Cow

by Beat Sterchi

  It had been hit by a car on a mountain road, the poor calf, and its owner had demanded compensation. The driver had paid up, but had then insisted on being allowed to keep the animal. He had had its broken leg set in splints at a vet’s, and had arrived at home with a new playmate for his children in the boot of the car. Bloody stupid, muttered Schindler. A calf’s a calf! But the children, it said in the newspaper, had been thrilled. The good calf had grown, which didn’t surprise Schindler. It had eaten roughly three times as much as the dog, in particular porridge, milk powder and lawn grass, and all the children in the neighbourhood had been invited along to ride on its back, and many of them had fallen off, some fairly frequently, but all of them had still so, so loved the little calf.

  But the calf had gone on growing. They had bought hay from a farmer, and all of them had looked after it. But then, when it had become a young cow, and they had begun to think of having it slaughtered, they had felt unable to go ahead, on account of the children. What were the children to think of life? They couldn’t just murder their friend just like that, brutally in a slaughterhouse and Schindler couldn’t believe his eyes, he took off his spectacles, put them on again. A committee had been founded. Their slogan was: Our Lisi must not die. Then they had set up a charity to save the cow. Schindler coughed. Save the cow! He wheezed and spluttered. A charity to save the cow! His face shone, each pore swelled up singly, his mouth and nose were covered by a net of blue-green and whitish veins, and tears squeezed from his screwed-up eyes. He coughed violently. Save the cow! His body shook, his dung-encrusted boots slithered about under the chair. Save the cow! His voice scratched and wheezed, and from outside the screaming of the waiting pigs penetrated the little canteen, and grew louder.

  —Oh my goodness! Frau Bangerter pressed her hands to her mouth. Oh my goodness!

  Schindler gaped at the paper again through crooked glasses. The charity for the cow had succeeded in finding a place for her in a zoo, and saved her from the abattoir. Schindler read about how happy and relieved all the children felt. There had been a party. Schindler fought for breath. The first cow in a zoo. He got up, and stood there, wheezing and rocking. A charity for the cow! A Simmental cow in a zoo! His chest rose and fell like a bellows, the wheezing and scraping grew louder. Schindler gripped the edge of the table, and leaned forward as though to vomit. Reddish froth dripped from his mouth. Frau Bangerter thumped him on his broad back, tried to pull him down onto his chair, but the chair tipped over and fell, the table slid aside, crashed against the wall, the coffee glass smashed, and the pigs’ screaming grew louder.

  —Oh my goodness! wailed Frau Bangerter, her hands clutching her hair. Stop it! She tugged at Schindler’s smock. Sit down! But the dealer stood up and gasping for breath, ripped at the blue cloth across his chest. He stuck his tongue out, his breath whistled, his glasses slipped down in front of his mouth. When his legs slid away from him, Frau Bangerter caught him, for a second he was in her arms, then he slipped further, onto the shards on the floor. He rattled very quietly. Trembling and pale, Frau Bangerter stood beside the massive body.

  Ernest Gilgen stood in the doorway of the canteen.

  —Oh my goodness! sobbed Frau Bangerter.

  —It’s the blood, said Gilgen.

  *

  Eleven forty-five.

  Standing.

  Standing still.

  Leaning over the table, while time stands still.

  Will you stop stirring at that damned blood. Go to offal! Right now!

  Krummen can only yell.

  I trim pancreases: snip away veins and fat and membranes from the valuable tissue.

  Fifteen minutes to go.

  Till I can take my boots off.

  Lie down. Stretch out.

  I’m not hungry.

  Can’t see a clock from here.

  That’s where the new gut-cleaning machine is going to go. They were just breaking open the chest in the corridor a while ago.

  The monotony here at this table has been a hundred times worse in the past.

  Thoughts.

  Everything in my head gets smashed straightaway. Like in a mincing machine.

  Mustn’t cut myself.

  All day, alone with a knife.

  And the students yesterday, they had a printing-press hidden away. It was just like in the pictures, in a basement room, through a door that was concealed by a bookshelf. At the bottom of a creaky flight of stairs.

  That’s where they printed their pamphlets.

  And they had a dark-room as well.

  But so much light in the apartment itself. Big windows everywhere. Newspapers lying around. Masses of them. And open books, and books with strips of paper in them, marking the place. On the walls, posters of Karl Marx and Engels and Lenin and Ho Chi Minh.

