by Beat Sterchi
I’ll tell Krummen.
Clunk. Shut the gate. I’m just another one of those door-bolters.
The calves start to shrill again. The slaughter alarm continues.
Slime-shitters!
What can they do about it?
They’ve got swollen knees and crippled feet.
Because, for reasons of hygiene, they’re kept on latticed floors, where they can’t put their feet down properly.
Stop standing around!
You’re not at the zoo.
I grind my teeth together till it hurts.
Always howling, the God damned...
I kick out at the sliding door.
I run off.
The calves go on shrilling.
Out of the hall, out into the passage.
I look neither left nor right.
The toilet door crashes shut.
Token in, shake, it falls: VACANT.
I tear the cabin door open and crash it shut.
ENGAGED.
I breathe.
My skull hasn’t grown any harder, but I’ve got fists hard as hooves.
The better to bang on the wall with.
Insensitive to pain, hard as rock.
But what am I taking it out on?
A shithouse wall!
And only because I’m positive that no one can hear me.
I sit here in the draught, with a cold bum, drumming on the shithouse wall, there isn’t even any graffiti, no cunts, no cocks, no scribbles. Nothing, nothing whatsoever on these surfaces: no phone numbers, no cry for help, no horror, no dribbles of sperm, no snot.
Not here!
All piccobello.
No drop of blood.
Only me.
Small and helpless, untrousered, banging and knocking and yelling in bewilderment.
You can lick my arse the lot of you!
I’m alone.
A lonely drummer in the night, alone in 2 cubic metres of lockable shitting freedom.
*
And don’t be afraid of the foreign workers, Bössiger had said to her right on the first day. Just don’t be provocative. Be decent and friendly. Apart from the canteen lady, you’re the only woman on the premises.
Frau Spreussiger was walking down the main connecting corridor towards the weighing office. There was a weight on Bössiger’s overall checklist that didn’t accord with the official weight. That would mean a meat yield of less than 35 per cent. Frau Spreussiger, would you go and see Kilchenmann right away, I want to know what the story is behind this dead weight, he had said.
Frau Spreussiger stepped around a stain on the floor. The corridor between the cattle slaughterhall and the chilling-room was full of cow carcasses sawn in half and hanging on the rails. On the frayed necks, the muscles were blue, and the sparse fat yellow. Don’t step in anything wet! And the way it all hangs down up there, and drips and steams and smells. The bodies dangled slackly 4 or 3 metres above her head, it was as though the sky was full of meat, but nowadays it took more than a cow carcass to bother her.
—Grüß Gott, Herr Sperandio. Luigi was navigating the blood-tank round some trolleys filled with innards, and past the wooden chest that waited outside the door of the cattle halls. The cows were finished and had all been stuck. Right! Bang the stuff in the centrifuge, Krummen had hissed. There’s only a little tank full because of your cock-up earlier, so let’s not sit and stare till it evaporates. Get it out of here, Subito!
—Whoops! Frau Spreussiger got out of Luigi’s way. Some blood slopped over the rim of the tank. Don’t step in anything wet. Luigi’s hands were as knotty as roots on the trolley with the blood-tank. She liked that, and the dark skin under the crusts of blood.
—Attenzione! Mamma mia! Luigi was too late. Frau Spreussiger tripped on the pallet with the wooden chest on it, which had been getting in everyone’s way for days now. She stumbled. There was another pool on the floor. Frau Spreussiger brushed against a carcass. Ee, that sticky, bloody substance! She shrank back. She put out her arms for balance, and as she did so, her skirt slipped another hand’s breadth over her knee. There was a snigger from the door of the chilling-room, where Hugentobler had posted himself as look-out. Thin knees she had, and bluish veins under her nylon stockings. In the cattle slaughterhall, Piccolo craned his neck to see. Porco Dio. To get the benefit of her for a moment longer, he took a couple of steps to the side, knife and gall-bladder in his hands. Pretty Boy Hügli appeared in the doorway of the toilet. He saw Frau Spreussiger and stopped. Huber and Hofer were approaching. They carried their compressed-air knives. They were walking so slowly, they were hardly moving at all.
—Look at those thighs, said Hofer.
—And calves, said Huber.
—Bit on the skinny side, mind.
—Yes.
—She’d never make a farmer’s wife, that one, said Hofer.
