Cow

by Beat Sterchi

  Then I... I determine the condition of the meat.

  Touch all over, finger, feel, palp, grope, pinch, squeeze. With my fingers I am supposed to feel through her dusty hide for deposits of fat between her muscles. My fingers are to tell me whether her flesh will be marbled or not, my fingers are to knead various parts of her body, and tell me what they are like inside.

  Dig in, then.

  And now she’s even licking me.

  This cow isn’t ready to be slaughtered: her flesh is still overheated from her journey here, and her muscle tissue is full of unwanted hormones.

  Quiet! Keep still!

  Instead of quietening down, she’s rubbed her neck raw.

  She scrapes and moos.

  The shoulder hold is well developed, with a good layer of fat.

  She’s fat here too.

  Here, you’ve got to go about this differently! Überländer brushes me aside. You’ve got to grab her properly, like this! There! If you can’t even get a good fistful, God knows you won’t get far in life. Look at this breast grip, there, get the whole dewlap in your grip. Not half-hearted like a schoolgirl.

  Überländer bends down underneath the cow. Without being bothered by her fretting, he puts his arm round her neck. His hands grip the holds on her hide.

  You won’t feel anything otherwise.

  My throat tightens.

  And the whole thing rolls forward irresistibly.

  Over my voice, over my own lack of will, crushes everything, and still I go on turning with it.

  I cling to the cow, trying at the same time to keep my chin off her back. I grab, I grab her flesh.

  That’s right, says Überländer.

  The udder hold shows whether the intestines will be well coated with fat.

  The skin on the udders is soft, warm and greasy. The hair almost downy.

  Jesus Christ allfuckingmighty!

  Did I tell you to come in here and grope her for half an hour? That’s it. A cripple cow like that is easily sized up.

  Krummen!

  He taps his goad against his apron.

  Überländer scratches his neck again.

  Right now, bring the goods into the hall. We’re almost finished in there, and you’re fast asleep.

  No, leave it! The apprentice is taking the cow in.

  Überländer lets the chain drop.

  Krummen goes on tapping his stick against his apron.

  And forever talking to the animals, he says.

  You master-wrestler, you. I touch the cow’s back, neck and head.

  It’s all right. No noise.

  Avoiding the tongue, I first untie the rope from the ring under the feed crib.

  At least she’s got no horns.

  She follows my movements with curious eyes.

  Right now! If you go in front of an animal, it will take you for the lead cow and follow you.

  I don’t feel like a tussle. Please let there be no test of strength this first time.

  Head down! Keep still!

  I’d rather a slow and reluctant cow than this one.

  Preferably one of the clumsy sort that has to be pushed under the axe like a block of wood, or even carried there.

  No joyous skipping about, please.

  I don’t want to wind up under your four-footed trampling body.

  Right! Get her in the correct grip from the outset.

  Überländer’s vanished.

  As soon as she’s untethered and unchained, the cow shoots her head up, barges me aside, and aims for the light at the opening of the pen.

  Once in the stallway, she flares up, jumps forward and back, moos, and swings her tail around.

  Krummen has to take evasive action.

  Hey, whoah there! he shouts.

  I shorten the rope, and hold on to the halter. So close to her neck, I start to get an idea of the power in that body. I lean against her front flank, without the slightest effect.

  The cow pushes out of the stall sideways. I am simply dragged along. A loud jangle, pressure against my stomach. My sheath clatters against the doorpost.

  Hell’s teeth! Watch out for your knives! Krummen flings his arms up.

  I have disregarded the one and only commandment of the last walk.

  He didn’t notice.

  For thou shalt not go unto the waiting beast without divesting thyself of the sharpness of the knives at thy side.

  Outside, among the poles and rails of the barriers and driving passages, between stock pens and slaughterhall, I pull the cow’s head towards me.

  Quiet! Be quiet! Calm down, will you! You’ll trample me, knock my knives out of the sheath into the air, crush me against a barrier.

  By jerking at her mouth, I manage to break her forward momentum.

  Don’t let go.

  I push against her belly, jerk at her head.

  You damned...

