. For years now. And my wife was of the opinion it might be time,’ said Knuchel, not forgetting to murmur a ‘good luck’ as he crossed the threshold into the cowshed.

  The mayor took his RÖSSLI STUMPEN between his fingers and shook his head. ‘Well Hans, if you fatten all those calves and give them to Schindler! You’ve only yourself to blame. If only you’d sold me the one for breeding. He would have made some bull! I’ve got a real eye for them. He would have made such a fine bull. One for the national show. But what’s done is done.’ He put the RÖSSLI STUMPEN back in his mouth, and started talking more casually about an open byre that he’d had built for his fattened oxen. They might go across afterwards and have a look at it. Through some rather convoluted talk, the mayor also managed to suggest that they hadn’t just finished with milking, far from it. A milking machine like that really paid its way, and it must have been almost half an hour ago that they’d washed and tidied everything away.

  Knuchel said nothing. He scratched his throat, and looked round the cowshed. The animals had been liberally provided for, with the cows up to their knees in straw. Their hindquarters were clean and dry. The feed crib was shut. Walls and ceiling were newly whitewashed. Now and again, a cow would lower her head and activate the automatic waterer with her muzzle. The shed was spacious and light, except right at the back, where the two village bulls stood, where it was darker and also warmer. Knuchel sniffed the hot, slightly acrid smell of the bulls, and patted Gotthelf on crupper and back.

  The mayor took an iron bar with a spring-hook welded on at one end. ‘Right, let’s see what Pestalozzi thinks then, eh? Tell your Spaniard to bring the cow into the paddock, it’s always the quietest there. I’ll bring the bull along.’

  ‘I’d rather take Blösch myself, you never know.’ Knuchel left the cowshed, and the mayor wedged himself between the two bulls, using the iron bar to make a passage. Then he got working on chains and straps. ‘Right now, put that tongue away!’ he called to Pestalozzi, who had a brass ring in his nose and red-and-white leather round his brow.

  The mayor tightened the bull’s frontlet, clicked the spring-hook into the nose-ring and said, ‘Right, let’s go,’ and led him out of the shed on the iron rod.

  Pestalozzi was one of the biggest bulls in the prosperous land. He was so broad that he scraped the doorposts of the cowshed on either side with his belly. Barely four years old, he had visible qualities that no adjudicator could ignore. His chest measured 281 centimetres and he had come to Innerwald with an officially certificated weight of 1227 kilos, a weight that he’d since been able to increase to 1246 kilos in the good highland air. Everyone in the village was agreed that he was a mighty bull. The women in particular found Pestalozzi as big and beautiful as the last wagonload of hay before the rain. A glorious future was predicted for him.

  Only Farmer Knuchel was a little sceptical.

  Pestalozzi had a slightly untidy, off-white dewlap that dangled down between his legs from his neck. Thick folds of hide also concealed the base of his throat and his jowls. At the slightest pretext, they would wrinkle up, forming curmudgeonly pouches at the corners of his muzzle. His regard was veiled, and sometimes without expression, not least because of the little curls tumbling over his eyes. In fact, Pestalozzi’s hair was curly and shaggy even below the shoulders, which some found attractive, and others unworthy of a bull. ‘What do our animals want with ringlets like that?’ Knuchel had asked once.

  This shagginess on his forequarters was one of the features that Pestalozzi had inherited from his maternal grandfather Jean-Jacques, and it was enough to turn him into his spitting image. Jean-Jacques was not a real Simmental bull, he was a Pie Rouge, and thus belonged to a breed of red-and-white cattle that, while originating from the prosperous land, had changed somewhat for the better under the more liberal breeding conditions and improved climate abroad.

  For Pie Rouge not only dropped curly bull calves, they also produced heifers that were quite exceptional milkers, all with considerable udder measurements, and they also passed on to their heirs a very high fertility. So high, in fact, that Jean-Jacques, along with a few other model Pie Rouge bulls, were reintroduced to their native cowsheds to breed back into the domestic stock, and reinvigorate the blood. Of course, the foreign blood was straightaway diluted, but nevertheless Pestalozzi so exactly resembled his grandfather that even the odd farmer who knew his bulls was surprised at the resemblance. ‘A chip off the old block,’ several had said.

  Ambrosio was another one to be surprised. ‘Qué país,’ he muttered, as the mayor led Pestalozzi so effortlessly by the nose. It was alarming. In this country the dogs are as big as the calves in Coruña, the calves are as big as cows, and the cows are bigger than elephants. This mountain of
muscle! A back like a roof. A chopping block of a head. So much power, and so tame. Pestalozzi moved along in a leisurely way. Only his half-covered eyes were rolling, as flashes of white sometimes showed. His breath came in fits and starts.

