Cow Read online

  Ambrosio sat down on the bench: the calf stood upright, still wobbling, still craning its neck out for balance, but nevertheless, inside a very few minutes one cowlife had crawled out of another, and put its 50 or 60 kilos on its own four legs.

  Red and white, spick and span, it stood in Knuchel’s cowshed as though it had always stood there, unlike Ambrosio it didn’t seem to be at all surprised: here it was. This was its place. And now it wanted milk!

  *

  Very early on the day after Ambrosio’s arrival in the prosperous land, all hell was let loose on the Knuchel farm. Clattering up and down the wooden outside staircase, and along the veranda, crashing about in the hayloft and the feed store, then back out on the veranda again, everywhere, a fiendish din!

  Knuchel was cursing, he was sweating in the morning air, he stamped his wild rage onto his own soil, he punched the walls of sheds and the doors of outbuildings until his fists ached, and behind the storehouse he threw a dozen of his own pine logs over the barbed-wire fence into the pasture. Blindly, he plucked the wood from off the stack and hurled it away.

  ‘Hell and damnation!’ More kicks crashed against the kennel, against the henhouse.

  Lights went on in the windows. The Knuchel household sprang from their beds in alarm. Cock and hens, dog and cows and pigs were crowing and mooing and clucking and squealing and barking; bedroom doors were flung open and slammed shut again, voices were raised in protest, hurried footsteps echoed through the house. Pushing the three little Knuchels along in front of her, the farmer’s wife stepped out of the kitchen door, and stood with arms akimbo. The children clung on tightly to her apron and skirts, rubbed their eyes and stared at their father, who was only gradually coming out of his fury, still pacing up and down in front of the cowshed, as though he wanted to stamp his way right through the solid oak planks into the cistern below. ‘Disappeared! He’s just disappeared! Up and left us!’

  ‘What a to-do. Goodness knows what it might have been,’ said the farmer’s wife.

  ‘And in the middle of the night too,’ said Grandma. ‘By God, I thought there was a fire. You must have taken leave of your senses, it’s not struck five in the village, and you storming through the house like a wild man.’

  ‘What if he’s gone! Pushed off home!’

  ‘You’d have been better off buying a milking machine then, wouldn’t you. But no one listens to me, do they. I’m just an old woman,’ said Grandma.

  ‘Now I can’t believe he’s just gone.’ The farmer’s wife freed herself from her children, and asked, with one hand already on the banister, ‘Have you looked up in the attic? Are all of his things gone? Now say, Hans.’

  ‘Damn it, yes,’ replied the farmer, ‘believe me, he’s gone. His bed is empty, and he’ll hardly have been sleeping underneath it.’

  ‘His things?’ said Grandma as the farmer’s wife began climbing the staircase. ‘That little bundle is easily tied up, there won’t have been much unpacking to do, with a little cardboard suitcase like he had. No Hans, believe me, it’s better this way, you should be glad he’s gone, and he didn’t exactly look like he was up to much either, and what are you doing scratching your neck like that, you’ll have it bleeding in no time.’

  Knuchel said nothing.

  He had only gone up to his wife in the back bedroom very late, and then he couldn’t sleep. Leaving the cowshed after the calving, he had felt abnormally irritated and galled and choked about the chest, yes, when he was thinking over the whole business again under the fruit trees in the paddock, he had even been short of breath. The affair had made his throat constrict and the tendons in his milking hands tremble. Out there in the night he had picked at the trunks and branches of his apple trees, had scraped and clawed at them until it hurt. He had torn one of his strong fingernails right from its bed.