—But that’s some udder! said Huber admiringly.
—Yes, she’s like a Holsteiner. They’re all skin and bones and udder. No meat on them anywhere.
—Now don’t tell me you wouldn’t...
—Oh, it’s all claptrap anyway. Hofer turned into the calf hall. There’s only one of us who’s screwing her, and we know who that is.
—The bastard. Huber stopped. That rump is a bit of all right. A straight back like a young cow, and she must be all of forty.
Huber himself was fat. It spilled in folds round his vest into his shirt and trousers. He had a beer gut as well. He laughed at Pretty Boy Hügli, the charmer, who had slid out into Frau Spreussiger’s path, as smooth as vaseline. He’ll have to do a lot more combing before he ever gets in there. Huber finally took his eyes off the red skirt, and followed Hofer into the calf slaughterhall.
Frau Spreussiger had previously worked as a typist in the main plant, and it had been quite a shock to find herself suddenly as Bössiger’s secretary at the abattoir. No one had asked her what she thought of it. She’d been the oldest person on the factory admin staff. According to the head of personnel, it seemed she was also the most self-reliant. She was the only one for the job, he had said when she’d been transferred.
At the beginning, she had been disgusted by the smell that crept out of the slaughterhalls, and squatted, fresh and damp, in every corner. She had sought to wrap herself in protective shrouds to abolish the contact between her skin and the blood-soaked air. Within a week, she had doubled her consumption of cigarettes. She was now getting through three packets of MURATTI a day. She smoked and smoked, wore only polo necks, or high necked-dressos, and dug out some old headscarves she had from the back of a drawer. She had gone into several department stores in order to get hold of large quantities of cheap cologne without attracting too much attention. Now twice a day during office hours, morning and afternoon, she rubbed herself with it from head to toe, and she carried perfume around with her everywhere, and there were sticks of deodorant in her handbag.
No sooner would she get home in the evening than she would scrub herself raw with hard soap and pumice stone in a hot bath. As though she’d actually been working side by side with the butchers all day under a shower of blood, she rinsed her hair again and again, and after her bath, she treated her face to a steam bath of camomile. Anything to get rid of the smell of the slaughterhouse world.
She cut her fingernails and toenails short, used only clear varnish on them, and left her wedding ring at home in the drawer of her bedside cupboard. Then, by chance, she’d come upon an article on skin problems in a women’s magazine. Whereas only 7 to 10 per cent of the general population suffer from warts, research has shown that 28.5 per cent of slaughterhouse employees are afflicted by them.
Frau Spreussiger had been panic-stricken.
However, after a month had passed, and she still hadn’t experienced all the distressing effects she’d been afraid of, she began to relax a little.
She continued to buy only cold meats, particularly corned beef, and now and again a veal-bratwurst or a little brawn, but never a
nything that was recognizably meat by shape or colour. Herr Spreussiger would have to wait a long time for her to cook him a Sunday roast. If you want something to sink your teeth into, as you say, you’ll have to cook it yourself, she’d told him.
But she was starting to enjoy her new job at the slaughterhouse.
The squealing of pigs, when it happened to penetrate the double door to her office, no longer caused her to make typing errors. She had settled down. She no longer avoided Bössiger’s searching glances when a bull bellowed loudly in its despair, and, after a first fluffed shot, more loudly still. It happens, she would say.
And she liked being around all the men. The foreign workers were always cheerful, forever laughing and casting lustful glances in her direction. Oh, how they talk! The way they gesticulate with their hands and feet. And the sight of the armed and aproned forms of the laconic butchers would often send a shiver down her spine. All those looks, so many pairs of eyes behind every corner. She felt young and desired by all the men as they stood in her way, their arms and hands dangling and dangerous. But she was still smoking her three packets of MURATTI a day, and her wedding ring was still at home in the drawer.
In the passage outside the calf slaughterhall. Pretty Boy Hügli stroked Frau Spreussiger’s elbow. Well? Won’t you come and join us? he asked.
—Oh, there’s so much to do in the office. And Bössiger’s in one of his moods again. If only you knew.
—Don’t be like that. We’re about to start on the calves. Come and keep us company.
—But, Herr Hügli, I have to go.
—Come in and see the way it spurts out.
—But that’s not fit for a woman. She wanted to loosen Hügli’s grip on her arm.
