Giraffe Page 20

  “Twenty-three of those giraffes were pregnant. Did they tell you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m happy it was you.”

  “Just a single shot each time,” I say.

  “This was the greatest migration,” he says. “You must understand that they found us on the grasslands, at the edge of red hills. They came to us. You can’t imagine.”

  It is true. I understand okapi and cannot imagine what it is to be a giraffe and to move in harsh light at such a height, with long steps. I do not tell him of the burning pages of Red Truth swishing through the witching night, or of how difficult it was to thread those heavy heads with my sparkler. I do not tell him how the felling of each giraffe was more violent to me than finding birds’ nests and squirrels crushed in trees I have cut.

  SOLDIERS ARE DRIFTING OFF toward the May Day parade together with secret policemen. I attach the shoulder strap to the Mauser. The barrel drips onto the white-powdered path. I see Emil sliding a metal case onto the backseat of his official car, a Tatra 501. He is showered and smartly dressed. He gets into the front seat and is driven off behind the last truck, just departed, carrying the cow Sněhurka.

  I DO NOT TAKE a lift home to my village at the end of the Svět when one is offered to me. I walk up the hill to the forest by the town swimming pool. It is a bright morning. I see Michael touching the pink roof of his chapel, lancing demons and hydras. I break into a run. I enter the trees like a deer from a field.

  There is the pine-fresh smell. I am in my living gloom. I go across, deep into the forest, where an okapi might hide. The forest floor is a trampoline of fir roots under me. I pass the secret military base. Its siren will sound out the Communist moment at midday. Squirrels and birds will scatter. Deer will lift their heads. Missile silos will open, as a carp opens its mouth at the surface of the Svět. The siren will cease. The silos will close again. Some of the soldiers will leave the base through a gate in the electrified fence and celebrate May Day with a game of soccer in a clearing.

  Tomáš — A Slaughterhouse Man

  ČARODĚJNICE

  APRIL 30, 1975

  COME OFF IT,” I say, upset. “We’ve just finished our shift.”

  “Tomorrow is May Day,” Jaro says.

  We’re a team, Jaro and I. He drives the truck, I cut the meat.

  “There’s a new television drama starting tonight,” I say.

  “There’s a bonfire celebration,” Jaro says. “It’s witching night.”

  “No dice, boys,” the boss says. “Finish your beers. This is the job you were warned about.”

  It’s true — we have been warned. We spent a week getting the metal paddles of the Destruktor in order. We were told to prepare the machines for the heaviest kind of horses.

  WE DRIVE BACK to the plant. There’s an StB officer here. It must be something different. I was thinking brewery horses, or something. We’re all here. Every driver, every butcher.

  “Sharpen your knives and look alert, boys,” the boss says.

  “This is a matter of national security,” the StB man says.

  “You’ll be properly compensated, if we keep our mouths shut,” the boss says.

  WE’RE GIVEN INSTRUCTIONS. Take the Vamberk road, head for the mountains, keep away from the industrial towns, through a forest to a zoo. A zoo! Well that narrows it down. Jaro and I take the three-ton Robur, the other boys are all in seven-ton Škodas.

  THE VB HAVE US lined up on a gravel road that runs along one of those big fishponds. We’ve been waiting here for hours. That’s how it goes. You wait around to get at the animals, and then they expect you to steal in and sweep them up in a minute, and we’re telling them, “No, pal. We’re not garbagemen. We’re slaughterhouse men. We’ll take our fucking time.”

  SOLDIERS COME BY THE TRUCKS calling for butchers.

  “Just the butchers,” they say.

  So I go with the other butcher boys up to the zoo. I went to a zoo once when I was a kid, but I can’t remember anything. It’s a real army-and-secret-police powwow here. They’re everywhere, these guys. Sure enough, when they get us through the gates, they have us put on some kind of nuclear-war suit, so we look like idiots to one another now. We march through the zoo in these suits with our butchers’ aprons over the top and all the knives and cleavers hanging off our belts, and I’m thinking, What happens if I accidentally cut a hole in this suit — what happens to me then? I see a rhinoceros and one of the boys points out some small deer asleep on the ground. We go up the hill to the giraffe house. Jesus and Mary. Giraffes! It’s all about giraffes. They give us another speech. The same thing as back in the plant. Only this time they say there is a plague, a contagion or something, not harmful to us, to people, but harmful to other animals. I guess that explains the powder all over the place.

