Cow

by Beat Sterchi

  Something was bugging him again.

  A nagging dissatisfaction, a bad feeling. He knew it well enough, but it was vague, and Rötlisberger stood there helplessly as it came and went. Sometimes it seemed to him as though the whole world was hidden behind a veil of tripe steam. Oh God, I don’t know, I can’t say... yes, the boot pinches me somewhere, but where? If only I could talk about it properly. Get it out in the open! Talk like a book. Rötlisberger would have liked to be eloquent. His angry tirades were venomous all right, but they’d always been short, and they were still shorter now. He would have liked to be able to shout abuse at Bössiger all afternoon. And Krummen and the rest of them. One item after another! Hours and hours. Not draw breath, and well and truly scrape their tripes for them! If he’d had them, he would have oiled the words with spittle, savoured them on his tongue before aiming them and firing them off. He would have told them all how immeasurably he hated gym teachers and sergeant-majors and early risers. He would have explained why the mere thought of them brought him out in a rage. I hate champion wrestlers, I hate people from personnel, I hate Social Democrats, I hate taxpayers, I hate gun-runners, I hate committee members, I hate card players and church-goers and citizens and tripers, and I hate crack shots even more than livestock-dealers, and foremen even more than television newsreaders, and Sunday hunters even more than xenophobes, and promenaders even more than PTA secretaries and butchers even more than motorists, much more in fact, and all the other foreigners, how I hate them, how I hate them! Much much worse than that I hate the President of the USA!

  Rötlisberger would never have stopped, he would have gone on cursing them all for ever, and never once would he have had to say bastard, or layabout, or fool, or cretin or bonehead.

  But he was all too aware of it: in the slaughterhouse a fiery way of talking was no asset. If someone sounds off a bit, they’ll say right away, you’ve got a big mouth, haven’t you? Why do you talk so much? Are you a grumbler? There’s no point beefing on about it the whole time! We’re here to work!

  But even without the fine words he so badly wanted, Rötlisberger had found himself in hot water often enough.

  *

  Fritz Rötlisberger was born on 17 March 1906 on a smallholding in Wydenau. He had two brothers and a sister. Also on the farm were a farmhand, three Freiberg horses, a herd of twenty Simmental cows and several sheds full of other smaller animals. There were hardly any machines. Everyone had to help. Fritz Rötlisberger grew up working.

  In the village school there was a teacher whose favourite subjects were music and singing. She didn’t want the farmers’ children to grow up without beauty in their lives. Little Rötlisberger had a beautiful voice, and the teacher became especially fond of him. Your little Fritz can sing like a bird in the woods, she told his parents on the smallholding. The next time Father Rötlisberger went to market in the nearby town, he came back with a small accordion. The teacher can show you how and where to push, he said.

  When Rötlisberger was fifteen, he was apprenticed to the village butcher. The butcher’s shop was attached to an inn, and he wrecked his back hauling crates of beer. He was less keen on singing now, although he never missed choir practice, and still played in the village band. As well as the accordion, he had learned to play the drum.

  When he was called up, he applied to join a light regiment. He wanted to be in the back-up troops. Or the mountain infantry. He finally wanted a glimpse of the mountains he’d been singing about for the whole of his young life. But instead he’d been assigned to the supply column. There was a lot of singing in the cadet school as well. ‘I had a comrade’ was Rötlisberger’s favourite song. And finally he did get to see the mountains. He learned how to slaughter a lame horse on a mountain ledge, without a rope windlass and without a light. How to wrap the parts in the skin, how to get the individual parcels out of the gorge and to the next canteen. Less hazardous was the slaughtering of cows in the middle of a wood. There, simple pulleys could be rigged up between two trees. When, even before finishing cadet school, Rötlisberger applied to Master-butcher Hunziker, Meat & Sausages, Wholesale & Retail, he had a badge with two golden ears of corn on his uniform.