Hügli tightened it. What? Then what is fit?
—Let go of me! What’s the matter with you all? There, that’s done it, now I’ve got something splashed on my stocking and it’s your fault. Frau Spreussiger had stepped into something wet. It’s blood! Blood! she hissed, and stared down at the stain on her fingertips.
—But don’t you like it if I hold your arm a bit? Hügli no longer knew what to do with his hand.
—Who’s going to get me a fresh pair of stockings now? She hurried off, Hügli staring after her as she stalked off angrily towards the weighing office. The silly bitch! She’s only after Gilgen anyway.
Pretty Boy Hügli had seen Frau Spreussiger with Ernest Gilgen by the railway tracks at the back. She’d trotted along in front of him like a little calf. Then Gilgen had grabbed her from behind and spun her round. He’d said something to her, but she’d only shaken her head virtuously. Not with you, you gorilla, Hügli had crowed. But when Frau Spreussiger had walked on and noticed that Gilgen wasn’t following her any more, she’d turned round and laughed, and at the end of the driving passage, at the lattice gate before the outer door to her office and Bössiger’s, she had looked round and, seeing no one but Gilgen nearby, she had pretended she couldn’t draw the bolt back. And then Gilgen had sprung to her assistance. He had poked and prodded at her hips with his fingers. He had driven her in front of him, back to the first cowshed. They were hardly inside it when she was already reaching under her skirt. Hügli had gulped when he saw her knickers. That Spreussiger, such a smart piece, and with that Tyrolean ram of a Gilgen, who shaves twice a week, and stinks like a load of pigshit? And for five-minute sessions in the nine o’clock break, up against the hay bales in the first cattle pen! When Hügli had been paying court to her for weeks in vain.
He had been deeply offended.
Still, better that than a wop, he’d thought.
In the weighing office, Frau Spreussiger had wiped her stockings clean with a cloth and stepped up to Weigher Kilchenmann, who was standing at his desk, entering figures in a book.
—Herr Bössiger would like to know why the seventeenth sausage-cow this morning had a live weight of 620 kilos, and only 180 dead?
Weighing-master Kilchenmann flicked back in his control book, put his finger down at the top of a column marked ‘Comments of the Meat Inspection’ and the determination of the slaughter weight of butchered animals is subject to legal conditions that are contained in the Meat Inspection Regulations, and Kilchenmann slid his finger down the column.
—Here! he said. Abscesses!
—What do you mean? Frau Spreussiger raised her shoulders. Why so much loss of weight?
—Infections, growths, septic sores, plum-sized purulent boils in the flesh. Do you understand, Frau Spreussiger? Sites of past infections, stinking discharges. The surrounding areas all have to be cut away.
Frau Spreussiger turned pale. Fine. That’s all right, she said and ran out of the weighing office. In the long passage, she looked neither at the drops of blood on the floor, nor at the staring eyes. Infections! Plum-sized boils! Septic sores! Stinking discharges! echoed through her head.
7
‘LOOK WE PLAITED it left here, see? Now we plait it to the right, to make a pretty zigzag. You stick your pitchfork in – you’ll have to reach up a bit – and twist the handle until you’ve got a whole strand together, and then hold onto it, or else you’ll lose it all again! And then you push it back in at the bottom, again at an angle, you see?’ The farmer was plying the four-pronged pitchfork at head height, showing Ambrosio how to weave the pattern into the Knuchel dung. The dunghill was man-sized. It was exhausting work, and there was no shade. Sweat poured down both men’s faces, from under their milking caps.
Ambrosio thought he could feel the smell of cowdung settling right at the back of his nasal cavity, and continuing to ferment there. ‘Qué mierda!’ Decorating dung! He hardly knew what to think. ‘Carajo! Hijo de puta! Caramba!’ And promptly Knuchel nodded in agreement: ‘These horseflies are a plague! Drat them! But you know,’ he went on, ‘it matters what raw material you have. There’s no point in braiding any old stuff. No, no. You need to have proper straw, wheat straw is the best, and the longer it is, the better for the dung.’
