Cow

by Beat Sterchi

  ‘You know, Hans, maybe you even overdo the milk.’ Schindler wiped his hands on his blue blouse. ‘You’ve got a lot of iron in your soil, your water’s too good. It’s healthy, of course, but you get red veal, don’t you! This one here will probably turn out to be another fox. And if they deduct something for that? Maybe you should, you know, ask at the cooperative, or you could—’

  ‘That takes the biscuit! Milk powder and calf supplement! We’ve got milk of our own!’ Knuchel felt the choking about to reach his throat. Hurriedly he added: ‘And if our milk’s not good enough to feed a calf. I’d like to know what is!’

  ‘You’ve got a fine product. I’ve never said anything else, it’s just that nowadays they are finding out new things about how to feed and water and stock-up scientifically.’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt you to try some of that yourself! You’ve become pretty heavy lately. You can’t deny it. But tell me! What’s your decision? Do you want to load it up or not?’

  Schindler peered down at his own belly: ‘You know, Hans, you should eat for as long as you’re allowed to. Who knows what things’ll be like in Heaven? They won’t be over-generous. Spirits only in tiny glasses. Anyway, sooner a belly from overeating than a humpback from overwork. Heh, heh, heh, heh!’

  ‘But the Blösch calf, do you want it?’

  Schindler stopped snickering. ‘Did you ever know me not to take a calf off you?’

  ‘Take it off me! That’s exactly as if you were doing me a favour! Take it off me! You’ve certainly never overpaid me. Don’t say you lost out on the deals you’ve done with me!’

  ‘No, not that, but they haven’t made me a wealthy man either, and all in all, Hans, the calf-trade doesn’t look too clever at the moment. You do what you can, but even so, I’m having to start dealing in cattle too, and I wanted to ask you if you happened to have a cow I could take.’

  ‘What, now in June? With the hay harvest almost upon us? Not likely.’

  ‘Nor a bullock?’

  ‘Can’t do it, Fritz. But if you’re going into bigger animals, up in the village, you can pick up Pestalozzi.’ Knuchel grinned and pointed back over his shoulder with his thumb in the direction of Innerwald. ‘There’s a shagged-out bull over there.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Well, yes, our mountain air doesn’t seem to agree with the gentleman. Some do well on it, but others sicken. But then no one listened to my advice. They’re still trying to bring him round with injections, but you’ll see, it won’t go on much longer, and they’ll have to sell him.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me, not that cattle are hard to come by, mind you. Some farmers are having to sell two or three head, because the mice have wrecked their pasture land.’

  ‘Bad, isn’t it? You know, there are meadows that look as though a drunkard has been out ploughing on them. One heap of earth after another. We haven’t had to harrow whole fields here yet, but they’re a plague, and you know, up in the village, there’s a campaign against the field-mouser. Oh, the way they moan, and you know what, the devil’s in it, they’re still playing up over my Spaniard. I’m going to have to let him go, if I only knew how and where to.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Schindler, and sat down on the bench in the cowshed.

  ‘The cheeser, the mayor, they’re all playing up. Half the village is playing up, trying to needle him the whole time. Same with the Boden farmer’s Italian. It’s very bad. And he’s a fine fellow for all that, bit on the small side, but willing.’

  ‘Not exactly a giant, is he? But what can he do, your Spaniard?’ asked Schindler.

  Knuchel thrust his hands into his pockets, pulled them out again straightaway, flung them wide, and said loudly: ‘Work! He can work! Isn’t that something? And he’s a quick learner too. He’s much more than a cow-minder, Fritz. He’s someone you can really use. I’ve kitted him out too. He came in sandals, but now he’s got a proper outfit: boots, good trousers, the things a man needs to work in.’

  ‘Well, I could try, it’s just a thought, but maybe a butcher would... They’re always saying there’s no one in the whole country who’s willing to work.’

