“If only it were true and Peti would want me…”
As he lay on the fodder in the hayloft, Peti would suddenly recall the girls’ laughter and what Zar’s sister had said:
“Get yourself a wife, good-for-nothing.”
He would then wander past the village households in his mind, trying to remember all the girls. For a moment he thought it a good idea to have a wife so that when he came home in the evenings there would be someone there to cook a warm meal and make his bed. But he couldn’t find a suitable girl. No one would ever give him a girl. There were many more men in the village who were much wealthier and better off than him.
His body was boiling hot and felt itchy. Sleepily, he would scratch all over his body with his sharp nails, like an ox does when it rubs its neck against a large rock or trunk. And then he would remember the crippled old girl. But, like a honeybee, his thoughts would fly to another flower and breathe a new fragrance.
And that’s how he stayed.
Years passed, and with the years, his youth passed. Like autumn grass, his secret thoughts of finding a wife and building a home dried out.
* * *
Spring was on its way. The snow was beginning to melt and its water was slowly dripping into narrow brooklets. The spring sun softly warmed up the ground, and the villagers who were tired of the long winter nights basked in the sun, sat under walls on pieces of dry log, and talked with each other.
Spring was on its way, and the cattle in the barns were becoming increasingly more irritated by the heat and showed signs of restlessness, looking impatiently at the door and lowing at the top of their lungs. The two-year-old female calves were mad, and the three-year-old male calves capered in the snow and locked horns with each other as they were driven along the fresh water. The bulls were fat with meaty legs. They hunted for pleasant fragrances in the warm air with their wet nostrils, lowing and digging their hooves in the half-melted, hard ground.
Peti too was restless.
The heat was also bothering him. His body itched more and he looked toward Mount Ayu more frequently. The mountain was his sign. The spring sun caused the snow on Mount Ayu to melt and, as a result, to bare its rocky slopes.
Sometimes he would go to the pasture by the village shoveling snow aside with his feet to observe how the green grass was starting to grow in the sun like stubble does into a beard.
Peti felt a sort of vibrant bliss at the beginning of spring. Like the brooklets that were formed from the melting snow, the blood in his veins seethed quicker, and he laughed, gurgling at the same time. He was no different than a horse neighing in delight when its stable is replenished with golden barley.
Peti was preparing for the spring. He sewed his moccasins, tightened the straps on his bag, and carried his worn-out rug on his shoulders to lay in the sun.
“Peti has laid his rug in the sun,” the villagers would say. That was a sign that the cattle were going to be driven to the pasture in a matter of days.
Like a caring mother, Peti would walk from barn to barn admonishing the owners to give their cows more to eat or to keep the barn warm. If someone wanted to know when a calf was to be born, they would ask Peti when the cow was last seen with a bull.
Peti knew which bull was the father of which calf and which cow gives difficult births. Whenever a cow was giving birth, Peti had to be there to help the cow’s owner.
And when the slimy calf would barely be able to open its wet eyes, it was Peti who massaged its nose and lips or caressed the cow.
“The cow was in much pain… But, look here! It’s that red bull’s calf.”
After the cow had given birth, it was usual for the owner to give Peti something in return for his services, such as an old coat, a dish with pudding, or a promise for a bushel of wheat for the threshing floor. Occasionally, a cow would give birth on the pasture. Peti would carry the calf home on his shoulders as he pulled the cattle along to the village. On days like these, the smile on Peti’s face was infinite. He knew that he was carrying a blessing on his shoulders and joy for the owner.
A few days before driving the cattle to the pasture, Peti warned the owners to be prepared. He gave them as much news as possible the first few days after returning to the village. The snow was melting and underneath it a skeleton was exposed. Peti approached, looked, and concluded that it was a sheep that a wolf had taken from the village.
The days were getting warmer, the grass was growing and flowers were blooming: blue, yellow, red. A thousand beetles and butterflies circled the air, birds built nests in the sweetbrier bush, and the cattle grazed the tasty grass with puffs and pants.
Spring always made Peti happy. Having looked after the cattle on the same pasture and mountain for so many years, Peti had become so familiar with the herbs and flowers that he could flawlessly point out which flower blooms early and which herb serves as a remedy against pain.
Sometimes, when he caught sight of a beautiful beetle or a colorful butterfly, or when he watched how ants worked on rebuilding their last year’s nest, Peti would shake his head and say to himself:
“Bless you, good Lord, who has created such wonderful things…”
* * *
And then one summer a plague spread among the cattle. One of the cows began to trail behind the rest of the herd on its morning drives to the pasture. She would stand still in the middle of the road and low at the top of her lungs. Peti got angry and hit her with his crook once, but the cow didn’t even make it to the foot of the mountain.
Peti watched how her legs shook and how she collapsed, lowing loudly, and did not get up again. Pus, mixed with blood, ran out of her nostrils. Her belly was bloated, and the sick cow, whose eyes showed grief, looked at Peti.
Peti was taken aback.
“What has happened to her? She wasn’t given any medicago, was she?”