  THE KILLING BEGINS. We’re not usually in on the kill. We usually pick up dead animals at the end of fields or on a riverbank and such. They’re animals you never think much about, except at lunchtime, cows and sheep mostly, which are meant to die. This is something different. It turns your stomach. They run the giraffes out into the yard. There is a hunter balanced on the fence. There are fireworks coming up from some celebration and the hunter — he calls himself a hunter — shoots the giraffes by the light of the fireworks.

  green

  blue

  yellow

  red

  The fireworks have run out now and it’s me, some luck, holding up a flashlight at the fence. I’m supposed to shine it in the eyes of the giraffes, sort of stun them, and then at the back of the head to form some kind of target for the hunter. The yard is filling with blood. It’s getting ripe. The giraffes are too scared to run out. So the keeper starts lighting their tails with bits of burning newspaper.

  “See that, pal?” I say to the hunter. “That’s love.”

  I BEGIN TO THINK of the flashlight as a weapon. I aim it. I don’t like it at all. So I go over and complain to the StB man, the one photographing everything.

  “Fuck off, then,” the StB man says.

  “Steady, comrade,” I say.

  He brings out a pretty girl in my place. Amazing. A tiny thing. She flew in here out of the night, through all these soldiers, like a bird or something. They say she’s the keeper’s girl. She’s up on the fence now, aiming the flashlight. I don’t feel guilty. I go over and complain straight to the hunter’s face. He’s reloading. He doesn’t look up at me. He just takes another swig from his rum bottle.

  “I can’t watch you anymore, pal,” I say. “I love nature and all that. I’m a hunter myself.”

  “I’m under orders, comrade,” he says. “I don’t like this.”

  “Well, if you ask me, it’s a misuse of the hunting profession.”

  THERE IS THIS YOUNG scientist type, who kneels down over every one of the giraffes, as if he’s giving them the last rites or something. He puts a jar to the bullet hole. The blood shoots up. You don’t see that with animals at the end of fields. They’re usually rotted and bloated. These giraffes spray blood right up to your waist. When the jars are full, the scientist closes them up with a rubber stopper, like a pickle jar, or one of those old beer bottles. Then the boys and I jump in. We do our stuff. We’ve got the hang of it already. It doesn’t take long. Three or four animals. One body is like any other. You find the tendons, cut them, and fold it up. The thing is, these giraffes just keep coming. There must be fifty of them. That’s a lot of meat. That’s a hundred and fifty cows. Jesus and Mary, that’s five hundred sheep.

  WE GET SOME TEA and meat and bread rolls. I look up at the stars. I like to do that as much as the next guy. It’s a clear night. The first warm night of the year. It’s the witching night too. I see bonfires burning on the hills all around here. Workers are getting drunk there, having a good time, not cutting up giraffes in a crazy nuclear getup, at gunpoint, for twelve crowns and fifty heller an hour. I ask you.

  WE’RE ALL TIRED. The blood sits in shallows now, like you get at the
end of a meadow, by a river. I’m sitting on the fence, smoking. I’m watching the scientist trying to cut out the tongue of one of the giraffes. He’s making a mess of it. He seems pretty upset. I jump down. I wade over.

  “You’re doing this all wrong, pal,” I say to him.

  “You do it, please,” he says.

  So I put my hand in there. I find the root. It’s long — that’s the thing. Much longer than any heifer’s tongue.

  “You always need to find the root, pal,” I say.

  I slip my knife down there. I slice it free. I roll the tongue up. He seals it in another of his jars.