  Things were going wrong with Blösch, he had long been convinced of that, and he had blamed first the cow, then his wife, and finally himself. Ridiculously spoiled that proud cow had been. Hadn’t he tried to guess her every cow wish from those gloopy eyes? And now all that ‘Blösch this and Blösch that’ had come home to roost, that was how she paid you back for constantly patting and pandering to her, and molly-coddling her over every trifling wasp sting. He had even gone and got her a new bell in time for the last grazing season: measured and moulded and ornamented for her cowpersonally, and inscribed ‘Blösch’. And now one bull calf after another came somersaulting down the drop. Knuchel had spat in the grass a few times, had tried to urinate. Why wouldn’t that damn cow give him a proper cow calf? Was she too vain to accept an equal next to her in the cowshed? Was she afraid of competition from her own daughters? An aristocrat of a bloody cow, a mean-minded conceited beast, was what she was! A blue-riband animal, the pride of every agricultural show, even, according to the Farming News, an indispensable mainstay of high-performance breeding standards, and for all that a bellyful of no-good bull’s heads. From now on, the whole of the herd, first to last, best-behaved to cussedest, was going to get a fair crack of the whip, and he would recalculate the whole feeding set-up. Milady Blösch would be forced off her high horse, and cowdemocratic principles of justice would once again rule in the Knuchel cowshed.

  With these resolutions, the farmer had returned across the paddock’s wet grass, and gone to bed. In spite of the short night and the bull-calving Blösch he wanted to drive out as early as possible the next morning: the grass should be harvested with the dew still on it and pitchforked into the manger but when he had gone to fetch the Spaniard from his attic to come and help, knocking several times on the door with hard Knuchel knuckles, he had found only an empty bed inside. Then the galling and choking and seething had started again, from the pit of his stomach up through his chest into his throat and finally, reached his head like a hangover.

  ‘Now stop your scratching!’ insisted Grandma.

  ‘One thing he didn’t bring with him in his suitcase was any good luck. Bloody Blösch cow squeezed out another bull calf!’ Knuchel’s hand rubbed over his stubbly jaw.

  ‘There, you see! It just shows, taking on complete strangers on a farm, foreigners too, that’s what you get, but then you never listen, do you.’ Grandma raised her hands either side of her head beseechingly, as though to ward off an invisible swarm of midges.

  ‘Now stop all your argy-bargy!’ called the farmer’s wife from up on the veranda. ‘What a carry-on! All his stuff’s been in the attic the whole time, and he’s got a wife and children too. Here, see for yourselves! It’s our Spaniard’s family snap!’ She held out the framed photograph over the veranda railing.

  ‘Ooh!’ Grandma turned in panic towards the farmer’s wife. ‘I don’t believe it! You never!’

  The farmer too craned his neck and stopped scratching his stubble. ‘Where is he then? What’s he doing? It doesn’t seem right. I mean, he can’t just have...’ Knuchel stopped. A latch clicked. The Knuchel children who had been standing by the wall, following everything with their eyes, giggled and covered their faces with the hems of their nightgowns: the upper half of the cowshed door was slowly opened.

  ‘Well, there he is, the bugger!’

  ‘Buenos días,’ said Ambrosio, and then a second time, a little more quietly, ‘buenos días’, and a third time, almost inaudible, just moving his lips, ‘buenos días’.

  ‘So you’ve been in the byre all along. Just dropped off on the bench, eh?’ The glimmer of a smile passed over Knuchel’s reddened face. He took a deep breath. ‘I never thought of the cowshed. It’s the only place I didn’t look. Well anyway, let’s go. Come on. I’ve got it set up in front of the barn. We’re feeding them soilage today. You’ll see what that does for the milk.’

  Without quite realizing what was happening to him, Ambrosio found himself in his knee-length shorts, sandals and vest next to Farmer Knuchel on the tractor; the motor started, and Ambrosio held on tightly to his hard dickey-seat over the high wheel, and the pair of them rattled off into the fields.

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bsp; ‘Well, well. So he spent the night in the cowshed! That’s what you get.’ Again raising her arms against an invisible enemy, Grandma trotted off down to the hen-run, scooped up a fistful of corn from the depths of her apron pocket, and scattered it through the wire-mesh fence to her hens.

  ‘Come on, Bibi. Come on!’ she called. ‘That’s it. Come on, Bibi!’

  *

  Knuchel’s fields lay under a blue-grey haze. They were burnished and breathing. Ribbons of mist passed over them towards the heights of the highlands. Pebbles were scattered by the tractor tyres, and scurried into the fields. The grass wagon was thrown this way and that by the ruts in the field track. Rakes and pitchforks clattered on the handling bridge.

  ‘Here we are then!’ Knuchel pulled on the hand-brake and jumped down off the tractor.

