by Beat Sterchi
The mayor had spoken about the bull for a while, and gone on to other village topics, before suddenly announcing in sharp tones that in Knuchel’s absence there had been a further deplorable episode which he had probably heard about already, as it involved the Spaniard. Together with the Boden farm Italian and Field-mouser Fritz, the old prattler, Ambrosio had been boozing on the Galgenhubel, and quite immoderately at that. The midwife had caught them turning the Boden farmer’s beasts loose.
When the mayor went on to say that the cheeser had now had it up to here and finally wanted to see a health certificate for Ambrosio, and that he himself was hardly best pleased by the whole matter, and would rather that the whole of the highlands weren’t abuzz with talk of the foreigners in Innerwald, Knuchel had already stopped pressing the telephone to his ear, and was instead holding it in front of him and staring at the receiver. It seemed to him as though hordes of invisible beasts, whining, humming vermin were coming out of it. It was as if that large-scale farmer, that tiresome know-all of a mayor, had shrivelled up and were sitting in the black bakelite tub of the earpiece. And at this point he had hung up.
He would have liked to hear from Ambrosio what had happened on that Sunday afternoon on the Galgenhubel. He tried to talk to him, gesturing and miming and asking and indicating, even mixing in a few scraps of French with his Knuchel German, something he had never tried before his military service, but all his efforts at clarification failed. Knuchel and Ambrosio confronted one another helplessly. But it wasn’t possible! He’s looked after my animals so well. Ambrosio drinking! On the Galgenhubel! What lying dog thought up that one? And something with the cows too. It’s as if one had gone missing from the cowshed, or wasn’t giving milk. He’d never do anything to a cow up in the village! They can try that one out on someone else. I won’t believe a word that midwife says any more. Maybe they should look to their fences. They’ll just have to make them stronger if their pastures are so meagre and grazed down, hardly surprising if a cow can’t stand it a moment longer in there!
The story of how his own herd had taken flight had not reached the farmer’s ears. His wife, apart from Ambrosio the only other person to know about it, had not told her husband. She knew her Hans. How he would have crowed! The Knuchel fence had been repaired. Ambrosio had dug up a few square metres of mouse-loosened ground, and pitched the posts in it freshly. And he had removed all traces of trampling and dung from the little wood.
But there was another piece of news to cause itching in the Knuchel scalp and choking in the Knuchel throat. The Innerwald village council had decided unanimously to halve the reward money for mice, which it had previously put up to combat the rodent plague. The field-mouser was only profiting from their own misfortune, and adding insult to injury, he was making fun of the worst-afflicted farmers with all manner of oaths and devilment. It was a scandal. And he drank like a hole. No, Fritz Mader, that useless windbag, would have to be kept on shorter commons, and a shorter rein, they had said.
Knuchel was of a different opinion.
‘They’re treating the old fellow like a naughty boy. Who’s it going to help, I’m asking. Now, when he can at last earn himself a bit of money, now the old fools turn round and behave as though he’s just been cutting felt hats in strips the whole time, and claiming mouse-tail money for them,’ he said to his wife, who replied that the wretched rodents had indeed been burrowing wickedly, that in many places in the highlands, and in Innerwald, they had eaten quite a hole in the money bags of many a proud farmer. ‘I can quite understand them being wrought up about it,’ she said, whereupon the farmer had retorted that that couldn’t possibly be laid at Field-mouser Fritz’s door. That was sheer bullying. The mice had wrought destruction up and down the land, and some of it worse, far worse, than in the highlands, as he had seen for himself on his refresher course. ‘No, those idiots! They’re just out to save themselves a few pence of mouse money!’ said Knuchel. ‘As if it was a doddle trudging about the fields at night when it’s as black and wet as the inside of a cow’s belly. And Fritz was telling me himself how they begrudged him the water in their wells, everyone was doing him down, and they laughed at him when he wouldn’t strew poison because it would kill the martens and the weasels and the owls and everything else that eats the mice. No, woman! Say what you like, up in the village there are some who have more dirt on their hands than Fritz has on the soles of his boots!’
