by Beat Sterchi
As of now I’ll piss when I please, as of now I’ll determine the rhythm of my day. As of now I demand freedom and independence and not to be judged by others!
I stand panting by the fence.
I’ve been running.
The bandage on my hand is red.
There.
That attack! That lowered head! Those horns, that neck, that force. The bull on the wall. The giant bull. Smeared with blood on the abattoir wall.
This is my hand!
And even if no one notices it for a thousand years to come, I declare myself here and now to be a free sovereign territory!
No entry for unauthorized persons!
I’m not a fucking colony!
I appeal to the Geneva Convention!
No power on earth has the right to encroach on this territory and wreak devastation on it to suit its own ends! Not any more! Today is my Independence Day. Flags! Music! A speech: The consciousness of my class lies bleeding in the slaughterhouse of my soul.
Red drops on the pavement.
Kilchenmann didn’t bandage me up thickly enough after all.
The bus.
I run across the road.
Climb in at the back please!
I come away from the slaughter defeated. I’m a wounded and sentimental fucker of a cheerleader.
I sit down in the corner right at the back of the bus.
Now the doctor, quickly, and then the cinema.
*
Entrail-man Hans-Peter Buri left the machine working unattended. He forgot to wash with the pressure-hose. Slime ran down his apron, gut-slime and excrement. His face was encrusted with shit, and his eyes were red and inflamed. He hobbled quickly down the main passage like a startled moorhen, stopped briefly in front of the cattle slaughterhall, shook his head disbelievingly, and hurried on. His boots smacked on the tiles like webbed feet.
Buri burst into the abattoir office, didn’t knock, just stood there on the carpet in his filthy boots and dripping apron and didn’t know where to begin. He wheezed and choked, and pointed through the open door back down the passage.
—About, er, I thought, over there, er... there’s...
—What’s the matter? Bössiger came out from behind his desk as though to say. Why isn’t that Buri at his job, and what’s he doing coming in here and behaving like a choking calf?
—It’s about, well, it’s Krummen!
Buri stared so penetratingly at Frau Spreussiger sitting at her typewriter that she typed his words as though he’d just dictated them to her, and at the same time she stared, wide-eyed, at his encrusted face. Er, it’s Krummen! They’ve locked him up in the freezer-tunnel. You should come and look! And there’s all hell let loose in the pig hall too. The scraper is throwing the sows right over the razing-table onto the floor, and everything’s clogged up and all over the place. And I don’t know where to turn this machine off. Buri scratched his neck under the butcher’s blouse. It’s the cow, you see. They walked out, Hugentobler led them. Yes, they brought in a cow, with a bell on her! You should have a look, it’s very bad! he said, already half turning to go.
—I’ll be back in a minute, Bössiger told Frau Spreussiger, who only then relaxed her pelvis, and sat back in her chair. She looked at the pigshit-fouled carpet and automatically reached for her mirror: Frau Spreussiger was very pale.
In the cattle hall, Hugentobler, Gilgen, Ambrosio and Rötlisberger stood around the garlanded head of the Eringer cow, whom they had tethered to one of the iron rings in the floor.
Rötlisberger puffed at his BRISSAGO. His hands were in his pockets. Gilgen was in his shirt-sleeves, and had put on a rubber apron. The cow molar, with its tridentine root, hung from the silver chain against the white apron-bib. Ambrosio was stroking the cow’s neck, and saying softly: Sí, sí, ya estamos, no te preocupes. He had a ladle from the tripery under his arm.
All three of them were watching Hugentobler.
He had taken off his fur cap, and was sharpening a knife on an oiled whetstone he held in his hand. He checked the sharpness of the medium blade with his thumb, whetted it some more, and brushed it over his left forearm. When he had shaved a white streak in the dark hair, he looked up, his eyes straight. He pulled down one of the hoses that hung from the ceiling over every slaughter bay, rinsed the knife, and held it out to Gilgen. Here’s one that cuts! he said.
Gilgen was on the point of crossing himself with the freshly whetted knife when Bössiger walked up to him. Who told you to slaughter this cow in the middle of the afternoon? Where’s Krummen? What’s going on here? And you, Rötlisberger! You’re smoking! And so’s that Italian too!
—Well, this little cow here has to be slaughtered some time, drawled Rötlisberger, cigar in mouth, and Ambrosio shrugged his shoulders as if to say, well, what can you do, that’s the way it is.