  Ambrosio, looking for something to grip, pulled his hand back. The whole of the rear of the tractor was covered with a layer of axle grease, a greeny-yellow colour under the dirt-blackened surface.

  Now at last it was under his feet, Knuchel ground, and he took his first uncertain steps on it, feeling the viscid heaviness of it, loamy and green. What a fat, sleek green. And the air was green too, and it slid coolly down into Ambrosio’s lungs. Before long he would feel this ground everywhere, all over his body, feel it with every pore: it would get under his nails, into his hair, his ears! He wouldn’t be able to get free of it, he would live off it, would wallow in it, plough it open and shut.

  Ambrosio shifted from one foot to the other. The grass tickled.

  ‘I’ll mow now, and you take the rake. Two strips, and then we’ll load it up.’ Knuchel had been picking up fistfuls of grass in both hands, holding them under his eyes, flinging them up into the air with a ‘Whew, damn it! Ah, they’ll love this. You just watch it disappear!’ Knuchel stuck a blade of grass between his teeth, unhitched the wagon, and clambered back on the tractor. The hydraulically powered mower inclined down to a horizontal, Knuchel muttered one more ‘Damn it!’, got in gear, accelerated, and dropped the blades into the grass.

  It was very laborious raking the grass together in two long heaps. The stubble pricked Ambrosio’s feet. The rake was huge. It kept snagging in the ground. Ambrosio stamped his feet and raged, pulling against it with his whole weight. He started to sweat. The four-pronged pitchfork was even heavier, and still less manageable. With its 2-metre-long shaft it was like a medieval weapon, and he just missed spiking his own foot. His hands ached. On the other side was Knuchel, effortlessly piling his heap into the wagon. Ambrosio tried to keep up, got out of breath, and when the grass was finally loaded, he dropped exhaustedly on top of it.

  Back in the farmyard, the grass had to be taken off the handling bridge, had to be tossed in well-aimed forkfuls into the feed alley, and from there distributed among the mangers.

  ‘Be sure not to give that bloody Blösch one more forkful of green than any of the others, all right!’ warned the farmer.

  Ambrosio didn’t understand.

  While his blistered hands were heaving one pitchforkful of grass after another in front of the cows’ muzzles, he couldn’t help noticing that Blösch hadn’t pushed her head through the opened crib like the other cows; she hadn’t even got up.

  Blösch lay in the straw. Quite apathetically, she eyed her calf, eyed Mirror beside her stuffing herself, eyed the whitewashed wall. She, who was otherwise driven by near pathological greed, not allowing any little 2-hundredweight cow a mouthful of clover without a fight, she, who could have taken on the greatest glutton in the world for gluttony, she was simply ignoring the smell of the first new grass in Knuchel’s cowshed. Everything bounced off her broad, white cow forehead. Nothing interested her: neither Knuchel nor her calf nor her fodder. Not even the cats, who propped their paws in the drop and hooked their gleaming, knife-like little teeth into the not quite detached afterbirth that dangled under her tail, plucking at it and tugging and gnawing, not even they could break Blösch’s apathetic calm.

  *

  ‘Well, let her,’ said Knuchel, ‘let her hang her saw-horse steer’s head. Tomorrow morning she’ll be the first to shove it in the crib. I know her, by God, I know that bloody cow. She’s the most gluttonous cow there ever was, greedier than Widlilismer’s wife! She’s been playing the prima donna now, ha, and next thing she’ll be tugging like mad on her chain, butting the walls, and she won’t stop until you push the crib bolt. And once it’s open, she’ll stuff her face in the hay, tongue out, get underneath it, and almost choke. The grinding and smacking when she eats! But I’ve had enough of her bloody Blösch antics, and she can make a fool of someone else for a change. We’ll show that red lady. You can bet on it.’

  While the preparations for milking were made, Knuchel refused to go near the hunger-striker Blösch, he didn’t have a single good word for her calf either, and he even told Ambrosio not to spend more time with the pair of them than was strictly necessary.