The farmer’s wife nodded in full agreement, but she also thought that since Hans had come back from the army, he’d done a lot of talking about things that bothered him. And she looked at Knuchel’s fingernails with some apprehension.
When there was a telephone call the following day from Livestock-dealer Schindler, the farmer finally scratched a bloody wound in the skin of his throat.
Like the mayor, Schindler began by asking politely after Knuchel’s wife and children, before going straight on to the health of Pestalozzi. How was the tired bull doing now, what would the bull committee of the Breeders’ Syndicate decide, had Knuchel already heard details of this or that?, Schindler inquired. Knuchel told him what he knew, and his answers so delighted Schindler that he sniggered a few times and said: ‘I’ll offer them the price for sausage-bulls, they’ll make eyes like saucers,’ but then all of a sudden he was talking about Knuchel’s Blösch calf: ‘Oh, Hans, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you earlier, but you were away with the army. Well, it had the weight all right, it had better, and it was nicely plumped up, but by Christ, it was a shade too red for their liking. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it, and I had to take a deduction.’
Knuchel took the news in silence, which alarmed the dealer and even made him mention, somewhat incautiously, as he tried to overcome the silence at the other end, how he had been looking round for a job for Ambrosio in the city, as Knuchel had asked him, but was having no success. He’d mentioned the case to various master-butchers and to the head of personnel at the meat factory, but they’d told him that a foreigner couldn’t change his job just like that, much less his whole line of work. No, it wasn’t possible to just go ahead, because then the immigration police would get involved. You see, there were quotas for foreigners in every branch of industry. When one had been allocated to agriculture, he would have to stay on a farm. Those were the rules, explained Schindler.
Knuchel, who by the mere fact of having been called away to the telephone while milking, had been put in a bad mood, did not return to the cowshed immediately. He went to hide among the pigs, to give the blood on his throat a chance to dry. But the creatures, who hadn’t yet been fed, began to squeal. After the clicking of the bolt, they expected their swill right away, that was what they were used to, and they buried their snouts in empty troughs. ‘Are you going to start whining and all!’ Knuchel bruised his knuckles against the wall of the pen, tried again to urinate, and, leaning against a partition as he did so, he caught sight of the pig that had been set aside for domestic consumption. Without taking his eyes off him, he said: ‘Ha, you there! You’ve been eating my best potatoes for long enough now! You’re fat enough as it is! I’ll see to it that you go under the knife this very week!’
In the kitchen, they were appalled by Knuchel’s intention. ‘Slaughter?’ Ruedi asked, and the farmer’s wife had to sit down, at first she simply wouldn’t believe it was true, and then she tried to make the farmer see reason. ‘Do we have to slaughter a pig now in the middle of a hay harvest? Whatever for, Hans? Think of the flies! Where will you get the butcher from? Where would we do the smoking? And didn’t you say the last time that you’d never have any butchering done at home ever again, and certainly not by Überländer?’ she protested. And Grandma added: ‘She’s really just a little sow still. Very, very lean she is.’ The old woman spoke quietly under her breath, and in her agitation, she carried the dried crockery piece by piece from the dresser back to the draining board.
‘Überländer will do fine, we’ll just have to see that he doesn’t drink too much.’ Knu
chel was implacable. ‘That sow will be scalded and slaughtered! And by Sunday, what’s more! If I have to scrape the bristles myself!’
That very evening Knuchel asked his wife for the telephone num-ber of travelling butcher Überländer. He had to ask for it several times. When the farmer’s wife finally gave him a piece of paper and said: ‘Here it is, 22 59 67,’ then Knuchel scratched off the plaster that his wife had made him put on his throat, and said: ‘Won’t you do it? Just tell him we want him to do a bit of butchering. And I’ll pay him well!’
Fritz Überländer’s first reaction was to think it was a joke. ‘Is Hans pulling my leg?’ he asked the farmer’s wife, and the farmer himself had to come and speak, saying that no one was playing a prank or anything stupid like that, and that they’d be pleased if he could make it this week. He would see to it that it was worth his while, said Knuchel.
