Guy Vanderhaeghe - Man Descending

In the dark barn that smells of brittle straw, and sharply of horse dung, the knife is making little greedy, tearing noises. It is not sharp enough. Then he hears the hoarse, dragging whisper of steel on whetstone. Although he is afraid that the bear his father is skinning may suddenly rear to life, he climbs over the wall of the box stall and steps into the manger and crouches down. He is only five, so the manger is a nice, tight, comforting fit.

What a bear! A killer, a marauder who had left two sows tangled in their guts with single blows from his needle-sharp claws.

The smell of the bear makes him think of gun metal – oily, smoky. Each hair bristles like polished black wire, and when the sun catches the pelt it shines vividly, electrically blue.

The curved blade of the knife, now sharpened, slices through the bear’s fat like butter, relentlessly peeling back the coat and exposing long, flat, pink muscles. As his father’s busy, bloody hands work, Dieter feels a growing uneasiness. The strong hands tug and tear, wrestling with the heavy, inert body as if they are frantically searching for something. Like clay under a sculptor’s hand, the bear begins to change. Each stroke of the knife renders him less bear-like and more like something else. Dieter senses this and crouches lower in the manger in anticipation.

His father begins to raise the skin off the back, his forearms hidden as the knife molds upward toward the neck. At last he grunts and stands. Reaches for the axe. In two sharp, snapping blows the head is severed from the trunk and the grinning mask flung into a corner. He gathers up the skin and carries it out to salt it and peg it down in the yard. Dieter hears the chickens clamouring to pick it clean.

He stares down into the pit of the shadowy stall. This is no bear. Stripped of its rich, glossy fur, naked, it is no bear. Two arms, two legs, a raw pink skin. A man. Under all that lank, black hair a man was hiding, lurking in disguise.

He feels the spiralling terror of an unwilling accomplice to murder. He begins to cry and call for his father, who suddenly appears in the doorway covered in grease and blood, a murderer.

From far away, he heard someone call him. “Mr. Bethge! Mr. Bethge!” The last syllable of his name was drawn out and held like a note, so that it quivered in the air and urged him on with its stridency.

He realized he had been crying, that his eyes were filled with those unexpected tears that came so suddenly they constantly surprised and embarrassed him.

For a bear? But this wasn’t all of it. There had been another bear; he was sure of it. A bear who had lived in shame and impotence.

He edged himself off the bed and painfully on to his knobbed, arthritic feet. Breakfast.

At breakfast they quarrel in the dreary, passionless manner of master and charge. He wants what she has, bacon and eggs. He tells her he hates porridge.

“Look,” Mrs. Hax said, “I can’t give you bacon and eggs. Doctor’s orders.”

“What doctor?”

“The doctor we saw last month. You remember.”

“No.” It was true. He couldn’t remember any doctor.

“Yes you do. Come on now. We took a ride downtown in a cab. Remember now?”

“No.”

“And we stopped by Woolworth’s and bought a big bag of that sticky candy you like so much. Remember?”

“No.”

“That’s fine,” she said irritably. “You don’t want to remember, there’s nothing I can do. It doesn’t matter, because you’re not getting bacon and eggs.”

“I don’t want porridge,” he said tiredly.

“Eat it.”

“Give me some corn flakes.”

“Look at my plate,” she said, pointing with her knife. “I’m getting cold grease scum all over everything. Fight. fight. When do I get a moment’s peace to eat?”

“I want corn flakes,” he said with a little self-satisfied tuck to the corners of his mouth.

“You can’t have corn flakes,” she said. “Corn flakes bung you up. That’s why you eat hot cereal – to keep you regular. Just like stewed prunes. Now, which do you want,” she asked slyly, “Sunny Boy or stewed prunes?”

“I want corn flakes.” He smiled up happily at the ceiling.

“Like a stuck record.” She folded her hands on the table and leaned conspiratorially toward him. “You don’t even care if you eat or not, do you? You’re just trying to get under my skin, aren’t you?”

“I want corn flakes,” he said definitely and happily.

“I could kill that man,” she told her plate. “Just kill him.” Then, abruptly, she asked, “Where’s your glasses? No, not there, in the other pocket. Okay, put them on. Now take a good long look at that porridge.”

The old man peered down intently into his bowl.

“That’s fine. Take it easy, it’s not a goddamn wishing-well. You see them little brown specks?”

He nodded.

“That’s what this whole fight’s about? Something as tiny as that? You know what this is. It’s flax. And flax keeps you regular. So eat it.”

“I’m not eating it. What do I want with flax?” he asked quizzically.

“Sure you’re crazy,” she said. “Crazy like a fox.”

“I want some coffee.”

Mrs. Hax slammed down her fork and knife, snatched up his cup, and marched to the kitchen counter. While she poured the coffee, Bethge’s hand crept across the table and stole several strips of bacon from her plate. He crammed these clumsily into his mouth, leaving a grease shine on his chin.

Mrs. Hax set his cup down in front of him. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t spill.”

Bethge giggled. In a glance, Mrs. Hax took in his grease-daubed chin and her plate. “Well, well, look at the cat who swallowed the canary. Grinning from ear-lobe to ear-lobe with a pound of feathers bristling from his trap.”

“So?” he said defiantly.

“You think I enjoy the idea of you pawing through my food?” Mrs. Hax carried her plate to the garbage and scraped it with a flourish. “Given all your dirty little habits, who’s to know where your hands have been?” she asked, smiling wickedly. “But go ahead and laugh. Because he who laughs last, laughs best. Chew this around for a bit and see how she tastes. You’re not getting one single, solitary cigarette today, my friend.”

Startled, he demanded his cigarettes.

“We’re singing a different tune now, aren’t we?” She paused, “N-O spells no. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“You give them. They’re mine.”

“Not since you set the chesterfield on fire. Not since then. Your son told me I was to give them out one at a time so’s I could watch you and avoid ‘regrettable accidents.’ Thank God, there’s some sense in the family. How he came by it I’m sure I don’t know.”

The old man hoisted himself out of his chair. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, I want my cigarettes – and I want them now.”

Mrs. Hax crossed her arms and set her jaw. “No.”

“You’re fired!” he shouted, “Get out!” He flapped his arms awkwardly in an attempt to startle her into motion.

“Oho!” she said, rubbing her large red hands together in delight, “fired am I? On whose say-so? Them that hires is them that fires. He who pays the piper calls the tune. And you don’t do neither. Not a bit. Your son hired me, and your son pays me. I don’t budge a step unless I get the word straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“Get out!”

“Save your breath.”

He is beaten and he knows it. This large, stubborn woman cannot, will not, be moved.

“I want to talk to my son.”

“If you got information you feel your son should have, write him a letter.”

He knows this would never do. He would forget, she would steal the letter, conveniently forget to mail it. Justice demands immediate action. The iron is hot and fit for striking. He feels the ground beneath his feet is treacherous; he cannot become confused, or be led astray. One thing at a time. He must talk to his son.