—What? Bössiger looked from one face to another. What? None of the men flinched or lowered his glance. Bössiger scratched briskly at his ear, and stamped on the floor like an angry child. What’s going on here? Will someone tell me what’s going on?
—Well, if you want to find out, you’d better hang around and watch. One of the electric lifts came down behind Bössiger’s back, humming quietly. Rötlisberger had his thumb on the red button. Look, something’s just arrived for you! Gilgen swiftly put his knife down on the floor and grabbed Bössiger round both shoulders. A hook, quick! Hugentobler took one of the iron hooks for half carcasses off the rack, pulled up Bössiger’s white apron, worked the hook under his belt, and hung the other end on the hoist. Rötlisberger pressed the green button. The lift hummed again, it hitched up Bössiger’s trousers, the belt rode up to his chest, and then, kicking and struggling, it lifted him off the floor altogether. Police! Frau Spreussiger, call the police! he shouted, and not until he was hanging directly under the overhead rail, with hands and feet dangling helplessly, did Rötlisberger take his thumb off the green button and say: There, I think we can start now.
Without looking at Bössiger or the little group of his fellow-butchers that was assembling at the hall entrance, Gilgen again crossed himself with the whetted knife, took it to the throat of the garlanded cow, and drove it home.
The little Eringer’s head darted back but only a little. She stood there steadfastly, and so still, the bell only sounded once.
But the gleaming black skin on her forehead was thrown into confusion, she mooed feebly, and her eyes lightened as they looked at the men standing in front of her. The cow stood and bled, and it was as though she knew the long history of her kind, as though she knew that she was one of those mothers cheated of their rich white milk, who had offered their teats for thousands of years, and for thousands of years been devoured in recompense. It was as though she knew that her kind had always had to beat their hooves sore on the stoniest of fields, that for her kind there was no escaping the leather harness of the plough that kept this world alive. It was as though this cow knew about her ancestors, understood that she herself could only be a pale reflection of the mighty aurochs, who with his curved, arm-length horns had established a dominion that stretched from the bright woods and rich parkland of central Europe as far as the distant heart of China, an empire on which the sun seldom set, and that neither the treacherous Asian yak nor the sullen gaur had been able to take away from him. It was as though this little cow understood the scorn and contempt that had been levelled at her subjugated species since that time, but as though she could still just hear, from the very back of her skull, from where the extended marrow began, and the cerebellum, a vague rushing, a softened roar that filled her head as the sound of the sea fills the dry shell, and that could be none other than the echo of her ancestors’ hoofbeats as they thundered across the steppes, like storm clouds, in their great herds, and it was as though this rushing and roaring showed itself unmistakably in the humility in the eyes of the little cow. As if she were without horns and without strength, as if she were beyond body and beyond pain, and rid of the imperative of sel
f-defence, so did she stand there and bleed, and in the transport of animals to be slaughtered, in the slaughtering itself and in the preparations for it, all forms of cruelty are to be avoided. The slaughtering and bleeding of animals that are still conscious is forbidden under Article 25 of the Federal Constitution, and Ernest Gilgen, the giant butcher at the slaughterhouse at first just stood still, with his hand on the knife in the cow’s throat, aproned, and muscular and bold. The blood flowed over his hand and arm, and then he pulled the blade away, and threw it right across the slaughterhall at one of the arched windows. The steel crashed against the frosted glass and jangled on the granite floor.
With the ladle, Ambrosio caught the stream of blood as it poured out past the bell, from the throat of the still almost motionless cow. The blood foamed and swirled in the utensil, and filled it to the brim almost immediately. Ambrosio held it out to Rötlisberger. The old triper threw his BRISSAGO away, and took a deep draught. He drank reverently, and if an animal loses a great deal of blood, and is unable to replace it quickly enough, its life may be saved if it is injected with the blood of another animal. A donor has to be found whose blood is compatible with that of the recipient, and then Hugentobler took the ladle, and, no longer squinting, he set it to his lips, and then it went on to Ambrosio, and to Gilgen.
Gilgen poured the last of the blood so avidly down his throat that some of it ran down his face and body and stained his shirt. As soon as the ladle was empty he held it under the already failing flow.
The cow’s front legs now gave way, she swayed, her bell rang leadenly and the garland of gladioli fell from her horns as her brown-black body rolled over on its side. Her head still moved and her clouded, tired gaze lit up once more as though shocked by all the blood, then went out.