  THE LAST GIRAFFE IS a saddening sight. She almost kicked herself to death inside the giraffe house before the hunter got her. She was running around on broken legs. The hunter just stands there, drunk, crossing himself. We drag her all the way out and fold her and winch her up into the Robur with a calf and the bull I cut the tongue from. The secret policemen check us for leaks.

  “All clear!” they shout.

  “On no account should blood leak on the road,” the StB man says through the window. “Negligence will be punished with prison terms.”

  Fuck you.

  JARO DRIVES INTO THE DAWN.

  “I’m getting some shut-eye,” I say to him.

  “Fair enough,” he says.

  WE’RE BACK IN THE hygiene or rendering plant. That’s what they call it. We’ve got other names for it. What we do is render diseased and rotten meat into pellets of meal that are fed back to other animals or scattered over fields.

  After a few years here, your fellow workers become your only friends. If Death were to open his robes, well, that’s the stench of this place. You can’t get rid of the smell. It’s on your breath. You sweat it out in summer. You piss it out in winter. You shake hands with strangers and there is a moment of rejection. I always hold my hand there a little longer to see the reaction. Women hate the smell. I’ve had women retch on me. It’s not only that. It’s the whole place. It’s at the end of a road. It’s surrounded by rape fields on all sides, as far as you can see. It’s like it’s another place, an island on a yellow sea that exists out of time or something.

  I OPEN THE DOOR TO the truck. That’s the smell. Death opening his robes.

  “We’re being watched,” Jaro says.

  There’s another StB man looking at us through binoculars from a distance. There’s a few armed secret policemen patrolling closer to the truck. They’ll gag if they get any nearer. Here comes the boss.

  “Boys!” he says. “You know the score. Get them out. Cut them up. Into the machine.”

  “Yes, boss,” we say.

  “Then disinfection,” he says.

  “Off with these suits,” Jaro says.

  WE DROP THE TAILGATE of the Robur. We rope up the calf and drag it out onto the concrete cutting floor, then the giraffe bull with no tongue, and finally the cow with the white belly, who broke her legs running around inside.

  We gaff them and hoist them up on metal chains. They hang before us now. I open up the calf and the bull. Jaro scoops out the innards. We kick and slide the gray pile together across the concrete into the sinkhole for the offal and waste. It’s horrible, that sinkhole. White-blue and gray and glistening, deep as the Labe, but you wouldn’t want to drown there. I swing the ax at the calf. I cleave the head and neck. I part the torso. Same for the bull now. I haven’t touched the cow. There’s something stopping me. I don’t know.

  “Hand me a knife,” I say to Jaro. “No, not a gutting knife. Something sharper.”

  He hands one over. I look up to see if the StB man is watching. No.

  “Keep watch,” I say.

  I get it. It’s beauty that’s been stopping me. I cut off a large piece of the hide, from the flank and the snow-white belly. I roll it up tight. I hide it among my knives. I’ll tan it. I’ll make it into a rug.

  NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON. The scientist from the zoo is here. He’s standing shoulder to shoulder with the StB man. He comes closer. Give him credit. He comes right in here in his nuclear-war suit. He holds his arm up to his mouth. I’m holding the ax. Jaro has the gaff. The scientist points to the cow, swinging here on this metal chain.

  “Which one is that?” the scientist says.

  “The last one,” I say.

  “The one that was shot all those times,” Jaro says.

  “Sněhurka,” he says. “Some of her hide is missing. Why?”

  He’s sharp — give him that too.

  “Look around you, pal,” I say. “There’s a lot missing here.”

  “We need a count of how many giraffes were pregnant,” he says. “What about these?”

  “That was a bull, that was a calf,” Jaro says. “So, no.”

  “She was pregnant,” the scientist says, touching the cow. “Check her.”

  So I slide a joint knife in.

  “She’s full all right, pal,” I say.

  His time is almost up. He’s going to gag. You can see it.

  “Comrades,” he says.

  He takes a step backward. He doesn’t gag. He makes it back to the StB man and lowers his head and breathes heavily. That’s right — that’s the routine.

