Cow

by Beat Sterchi

  And the old man was content with their mere, mute presence.

  From all around came the sound of heavy cow bells and the ringing of the tin chimes.

  On the pastures of the village, including that of the Boden farm in front of Luigi and Ambrosio, between the shooting range and the village road, the grass had grown back strongly. This sunny day had been preceded by a couple of days of wet weather.

  For some of the Innerwald cattle, though, this growth was too little too late. The grass on some of the hay meadows adjacent to their own grazing pastures was considerably thicker and higher. To make matters worse, the cows had been robbed of many square metres of grazing by the plague of mice. Within each impatient herd, there had been more recourse to horns, the fight for grass had become fiercer, and the bit of fresh green now sprouting back on ground that had been cropped down several times wasn’t enough to keep the animals from throwing the odd glance at what lay beyond the barbed wire. Every calf was aware that on the other side of the impressive fences flowered the red cow-clover.

  And this in spite of the rain which, by flooding and washing away the underground network of passages, had put an end to the unhindered spread of the mouse plague. Strong variations in temperature, also disliked by the rodents, had done their bit as well.

  In many places there was still one mound of earth by another; there were still spoiled fields, which in their churned-up and furrowed condition bore less resemblance to Innerwald fields than to unearthly crater landscapes. In fact, every other one of these brown tumps was nothing but an abandoned nest. But even on the Boden farm pasture, that was not enough to make the cows forget their reduced rations: and clover, lucerne and dandelion still spiced the air.

  ‘Caramba! Mira las vacas!’ Ambrosio jabbed Luigi in the side. Never on the highlands had Ambrosio seen a herd grazing so close to a fence as these cows down there. The cowbells! They were sounding notes of protest.

  ‘Eh! Che cosa vuoi?’ asked Luigi, and shrugged his shoulders languidly.

  The cows were eating their way towards the fence that ran alongside the village road, but they were uncommonly close together. Every cow had just enough space to be able to whisk her tail freely against flies and horseflies. But evacuating and scratching were problematical. If a cow was a little exuberant in the way she pumped out the contents of her bladder, her high arc would force the animals behind her to take evasive action. In addition, the centre of the herd had already moved in such an unwonted quarter that the three young cows grazing on its right flank now found themselves hard pressed by the fence.

  One of them moved her forelegs apart, circled with her ears and lowered her head like a bull at bay. She had come into contact with the barbed wire.

  Another went down on her knees, pushed one leg out in front of her, and laid her throat and forequarters down on the ground. Her bell was silenced. Greedily, she shoved her head under the fencing, and her tongue set about the dandelions that grew on the verge of the village road.

  A third scraped at the wild moss on a fencepost like one possessed.

  Ambrosio was astonished. Luigi appeared unmoved.

  And the field-mouser carried on speaking in his unmelodious way, spitting out his words in rhythmic bursts, with his eyes gazing beyond the hills towards the horizon: ‘And forever with our toes in the dirt and the dung, our feet like leather, yes, like leather when I was a boy, in the summer we were always barefoot, yes, until far into the winter, and often the grass was cold, like ice it was in the mornings, and when we went to fetch the cows from the pasture, they almost froze, sometimes we saw a place where the grass was flattened, there a cow had lain, and we ran to it, and there the earth would be warm, and we would stand on that spot for as long as we could, and afterwards we ran after that cow, and sometimes our feet grew so cold—’

  ‘Caramba!’ Ambrosio leaped to his feet.

  A brindled cow of medium height trotted out of the middle of the herd straight towards the fence. Tossing her head to and fro, she walked alongside the barbed wire. Her chimes rang with resolve. She stopped in front of a post that rose out of a piece of ground studded with molehills, then she mooed, slid her horns underneath the top line of barbed wire, craned her neck and uprooted the post. It still hung by its barbed wire and quivered. But when the brindled cow got her horns free again, she put her hoof on it, pushed it over and trampled the fence to the ground.

  ‘Hijo de puta!’ said Ambrosio. ‘Porco Dio!’ said Luigi. The Boden farm cows put their heads together, mooed in a variety of different keys, stretched, turned and trotted over the demolished fence down the escarpment and onto the village road.