Fritz Überländer didn’t hesitate for long. He had a part-time job at the slaughterhouse, and he could get the day off, though he would have to work something out, and there was also the consideration that in high summer, the ham and the bacon needed double quantities of salt, Knuchel should bear that in mind. He would also require more water, and it would be pleasanter if they could do the scalding and butchering in the barn or the hayloft, somewhere with a bit of shade anyway. He was worried abut the flies, and well, it was funny, normally Knuchel would only think of butchering round about the middle of November. It had worked out well enough too, by the calendar!
‘Never mind that, Fritz. You can butcher and make sausages wherever you please, just come. At least this week the moon is still crescent,’ replied Knuchel.
8
LUIGI AND ÜBERLÄNDER pulled the first calf under the rack. Krummen held it tightly round the neck. The rope went round the left hindleg immediately above the knee. They had taken their knives off, all except for Pretty Boy Hügli, who was standing there, wondering whether to lend a hand or not.
—Shoot! yelled Krummen through the hall. Shoot! For God’s sake! We haven’t got all day! This isn’t charity work! Chrrrrchuarrrchoootuh! As though he was getting rid of his mucous membranes once and for all so as never to be troubled ever again by irritation or congestion of the throat, Krummen hawked up a mouth-filling snot projectile, and looped it into the waste container.
—Just coming! Kilchenmann fitted a cartridge into his firearm as he walked. Does there always have to be this mad rush the whole time, he protested under his breath, without looking at anyone.
Suspended from the rack hung a gleaming hook, and under the calf six hands grabbed six cold, dank forearms, the three men locked themselves round the wriggling limbs of the shaggy-coated Simmental. They squatted down like weightlifters, straightened their backs, the veins stood out on their necks, they held their breath, and Hup! the calf lost the ground under its feet, it squirmed, its neck shook, its tongue frothed, it kicked and screamed. Luigi grimaced, his face was pressed against its flank, Krummen’s jaw trembled, he couldn’t keep it up much longer, the looped rope passed over the hook, and Kilchenmann, as always, as he did a hundred times a day, took aim with his bolt-gun, fired, and paff! Six arms let go of the calf. Roast, stew, soup bones, 160 kilos or so, hung on the end of the rope, swung back and forth, tongue on the floor. Three drops of blood trickled from the hole in the skull, and rolled down over the white blaze. A whole world had turned upside down.
Überländer spat. Luigi cleaned his face, burying it in a dry patch on the right upper arm of his butcher’s blouse.
—Next! Krummen opened the sliding door of the waiting pen. If a certain gentleman would agree to participate, we might find it a little easier next time!
Luigi took the second calf by the tail, Überländer held the horns. It was an overfed animal with deformed legs and imbecilic eyes. It allowed itself to be towed into the hall without resisting, it was lifted and shot, and the smaller the animal, the faster is heartbeat. A high temperature, movement, and fear are factors that will raise the heart rate.
—That one! Krummen pointed to the third calf. It was smaller, and still had some of its navel cord, brown and half dry, hanging like a little rod under its belly. It had a curly hide. As the men in their rubber aprons came up to it, it dug its front feet in, and made a show of defiance, as though it was a game. It wanted to butt, to horn, to fight. Luigi laughed. Überländer gave it a tap on the back. It leaped up like a goat, and skipped into the calf slaughterhall. As it kept hopping up, it was easily coaxed under the hook on the rack, and was soon swinging on its rope.
—Right, I want the apprentice to stick! ordered Krummen. And what about him there? What’s he want now? Behind the hanged and shot calves, the man from the veterinary hospital had appeared. He stood with outstretched arms, rowing and balancing on the slightly sloping floor, on which the blood was only starting to flow. He had on a grey orderly’s coat, and had a way of walking that was like a tiptoe.
—I’d like a heart, please, one that’s still beating! He had a container like a thermos flask, with a liquid in it that would keep a freshly taken heart beating for several hours.
—Experiment! he said.
—What are you lot experimenting on? asked Überländer.
—Well, if only we knew, replied the man from the veterinary hospital.
—All right then, you stick, said Krummen to Überländer. We’ll get another crippled dog of a calf. You can take its heart then. The apprentice can stir blood.