  Rötlisberger was employed as an independent butcher by Master Hunziker. Every week he slaughtered four pigs and a cow on his own, and every other week a calf as well. He made cervelats, bratwursts, smoked meats, bacon, several types of sausage and ham, and soup meat, on and off the bone. His back had been strengthened by the gymnastics he’d done at cadet school, and the only time Rötlisberger felt it was after doing his rounds. Twice a week, generally on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he took Master Hunziker’s army bicycle all over the highlands, going from farm to farm with a large wicker basket full of sausages strapped to his back.

  Rötlisberger was paid every fourth Saturday, from the wallet that Master Hunziker somewhat cumbersomely pulled from his back pocket. The wallet was pigskin, and it was as thick as a church hymn book. Well, payday’s come round again, Hunziker would say, and Rötlisberger blushed every time and stammered, Merci, Herr Hunziker, and the master said, Are you sure you don’t want to check it? Then Rötlisberger would count the four notes – a fifty and three tens – from one hand into the other, and say: That’s right.

  Hunziker’s butcher’s shop was in the upper village street in Mundigen, and Mundigen had a glee-club. A male voice choir, a yodelling club and a folk group belonged to it. Rötlisberger was a member. They sang in black shoes, linen trousers, a black velvet tunic with red piping, and starched, snow-white shirts. The men of Mundigen liked to sing about glacier-white milk and red sunsets, about curds and cheese. Before they struck up, they would put their hands in their trouser pockets, bend their backs, and paw the ground. For a few seconds, their shoes shuffled back and forth, as if they really were on the side of a mountain, looking for secure footing in a slippery cowshed or out on a woodslope felling trees.

  At one festival Rötlisberger met his future wife. She was the daughter of the station master at Mundigen. By then the railway had already introduced a fixed working week. Rötlisberger dreamed of a fifty-four-hour week. He liked it at Hunziker’s. The work had to be done, but how it was done was left up to him. But sometimes he thought that there was so much he could do, if he had an hour to himself after work...

  Then Rötlisberger joined the choir of the butchers’ lads in the nearby town. Now he sang in his butcher’s blouse and diagonally folded apron. But on occasions, when the song had been announced, and the singing was just starting, Rötlisberger would clench his right fist in his pocket. The station master had been able to get him a discount on his rail fare. He was often in town, and he saw things there that he would rather have sung about.

  Once, the butchers’ lads’ choir sang at a meeting of workers’ singing groups. They sang powerfully and well, about cows in the sunshine, and the inexhaustible quantities of butter and cream on the slopes. As ever, Rötlisberger stood in the middle of the front row. At the end of their rendition, there was tumultuous applause from the hall.

  But then along came the metal-workers, and their song was about steel and sweat, and the machines in factories that didn’t belong to them. It grew very quiet in the hall, and a few of the butchers’ lads who were still standing at the back of the stage started rolling up their sleeves. Their rosy faces shone with desire for a patriotic punch-up. The audience applauded. Only moderately, but loudly enough to drown out the whistles from the supporters of the butchers’ boys.

  But Rötlisberger liked the metal-workers’ song, and said so. He clinked glasses with one Max Gschwend, and that same day he became a Social Democrat. For the first time, he sang the party’s version of the butchers’ song, in the party choir. Rötlisberger heard from one or two more butchers’ lads, who like him didn’t feel they wanted to go on singing: ‘We men of the mountains are emp’rors and kings, in the early morn o’ the mountain!’ Together they became active supporters of the idea of a butchers’ association. They spoke about clearl
y defined tasks. About set working hours. They discussed ways of knocking out the animals that didn’t put the lives of the butchers at risk. Someone mentioned accident insurance. Someone else paid holidays.

  His following payday, after he had counted his four notes, Rötlisberger said: It’s right – but how about, well, maybe, you see I’ve been with you for three years now. Master Hunziker was astounded. What? Our butcher’s lad! he said. The son of a farmer! And he’s a lefty! I know three dozen good butchers who’d be glad to do your job for half of what you’re getting.