  No time was wasted. The cows made straight for the fodder. Soon the dandelions were missing from the roadside, and while the most adventurous of them tweaked at the red clover in crisp bunches from the hay meadow on the Galgenhubel slope, some others set off down the road, and turned into a cabbage field.

  The field-mouser ground his teeth, came out of his reverie, broke off his droning monologue, and sat down in the grass next to Luigi. ‘Holy St Ulrich! The Boden farmer’s beasts are on the village road!’ he giggled, and slapped first himself and then Luigi on the knee, rootled in the ground with his stick, gestured up at the village and said: ‘The midwife’s about due. She’s probably just been having coffee with the minister. There, there she is, see her with her head down, she’s just in time!’

  Luigi also noticed the woman on the bicycle. ‘La levatrice! La levatrice!’ he shouted exultantly, leaped up and cried, ‘Qué donna! Qué donna!’ He clenched his fists against his chest. He would give his right arm to spend a night with the left leg of that woman. A thigh and he would be happy! That woman had divine legs! he exclaimed, leaping and prancing about, and opening his arms as though to embrace a tree-trunk. What he’d never been able to do on his own, those cows would manage for him. No speeding past this time!

  The midwife turned a corner and headed straight for the runaway herd. She rang her bell. She did not brake. She rang and rang uninterruptedly, although she had already taken one hand off the handlebars to gesticulate. ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ she called out. Only at the last minute did she put her brakes on. Dust rose from the gravel as she skidded with locked wheels up to a cow, and before even taking her feet off the pedals, she began lashing out at the animal. ‘What do you think you’re up to! And on a Sunday too!’

  None of the cows took a blind bit of notice of the woman, who put her bicycle down on the roadside, and then spotted the three figures on the Galgenhubel.

  ‘I don’t believe it! It’s just not possible!’ She climbed the slope and shouted: ‘Oi, you up there watching! Why don’t you come down and help get those animals off the road!’ She stopped, stood still, shaded her eyes with her hand, and craned her neck to study the three figures closely: ‘Are those the foreigners there?’ she asked. ‘Ha! As I thought! Now will you come down and drive that bull off the road! Right away! Do you hear?’ She stamped angrily along the slope, supporting herself with one hand, but she still slipped, and, in falling, rucked her skirt up. Like two naked bodies, her mighty thighs lay in the grass. They were white as milk. Luigi gulped and forgot to shut his mouth. Ambrosio sat down again. He scratched his bald patch. So much meat on one leg! The field-mouser laughed and shouted, ‘Catch a mouse, did you?’ And then, triumphantly: ‘Those cows, eh!’

  The midwife gestured back with her arms, got up, one hand holding her skirt, the other supporting herself on the slope. ‘Now will you come and get that bull off the road!’

  ‘If that’s a bull, then I’m another! And you know what that makes you!’

  The midwife turned round, climbed back down the slope, picked up her bicycle where she’d left it at the roadside, lifted it over the flattened fence, pushed it between the molehills around the cows and back on the road, then she mounted the saddle again and pedalled off down towards the little Knuchel wood.

  ‘Qué mujer!’ said Ambrosio. ‘Mamma mia!’ said Luigi. The field-mouser gigg
led.

  When Ambrosio and Luigi had driven the Boden farm cows back into their field, and done some quick repairs to the wrecked fence, Ambrosio took his leave. It was still rather too early for the evening milking. His guess was that the Knuchel cows wouldn’t yet have climbed back up to the paddock from the furthest corners of the pasture, to assemble at the gate. Usually they liked to spend the hour before they were collected for watering and milking standing on each other’s toes, or maybe, if the sun was shining, affording shade for one another. Today would be the same... Then the Boden farm cows reminded him: hadn’t a similar liking for dandelions that flowered under barbed-wire fencing lately become apparent in the Knuchel herd? Hadn’t he seen Baby and Bossy standing suspiciously near to the fence on some occasions? Hadn’t Blösch once set about a molehill with her horns?

  And hardly had Ambrosio gone a couple of hundred yards down the road when he saw first a couple of horns, and then the whole of a cow’s head. ‘Hijo de puta!’ From behind the shooting-range heights came the sound of familiar cow bells. The entire Knuchel herd was grazing there.