Überländer strapped on his knives, the apprentice got a milk can and a stick. The others went out to get the fourth calf. It was stubborn and heavy. Hügli swore and grabbed it by the eyelid. Krummen punched the base of its tail. Hup, you bastard! he shouted.
The man from the veterinary hospital took a step back.
Kilchenmann was ready to shoot.
The longest knife from Überländer’s sheath was stuck in the throat of the first calf, and when bleeding an animal in a hanging position, check that no urine or spittle are allowed to mix with the blood in the collecting utensil. The blood must not come into contact with either the butcher’s hands or the hide of the animal, and: paff! The fourth calf convulsed. Its limbs jerked up to its body, and it swung back. A good shot for a wriggling, overweight animal. Kilchenmann clicked his firearm open to reload. That calf won’t blink, he said to the man from the veterinary hospital. Kilchenmann shoved the empty cartridge in his trouser pocket, and an animal is insufficiently stunned if it still blinks its eyelids when the eye is touched.
The apprentice stirred the blood of the first, already stuck calves. Überländer went up to the fourth calf, stuck it, and opened up its belly. He sliced through the hide and then, cutting from the inside to avoid damaging any of the organs, drove his blade down through the cartilaginous sternum. He opened the chest cavity as far as the base of the throat, then he felt for the heart and pulled it out between the two wings of the lungs, and there are three circulatory systems: the major circulation (body circulation); the minor circulation (lung circulation); and portal vein circulation; and: Here, it’s still beating, said Überländer, cupping the calf’s heart like a small animal in his hands for an instant, before dropping it into the open container.
The fifth calf was hanged and straightaway stuck. The blood ran into the can, the apprentice stirred and stirred, the fibrin curdled to fleecy lumps, and the major circulation requires far more energy than the minor. Therefore, the left heart also has a much more powerful musculature than the right, but the sixth calf put up a fight.
—Here, come out, you bastard! The calf bucked and pushed against the men. Are we going to have to carry the fucking cripple? No, the bugger’s far too heavy! But we’ve got to get him out! Not like that! Not with your fingers under his eyelids! Don’t let Dr Wyss catch you doing that! Krummen twisted the calf’s tail as though trying to break it. The calf sat down, bleated and screamed, pouring out froth and gut juice over hands, aprons and boots. Krummen had got himself covered with yellow slime by pushing its behind. The cal
f wouldn’t move.
—How did you get the bastard in here in the first place? asked Pretty Boy Hügli.
—I gave it my fingers to suck, replied the apprentice.
Pretty Boy Hügli shoved four fingers into the calf’s mouth and the whining stopped, the calf stood up, stretched its neck, took a step forward, then another, and it walked out of the waiting cage.
—Ha! See that! Hügli swelled his chest and beamed. Luigi was still holding his hands out away from his body. Yellow stuff dribbled from his fingers. See what he did! The pig! he said. He wouldn’t have minded having to drive the animal a bit more, shoving at it and pulling at its hide. Krummen likewise. He trotted along behind the calf in some disappointment. He would have given the bloody animal what for.
The men squatted down. The rope was fixed on the hindleg, necks stretched, hands gripped and fingers linked, and once more: Hup! and paff!
Straight after the shot, the man from the veterinary hospital said: Well, be seeing you. The container bearing the calf’s beating heart was hermetically sealed. The calf on the rack swung quivering back and forth. It had three golden stripes on its back. Krummen had wiped his shit-smeared hands clean on its hide. The sheaths were strapped on again. The man from the veterinary hospital hurried off, still tiptoeing.