  With a bad report in his journeyman’s book, Rötlisberger had trouble finding work. Hunziker had written in black ink, in his florid hand: A good lad, but a malcontent. Rötlisberger had to postpone his wedding. His brother on the smallholding in Wydenau took him back, but unwillingly. Rötlisberger did all the work that was going, but he didn’t get so much as a plate of rösti without some caustic remark about Reds, and how they were always wanting something for nothing.

  At last he got a part-time job in a large slaughterhouse. He hated it there from the start. They worked in cellars that were damp and poorly lit. The chilling-rooms were so full that when Rötlisberger had to go in and get something from there, he had to crawl underneath the hanging carcasses on his hands and knees.

  As a part-time worker, Rötlisberger was liable to be given all kinds of things to do. He whitewashed walls, he sprayed bark-beetle poison, he carried whole trainloads of salt into the cellar. But most of the time he spent at the sink with a scrubbing brush in his hand. He washed sausage-meat canisters, for hour upon hour. Until that time, he hadn’t realized that the length of the day could be a punishment.

  Once he was told to sweep the smoking chimney. He had just done a thirteen-hour day. His back had got bad again. Rötlisberger ignored his orders. The head-butcher started yelling. He was a sergeant-major in the army, and proud of it. Hadn’t Rötlisberger learned to obey his superiors in the course of his own service? No, but he had been taught to defend himself, said Rötlisberger, and slapped the head butcher in the face.

  After that, things became difficult for Rötlisberger. His journeyman’s book was taken away from him. He could find no other satisfying work. At thirty, he was finished. Banishment to the tripery. It was the only work in his profession that was still open to him.

  He had become isolated. His marriage had gone ahead, but all his other contacts fell apart. Max Gschwend and the comrades were suddenly all backing machines. You wait, soon they’ll be doing all the work. In America they’ve got these, became some kind of refrain. And Rötlisberger watched his mates crawling into the works when the miracle machines broke down. They fancied themselves as mechanics, and they were proud of every oil stain on their butchers’ blouses. Rötlisberger laughed at the machine worshippers, who were happier with a monkey-wrench in their hands than a knife. He laughed at their urge to caress all the chrome parts of meat-cutters and sausage-fillers with a duster every other day.

  And as the by-product tripe came into his life, so his life became a by-product. Rötlisberger knew it. And he knew that a job as tucked away and unappealing as triping couldn’t give a man the dignity he needed in life. He would have to find the dignity for it himself.

  To begin with he just felt empty. He started smoking BRISSAGOS, and became introspective. His colleagues said of him: BRISSAGO right, talks left. Now and again he would get pissed. Then he realized it must be the routine. He was going about his duties slowly and unwillingly, like a slave. His days were not defined by the work he had achieved, but by the hours he had got through. The only possible solution open to him was the attempt to defeat time, and stay ahead of it. So he started his hectic regime in the tripe kitchen. Always a step ahead. Anything to avoid sagging back in his chains. Don’t be dragged! Pull! Using his only available freedom, he ended up working for two.

  His reign in the tripery was only interrupted once: by active duty. He spent over a thousand days with the canteen unit of a mountain brigade. There he exercised his profession to the full for the last time. There too, he sang again.

  After the War, he went back to the tripery. Rötlisberger put up no resistance. Just so long as they leave me in peace. He spent summer evenings and weekends on his allotment. He managed to wangle three sections for himself. The three best ones. They were behind the armaments factory, right on the edge of the forest.

  There he scratched the soil. He crawled over the beds and felt the earth under his fingernails. He rarely used tools. He worked with his bare hands whenever possible.

  He stole blood from the slaughterhouse for his roses. He bred them with large thorns. The flowers hardly mattered to him. He liked it when he got snagged while cutting them, when a thorn pricked his skin, not deeply, but deeply enough for him to feel it under the callouses on his hands.

  Rötlisberger also grew vegetables, lettuce, parsley, dill and tripe-weed. He made bunches of herbs. Outside the slaughterhouse, he never smoked. I’d be a fool. Sometimes he would sit in front of his garden shed with his nose in a bunch of parsley, as though it was an oxygen mask.

