by Beat Sterchi
‘You’re not putting that on specially, are you?’ asked Farmer Knuchel.
‘You wouldn’t go into your cowshed without your overall trousers either, would you?’
‘Yes, but I work with dung,’ said Knuchel, whereupon the postmaster observed that what mattered wasn’t so much whether it was money or mail or dung you worked with, but that you had the right attitude. ‘Yes, that’s the main thing,’ he added, and, doing up the last button on his coat, disappeared behind the counter.
Ambrosio hesitated by the door. This house was only made up of rooms, each with four walls and a floor and ceiling, the most unexceptional thing in the world, and yet he continued to feel oppressed by these Innerwald interiors. This post office gave him a sense of danger. Was it the dimensions? The building materials? The cleanliness? The cow waiting outside? Was it the two men, who needed so much space for their sweeping gestures, and so much air for their sluggish speech? And the things on the walls! Enlargements of postage stamps gleamed behind glass. One series of flowers, another of rocks, a third of various cattle breeds. The depicted animals were red-and-white, brown, black-and-white, and brownish-black. Not a bull among them. On the promotional posters there were yellow post office vans on steep mountain roads, swerving round grazing livestock. All cows. And ALWAYS USE THE POSTCODE over the letter-box.
‘How do you want to send this money, then? Cash on delivery?’ asked the postmaster, who was laying out cheque book, forms, stamp, ink pad and sponge on the counter in front of him.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Knuchel.
‘And how much?’ The postmaster’s hand hovered over a form.
‘One thousand,’ said Knuchel.
‘One thousand?’ The postmaster’s raised eyebrows appeared over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses. ‘He’s doing well out of you, your Spaniard.’
‘We’re not doing badly by him either,’ replied Knuchel.
‘And what about the spicka da language, how’s he doing there?’
‘The language? Not much there. But he usually understands what you tell him to do. No more than that.’
‘Well, let’s try him out, shall we? Can you spell me the address?’ said the postmaster turning to Ambrosio, who vainly did as asked. After he’d been forced to tear up three forms on account of various misunderstandings, the postmaster gave up his pretence of understanding Spanish. He held out the biro to Ambrosio, and said: ‘Here, write it yourself, don’t know who taught you your spelling.’
Then Ambrosio put down ten one-hundred notes. Slowly, one on top of the other, he laid them on the marble counter. Knuchel’s lips moved as he kept count, and as soon as the last note had been paid, he said: ‘He has been saving, our Spaniard. He’s sending almost his entire wages off to Spain.’ And for his part, Ambrosio reflected that in three months he’d had barely half a dozen opportunities to spend any of it, but soon he would treat himself to something, first, he would go to the village shop, where he bought cigarettes, and choose one of those sports bags that you could tie at the top, and then he would ride into town, to the station where he had first arrived in the prosperous land and from where he had caught the yellow bus to Innerwald, and at this station he would buy himself a newspaper with the Spanish football results in it, and he would buy some wine, proper wine, and then he would look for a watch, a handsome wristwatch, and he would have them take it out of the shop window and tell him about it, and then he would wear it on Sundays, and maybe in the evenings as well, wear it far down on his wrist, outside the cuff, the way Luigi did. When Ambrosio signed the receipt at the place indicated for him, his signature seemed to flow more smoothly than it had ever done before.
‘Ho, yes, your wife will be pleased down in Spain, when she gets this! And the children! If you want, you can tell them there’s more to be earned where that came from,’ said Knuchel. ‘Our cattle have a good appetite, here in the highlands, they give streams of milk, and the weather’s promising for later this year too, only the new bull’s a bit of a disaster and there’s a terrible plague of voles in the soil, but apart from that there’s not much we can complain about, what do you say, postmaster?’
‘I think you’re right there, Hans,’ replied the postmaster, separating the stamped receipt carefully from the form in order not to damage either of them, and keeping three fingers crooked in the air. ‘They say the mice are awful, so I’ve heard,’ he continued, without looking up, ‘but that apart, everyone’s got a couple of flitches of bacon hanging by the fireside at home, and I don’t know what’s supposed to be wrong with the new bull.’