  A bottle of Chianti on the kitchen table.

  I wanted to tell them about monotony.

  Monotony is the worst part of it.

  I couldn’t make them understand it.

  Why else would they be racing each other again in the calf hall, if not to escape the monotony?

  But that doesn’t interest the students.

  Someone should try and take a picture of that!

  It’s in your throat. Your gut. A void that swallows up everything. Nothing hangs together any more. You don’t know anything. Don’t know what you’re doing, don’t know what you want, nothing.

  Trapped.

  It hurts.

  In your throat. All over.

  Your head feels muzzy, but the time is so clear.

  So dead.

  It’s impossible to describe it properly, I said. You couldn’t keep listening to the same thing over and over again all day long. You couldn’t keep listening to the same thing over and over again all day long. You couldn’t keep listening to the same thing over and over again all day long. You couldn’t keep listening to the same thing over and over again all day long. You couldn’t keep listening to the same thing over and over again all day long. You couldn’t keep listening to the same thing over and over again all day long. You couldn’t keep listening...

  They don’t get it.

  For them, alienation is something different.

  There goes Buri.

  The way he limps.

  Have you got the time?

  He wipes his hands on his trousers and pulls his watch out of his trouser pocket.

  He holds it up to my face. It’s a fine OMEGA.

  A special present from the company.

  Gold.

  Because I’ve been here twenty-five years.

  It’s nearly twelve.

  Buri puts his watch away again.

  If you listen to those friends of Lukas’.

  They make us out to be heroes, us here in the slaughterhouse.

  Maybe we should all eat testicles.

  And bone marrow.

  Fried in butter.

  A man should be able to face his fellows without having to turn his cap in his hands obsequiously.

  And there’s no point in withdrawing to a private underground.

  My world: cows, guts and glands.

  And in my head, movie images.