  He kept a dog and a dozen rabbits. The dog was a mongrel dachshund called Züsu. The rabbits all had cows’ names. The buck was called Bössiger. Rötlisberger sometimes had the impression that his scaled-down versions behaved like the real thing. They eat like cows, gawp like cows, they’re all as stupid as cows.

  He no longer sang. Least of all about the herds on the Alps. A couple of times his wife asked him, Why don’t you get out your accordion again? Oh, wouldn’t you rather listen to those birds singing in the woods, Rötlisberger would reply each time. But Frau Rötlisberger knew: all that soaking in hot water had made his fingers too thick and stiff to be able to play music.

  *

  —You’re maltreating the machines! shouted Lukas across the tripery. He stood on tiptoe on the flooded floor and laughed. He had rolled up his jeans. Stop it! You Luddite! I’ll haul you up before the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Machines!

  The chant ‘Do your own fucking crap!’ died down. God, it’s Lukas! The colander with which Rötlisberger had been banging away on the BOSSHARDT STEAM PRESSURE COOKER splashed into a basin. But the hissing of the valves kept up, and so did the gurgling and simmering inside the cauldrons. Rötlisberger waded over to Lukas. Ha, the apprentice was saying you’d be back today. I thought, after what happened yesterday, you wouldn’t... I’m surprised they let you in!

  —They didn’t. They banned me from the slaughterhouse, and the organization of slaughterhouses, their sanitary and police supervision, their opening, closing, slaughtering and public visiting hours, etc., are all subject to licence from the local authority, and Lukas said: The porter said I was an unauthorized person. So called. And unauthorized persons weren’t allowed on the property of the city slaughterhouse.

  —They slapped a ban on you? Well! Rötlisberger took the BRISSAGO out of his mouth, rubbed his chin against the collar of his butcher’s blouse, wiped his hands on his inside apron, held out his right hand to Lukas and said: Welcome!

  —Well, I’m persona non grata now in the slaughterhouse.

  —You don’t mean to say you came in over the rails, do you...?

  —Yes. Same way as the cows. I knocked on the window over there. But you can’t have heard me.

  —Now, Lukas, just watch yourself! I don’t want to punish you again. Hah! He prodded Lukas in the chest. They made a right mixed grill out of you there, God, I thought they were going to turn you into chipolatas! But they didn’t finish you off quite, did they?

  —No, I didn’t die, not quite. But I puked a whole drawerful in the vet’s office. God was I sick! And he still had blood all over his hair. That stuff got incredibly sticky when it dried, he said. What about meat? He wasn’t sure. Wouldn’t be eating any today or tomorrow. He wrinkled his nose. Doesn’t look too appetizing in here either. Is that your craft’s golden foundation? he asked, pointing at the brownish-grey pool on the floor.

  Rötlis
berger turned a crank to get the lift going. He had loosened the spindle with his percussion work and it now wanted tightening. And the day’s tripes were still only at the scalding stage. They should have been boiling long ago. Rötlisberger beckoned to Lukas, and shouted: Come nearer, you can’t hear yourself think! Now what about the camera? Where had he got it? He hadn’t left it behind, had he?

  Lukas opened his US ARMY jacket and pointed at a bulge under his jersey. My camera’s in there. Why, though? You didn’t want your picture taken yesterday.

  —That was yesterday! Today’s different. Or not? Today’s Tuesday 11 March. Get it out! Take a few snaps of me! Proper ones! Good ones! I want to see them when they’re done! Got it?

  —What if someone comes in?

  —So what! Get going! Hup! Fire away!

  The camera came out from under the jersey. Lukas photographed a Rötlisberger standing by his tripe boilers as proudly as a train-driver, holding onto his job as though he meant never to let it go. This is me, Fritz the tripes, yes, I know, I’m old, ah but if only you could get the smell into the pictures too!