‘The new bull’s lame, that’s what’s wrong! Can’t get it up!’ said Knuchel laughing, thinking the while that a man like the postmaster who only worked with two fingers at a time would hardly have much idea about livestock breeding. And he got ready to go.
The postmaster put forms, stamp, sponge and cheque book back in a drawer, turned the key, and emerged from behind the counter to show Knuchel and Ambrosio out. With his hands buried in his trouser pockets, he stood in front of the door and looked at the restless Blösch, who appeared incredibly big to him in the dim light of the street lamp and dangerously horned. Then he looked at the area she had defiled in front of his house, at the broken hedge and the trampled flowers, and said: ‘I suppose you’ve got to go now. She seems in a hurry to get back!’ But while he shook Knuchel’s hand, wished him a good night several times, said three ‘Adieu’s’, and for some reason, or maybe merely out of habit, thanked him for something unspecified, the postmaster thought to himself: Yes, go before your damned cow starts shitting or uproots my fence, get out of here, go! And when he locked the door again, and heard only the sound of hooves clopping into the distance, he growled to himself: ‘That cow wouldn’t lick another cow’s calf. Someone from here could have used that money. What are we playing at, sending it down to Spain?’
And before the postmaster unbuttoned his grey work tunic, he fetched a damp cloth out of the broom cupboard, got down on his knees on the flagstones of the post office, and removed the marks left there by the boots of Knuchel and Ambrosio. He swore as his arm moved rhythmically to and fro.
*
Having reached the village square, Knuchel set his left foot on the staircase up to the Ox, brushed the dust from his overtrousers, and said: ‘Well, let’s see if we can still catch the field-mouser, Fritz.’
Ambrosio, who was leading Blösch to the well, shook his head. ‘Yo no,’ he said.
‘What? Aren’t you thirsty?’ Knuchel straightened up, and when he saw Ambrosio’s index finger waving to and fro like a windscreen wiper, he rested both hands on his knee and pushed himself up. ‘Well then, leave it.’
On the threshold to the bar, Knuchel wiped the dirt off his soles, took off his cap, and the pipe out of his mouth. ‘Good evening, one and all,’ he said in greeting. The customers in the Ox fell silent, turned their heads and two dozen hands stopped raising beer glasses, playing cards, smoking, and worrying and scratching through shirts and trousers. As though they had ears, the hands lay beside glasses and cards, for a few seconds nothing stirred, then work boots and shoes slid over the floor, swollen veins rubbed against chair legs round which footwear had entwined itself.
Well, by God, it’s another full house, but I don’t feel like playing cards, and my time’s too precious for nattering with the cheeser. Knuchel rubbed his neck. Where would he sit? He pointed at the field-mouser, who was sitting at a table by himself at the very back of the room, with his head on his folded arms, and appeared to be asleep. ‘What’s the matter with Fritz?’ he asked as he took a place on the bench that ran along the wall.
‘Ah, Field-mouser Fritz is sleeping it off,’ said Stucki, an old farmer from the village, and another Innerwalder, Eggimann, shouted across three tables, ‘Why, look, it’s Hans Knuchel!’
‘I just happened to be up in the village at the end of a day’s work.’ Knuchel asked for a beer, puffed at his pipe, and before he’d realized it, the net of conversation
at the Ox, a loose weave that extended through the whole room, had settled over him as well.
The talk was of the Obermoos farmer who was about to sell his small, but heavily indebted property and move with his family to the city, where he had found a job in a factory as a porter or a forecourt gardener it was thought. It was Stucki who saw the story as another tragic example of flight from the land. Knuchel disagreed. That was Farmers’ Weekly talk. If someone was really going to flee the land, he’d have to go a lot further than just some factory in the city. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Farmer Eggimann backed him up. ‘Some have come back with their arses in far finer trousers than Overmossy’s got on, you can be sure of that.’
What Knuchel then had to report about his visit to the village bulls was not only listened to with keen interest, it also had the effect of splitting the customers of the Ox into two rival camps, each accusing the other of exaggerating and of complete inability to face facts.