  She turns, she turns a whole circle. She’s trying to brush me off. Tied together, we can’t get off the merry-go-round. We turn, once, twice, three times. A staged first walk for me, a staged last for her.

  I’m stuck to her again.

  Helpless.

  Everywhere on my skin I can feel the dust from her red-and-white hide. It bites into my face, my chin, my throat. I curse the pain in my hands, and the spittle running down from her muzzle.

  The hemp rope softens and starts to get slippery.

  I begin to sweat.

  And my knives!

  We go on turning.

  Don’t let go!

  Krummenroaring.

  Don’t let go! Get a hold of her! I told you to take a stick. Krummen gives the cow a whack on the base of the tail.

  She leaps up, rips rope and halter from my grasp. I lose my balance. A kick on the upper arm sends me onto the floor. Another kick. I am hurled against the slaughterhall wall. My knives fly jingling from their sheath.

  I feel warm wetness in my left boot.

  Fucking hell, you bitch!

  Krummen hits her. He will catch her. The gun in Kilchenmann’s hand will click. Then the shot, the impact, the thud on the abattoir floor.

  I will collect my knives, go and whet the damaged blades again. I will lie down on the bench in the locker room. Today I will go and lie down in the locker room in my lunch break. I will go to Krummen and say: I want my toilet tokens.

  A knife has pierced my boot. In order to take it off I lean against the wall of the slaughterhall. It says NO BICYCLES in red letters on the crumbly plaster.

  The wetness in my sock.

  Sweat.

  A little red stain.

  A little pain in the ball of my foot.

  *

  The butcher’s little dispensary should contain 1 pr. scissors, 1 pr. tweezers, 1 small bottle of iodine or styptic powder, cotton wool, gauze and bandages, and it should be within easy reach of potential danger sites, preferably clearly marked with a red cross; and it is further recommended not to gesticulate while holding a knife, nor to walk about knife in hand. It should be put away in the knife-holder (sheath). Protection against highly dangerous knife wounds in the stomach and groin areas is afforded by a protective apron of light metal mesh. Knives should have shaped handles to make them comfortable to hold. They should not be left lying around on tables, still less at the bottom of containers; and since, generally speaking, a butcher works on his feet, he should have solid footwear, which will help prevent flatfootedness, varicose veins and tendinitis. Be on guard against erysipelas, psoriasis, Bang’s disease, swine fever, tetanus, and all occupational illnesses. First aid prevents a condition from deteriorating: with heavy bleeding, press the wound together firmly with sterile gauze, and bring the injured man to a doctor. In cases of bruising from falls on slippery ground (wet, greasy), on hides or waste matter, or in incidents involving animals (kicks, horn wounds), injuries on meat-hooks and the like, give the accident victim neither food nor drink! Internal injuries! Take him on a stretcher to a doctor.

  *

  The sk
in of a fetus has its value too. Tanners are eager for the soft hides, and delicate calfskins are dyed naturally in standard or fashionable colours, shorn and printed, worked into summer or winter furs, but they must be intact, and Krummen lashed out with his boot at Blösch’s uterus. He pushed the kidney-shaped sack ahead of him on the floor. Scraps of fat and bits of sinew everywhere. Yah, fuck it! I always have to do everything by myself.

  The arched windows of the cattle slaughter room were clearing. Condensation poured down the panes. Kilchenmann put the last of the cows, which had had to be slaughtered separately onto the scales. Two hundred and thirty-seven kilos slaughter weight. Überländer collected the ropes. They had to be taken away and washed. Here, give me one of those halters, said Krummen. Piccolo took the gall bladder off the rack, and slit it open over a basin, and gall stimulates bowel movements. It digests fats. In industry it is used in the production of cleansing materials (soaps), and in the printing trade, and the gall of cattle is viscid and glistening like gloss paint.