Gilgen held out the ladle in front of him, and with Ambrosio, Hugentobler and Rötlisberger took a step away from the dying cow. Above them on the lift, Bössiger had stopped shouting, and Überländer now approached them from the entrance. Come on! Give me a sup! he said. And behind him was Pretty Boy Hügli, and behind him were Fernando and Luigi, Huber and Hofer, Piccolo, Pasquale and Eusebio, and the ladle went from mouth to mouth.
Only Buri stayed away. He stood by the double door of the slaughterhall. In front of him, Frau Spreussiger was leaning against the wall, vomiting in sobbing spasms. Buri moved his head, as though talking to himself. He was about to leave the hall.
—Hey, Buri! Wait! Ambrosio went up to Buri with the ladle, cupping it in both hands, with the handle out to one side.
Buri looked at Ambrosio’s face, his hands, and the gap where the middle finger should have been. What nonsense! he said, and took the ladle, and drank.
—What about Fritz Krummen? asked Rötlisberger. Isn’t he going to get any?
—Wait, I’ll go and get him. Leaning forward as always, arms swinging, Hugentobler set off.
When he came back with the foreman, Krummen went round them all saying: JesusChristAllfuckingmighty. Then he wiped his hands on the seat of his pants, took the ladle and drank.
Krummen was quaking.
*
And in the slaughterhouse behind the high fence at the edge of the beautiful city the trailer-lorry from the glue factory had driven up and stopped between the tripery and the waiting enclosure. The loading crane hummed over the driver’s cab. A crateful of bones hovered over the trailer. The planks of the crate were greasy and stained brown with dried blood. Flies swarmed around the jumble of hooves and horns and bones.
The lorry driver released the hook from the crate, and swung the crane back round. Well, that’s it for today then, he said to Krähenbühl who had helped him loading
—Yes, that’s it, Weighmaster Krähenbühl replied. And now? Got a lot further to go today? he asked
—Oh no, look! Got a full load.
—But you’ll have to unload it today, won’t you?
—That’s true. What you load you have to unload, eh?
—That’s right, said Krähenbühl.
And, climbing onto the running board of the lorry cab, the glue factory driver asked: What about you? You knocking off as well?
—No, not me, said Weighmaster Krähenbühl. We’re still expecting a whole trainload of sausage-cows. I’ll have to weigh them. And then I have to go to the incinerator. Dr Wyss has been really strict lately. All the condemned material has to be destroyed right away.
—Ah well, said the driver, shutting the door. He turned the ignition and then stuck his head out of the window again. Hey! What are the police doing over there? he asked, and nodded in the direction of the administration building, where a police car had just driven up.
—Search me, said Krähenbühl. There’s always some bother with Italians not having documents, that kind of thing.
—Or maybe someone killed a calf, ha! said the driver, laughed, waved and drove off. Krähenbühl waved back and went off to pick up the cow which, having failed its lab test, had been stamped over and over in large blue letters INEDIBLE, and animals and parts that are found to be unfit for human consumption are to be buried in the knackery at a depth of no less than 1.25 metres, having been covered with quicklime (CaO). However, their destruction is achieved more quickly and reliably by incineration at 1000°C, and the cow with poisoned flesh that Krähenbühl pushed along the overhead rail and out of the back of the abattoir was Blösch.
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About the Authors
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About the Authors
BEAT STERCHI was born in Berne, Switzerland, in 1949. In 1970 he went to Canada to study English. He lived on the American continent for the next twelve years, travelling widely, teaching, and working. Cow, his first novel, was originally published in Switzerland in 1983. He now lives in a village in a remote part of Spain.
MICHAEL HOFMANN is a poet, essayist and translator. He has published four books of poems, and two collections of essays. He has translated many German authors, including Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Wolfgang Koeppen and Hans Fallada.
EILEEN BATTERSBY was born in California and holds a Master’s degree in English from University College Dublin. Her first book Second Readings: From Beckett to Black Beauty was published in 2009. Ordinary Dogs – A Story of Two Lives followed, as has a novel, Teethmarks on My Tongue.
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This is an Apollo book.
This edition first published in the UK by Head of Zeus Ltd in 2018
Originally published in German as Blösch in 1983
This English translation first published in 1988
Copyright © Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich, 1983
Translation copyright © Michael Hofmann, 1988
The moral right of Beat Sterchi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781786697462
ISBN (XTPB): 9781786699213
ISBN (E): 9781786697455
Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray
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