  Blösch was nervous. She swung her rear this way and that on skipping feet, and she kept moving her tail. Pestalozzi gurgled faintly, lowered his head and sniffed at a blade of grass. ‘Now for Christ’s sake!’ said Knuchel, who had Blösch by the halter. As though his oaken legs had put down roots, Pestalozzi stood motionless behind the cow. ‘Now why do you think we paid a king’s ransom for you? Get on with it, you bugger! Or I’ll teach you! She is bulling, isn’t she?’ said the mayor, with a glance at the slime that hung down in great threads from Blösch’s cleft, and he tugged harder at the bull’s head with the iron rod. Forced up against her, Pestalozzi smelled at Blösch’s crupper. ‘You’re not there to stand and contemplate her arse, you’re to mount her!’ The mayor’s brow furrowed with worry. He beckoned to Ambrosio: ‘Here, give me your goad!’ he said.

  While Pestalozzi was getting a dozen blows on the ridge of his horns, Knuchel was inspecting his undercarriage: ‘Is he tired?’

  ‘Can’t be bloody tired! For that money, and the way he eats! Come on, take the cow, we’ll try them out in the box if the bugger can’t be bothered to jump her.’

  The box was a cage where the cow was enclosed on three sides, and the bull, approaching her from the open side behind her, had a couple of boards on either side of the cow’s belly where he could rest his feet for support during copulation.

  Blösch allowed herself to be put into the box willingly enough, it was Pestalozzi who jibbed. The mayor tugged at the bull’s nose-ring until, snuffling loudly with pain, he scaled the boards, and lay on Blösch’s back. When nothing further happened, Knuchel said: ‘Now, mayor, seeing as we’re here, why don’t we give Gotthelf a try? I’m sure she’s willing. What do you say? Here, Ambrosio, hold her while I go and get the right bull. Pestalozzi’s not up to it.’ He led Blösch out of the box and passed the halter to Ambrosio.

  ‘No te preocupes, ya viene el toro,’ said Ambrosio softly to Blösch. She was hard to hold, throwing her head to the side, plucking at the rope, taking Ambrosio with her, and mooing. The rope burned his hands. Blösch twisted and turned, kept trying to break loose, and whisked her tail as though she had to keep off a whole swarm of horseflies.

  Gotthelf was a few kilos lighter than Pestalozzi. Nor did he have the curls on his body, only on his forehead. His head was white, so were his back, his flanks and his feet. All the rest was red. Gotthelf was more muscular than his neighbour, and he was four years older. He too was well known in the area. He was of good parentage. You could read his pure-bred ancestry in his face. He had the head of his father, who had been hired out as a stud bull in foreign service, and had thus developed a particularly wide forehead. In size and bone structure, though, he was more like his uncle Ferdinand, who, as a draught ox, had also led a life of service.

  It was his maternal ancestors who had given Gotthelf the external marks of the breed. They came from the Oberland, and on that account not only had fine sets of horns, they were also good climbers, and had broad udders. Now and again one of the cows in the family would manage to attract attention at a fair or exhibition, whether as an honourable mention, or even as points victor at the herdbook prizegiving.

  When Knuchel led Gotthelf out of the shed, the two bulls met and stared at each other. Pestalozzi snorted loudly. Breath steamed out of his nostrils. But Gotthelf wasn’t interested in his rival, he wanted to go on, and trotted purposefully out to the paddock. Knuchel had to hold him back somewhat with the iron rod.

  As night was falling, Blösch was at first not visible at all, and then only as a dark shape between still darker trees. But Gotthelf’s nose twitched. His nostrils flared, he stopped and lifted his head, his throat rattled, and his pizzle shot out of the tuft under his belly. He pawed the earth with his forehooves, swung his scrotum about between his hindlegs, as though to say: ‘Right, where is she? Bring her to me! What are you waiting for?’

  Blösch too pushed nearer, sideways, with head bent away. Only by forcing her to circle round the trees in the paddock could Ambrosio keep control of her.

  Blösch mooed.

  Farmer Knuchel nudged Gotthelf’s neck with his elbow: ‘See, that’s her coming! She’s burning, it’s killing her, her udder’s hurting, she wants it so!’ And calling from the shed, the mayor asked how Gotthelf was doing, whether he wanted to, whether he could, whether the cow would let him.

  Gotthelf could, and Blösch let him.

  As soon as the cow’s hindquarters were in front of him, the bull reared up and his pawing forehooves found the branches of an apple tree. Everything happened very quickly. The muscles tensed and flexed, first on his hindlegs then all over his body, showing through the hide as though chiselled. Swaying to the side, he plunged his pizzle into Blösch’s vagina, gave another thrust, grunted, his great chest shook, he foamed and panted for breath, through the black flames at his nostrils, and Blösch trembled, she drove her forelegs into the ground, her hindlegs seemed about to give way under the colossal weight, her dugs were like thorns, she threw her head back, caught her horns in the apple twigs, the whole tree was swaying, and no sooner had Gotthelf slipped back into a fancy crouch, and then got his forehooves back on the ground, than Blösch turned her head towards the village street, mooed, and pulled so hard on the rope that once more Ambrosio had difficulty holding her.