  *

  And the second hand wriggles down the right-hand side, takes the bottom curve, turns into the final straight, and click! Hour hand and minute hand are both vertical, and it’s twelve o’clock, noon, lunch hour! Don’t shout, we’re only halfway there, and after hours of cows, hands dip into buckets and human hide is washed, and out of slaughterhalls and workrooms come the slaughtermen, the tripers and gutters and foreign workers, it’s gone quiet, the compressors are silent, only the ventilators continue to hum, the hush of noon, listen, can you hear the doves cooing up on the glass roof? Well? You, standing in the doorway like a great ox, let me by! Well? How does the shit get on the roof? The cow, she dumps it in a pail, and flicks it up there with her tail. God Almighty! That was some morning, someone ought to write it all down, write it in blood, but I’m hungry, shove o
ver Piccolo, let me in, I always sit here, and you keep your regular place, even in the dining hall, and Rötlisberger’s in a hurry, he wants to dress his rabbits in his lunch hour, and Huber and Hofer open their mess-tins hot out of the warming oven: potatoes, noodles, sauerkraut and what have you got with it? Escaped the axe, beset anew, tied, thrown in water, hanged too – what suffers all the tortures of the damned, yet still finds itself much in demand? And what are you eating today? Steam rises from opened canteens, beer next to them, all the bottles replenished, thirst, thirst, thirst in butchers’ throats, haven’t we sweated? Cattle are a battle, lift arms, cheers! aim, fire, ah, that’s better, and foam dribbles down chins, lips smack, backs of hands wipe, a cow would envy your capacity, erps, belching competition, and now go, holes open, greed, forks, spoons digging, bread broken, fingers tamp, stuff bulging cheeks, gulping throats, Adam’s apples yoyo, shoulders aid swallowing motions, and what have you got over there? Pork chops, want a bit? Not on your life! No pork, the doctor told Schindler, it’s very bad for you! Oh, but who was ever killed by a pork chop! Haven’t you heard, Schindler suffered a stroke? What? Where? In the canteen, with Rösi... You see, it’s schnapps! Fritz Schindler? Yes, collapsed, apparently, and where is he now? In the meat-inspection office, with Dr Wyss. They’ve called an ambulance. Well, what can you expect if someone drinks spirits first thing in the morning! Must do something for your health, he always said. Take a glass of potato brandy with your rösti in the morning, it’ll warm you up and help the digestion, now he’s got his comeuppance. What did Bössiger tear him off a strip for? They don’t need him any more, the two or three calves he brings in, and Foreman Krummen through a throatful of dough: Eat! If you don’t eat... he gulps, swallows... you won’t be able to work, and it tickles, shut up Krummen, you slave-driver! Only one of them thinks it, and how the calf hair itches your neck! Some scratch, others don’t, insensitive skin, beer swills everything down, but if you always tank up like a cow... Überländer wipes his face with his sleeve, he’s got dark sweat stains under the arms of his butcher’s blouse: Now leave the lad alone! But that little pussy-cat of a cow knocked him off his feet! He needs to eat more! Do you have to start too? Oh leave him, the cows that low the most give the least milk, and that’s filled the hole for the moment anyway, and a few words are heard among the chomping and swilling, heads are lifted, and moomoomoo calls the cow, we give her lots of fodder, she gives us milk and budder, and silky-smooth Hügli lights up a MARLBORO: Who really knows what he did to that cow? Say, where did you grab her to get her so excited? But oh, I have oh-nly myself to blame, said the cow, when she had to cart her own dung out into the fields. Buri’s plate is scraped, Hofer’s army spoon licked clean, hand on turn and: gerps! So the spindly thing threw him? Yes, one of those, all veins and hamstrings, nothing up top, no meat on her rump, bone for thighs! A skinny thing like Spreussiger, and if you plough with young oxen, you’ll drive a crooked furrow, ergh, please! Goddamn it! Krummenmutter: I had to catch her myself, that cow, if the lad won’t eat anything, thecowrantillshefelloveronherear! Till-she-found-cow-clover! Ah, Spreussiger, Huber laughs, Hofer laughs. And for every workplace a soupplace, smokeplace, swearplace, fartplace, and behind the eatplace the drinkplace, the cardplace, the shitplace, the changingplace, and even for the pigs screaming through their baconfat throats a waitingplace, but Frau Spreussiger, she’s one that got away, eh Hügli? What she needs is a real sperm technician, ha apprentice? And an old cow’s rather apt to forget, she isn’t still a young calf yet, yes, a sperm technician, one of those who goes from farm to farm, or a bull, what she needs is a bull! And beware the front of the bull, the rear of a horse, and the milker on every side! You’d better start eating testicles too, Hügli! Eh! Eat bollocks! And Buri stretches his back and groans: The blacks, the blacks in Chicago, they always used to eat testicles. Never raw though! What a bastard! Eating raw testicles. And where’s Hugentobler? Didn’t anyone call him? A Franggesta eatta inna goolroom. I told you to call him for Christ’s sake! Huber laughs: And bring Spreussiger along too, for Hügli, and Hofer chips in: But she’s just being serviced in the pen at the back. Off you go now, lad! See how it’s done. Oh, stop it! He’s a big Neubau... a big boy now! Did you know that where Spreussiger comes from, cows are a protected species? No, why’s