  ‘Well, Fritz, why not? I’d be grateful to you. I have to do my military service now, bang in the middle of the hay harvest, what about that, but after it’s over, well, if someone could use him. I was always of the opinion that a cow with bigger horns would get through the village all right, but no, it’s gotten worse, you can hardly send him up to the cheese dairy by himself any more.’

  Schindler got up, stepped out of the shed, and said: ‘Don’t worry, Hans. Something will turn up, it won’t be for want of trying on my part. Can’t promise anything, mind. And where is he now, your Spaniard? He could help load up.’

  When the Blösch calf, without its muzzle, was standing in the cage on the trailer, it sniffed at the straw spread out underfoot, gawped through the wooden slats, shivered as though it felt cold, and blinked its eyes: it was the first time it had been out in the sun.

  Knuchel went to get its registration from the parlour, and Schindler checked that the number tallied with the one on the calf’s eartag. He folded the paper, and said: ‘Well, let’s see what happens. If it’s over 120 kilos, and the legs are meaty and white, then we’ll settle it on the basis of today’s A1 calf price. I’ll be round again in a week or so.’ And then, after several handshakes and repeated farewells, the LANDROVER and trailer rumbled back up the farm track. The wooden chest rattled on the trailer. Between the slats, Ambrosio could see the calf as stripes of red and white.

  Knuchel shut the lower half of the byre door from the inside. He propped himself on it, resting on his elbows. With one hand he scratched his forearm, the other he just dangled. Against the bleached wood, the spread fingers resembled the prongs of a fork-like implement.

  Ambrosio looked down at the nearside pasture. This time, none of the cows had interrupted their grazing.

  *

  Milk and morning coffee shone in the corners of mouths. It was Sunday. The three little Knuchel children sat on the bench in the corner behind the kitchen table. Today they chewed leisurely, filling their cheeks alternately. When they came to swallow, they lifted their almost invisibly blond eyebrows, opened their goggle-eyes still further, and craned their necks like choking swans.

  Opposite the children sat Grandma and the farmer’s wife. Ambrosio’s place was on a low stool next to Ruedi at the bottom end of the table. The place at the top was empty. For the past week Knuchel had been at his military refresher course.

  Before he had walked up the road to the village in his uniform on the previous Monday immediately after the morning milking, and disappeared into the little wood, the atmosphere on the farm had been poor for some days past. There had been differences among men and beasts alike, with kicks in the cowshed and cross words in the parlour. In the evening, the inexplicable knocking that shook the beams of the house had regaled Ambrosio’s ears for longer than usual.

  Farmer Knuchel had worked incessantly ahead, like a man driven. He had bought several months’ supplies at the co-op. ‘For when I’m doing my service,’ he had said time and again. All at once, it seemed he felt he had to settle all kinds of trivial details. He had tried to anticipate all eventualities in the period of his absence, for instance, going out to mow a hay meadow, in spite of the unfavourable weather forecast. Ruedi had been offended. ‘Anyone would think none of us had ever seen a hayfork before! Why doesn’t he let us do it?’ he had said, and Ambrosio, who had noticed tears in his eyes, and who felt particularly useless himself, had patted him on the back. When the hay was duly spoilt by the rain, the farmer’s wife had managed to hold her peace for three days, before finally losing her temper on the afternoon of the fourth, a Saturday.

  Although there was neither a shortage of space in the cesspit, nor any other urgent cause, Knuchel had set off, quite out of the blue, with a load of slurry in the direction of the meadow. Alarmed by the noise of the tractor, the farmer
’s wife had first shaken her head in incredulity before leaving the flower garden on the sunny side of the yard, where she had been working, and crossing a beet field with giant strides to intercept Knuchel before he reached his destination.

  In her indignation, she had taken her trowel with her, waving it menacingly in the air, and then, having leapt out into the path of the rumbling tractor, levelled it like a pistol at the farmer, who had immediately changed down and asked her: ‘What are you doing here?’ She had replied that he should turn the motor right off, and then she had said what she had to say.