  ‘So it seems you did want to. Come on, bull, you can put it away now,’ said Knuchel.

  Scratching the crown of his head, the mayor came up and said: ‘What a wretched creature that Pestalozzi is! What’s the matter with him? Say what you like, there’s a lot to be said for artificial insemination. There you know where you are. And so does the cow. What a time all this takes. I’ve had enough. You have to wait for the BOSS-BOYS to play a cow yodel on the radio before Mr Bull will condescend to mount a cow. It’s the truth. But now, Hans, I’ll show you the new shed, hah, seeing as you’re here.’

  Knuchel took Gotthelf back, and followed the mayor behind the tractor garage, to a farm building not properly finished.

  The mayor switched a light on, and said: ‘This is it.’

  In an area walled in by bare bricks, Knuchel saw a half-dozen fattening oxen. He got his pipe out and filled it. After the first puff, he asked: ‘And do they just shit where they feel like? Anywhere in the shed?’

  ‘Oh yes, but only until they’ve been trained. Then they’ll shit like pigs, all in one heap.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Sure. Then all you need to do is go in once a week with a big shovel and a hosepipe, and your livestock’s clean again.’

  ‘But what about the dung?’

  ‘Now Hans, where’s the sense in chasing after every pound of cowshit, and every squirt of piss? I’d rather pick up an extra sack of fertilizer at the co-op instead.’

  ‘You mean chemical fertilizer.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know, mayor, we’ve always done well enough our way, using our own dung. Our animals like eating, and they eat a lot. They’re healthy beasts too,’ Knuchel added, and turned away.

  ‘You and your dung,’ said the mayor, turned the light off, and followed Knuchel, who went on ahead in silence, cleared his throat, stopped and said in a worried voice:

  ‘You know, it’s a right bugger with the mice this year. They’re everywhere. There must be many more of them than in years past. But what I wanted to ask you was where the field-mouser’s got to? He’s only been down once. Any idea where I might catch up with him?’

  ‘Well, there’s voles up in the villages too, you know, awful. The field-mouser’s no need to go down as far as you, he can clean up right here. But if you want a word, he’ll be down in the Ox most of the night. He gets so many tails together as it is, he’s never short of money for a drink.’

  ‘Well, if that’
s the way it is. I’ve still got the postmaster to see, on account of my Spaniard. I’ll look in at the Ox later on,’ said Knuchel, and put out his hand, which wasn’t shaken.

  *

  The Innerwald post office had been closed for several hours.

  Farmer Knuchel took his pipe out of his mouth, pressed his nose against the glass door, while the newly coupled Blösch, on the end of the long halter, arched her back to urinate. ‘Now, by Christ!’ said Knuchel. The window was frosted glass with a steel lattice behind it. Without looking at the opening hours posted on it, Knuchel knocked on the doorpost. Nothing stirred. He knocked against the letter-box in the wall of the house. A dog barked on one of the farmyards that the night had turned into a single black shadow. Blösch tugged at her rope.

  Knuchel pointed at a garden fence next to the door, gave Ambrosio the cow, and saying, ‘Tie her up,’ trampled a whole row of flower seedlings and shouldered through a thorn hedge. He had spotted a light on in the window of the postmaster’s flat, behind the office rooms in the same building.

  Stretching to get past a window box of geraniums, he tapped on the pane.

  The postmaster opened up in his shirtsleeves, leaned on the sill, greeted him and said, ‘What’s wrong, Hans? What’s the trouble?’ Knuchel passed his hand over face and forehead, lifted the cap off his head with a couple of fingers, scratched his hair with the others, and said, trying to squint past the geraniums into the parlour, where the postmaster’s wife was just turning down the television: ‘We want to send some money down to Spain.’

  ‘The post office is closed, Hans,’ said the postmaster.

  ‘Well, and why’s that, if I might ask? Am I supposed to leave off milking, just so as to come here and bring you money? Go on, open up!’ said Knuchel, and was already shouldering back through the thorn hedge.

  The postmaster swallowed, sighed, shot a guilty glance at his wife, and shortly afterwards appeared behind the glass door, jangling his keys. ‘Well, so that’s him, your little Spaniard, I’ve already had one or two letters from him come through. Oh, and I see you brought a cow along too,’ he said as he unlocked. He had pulled on his grey office coat, and was doing up the buttons from top to bottom.