that? Because they can’t tell them from the women. And did you know why the farmers over there have got such long arms? It’s so they can kiss their cows while milking, but you know I’ll bet Spreussiger rattles in bed! Like a ghost, a skeleton! But why does the farmer hang a bell round the cow’s neck? Hugentobler’s deaf, he’s got the hearing of an artillery man. Fetch him, for Christ’s sake! Now... And what’s the matter with you? The lad’s not hungry, and another laugh between mouthfuls of beer, the farmer made his cows so happy, gave them all a little tranny, and Piccolo keeps missing the fly on the wall, rats, missed it again! Luigi? Fernando? Game of cards? Ambrosio’s missing, and I saw him at the fair on Sunday, eh Luigi? We had a beer together. Has he got a woman! Not one of those cadaver cows, she’s got a bit of veal on her. And what are those dagos doing at the fair? Eh, Buri? The place was swarming with Eyeties, half the beer tent was speaking Italian. Ha well, if they all get to bring their wives over! And a dozen kids apiece! Soon it won’t be any fun putting on your Sunday best any more. You go out for a walk, and it’s wall to wall foreigners! Effing dagos! But they’ve got the biggest cows, that’s true: near Milan, Chianina, they’re called! Well, just goes to show, the stupidest farmers grow the biggest spuds, and it’s the littlest runts who have the biggest cows! What have you got against Eyeties? But it’s true! Huber sniggers, Hofer sniggers, of course he’s got a good-looking wife, he was buying her elder week after week from the cheap-meat department, but it didn’t do much for her measurements, you should eat a few more brains yourself, you mutton-head, and bollocks and pizzle, but he’s right, it’s getting to be as bad as it was with the blacks in Chicago, those Negro bastards, you know they employed one of those chimneysweeps here once. What? Here? That was an Arab! He looked black enough, and in Chicago when the butchers went out on strike, then they started taking on blacks at SWIFT & CO., but in the bacon room, where everything was white, the walls, the lighting, the tables, where they show the visitors around, they didn’t let any niggers in there, no black hands on their white fat! And they washed the hands of the black women every hour with detergent, and checked their fingernails before every shift. And Rötlisberger holds out his empty water bottle: Hey, Luigi, will you fill this up with blood for me, you know, for my garden? And have you heard this one? The farmer’s son is out walking with his sweetheart in his father’s meadow, and just at that moment the bull mounts a cow. Oh, he says, that’s what I feel like doing now, and she, quite unabashed: Well, what’s keeping you, they’re all your cows aren’t they? Ah, that’s like the woman at the agricultural show. They had a fine bull there, and the woman asked the lad who was minding him, how often he would, you know, in a week. Every day, the boy said, and then she looks her husband up and down, you know, like that, and then the lad says: But with a different cow every day! And the neighbour’s wife? Rötlisberger snaps his army knife shut. The neighbour’s wife comes along complaining, and says, your boy, your boy, he just called me a cow! Now, says his mother, the little rascal, and I’m always telling him not to judge people by their appearance, and mouths grin round cigarettes, and little Hansli? Yes, little Hansli’s late for school one day, and the teacher’s cross with him, and Hansli says: I’m sorry, miss, I had to lead the bull to the cow, and the teacher says: But couldn’t your father have done that? Yes, I suppose he could, says Hansli, but not half as well as the bull! See! Till he gets to feel like the bull in Cuba, oh you mean the bull that came in from the cold? Yes, tell us about him. Oh, they’d imported this expensive bull, enormous great creature. But as soon as he got here, couldn’t do it. Didn’t seem to fancy any of their cows, just stood there and did nothing. Well? And did they have to send him back? Not at all! One Cuban had the bri
ght idea of installing an air-conditioner in his stall, and as soon as it had got a bit cooler, he was all over the lot of them! Have you heard the one about the two cows? It’s true, that one about the bull, isn’t it? And you? Haven’t you? Come on, tell it, what are you waiting for! Well, these two cows meet up again at the end of the summer, and one of them’s contented, and the other isn’t, and who are these men in unbuttoned butchers’ tunics, behind layers of sweat and apron? Who will count the wounds and tell the scars of those that crudely clashed here? Get your milker’s mitts off my beer! Ee, what’s that? Coffee, want some? Faugh! Is it medicinal? External use only? It’s just like a cat crapped in it! Oh shut it! Would I fancy going to a funeral today, eh? To whose? To yours, but do you know how many of them it takes, where Spreussiger hails from? How many to milk, you mean? Oh, that one’s ancient! That’s right, twenty-four! One on each teat, and twenty to lift the cow up and down! Hey Buri, why have so many of the pigs got wooden legs over there? Come on, Buri! And Buri turns scarlet, and the room falls silent. Go on, Buri! Come on, leave him alone! Because they didn’t want to slaughter a whole pig each time they ate trotters, and heads lean forward and peer at Buri, eh Buri! Hofer hoots, Huber laughs, Hügli sprays coffee out of his mouth, and here’s one for you Überländer! What does the cow say when she gets artificial insemination for the first time? Well, it won’t be a whole hell of a lot, because cows don’t talk, they