Knuchel praised Gotthelf, made mention of his own Blösch, whose fame had spread way beyond the highlands, and reckoned he’d never quite trusted Pestalozzi, how could you trust a bull with ringlets, and, scratching his throat, he added that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Bull Committee of the Breeders’ Syndicate should feel compelled to sell their expensive bull this selfsame year, and at a loss.
But that would be slaughtering the goose that laid the golden eggs, that was irresponsible talk, and Knuchel must be blind in one eye, came the reply from the supporters of Pestalozzi. What about the tests on Gotthelf’s latest offspring? Wasn’t it time the gentlemen learned how to read a statistic! Just touching and looking closely at horns and scrotum wasn’t enough for the modern-day assessment of a bull! The AAI had shown that often enough!
Knuchel merely laughed, looked round in amusement, and asked: ‘What about pedigree breeding? Eh? And leave your Association for Artificial Insemination out of it! Are they the reason we’ve got healthy cows? Yes, by Christ, are we farmers still or are we gold-digging cross-breeders?’
A murmur arose at this, and the customers at the Ox reached for their glasses, and while they drank looked to see what reactions were being registered, however cautiously, on faces to their left and right. All wrinkled their brows – but only as much as their neighbour did. All raised their eyebrows – but not too high.
Farmer Blum, with his diploma, was the first to speak clearly amid the murmuring: ‘But it’s mad, experts everywhere are researching and finding new methods and procedures, only we here in Innerwald, we act as though we knew it all ourselves, and were incapable of taking on board one or two improvements. It’s true!’ And he blushed and fell silent. ‘That’s right,’ large-scale Farmer Strahm took up the theme. He had recently been in the veterinary hospital and one of the doctors there had wanted to show him something, for which he had had to put on a rubber apron and other boots, Strahm said. The vet had led him to an experimental cowshed. There he had seen a young cow with a regular window fitted into the side of her belly, so you could look through it and see the ruminant’s stomachs, and even the grass, ever so clearly.
‘For Christ’s sake now,’ laughed Knuchel, ‘were our learned professors unaware that what a cow eats goes into her belly?’
There were various responses to this remark – some giggled, others shook their heads and tut-tutted at Knuchel’s narrowmindedness, and spoke of great beams of fir trees suddenly having disappeared from the sawmill and turning up in the eyes of some people they could mention – then the village farmers on Knuchel’s left began to speak of the latest state-of-the-art milking technology. Knuchel listened for a while, and then said: ‘Look. I’m glad you’ve got your clickety-click gear if you’re happy with it, but please leave me out. What do you have to keep on praising your milk suckers for?’
That made the cheeser take the cigar out of his mouth, swing his card hand behind the back of his chair, turn to Knuchel and say: ‘There are some that have milking machines, and some that have foreigners in their cowsheds!’ The co-op manager added in the same tone that, as far as noise went, one of those foreigners made quite as much noise as a milking machine, particularly on a Sunday.
And when large-scale Farmer Strahm also started in on him, then, for the first time in weeks, Knuchel felt the choking in his throat again.
Strahm had just been praising his own milking system with especial fervour, and had even volunteered the opinion that these milking machines were God’s gift to the milk producer, and that he was proud to be involved in the industry now, in the age of the milking machine. Strahm asked Knuchel how many large cattle units he actually had in production, because these latest technologies weren’t beyond the means of the small or medium concern, on the contrary, this machinery should interest even the very smallest farmer.
Knuchel banged his beer glass down on the table, put his pipe in the ashtray, and, as though to prove that he wasn’t a small farmer, he stood up, cleared his throat and spoke: ‘I have no large cattle units in my shed! I have cows, and all of them are prize-winning Simmental cows! Blösch, outside by the well, is the best of them. Baby’s the stupidest. Spot is the youngest, and they are all more than good enough for me. As long as I have hands to milk with, I won’t have any milk sucker on my farm!’