  Ambrosio ran straight across the meadow to the edge of the hill. There was Baby, chewing and gawping, there were Check and Flora grazing, further down were Stine and Spot in knee-high clover, and there, in the juiciest, most luscious green of all, immediately in front of the closed shutters of the marksmen’s hut, there was Blösch tucking into the very finest of the grass.

  *

  The tongues of the Knuchel cows, still green from ruminating, snaked out of their muzzles, licking up the PROVIMIN they were given before evening milking. Their lower molars ground against the toothless gums of their upper jaws.

  The air in the cowshed trembled, shaken by animal greed.

  Ambrosio had hesitated briefly in the feed passage. Was it right to go on giving those cows such highly concentrated nourishment? Would the extra energy derived from it really go to their lactating glands, or might it not lead to a further free-for-all? He didn’t think he could manage a second pasture revolution! One breakout through the Knuchel wood, the shrubbery, and onto the virgin pasture of the shooting range, that was enough.

  And yet Ambrosio did not find it difficult to decide against reducing their intake of concentrate. Like yesterday, like the day before, he had picked up one of the sacks from the pile and hoisted it onto his shoulders, to tip it straight into the manger.

  He had even given them half a sack over the stipulated amount. He wanted to make absolutely certain that the milk-production figures would be up to scratch. During his period as caretaker ruler of the Knuchel cowshed, the milk quantity was not to go down so much as by a single litre. Ambrosio would move heaven and earth to see that it didn’t. Even if it meant using the hosepipe...

  But it was more than simple ambition that kept Ambrosio from punishing the Knuchel herd where it hurt them. Since last Sunday, when he’d seen them standing in the luscious green, he had felt more drawn to the character of these Simmental cows. Hadn’t they been bred specifically for limitless greed? Altogether, Ambrosio felt that he’d wronged them in his previous estimation. They weren’t nearly as demure as they looked, and they knew quite well that they had horns on their heads and power in their necks.

  The gentle hiss of a cigarette end rose from the gutter.

  Ambrosio sat down on the cowshed bench, his elbows on his thighs, the tops of his rubber boots pressing against the back of his knees. He was just about to start milking. He played with his lighter. The ball had become much smaller. Ambrosio had already burned up a considerable part of the tinder in Innerwald. His ear itched. He picked a bit of dried clover out of the hair at the back of his neck. He itched all over. At last, the weather had turned, and, under the command of the farmer’s wife, they had started to get the hay in.

  For three days Ruedi had been driving all over the Knuchel meadows on the tractor, towing all manner of appliances and machines. He had mowed and raked and turned. The smell of hay was everywhere. One forkful after another was heaved onto the wagons. Huge loads were built up with bulging overhanging sides, and a haypole – a heavy round beam – had been laid lengthwise on top of the hay and pulled down at the back by means of a rope pulley, to press the hay down and make it secure for the drive over the rough Knuchel tracks.

  The sweat flowed. The upper arms of the farmer’s wife burned red. Grandma brought their meals out to them by the wicker basketful. Cheese, sausage and bread, wrapped in red-and-white-striped cloth, and litres and litres of mint tea and apple juice that were somehow never quite enough.

  And now, while the slightly damp hay on one meadow was being raked together and hung on racks overnight for fear of hoar-frost and the threat of rain, Ambrosio had gone in ahead of the others to clean the cowshed and milk. The cows had had to do without their pasture out of doors. During the day, they were better off inside, away from the attacks of insects. When Ambrosio appeared, they had climbed up out of their straw, and, tempted by the concentrate, shoved their heads into their mangers. That way the back of the stalls was easier to clean. There was already room under every udder for bucket and milking stool. Ambrosio had pushed the clean straw to the back, and carted the dung out of the shed, and now, in a minute, he would dip into the milking fat. Half a minute. Ambrosio felt the heaviness in his limbs. A day in the Knuchel hay. With those gigantic tools, in that heat! In Knuchel fashion he rolled up the sleeves of his milking blouse.

  Blösch mooed. She had licked up her own portion of formula and a fair bit of Mirror’s as well. She moved her hindlegs wider apart. Her milk-plumped udder was jammed in between her lower thighs. She wanted to pull her head back out of the feed crib. Her horns smashed against the wood.