  It just wasn’t to be borne any more, for days her head had been like a hive full of bees, she’d felt worse than a dumb hen, and purely on account of him, and no other cause, she had complained. It was true, and the others felt the same way, Ruedi was depressed. Grandma wasn’t opening her mouth, and even the Spaniard was slinking round the farm like a beaten dog. And so now he had to go out manuring, on a Saturday of all days, so that it would stink the whole of Sunday, when they finally had a bit of time to sit out in front of the house. She felt quite ashamed, she had said. For as long as she could remember, no one had ever been to get the manure barrel from the back of the barn on a Saturday! It was no way to carry on, and she would be pleased when the time came for him to go away and do his service, he’d had to be away from the farm for a few days before, and they’d certainly not been at a loss without him then. But the way he was acting, it was as though the whole family was about to go off to some remote place for the holidays, and there would be no one left at all on the farm, to clean the cowshed or to milk, and it just wasn’t to be borne! And if the weather should happen to turn, then God knew that together with the remaining menfolk she would be perfectly capable of loading the odd cart with hay and not upsetting it in the first ditch they came to! ‘But then you don’t even trust us to do this much,’ she had said, pressing her right thumb and forefinger together and holding them up in front of her right eye.

  Then, taken by a fit of sobbing, the farmer’s wife had hurried back across the beet field, caught her foot among the tops but steadied herself before she fell, and had turned round to say it would be far more sensible if the farmer were to start to get his army things together, because there would certainly be a to-do before he had them all safely in his kitbag.

  In the meantime, Knuchel had climbed down off his tractor, scratched the crown of his head under his cap, and then, with his fists buried in the pockets of his overtrousers, walked round the tractor, dug at a molehill with the toes of his boots and said: ‘Gah! If a man can’t cut hay because of the wet weather why shouldn’t he go and manure instead? It would be a kindness to the meadow.’ Back on the tractor, he had called after his wife not to worry about his army gear, he could pack a kitbag in no time at all, and once she’d checked that there were no buttons missing on his coat, it wouldn’t take him more than a couple of hours to get ready.

  Then he had turned tractor and manure barrel round once more, but had taken care not to push the release until he’d reached a piece of grassland a long way from the farm.

  The following day, as he was packing, there had indeed been further commotion. First, Knuchel had been unable to find his army knife, then further deficiencies in his equipment had become apparent. The mug for his water bottle was missing, and the blacking brush from his shoe-cleaning kit. And his coat wouldn’t fit into his knapsack properly. Late on Sunday evening, the farmer had still been on his hands and knees on the parlour floor, making further vain efforts to roll up the thick green material in the approved manner. His swearing on the subject of the equipment regulations had been plainly audible up in Ambrosio’s room.

  But now all was peaceful in the kitchen.

  The farmer’s wife set another jar of newly made redcurrant jelly on the table, and cut thick slices from a loaf that she held against her bosom. The thickest slice was given to Ambrosio. Then she too went back to chewing. Red rings formed round the mouths of the Knuchel children. No one spoke.

  When the first shots rang out from the firing range. Grandma said: ‘There we are. They’re shooting again today.’ The farmer’s wife nodded and said after a little while, still chewing: ‘Hans can hardly wait to get the carbine out from under the bed each time.’

  Thereupon Grandma laid her hands, which were almost like a man’s hands, used and wrinkled, but soft too, and very alive with their brown spots, laid them like a peel around her coffee cup and held it up to her mouth, not to drink but to drink warmth, and she said: ‘At least we won’t have him around in the kitchen. He’s always getting under our feet on a Sunday. Oh, I’m pleased every time he has to go shooting or go out in the fields or something. At least then you can put the soup on in peace and quiet.’

  The farmer’s wife stared at one of the blue dots on the milk jug and said: ‘Yes, when Hans can’t work, you hardly know what to do with him.’ And when Ruedi got up and announced that he wouldn’t be back for lunch, she only replied with an absent-minded, ‘Never mind’.