He took out his knife to draw blood, cutting a bit of the cow’s earlobe. The cow writhed her head in pain, attempted to get up, but her legs shook too much. The warm blood flowed onto the grass, but when the blood coagulated, the cow did not feel any better.
Peti went to a nearby source to drink some water and then pick up the lying cow in the valley. But when he returned, the cow had already died. The bloody pus had run out of her nose, her tongue was blue, her gums were cold, and her belly was bloated like a stretched out drum.
Only then did Peti realize that this was “cattle plague.” That evening no one in the village talked about anything else but that. There was sadness on everyone’s face—people asked each other where the plague had come from, and instantly they grabbed their oil lamps and went into the barns to examine their livestock.
Peti felt as though someone had poured cold water on his head. He had lost himself and was confused. A thousand thoughts ran through his head, including why the plague had come.
Zar’s sister added fuel to the fire by saying:
“Peti, the plague was sent from above. A misfortune is going to befall the village.”
Peti thought about the “misfortune,” but he was actually more afraid of the veterinarian who had come to the village once years before during the last cattle plague.
Two more cows died the next day. News arrived that cows had also died in a neighboring village. In the evening, the messenger announced from the rooftops that the cattle doctor was to come to the village the next day.
Peti was standing with his back against the barn, leaning on his crook, and listening to the messenger. He remembered Zar’s sister’s words:
“A misfortune is going to befall the village, Peti.”
That evening Peti did not even put a small piece of bread in his mouth. He wrapped himself in his rug and lay down on the hay. The next morning Peti was like a lost soul. His daily routine had been disrupted by the sudden outbreak of the plague. He had only very rarely been in the village at that hour and he was feeling out of place. He walked from barn to barn, examining the livestock. The tied-up cattle were lowing in front of the barn
for fresh grass. And each time the cattle lowed, Peti felt a pang in his heart.
It was noon when the veterinarian got to the village with two watchmen. Peti saw him sitting on a horse wearing glistening spectacles and a bright cockade on his white hat.
Peti saw him and recognized him.
The cattle were driven higher up in the village to a spacious threshing floor and tied to stakes that had been hammered into the floor in preparation. The cattle were bothered by the heat and lowed for the fresh grass on the mountain. The cow owners stood by their cows with lowered heads and hands on their hearts.
The veterinarian arrived and ordered the watchmen to search the barns for hidden livestock. The watchmen followed orders and entered the barns sniffing like hunting dogs.
One of the watchmen, who had a ten-inch long mouth, saw a fat cock pecking the dirty ground with its claws as he opened the door of one of the barns. The watchman drooled from his ten-inch long mouth when he saw the cock and ripped off one of its wings with a piece of wood. He grabbed the bleeding cock and shoved it into his woolen sack.
The landlord called after him, pleaded with him, but the watchman threatened to tell the veterinarian that the landlord had hidden his livestock in another village and he shook his terrifying fist under the landlord’s nose.
In another barn a cow was found hidden behind large baskets of fodder. It was the only cow the poor household owned and it had been hidden in the dark corner of the barn for fear of the veterinarian.
The entire village had gathered inside the threshing floor where the cattle had been tied up.
After the watchmen returned with the remaining cows they had fetched from the barns, the veterinarian said something or other to the villagers as he looked at them from behind his glasses with anger burning in his eyes and wagged his finger.
“He’s angry with those who have hidden livestock,” one of the villagers said.
And then the inspection, for which the villagers had been waiting impatiently, started. There was a feeling of doubt in the hearts of each one of them. Would their cow turn out to be sick? Time seemed to pass very slowly under those circumstances.
The veterinarian started at the end of the row. He approached each cow, looked at its tongue, its eyes, under its tail, then signaled the watchmen to separate the healthy from the diseased.
Peti was also present. He was standing at a distance, watching the veterinarian, the cows, and the villagers. No one paid attention to him in the bustle and it crossed no one’s mind that Peti’s heart pounded every time the veterinarian approached a cow and spent more time inspecting it than the others.
The inspection ended near the end of the evening. Twelve cows were declared sick. The only way to prevent the disease from spreading further was to cremate the plagued cows.
The villagers dug large holes in the ground and the watchmen urged them to hurry.
Many people were crying. Calves were lowing in courtyards, and so were cows. Those who were hastily digging deep holes with spades and picks felt the same amount of pain in their hearts.
Only the veterinarian was calm: this was routine business for him.
When the holes were dug, the sick cows were driven toward them. The watchman with the ten-inch long mouth used the blunt side of an axe to beat the brows of the animals. The animals winced in indescribable pain, lowed, and rolled into the hole.
Next, black petrol was poured onto the cows and trusses of hay were thrown into the hole. Finally, both petrol and hay were ignited. Together with the dark smoke of the fire the smell of fat rose into the air, and the wind blew the smell of petrol and scorched meat far away toward the mountains where the night dew settled on grass.
The calves in the courtyards lowed all through the night, and the village fell into mourning.