He had spoken loudly, loudly enough for some of the Innerwalders to exchange glances, as though to say: Who’s that bellowing in our Ox? Not content to stay at home and work or clean or play the wild man there? But when Knuchel sat back down on his bench, at the very back of the room, the field-mouser raised his head, his rutted features stared off into space, and he croaked: ‘Dust art thou, and to dust thou shalt return! For thou art as the dirt under thine own nails!’
Here, too, there were murmurs round the tables, jaws were scratched, eyes squinted left and right, anything rather than take up a position too speedily and be exposed, but one head after another turned back, heavy Innerwald bodies shifted their low centres of gravity on chairs and benches. It was apparent that to a man the customers of the Ox were turning away from Knuchel to level their full contempt on the field-mouser at the back of the room.
The old man rubbed his eyes with his earthy hands, crushed his hat firmly onto his head, and complained to himself, half aloud, that night had fallen, and he should be gone, but once again no one had woken him, he wasn’t even able to trust the waitress. Slowly he stood up, and emerged from behind the table. In his grey-black outer garment, he looked like a gigantic bird of prey, testing his wings.
‘Yeah, you!’ jeered old Stucki. ‘It’s long dark. You and your devotions!’
‘Why don’t you go to church instead for a change?’ said the cheeser, and talking all at once, the other customers at the Ox opined that no one should be surprised that the damned rootgnawing of the moles had got to be so bad when the village’s own field-mouser drank every sundown, or at any rate slept through it, and still speechified afterwards, and they nodded up at the old man as though aiming to butt him with their thrust-out chins. Soon one wouldn’t be able to go for a walk in the churchyard without continually tripping over some cursed molehill, said the cheeser, and old Stucki shouted that they had counted more moles this year than in any year since 1933, and he went on to say that his boy Samuel already had three of the cows in his byre suffering from leg strains, on account of missing their footing on molehills while out grazing! Even Blum, the agriculture graduate, threw angry looks at the field-mouser, and said that the community couldn’t go on entrusting its pest-control policy to that knife-grinder, and it was high time to take the bull by the horns, because only yesterday his wife had discovered another damned tunnel right under her rhubarb bed, the whole thing was undermined, it was so bad it gave you sleepless nights. True, true, the Ox customers chorused, if someone just drank and slept and acted pious, what did that add up to, of course given such conditions the voles would multiply undisturbed, and that as quickly as a northwesterly gale, and who could be sure what this homeopath of a strolling tramp was doing with th
e 50-kilo sack of poison that the community had so blithely handed over to him.
But the field-mouser straightened his wrap, stooped to pick up his box of tools, got his lantern out from under the table, took up his staff, and confidently crossed the room. The steel caps on his earth-encrusted boots were clearly audible. His eye hastened ahead of him, clear and unclouded, as if it were gliding over a field in the moonlight. From the beginning, his staff pounded rhythmically on the floorboards; it was the slow, economical rhythm of a man used to covering long distances. The coat, draped round him like a cloak, his hand on his staff, all gave him a look of great inner peace. The field-mouser offered no insult, no hint, however tiny, of self-defence, he simply left, with such intangible sublimity that the customers at the Ox were left staring in perplexity at the door after it had closed behind him, before realizing that they had wasted their words.
When bodies and limbs once again shuffled into more comfortable positions on benches and chairs, when Innerwalder hands again picked up glasses and cigars and playing cards, then Knuchel remembered he had wanted a word with the field-mouser.
‘Damn it! You shut the byre door, but the cow’s bolted. I’ve missed him. That’s how it is with talking.’ Then he called the waitress to pay for his beer.
But even before Knuchel could get to his purse in the trousers he had on under his overclothes, Armin Gfeller, a farmer with a smallholding behind the Galgenhubel hill, came over to him and sat down. Gfeller had a beer bottle under his arm and a glass in his hand. ‘Not off already are you, Hans?’ he asked.
Knuchel went on rummaging in his back pocket, halfway between bench and table. When he had at last extricated his purse, he replied that his cow was still outside, and the Spaniard, Ambrosio, was waiting for him as well.