  ‘Don’t mollycoddle her, just leave her to sulk.’ Knuchel didn’t so much as glance at the calf’s navel, or give its skin an appraising touch. The retina wasn’t checked for possible vitamin shortage, nor the inside of the mouth and throat for mucus congestion. All Knuchel’s attention went on the other occupants of the cowshed. For them there was no end of patting and stroking, there were words of encouragement on all sides, even little jokes and cow ribbings. Ambrosio followed the farmer everywhere, nodding, and even venturing the odd pat himself.

  ‘There, take a look at him! He’s our new milker from Spain. Wouldn’t you like to give him your hoof to shake?’ said the farmer to Baby, who was good-naturedly licking Ambrosio’s arm.

  It was still dark in the cowshed. A couple of electric bulbs shed a weak light over the dozen cows. A mass of spiders’ webs were draped like a veil across the walls and ceiling. It was dark too in the corner where Knuchel got out a shovel, dungfork, pitchfork and broom. The farmer demonstrated the use of these implements around one or two cows, then with a ‘now you try it’ expression on his face, handed them over to Ambrosio.

  Knuchel’s actions were unmistakably clear. Ambrosio watched the techniques and grips, was amazed, thought to himself: Caramba, sabe trabajar para cinco.

  The farmer worked steadily and gracefully too: he didn’t so much as crook a finger without it serving some purpose, everything was to plan, and he stood there huge and silent, and plied shovel, dungfork, pitchfork and broom as though they were all extensions of his arms, and not Herculean items, real monsters of implements, the like of which could not be found in all of Coruña.

  ‘Whoo! Whaa!’ Ambrosio called out to the cows, raising and lowering his voice the way Knuchel had done, and with those two first words of a new language, he barged his way between a couple of cows. He pushed against their rumps, forced their flanks apart, and for all that he was only wearing sandals, he put his feet wherever they had to go, be it in puddles of slurry, in dirt or on sharp straw, thinking only of the three-pronged dungfork that he had to push between and beside the cows’ hooves. He shovelled and hoisted the dung without grazing a single leg, spread the straw, got a few wet tail smacks in the face, but, from Blösch to Baby he performed cowpraiseworthy stallwork.

  ‘It’ll be no different in Spain,’ said Knuchel. ‘It’s just the same, isn’t it? A clean shed is half the milking! That’s right, ha?’ He watched as Ambrosio scraped away at the floor underneath the animals, watched the greeny-brown liquid; when the gutter clogged up, he thrust his own boot in it, and with his hands in his pockets, helped it along playfully, until it splashed richly and thickly into the manure pit. That little Spaniard, he thought, by God he’d better be this good at milking as well. He was already chuckling away to himself, and when Ambrosio had left a few twists of straw on his dungfork, Knuchel plucked the yellow strands out of the heap on the wheelbarrow and returned them to the floor. ‘Just the dung, boy, just the dung!’ he laughed. ‘It’s only the dung we put on the dungheap. And don’t pile the barrow up so high. Better take one extra tr
ip out of the shed. It’s all right, there’s no hurry, take your time, a wheelbarrow load like that empties in no time at all. Now come on! We want to start on priming them!’

  Now Knuchel wanted to know about the Spaniard’s grasp. Can he do it or not? that was the question. The knotty tendons twitched in his milker’s hands. He thrust his jaw to one side, tensing the muscles in his cheeks and throat. He scratched the already sore skin. Why should the village cheeser have the right to keep poking his nose in other people’s affairs? Before he’d even arrived, the way this willing Spaniard had been gossiped about, dragged like a floor-cloth across every filthy kitchen floor in the village, yes, and through all the manure pits too! That cheeser! He could find nothing good to say about the Spaniard at all. And did he know him? Hardly! And was it anything to do with him? Shouldn’t the cows have any say in the matter at all? Let’s see what the cows make of him.

  Outside, in front of the cowshed, Ambrosio was contemplating the dungheap. It was a brownish-black hill, built up one barrowload after another. One side was pressed against the outer wall of the cowshed, another was formed by the curve of the ascent. All 2.5 metres of the two remaining sides were covered in a meandering plait pattern. Once a week, in laborious pitchfork work, Knuchel and Ruedi had taken the loose strands and wisps of straw and woven them together, like a basketmaker with willow twigs. That gave the whole thing firmness and shape, and kept all the dung fresh and moist, inside and out.