moo... That’s what you think, up in Simmental, in the wilds, they had talking cows! Rötlisberger takes the BRISSAGO out of his mouth, Huber gets up: yeah, probably the same shit as you talk, only not quite so much! Now listen! The farmer didn’t believe it either, so he went and hid himself up in the hayloft on top of the cowshed, this was on Christmas Eve, and he’s lying up there, and then suddenly this one cow says to the other, she’d have to be yoked up in three days because she’d be taking the farmer down to the churchyard, feet first. When he heard that, our old Oberland chappie was out of the loft like a streak of lightning, ran straight out into the night, and fell over the edge of a precipice! And by God, three days later, there was that cow taking him down to the churchyard feet first! Huber gets up, Hofer’s away: load of twaddle. Krummen turns over a sports page. Garbage. And popular prose blossoms forth: female mortality no fatality, cows’ doom spells instant ruin! And three butchers went out hunting together, and two of them tell the third one to stay down at the bottom, and drive the game up towards them at the top, but he comes up himself, and bang! he cops one. In the hospital the doctor says, that bullet in his brain, we can remove that and repair the damage, but why did you have to take out his heart, lungs and stomach? Oh you’re crazy, so are you! Well, look at the cow, she’s got a long face, she gets to see a bull once a year, and you just laugh! Yes old Fritz Rötlisberger still believes in ghosts, and tell me, why has a milking stool only got one leg? And why oh why do cows wear bells? Poor cows! It’s to keep the lonesome cowherd from mounting them! Yes, and don’t they love their cows! The poor things, get given green grass to eat, and still have to make white milk out of it, you stop helping yourself to my beer! That bottle’s mine! But in Ireland there was a cow who gave as much milk as you wanted, she filled every pail! Till this old witch came along, and shoved a sieve under her. And at that the cow ran off, to somewhere where they hadn’t heard about her, and they went and slaughtered her! You know, Fritz, there’s a whole miracle race of them in Holland: only one teat gives full cream milk, but the others are low fat, milky coffee, and cream! They milk into four separate pails over there! And if you twist her tail, I suppose the cream comes out whipped, eh? Like the cows in America, they get gelatine and strawberry flavouring with their grass, and, bingo, you get a pailful of ice cream! Hey Buri! America! Chicago! Why’s he turned as red as a blood pudding again? He sowed his wild oats in America, that’s why! Eh, Buri, the cows were so big, you had to milk them into lakes, and the cheesers rowed around them in little boats, skimming off the cream! Ah Chicago! That was the real thing, eh! Hey, Überländer, isn’t that where they have the cows with such long horns, you blow into them at Easter and they don’t sound till Whitsun? Well, who was it who went there? Was it you or me? Of course you went there, you worked in Frau Baumann’s jam-mine, didn’t you! And he smelted straw hats in the Wild West, eh Buri! Chicago! God what a bunch of idiots you are! How can you have any idea of what it is to think generously, on a real American scale! To guard against fire, he went around the fat-boiler at SWIFT & CO. in a submarine, and Buri stares at the wall, raises an arm, puts out his hand, speaks: As far as the eye can see, as far as the horizon, oxen, nothing but oxen, back by back, one ox next to another, a whole sea of oxen. The way the smell goes up your nostrils, and the bellowing, and the drovers are bellowing too, and they’ve got spurs on their boots, and whips, and Hügli laughs: You must get plenty of dung from a sea of oxen, eh Buri! And Buri’s eyes narrow, his outstretched hand trembles. And the roads, straight as an arrow, all of them straight as an arrow, unending, mile on mile, and if you... Oh, what a lot of arseholes you are, and Buri gets up, tears on his cheeks, and cows sitting around in milk bars, doesn’t do the farmer much good, and over here we don’t slaughter any more than we can salt, and Buri goes, and hey what’s happening today, are we going to get brought up to strength? Seeing as Gilgen, and Ambrosio... Does each one always have to do the work of two? Hügli smoothes his hair, it’s not as though we were paid for it, and now that Fernando’s going to the tripery, and it isn’t till a cow’s lost her tail that she realizes what it was worth to her, and where’s it all going to end? At the door of the eating room, Krummen turns round: It’s nothing to do with me! And one knife whets the other, and we can ask, though, can’t we? Just do your own work properly! Not so much standing around, chewing the fat, not so many fag-breaks in the bog! Oh don’t start that! You graft away, and then... Come on, let’s go to the canteen! They’ll send in some more Italians. Trainees. Stooges. Oh, shut up! Who’s got more to do than before? That’s putting the cart before the horse, that is. They bring them in from all kinds of places, and what we need are trained butchers, professionals, and Überländer goes. That Rötlisberger is cutting his nose to spite his face. But why do the Italians come? We’re just lucky enough to live in a wealthy country, yes by God, and why wouldn’t a country be wealthy on the work we do, hang on, I’ll come too, what about you? Do you want to slaughter rabbits? And why oh why does the farmer hang bells? And one goes, and another, and the apprentice goes, and the calf follows the coo, and the coo goes...