Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

It would have been silly to ask what waters.

And they left her here, just upped and left, he said, the words erupting with such force that the lamp began to shake in his hand, the glass knocking against the door beam, and he cried out again, desperately, but his body remained stiff, the tension wouldn't let the tears come, he tried to swallow but choked; they left her here alone, he repeated a third time, even though they knew, they knew and still they left, the bastards.

The sow's rump twitched on the slick floorboard, her head fell back and flip-flopped, then slipped along the floor, because she kept opening her mouth as if gasping for air, and it was horrible to hear no sound issuing from her despite the cramped straining.

Something was happening inside her that was not ending.

He must get his father.

Kálmán's father and his two much older brothers were bakers; the bakery where they worked used to belong to them, so Kálmán, being the son of a former property owner, was considered a "class alien," as was Krisztián; the men would leave in the afternoon to prepare the dough and light the ovens, and return early the next morning, after the bread had all been baked and delivered; his mother also left the house after the two cows had come back from the pasture and she had milked them; she had a night job cleaning wards at János Hospital.

So we were both free; no one at home ever asked me where I was off to, and Kálmán was left alone every night.

At our feet, the dog was switching its tail and whimpering quietly.

Kálmán shoved the lamp into my hand again, and he seemed hesitant— I thought he was going to run for help, after all, which would have meant leaving me there, alone and helpless, with this horrible thing; I would have liked to say, You stay here, I'll go — or just go without saying anything — but now the pig was slipping and sliding so quietly that Kálmán decided to climb in again.

I moved closer, to give him more light; I wanted to do it right, though I had no idea what he could possibly do, or whether he knew what one was supposed to do in a situation like this; but somehow I trusted him, he'd know what to do, even if at the moment he looked as though he didn't — when it came to plants and animals, he knew everything; to me the sight was so incomprehensible, the feelings it aroused so confusing, and the suffering (which, because of our helplessness, immediately became our own suffering) so overwhelming, giving us neither time nor strength to escape, that I was grateful to him for not leaving me there, for trying to do something, in a way doing it for me, so that all I had to do was hold that lamp straight.

He crouched behind the animal's rump and for long seconds did nothing.

In the stench and stifling heat it was getting harder and harder to breathe, but that didn't bother me then, because I sensed the presence of death, though I knew I was witnessing birth.

And then he slowly lifted one of his hands, raised it from his lap, oddly, tentatively, with a pensive look on his face, his fingers loosely crooked, and slipped the hand through the thick folds of those swollen rosy lips; I could see his hand disappear up to his wrist.

This made the animal twitch, and she was finally able to breathe; when the next contraction wrenched her body, the sound she emitted was not so much a rattling as a retching one; she was kicking and slobbering, and snapping her teeth, as if ready to bite Kálmán.

He yanked his hand free, but could not get away while still crouching, I was blocking his way, standing with the lamp in the narrow doorway, too scared to jump back quickly; he plopped down on his butt, right into the muck.

But the pig dropped her head back, her mouth still open, hawking and gasping in irregular bursts, snapping at the precious air, and from below bristled lashes, her light-brown eyes seemed to be fixed on Kálmán.

I could feel the even panting of the dog on my leg.

As the sow lay there, looking at Kálmán, I saw that the whites of her eyes, bulging almost completely out of their sockets, were all bloody.

By then Kálmán wasn't trying to figure out what to do — he was also watching those eyes — he got on his knees, sank his hand again into the animal's body, and as he slowly penetrated farther, paying no attention to slipping and sliding in urine and shit, he laid his body on the animal's swollen side, pressing down with his full weight; they were looking at each other all the while and breathing together, because as he pressed down, the animal exhaled smoothly, and when he lifted his body slightly, she inhaled helpfully; his arm was inside her, up to his elbow, but then, as though hit by an electric shock, he jerked out his hand and, his whole body shaking violently, he began to yell at the top of his voice.

He was yelling something but I couldn't understand what; I heard him yelling words but couldn't make them out.

The sow squealed, slid farther on her rump, gasped for air, her feet stuck out, stiff, and she squealed again, so shrilly, so long, and so loud it sounded like a human scream; she writhed, then stiffened again, but somehow her body preserved — more precisely, it refined — the rhythm the two of them had found before; and not for a second did she take her eyes off Kálmán, she remained fully alert, and his eyes were also glued to hers, even as he raised his soaked, gooey arm, illuminated by the lamp, and held it before him as if it were some strange object, and just as abruptly as he had started yelling moments before, he now fell silent; if I were to say the sow's eyes were pleading for help, if I said she was begging him to do something and was also guiding him toward that goal, if I said she was grateful to him and urging him on, with her willingness reassuring him that Yes! Yes, we're on the right track, let's keep going! then with my sentimental human notions I'd be defiling that direct raw but by no means brute sensual power that I suppose only an animal's eyes can convey.

The pig responded to his screams with squeals of her own, and he answered her silence with silence.

In spite of being apart now, they stayed together.

The depth of the open vaginal orifice was frothing and bubbling with spasms and thrusts whose rhythmic repetition was like breathing or the beating of a heart.

He reached in again, back to the very spot that had made him recoil before, but this time matter-of-factly, the way we return to familiar places when necessity compels us.

Simultaneously he turned his head away from the sow in my direction, but he closed his eyes.

The animal was quiet now, as if to oblige him by holding her breath.

It seemed he kept his eyes closed because he was doing something inside and did not want to see anything, the better to feel what he was supposed to do.

And then he pulled out his hand, slowly, wearily, got on his knees; his head slumped forward and I couldn't see his face.

It was still quiet, the animal lay motionless, but then, as a delayed response to his manipulation, her side began to undulate, then her whole body was moving in waves from the pressure and the gasping, and at the end of each spasm she let out an alarming squeal that died away in the stifling stench of the narrow pen.

She won't make it, he said, she can't do it, he said quietly, as one who could not be moved even by this undulating suffering because he already saw what lay ahead, he could see all the way to death; and though he did not move away, he stayed put, there was nothing for him to do.

But whatever was happening in the animal's body was far from over.

For in the next instant something red appeared in the heaving folds of that slit, and he, shrieking and wailing like the pig, jumped to grab it; immediately he fell silent, because that something, as if a strange bone had gotten into the sow's flesh, slipped out of his fingers; he grabbed it again, and again it slipped out.