  Bossy was restless too. Half a dozen cats lay in the alley behind her, impatient for milk. But Ambrosio had avoided all chiming and tinkling, and so her leaky udder wasn’t dribbling yet. Like Blösch, Bossy tried to extricate her head, but her hindquarters went alternately too far to the left and too far to the right.

  Ambrosio stuffed his lighter into his pocket, and suppressed a desire to land a kick in the middle of the rabble of cats.

  Those cheeky beasts. ‘Carajo!’ Why don’t you chase mice?

  The calves were hitched up between the bench and the door. They tugged at their ropes. One of them bleated. Tienen hambre. Ambrosio stretched. He took the bar of STEINFELS soap off the shelf. He would probably have to water the calves himself today, the Knuchel children were still out playing on the mown meadows. They were making hiding places for themselves under the hay racks and whooping and squealing with laughter. Today they wouldn’t be there to creep up on Ambrosio and laugh at him under the bellies of the cows, and run away when he pointed a teat in their direction, and sent a stream of milk after them. Ambrosio looked at the head of one of the calves. They all looked the same. Those pronounced but blunt forms with their childish roundness, their mass, the concavity between muzzle and skull, the thick lips and the taut skin round the eyes. These characteristics of the calves kept putting him in mind of the human faces of Innerwald. Didn’t all of them in the village and on the farm have those same very weak cheekbones? Loose flesh under their chins? Just like that roll of skin on the throat of this calf?

  And the strong curve of the skull, with so little musculature below it! And that wide forehead with the rounded edges, suggesting bumps and bruises that often looked as if they might put forth horns! And those highly developed nodding muscles in the neck, and that look from under the mostly hairless eyebrows! Calf-like they were!

  And what about himself? Had he already...?

  He touched his chin and mouth. He felt relieved to feel the skin still taut across his throat.

  He finished his preparations and sat, hands greased and the bucket between his knees, under Bossy’s udder, which, to the delight of the cats, had now started to dribble.

  Every now and again, Ambrosio leaned aside while milking to glance down the feed passage at the door. Maybe a little blond head would show up
after all.

  *

  Ambrosio racked his brain over it, but in vain, he couldn’t understand it! No sooner had Knuchel returned from the refresher course for reserve troops, than the banging at night had become louder again. Every day for two weeks it had grown quieter, and now it was once more echoing through the beams of the house, boom, boom, boom.

  And the cats became cheekier. Ambrosio had chased them out of the cowshed into the fields several times. Unavailingly. Now, with the farmer back, they settled in the freshest of the straw with hours to go before milking.

  The behaviour of the farmer’s wife changed as well. She was proud; half the hay harvest had been brought in in her husband’s absence without any problems. But now the thickest slices from the loaf were once again to be found beside his plate at the top of the table, and the blue, red and yellow aprons were rarely seen outside the kitchen and garden.

  The farmer himself was quiet and calm. ‘When he was called up, he was fidgety and as wound-up as a calf’s tail, but now he’s hardly scratching any more, just now and then on his throat. His service has done him the world of good,’ said the farmer’s wife to Grandma.

  When the farmer himself was asked how his military service had gone, he replied: ‘Fine. It was fine. The weather was kind to us, and we were never without a bird to put in the soup, my, that was some refresher camp!’ So saying, he pressed his lips together and nodded his head, like a cow scraping her horns against the bars of her crib. ‘We were able to get hold of some wonderful horses this year. That was a sight, us gallivanting about the mountains on board! No, it was fine in the army, as fine as a holiday by the seaside.’

  But soon, he was scratching skin and scalp rather more often.

  The mayor had telephoned. He’d begun by asking nicely after wife and children, then he’d wanted to know who’d been present at the refresher course, and had even pleased Knuchel with the news that for days now that damned Pestalozzi couldn’t be induced to cover a cow, and so what Knuchel had predicted would probably come to pass, and they’d have to cut their losses and sell off the expensive bull. But would anyone still want him? the mayor wondered. One should at least be careful to talk about it as little as possible, because Pestalozzi still had a name far beyond the highlands, and it might be possible for the Breeding Syndicate to come out of it all without suffering too much of a loss.