  I SETTLE THE AX. I quarter the cow. I heave some part of foreleg up into the machine, which is called a Destruktor because that’s what it does — it destroys. It’s a truck-sized cylinder with four small doors. We have to cut all the animals into pieces small enough to get in there. So I cleave.

  I gaff the cow’s head now and push it inside the Destruktor. Jaro closes it up. We start the machine. Boiling water rushes in. The drum inside the cylinder starts turning over. We walk away. We’re done. I tuck the giraffe hide under my arm.

  OTHER BOYS COME TO clean up. The Destruktor will keep heating up. It’ll keep turning. The metal blades will start churning. Those giraffes won’t want to be liquidated. They’re heavier than brewery horses. They’ll bend the blades out of shape. The boys will have to stop the machine, let it cool, climb in there with hammers, chest-wading, and beat the blades back into shape. They’ll start it up again. They’ll turn the heat up. The drum will start turning over again. It’ll get hotter and hotter and darker and darker. It’s hell in the Destruktor. It’s the kind of place where an angel would unsheathe his sword, where life is undone. Those giraffes will lose their spots in there. The hair will come off their tails where it wasn’t singed off with the burning newspapers, their flesh will soften and peel from the bone. Their eyes, their lips, their little horns, their lungs, brains, veins and arteries, the ligaments holding their necks in place, the vertebrae themselves, their hooves, the little unborn one, will all melt. The drum will keep turning. They’ll just be ligaments and bones. The ligaments will snap, the bones will break, and break again. They’ll be a slop, slopping, a berry porridge. The drum will keep turning. All the liquids that made those giraffes will evaporate. They’ll just be dry meal left, to feed to cattle.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sub specie aeternitatis.

  Emil

  MAY DAY

  MAY 1, 1975

  THERE WAS A JOURNEY in 1973 when Sněhurka stood behind me. I leaned back against her legs on a barge, and I looked back at her through a narrow window on a truck, when she opened her eyes to a beekeeper and to the beer offered up by villagers. I follow her now to the rendering plant. She lies in the truck ahead of me, like a fallen tower of the Qasr al-Qadim. I could not watch her death, or take a sample of her blood. I imagine it now, as I have imagined her birth and her captivity. She kicked out in the giraffe house until her legs were broken. She ran on broken legs. The crack of the rifle came to her like the sound of thunder. She was hit. Gravity snatched at her. She was hit again, and she fell. There was a coldness, a sinking. She felt no pain; she was aware only of memory slipping from her, as dreams slip from the waking. She died. She could see a zebra, and then only stripes of a zebra, and then only a space where the shape of the zebra was. She remembered she was single, then her thoughts became m
ingled.

  Death is a confirmed habit into which we have fallen.

  This was scribbled in my uncle’s copy of Great Expectations. I would further underline fallen. I follow a convoy of trucks packed with the secretly liquidated beasts. I follow them through bursting spring, through leaded exhaust fumes, spluttering black on the inclines, under hedge maple and elder, by verges of hawthorn and poppies, gardens of red tulips and green-rising wheat fields, and by a camp where professional cyclists from the Tour of Czechoslovakia are sleeping under canopies, and windburned mechanics move about with cups of coffee, spinning wheels on upturned bikes.

  THE RENDERING PLANT IS A whaling station of my imagination, a pier smeared crimson with fat jutting into cobalt Antarctic waters in which elephantine mermaids feed on krill and penguins, but beached somehow upon landlocked Czechoslovakia.

  The smell is of giraffes being rendered and of rancid chicken feathers filling a warehouse to the ceiling waiting to be melted into a putty and fed to other chickens, just as the giraffes will be ground into dry meal and fed to cattle in the neighboring collective farms.

  “The meal will be perfectly sterile, comrade,” the head of the plant says. “No contagion can survive our machines.”

  He hands over several files of paperwork.

  “It hasn’t been an easy night,” he says. “We’ll need compensation. The giraffe bones have beaten the blades inside our Destruktor machine out of shape.”