Ambrosio lit himself a cigarette. As he stuffed the bundle of his tinder back into his pocket, he saw that, as ever, the cows on the Knuchel pasture were all grazing in the same direction. Blösch and Gertrude were in the middle of the herd, Baby and Stine on the outside. And up by the little wood, he saw a moving cloud of dust. It was the woman on the bicycle who emerged between the bushes, racing down the little road, head in, upper body leaning forward like a pro’s. Already he saw the knot of her hair. She gripped the handlebar with one hand, the other was holding her skirt. The brown cloth was tight around her thighs. Those legs! Qué mujer! And the way she flew past the apple trees!
‘She’s some cyclist, isn’t she? She’d be good on the Tour de Spania!’ laughed Knuchel, standing cock-a-hoop on top of the dunghill. Ambrosio laughed too, and they went back to driving their pitchforks into the heavy muck, muscles tightening, lifting, pushing, plucking, and pulling it from place to place, as they puffed and sweated and swatted at flies and the piled dung lay smooth and even.
‘There, that’ll be Schindler now.’ Farmer Knuchel leaned on his pitchfork. A LANDROVER surged up the hill, braked and turned into the farm track. Its trailer wobbled and jounced from side to side on the deep ruts made by the tractor tyres. A wooden cage clattered on top of the trailer. Hens fled cackling for their lives. Prince barked, and, out on the meadow, the cows lifted their heads momentarily from the grass.
Calf-dealer Schindler swerved round the cobbled yard, put another hen to flight, and came to a stop in front of the dunghill. ‘Did you see the midwife just now?’ he asked as he got out.
‘Yes, and I reckon she’ll wrap herself round a fir tree one of these days.’ Knuchel climbed down off the dunghill, and wiped his right hand on his overtrousers before offering it to Schindler. ‘You’ve come about the Blösch calf, I expect?’
‘To look at him, yes. He’s fattened up nicely, your wife was saying on the telephone.’ Schindler took out his blue cowherd’s smock and pulled it over his head, but then got stuck in it
. Knuchel came to his help, but the calf-dealer got into even more of a twist, and started wheezing under the thick cloth, saying that he would buy himself one that buttoned in future. ‘A right stupid shirt that one is too!’ observed Knuchel.
When his head finally appeared, the calf-dealer whistled through his teeth: ‘Whew! That’s quite a pile! Some dung you have here!’
‘Yes, our dung is high all right, and I was thinking of taking out a couple of loads and spreading it, but then it’s also near the time when we can leave the cattle out to graze overnight.’
‘Quite right. Less of a job cleaning out the cowshed that way.’
‘On the other hand, you don’t get the full benefit of the dung either. That has to be said too. Now what about the calf, Fritz? Do you want to have a look at it?’
‘Right, yes! Let’s see it!’
‘All right? Seeing as you’re here!’
Some calves were bleating at the back of the otherwise empty cowshed. Knuchel untied the biggest of them, took off its muzzle and asked: ‘Well, what do you think?’
The calf held its forelegs wide apart, lowered its head, shuffled and looked up at the calf-dealer, who approached it and touched its neck with a pink, fleshy hand.
‘Can you use him or not? We didn’t give him any eggs, but fat milk more than enough.’ Knuchel stepped back and kneaded at the cloth of his left oxter with his right hand.
‘It’s like he’s almost got a bit of a dog’s back, you know, not really that fleshy towards the tail.’ Schindler touched the calf all over, and stroked its loins.
‘A dog’s back! I don’t believe it!’ Knuchel went to touch the calf himself. ‘Look at the way the breast has plumped out, how broad it all is, that’s an A1 stew.’
‘Now, Hans, breast is all well and good, but it’s not so much in demand as once it was. Who buys breast of veal nowadays? The butchers want nice kidneys, calves’ kidneys are where the trade is. And a couple of fillets, preferably weighing 6 pounds apiece, and an enormous liver.’
While Schindler looked inside the calf’s mouth, and thumbed the eyebrows up to see how white it was behind the dull blue pupils, Knuchel ground his boot in the straw on the cowshed floor. He smashed his fist against a beam of the feed crib, kicked at a chain that dropped from it, and, reaching the front of the stall, he punched the blackboard on which he’d chalked up Blösch’s name, the date of her last heat, and her expected calving date. There you had it, he growled to himself, you stuffed those bloody Blösch calves with milk from both ends practically, to get the breast to grow, and then the calf-dealer suddenly decided he wanted more meat in the tail hold. That kind of thing wasn’t to be borne.