  Krummen opened up Blösch’s uterus. Amniotic fluid splashed back over the blade and his hands. The fetus was light brown, with a white mark on its forehead. It was lean, with a back like a greyhound’s, and its damp hair gleamed cleanly. Krummen detached the skin at the head, and pulled it back a couple of hand-breadths. He slung the halter round the exposed neck and attached the end of it to the nearest ring in the floor. He attached the loosened flap of hide with a meat-hook to a lift pulley. He pushed a button. The motor hummed, and Piccolo raised his head. His face was covered with spots of gall. Gall dribbled down his arms and apron. Between floor-ring and lift, halter, fetus and skin tautened. The lean, blue body slipped soundlessly from its sheath: first the front half of it, then the loins, the back legs flipped up, the hips clicking as they were dislocated. Last of all the tail slipped out of the inverted hide.

  Krummen bent down and untied the rope. The fetus would have become a female calf, and at nine months, the length of the fetus is 90 centimetres. Well haired. Testicles in scrotum. Milk teeth present, incisors and molars, and the halter, removed from the neck, dropped at Piccolo’s feet. Get rid of it! Krummen left the skinned body lying beside the bin for waste material.

  —When you’re finito, subito lavare gall, e poi hang up calves! Got it? Piccolo nodded his green head. Always the same orders, and always the same emphasis.

  There was more shouting at the entrance to the slaughterhall. Bössiger had come upon the split carcass of Blösch in the long corridor.

  —Get Krummen here! Fast! Did you hear me? Bössiger had thrust his arms out, he circled round the disfigured cloven carcass that was suspended from the overhead rail. For the moment Blösch was only conditionally edible, and edible meat (defined in article 52 ¶ 1 of the Meat Inspection Regulations), is stamped with an oval stamp, conditionally edible meat with a triangular stamp according to the design shown (Fig. 1). Meat from animals of the type: horse is further to be stamped with the word ‘Horse’, and all Blösch’s lymph nodes were swollen; the flesh was dark, almost black, and heated. It felt dry and sticky. It drooped from the protruding bones. ‘Gelatinous and feverish!’ had been the verdict in the meat-inspection report. And Dr Wyss had ordered a laboratory inspection.

  But Bössiger was remonstrating.

  —What kind of massacre is this? Fine butchers you are! He pointed to the hacked sirloin. Krummen drew his head in and clutched his trousers. As he’d done a moment ago with the carcass of the cow, Slaughterhouse-Marshal Bössiger now circled Foreman Krummen. The dogs got that one, I suppose?

  —If we’re short-handed... If you have to do everything yourself! If you...

  —Then you just hack through the sirloin! At 30 francs the kilo! That’s the limit!

  —But it’s headed for the cheap-meat stall anyway, Krummen defended himself, and all customers are urgently advised to boil meat purchased from the cheap-meat stall until it is quite grey in the middle, and Krummen was in despair. That cow destroyed my tools. I blunted two cleavers on that great bitch.

  —Now listen to me, Krummen! Bössiger said roughly. The purchasing department want to see a higher throughput of meat. If this carcass was in slightly better shape, it wouldn’t have got a triangular stamp on it. We need sausage-meat. A cow is no good to us as cheap meat. We want to produce frankfurters, cervelats, and bologna.

  —Well, what am I supposed to do? Gilgen’s gone, Ambrosio took off like a crazy chicken with his head in the air, the apprentice gets himself knocked over by a little slip of a cow, and the stooges bungle more than you’d think was possible. Whenever they happen not to be on the crapper!

  —Now don’t give me that. You’ve got better people here than at the main plant. Have you got any idea how hard it is to find trained butchers? They don’t snow down from the sky, you know! Give your people a good grounding! We just have to make proper use of them. Show them how! What you teach them today, they’ll be able to do by themselves tomorrow.

  —Yes, but a stooge is a stooge. I’ve said I need six butchers in order to manage the extra workload, and what do I get? An apprentice, a Spaniard, and half an Italian who doesn’t know one end of a knife from the other!

  —Do you think we’re keeping good butchers in the deep-freeze?

  —Well, if Gilgen didn’t keep inciting them the whole time! And Rötlisberger puts in his tuppenceworth too.

  —But Krummen, they’re cutting their noses off to spite their faces. Don’t you worry about them. Bössiger hurried off, stopped again. And I don’t want any more blood lost! We need every drop we can get, he said, and disappeared into the office.