  Ambrosio left the table together with Ruedi. The Knuchel herd was already out on the pasture, but the calves were still in the shed and there was one whose navel string was discharging pus, and only slowly drying out. Ambrosio wanted to see to it first. Then the mousetraps had to be checked, emptied and reset, and the farmer had also given instructions for the pig that was being fattened for domestic consumption to be let out after breakfast for half an hour. It was to get a chance to run about and roll in the dirt in a totally routed-up area behind the henhouse that was kept specifically for the purpose.

  Only after these tasks were finished, did Ambrosio get the big twig broom from the feed passage to start sweeping. He even swept outside the kitchen. The farmer’s wife went over to the doorway, with her dish-cloth and cutlery in her hands, and said: ‘There will be good haymaking weather after all next week if everything is so neat and tidy.’ But while she spoke, she dropped the bread knife which landed point down in the doorway. The farmer’s wife was frightened and shrank back, behind her Grandma looked at the knife quivering in the wood. ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  The farmer’s wife laughed, took the handle and said: ‘You’ll see, we’ll have visitors.’

  ‘Won’t be that!’ said Grandma.

  ‘But if a knife sticks in the ground like that, it means there’s something in the air,’ insisted the farmer’s wife. ‘Doesn’t it?’ she asked Ambrosio, who nodded as he carried on sweeping the Knuchel dust with his willow twigs in a semi-circular pattern.

  *

  Ambrosio was feeling good.

  After lunch he had gone and sat with the calves in the otherwise empty byre but he had soon got bored, and didn’t even stay long enough to hear a cigarette end hiss into the gutter: a little ritual Sunday sound that he had begun to take pleasure in.

  Instead he went for a walk up in the Galgenhubel.

  The Galgenhubel was a hill just outside the village where he and Luigi and the field-mouser had met a couple of times on fine afternoons for a drink from a bottle one of them brought along.

  As he set off down the farm track, Ambrosio thought of Knuchel’s commands to him, all the points of instruction that the farmer had demonstrated to him. He thought of the work that he would do in the week ahead. The potatoes had to be sprayed before Knuchel’s return. He mustn’t forget that. Knuchel had shown him how to use the portable spray-tank that you strapped on your back, and had also told him that the two rows on the left edge of the field didn’t need poison. Not a drop was to fall on those plants. Those potatoes were for their own use, and the pigs in the sty and the women in the kitchen had no preference for especially large specimens. The main thing is that they taste good, and they keep well in the cellar,’ he had said.

  Above the wood, Ambrosio heard panting. It was a suppressed groaning, suggestive of physical effort. And then a bell. Ambrosio leapt aside. The woman on the bicycle! Her arms stiff against the handlebars, her head down between her shoulders, she was toi
ling up the hill to the village. She panted for oxygen, the air in her wake smelled of sweat. She had to be the most strapping woman Ambrosio had ever set eyes on. Her thighs were cranks, her calves pistons. Not for one instant did she take her eyes off her front wheel on the gravel road. She was a pedalling machine where metal and flesh were as one! And how evenly she conquered the climb up to the village!

  Ambrosio passed the locked-up marksmen’s hut, crossed the Innerwald shooting range, and then he spotted the field-mouser in his floppy felt hat and earth-stained cloak, standing on the Galgenhubel like a personification of the landscape. The old man’s boots were rooted in the grass, he leaned on his stick, and he aimed his incomprehensible words at the highlands. He was oblivious of Ambrosio’s approach.

  Luigi was sitting on his handkerchief on the grass, with his back to the grey shape of the field-mouser. Ambrosio shook his outstretched hand, put a blade of grass between his lips, and spread out his own handkerchief to sit down likewise.

  Both Luigi and Ambrosio wore brown suits and ties, and had contrived a way of resting their arms against their knees that gave prominence to the dazzling display of wristwatch. Ambrosio was laughing, and Luigi was pointing at the rock masses of the Lower Alps with a sweeping gesture. The Galgenhubel was the only common part of Innerwald that offered a panorama, here they could sit and gaze southwards, staring at the jagged mountains, without attending to the field-mouser, not troubling to listen to words they wouldn’t have understood in any case.