Peti, speechless and heartbroken, was standing in front of the fire, remembering the black cow whose udders were always hanging and whose fat milk dripped on its way home from the pasture.
When the fire died down, Peti returned to the village depressed. He wrapped himself up in his rug and lay on the old dry hay.
The orphaned calves continued to low, and Peti, with the old hay under his head, lay in his worn-out rug and cried like a helpless child.
* * *
The next morning Peti could not bring himself to look at the threshing floor, so he kept his eyes fixed on the ground as he passed it while driving the cattle. Zar’s sister was waiting by the source with a cow to be added to the herd. Peti did not reprove her as he normally would have:
“Poor cow, it doesn’t have any milk left.”
But Zar’s sister did moan:
“A misfortune is going to befall the village.”
The first few days were hard for Peti. He could not get the cremated cattle out of his head. His heart was broken and he was angry with himself for hitting the sick cow once with his crook at the foot of the mountain.
Time passed, and with time, the village forgot about what they had lost. And then winter came. As before, Peti was in the barns looking after the cows that had become fat. He was restless with boredom and couldn’t wait for the winter to end when the slopes of Mount Ayu would become visible again.
Winter was passing, and with it the melting snow allowed the grass to turn green. Whenever Peti saw the green, he grew younger and his blood boiled. But he had stopped thinking about the crippled old girl with the withered hand.
Zar’s sister had died and there was no one anymore to tell him:
“Get yourself a wife, good-for-nothing, and rebuild your father’s palace.”
Peti had settled with his cattle and had become used to their company. He had no other work to do besides the cattle, and his thoughts neither drifted from his cattle, nor from the mountains.
Only sometimes, at the break of a summer’s dawn, when the air was crisp and as transparent as glass, when the tops of distant mountains were clear in the blue horizon, and when the cattle were grazing at the foot of one of Mount Ayu’s slopes, did Peti sit on a high rock and look into the distance ahead of him at the vast field in the middle of which a remote village was enclosed in green gardens.
He had been there once, but he only remembered the remote village as a dream, as if he had never even seen it, had only heard of it through a tale during the long winter nights.
One evening, as he was driving the cattle home, he witnessed commotion in the village. It was a summer evening and the villagers were gathered in groups talking with each other as they made their way home after harvesting and mowing all day.
When he got to the streets of the village Peti heard someone say:
“Oh, heartless man, he won’t even become a soldier.”
A war had been declared and the village had been ordered to draft soldiers.
On any other peaceful working day no one in the city would have thought twice about the village that lay behind the mountains. But on this day, it was as though the village was tied to invisible ropes and a fist, an armed fist, was ready to strike the village.
Soldiers were taken from the village.
The first few months were full of joy and happiness. The first group of soldiers were led out of the village with drums and bells, but then, just as a swallow that appears in the spring, armless boys and boys with wooden legs started coming home. At the same time letters began to arrive with foreign and unknown words from soldiers in captivity in distant cities, and the village began to change its attitude toward the war. Soldiers were no longer sent off with drums and bells; many people cried, and the number of widows multiplied in the village.
Everything in the village had been turned upside down. Days had become years, poverty was on the increase, the price of bread was rising, and sugar had become medicine for the sick.
It seemed as though there was no end to it.
Peti tended his work with his head cast down. It would not be unfair to say that the village hardly paid any attention to him. The jokes from the old days were no longer tol
d. The calf that had been born on the mountain no longer brought joy to the owner.
“Peti, bring some news, some good news, from the Germans’ prisoners.”
Peti shrugged his shoulders and left without saying a word. The wages had also decreased. People did not give as much bread as they used to. Instead of bread, many gave money—paper money—whose value Peti did not know.
Nobody gave away old clothes anymore. In fact, many were wearing worn-out clothes themselves. Peti himself sat under a lamp in the barn and passed a woolen thread through a needle in order to sew the old patches on his woolen overcoat. His rug had become close to useless, but nobody thought of giving him a new one. More often than not the supplier only had stale bread. The villagers sold oil and cheese at the price of gold. The rich and abundant days of yore had vanished.
And whenever Peti drove the cattle to the foot of Mount Ayu, he recalled Zar’s sister’s words:
“A misfortune is going to befall the village, Peti…”
He recalled her words and looked toward the city, but his slow mind could not put the pieces of the puzzle together and arrive at a conclusion.
Winter came. The cattle were in the barns, but it was not the way it used to be. It so happened that he remained hungry for days, working in the barns, but never being called for dinner by the owners. And he was too ashamed to ask for food.
Peti sat in the barn and listened to the cows ruminate, and felt the necessity to eat as well.
And then an old thought, as from his childhood memories, rose in his head and crawled like a green caterpillar. It was a secret thought from the old days about having a house of his own—the suppressed wish of building a home, which surfaced when he had eaten well—and the blood in his veins warmed up.
He smiled to himself. And, for a moment, the smile radiated from his pockmarked face, but then faded and died out. His head dropped, his eyes fixed on one spot, and his thoughts whirled in his head for a long time until sleep finally defeated him.
* * *
The Dark Valley Page 5