  Krummen went back to burrowing in his trousers. His jaw was working. Train the stooges! First the wops have to learn to cut the feet off a cow! Then wash, stir blood and scrub guts. We’ll manage the difficult things. As if anyone could do our work for half the wages, just because he’s got a big mouth on him! What do these white-collar types think goes on here? Let them come out in their white coats. They can push pencils around all day, a cow’s still got four legs on her, and before you can make her into sausages, she still wants sticking and skinning.

  *

  Nine forty-five.

  Air!

  Light!

  A few breaths of fresh air. I have to fetch the calves in. Willingly. Anything to get out of the steam and the stink.

  Beyond the abattoir walls, other brick walls and chimneys. Factories, warehouses, plumes of smoke over the foundry stacks. A passenger train. The main line is very near. It thunders past the ramp. So close to the station, many of the passengers are still standing up in their compartments, taking coats off, stowing luggage away.

  The one bit of green anywhere is around the administration building behind me, which is where the meat inspectors come and go.

  There’s a smell of singed bristles.

  I cut myself in the heel.

  It doesn’t hurt, but...

  The way Huber and Hofer stared at me! As though I had horns. They were cleaning their skinning gear with water and compressed air, and looking at me.

  In the pen next to the main driving passage lies a solitary pig. It’s gurgling and there’s froth coming out of its snout.

  I should care what Huber and Hofer think of me!

  I’m not a coward. Am I a coward? A foreign worker in my own country is what I am. But I did ask for toilet tokens.

  I surprised myself. Krummen plonked himself in front of me, grabbed at his arse, but before he could get a word out, I told him I needed some tokens. He didn’t hear. Go to the calf ramp! See if the goods have arrived!

  I don’t feel very well. I have to go...

  God Almighty! They all want their tokens. Do you have to shit five times a day? Or have you all got the runs?

  Then I went and almost apologized for it.

  I’m so conciliatory.

  Never push for anything – always yes, sir, amen, sir, three bags full, sir.

  As if I had a voice built into my chest like a car radi
o, forever promoting peace.

  Be crushed in peace.

  We’re under pressure, he said, I couldn’t go now. But he gave me a token, one with another number on it.

  My number is 272. It says it on my tokens, and my card, my locker, my clothes and my envelope on payday.

  If I make a mess in the toilet, they can check up in the lock of the WC, and find out it was No. 272 that did it.

  Watch it! Or you’ll have another accident. You look pale. Don’t come back without the calves, mind.

  There was a worried tone in Krummen’s voice. Was it me or the calves he was worried about?

  I walk upright and breathe deeply. My rubber boots scrape against my rubber apron.

  How frail I am. How thin my skin is.

  What is a human body, here on this asphalt, surrounded by steel and concrete?

  I feel the hardness of the ground under my boots.

  In the cage, half a dozen calves gawp at me. Five straightaway push through the wire gate into the driving corridor.

  The more mobile, the better.

  Hup, hup, hup.

  The sixth calf stiffens, digs in. It stretches its neck and shrills its head off.

  I push it, tug at it, shout at it, punch it.

  Hup, hup, hup.

  You bastard.

  That wasn’t even half a step.

  You blockhead!

  He keeps up the horrible squealing. A continuous monotone, like a car alarm.

  I can’t carry you into the calf hall.

  The tail is sticking out. There’s a yellow discharge all over its behind.

  Now it starts to show: my fall did take something out of me. I only make about an inch at a time with the calf.

  I stick a finger in its mouth for it to suck.

  It bites. It won’t let go. It follows my hand.

  Bad accidents happen during calf slaughtering. Since beer doesn’t exactly improve accuracy, one man hanging up a calf got hit by the knocking hammer. The blow, just enough to stun a calf, shattered his skull like a china vase.

  In front of the sliding door to the calf slaughterhall, I lock the six calves in a pen again. They stand huddled together in a corner.

  My own mishaps at work are never spectacular: a graze, a fall.

  Six calves ready to be hung up.