*
The diagnosis might have been simply BUTCHER’S WOUND but Jacob Haueter had his own clumsiness, even his own folly to blame when he bled to death in ten minutes on the slaughterhouse floor. Karl Brugger had stood there looking like a real killer, and every three hours on average a working man is killed in the prosperous land. Industrial accidents are those that occur in the course of performing a task that is in the employer’s interest within or without the employer’s terrain. And in the construction of the Gotthard railway tunnel, 847 men more or less were slain or maimed. Jacob Haueter died with a knife in his belly. Karl Brugger too in a way. And the worker who was cutting a screw, and then switched the machine into reverse. A square-head bolt caught his overall which wrapped itself round the drive-shaft, and took the hapless man with it. He suffered a bruised skull, a cut stomach, and a deformed knee before his throat and chest were so tightly constricted that he suffocated. And busy fitting the wires back into the insulators on a newly replaced electricity mast, a fitter dropped into his safety harness and died, even though the cables had been switched off. Because at nightfall, a photo-electric cell automatically switches on the street-lighting which is carried on the same mast, and there the helper falls through the unfenced hole in the floor, there the foreman falls almost 12 metres onto the scaffolding that is just being erected, there a plasterer lies crushed at the foot of a fifteen-storey block, there the painter leans against an apparently secure barrier, and tumbles down the lift shaft with it, there a man walks into space off a 35-metre-high motorway viaduct, there the floorlayer’s apprentice tips off the end of a balcony with his barrow, and here one butcher sticks his knife into the belly of another. Human beings are rarely infected by foot-and-mouth disease. Individuals with a predisposition to it develop blisters on the lips, the tongue, inside of the mouth, and more rarely on hands, feet, arms and chest. The butcher who comes into contact with anthrax is risking his life. Careful: disinfect every wound with iodine. Wash hands, arms, neck and throat with alcohol. Boil contaminated equipment and clothing. Immediately contact your doctor at the slightest symptoms of ill health. As well as causing a temperature, anthrax leads to the formation of coal-like carbuncles on the skin, on the neck, throat, and face, on the arms, hands, lips, and in the lungs and guts. At first a small red patch forms, which itches, then hardens and fills with a brownish liquid. The pustule then bursts, and a blackish ulcer appears. And swine fever. And glanders. And rabies. And Bang’s disease is an occupational illness among butchers, vets and farmers. But Jacob Haueter died with a knife thrust stupidly into his belly. The symptoms of Bang’s disease or brucellosis in humans are fever, tiredness, pain in the liver, kidneys and nerves, headaches, perspiration, anaemia and a stooping walk. And swine pox. And tetanus. And erysipelas. And tuberculosis. For years, Jacob Haueter wore a protective metal guard under his apron when he worked. Not even the finest blade could have got through the wire mesh. His body was safe from the dangerous butcher’s cut, the fatal thrust to the groin. But boredom at work made him fool around. He played tricks. If someone came near him, he would try and give them a fright. He would pretend to slip and stick his knife into his stomach. Once he made Frau Spreussiger scream. Visitors too. And trainees. He would stand at his table, boning pieces of meat, and suddenly double up. First howling, then howling with laughter. Sometimes boy scouts came. Tidy little chaps in shorts and knee socks. They wanted hollow bones. They had little ornamented knives in leather sheaths. They wanted nice bones. To make tie rings out of. Jacob Haueter liked having the little fellows around, liked playing his tricks on them, as they stood and gawped at Haueter’s knife flashing in and out among the bones. A sudden Ouch! and a yell, and the little chaps went white as sheets. Once a whole school came on a visit. Students or sixth-formers. They’d all put on white coats over their clothes, and paper hats, and labels on their chests with their names on them. They followed the abattoir director around like lambs. Every machine was explained, praised or commented on: this is where the cow goes in, and here is where the sausages come out. What really held them was the pig-scraper. In one hour, believe it or not, it scrapes the bristles of sixty pigs. It wasn’t even Haueter who tried to grab the attention of the visitors with his silly trick. Jacob Haueter knew that on that day he wasn’t wearing his steel armour underneath his apron. But Brugger didn’t know, and he felt jealous of the machine that everyone was standing around watching, while no one noticed him, no one was paying any attention to his own skill: in just three and a half knife strokes, he would cut the heads off the pigs as they came out of the scraper. No one else can do that. After years of practice, he’s like a Japanese sword artist at it, he pulls his blade round the cheekbones, along the jaws and right through the neck. And he stuck his knife in Jacob Haueter’s belly. He wanted to put on an act, but this time Jacob Haueter didn’t even cry out. He bled to death, pathetically. Like a badly shot pig that they go ahead and stick, and accidents that don’t occur in the course of work carried out for the employer are non-industrial accidents.