07 – BUTCHER
I looked at old family albums. My mother gave me also reels of films made by my father when I was very little. There were astronomical numbers of those albums and reels, as if somebody did nothing but run around with a camera. Apparently, when I was very young I often took my dad’s camera and filmed everything. My parents thought I would work in television.
I bought a projector at a flea market. I knew nothing about it and probably a shop assistant sensed it. I showed him one of the reels and he chose a right projector. Then I found some white wall and started to watch my reels one after another. The projector overheated from time to time so I had to make breaks. I fell asleep quite often and on one occasion a fire nearly broke out. The reels were labeled with the date and place only. My films were on them since the year I was four. Mostly they were about nothing but I found something which could be useful. Suddenly there were images of butchers slaughtering pigs both on the photos and the reels. It was strange – what kind of a four-year old boy so passionately watched and documented pig-slaughters? The shots were terrible, but what horrified me more was a thought how that kind of a hobby could affect my psyche.
It wasn’t difficult to find the butchery although now it functioned in a different cirmustances. Handheld slaughter, often carried out in a customer’s house, changed into automated killing, but the boss was the same. I recognised him from the photos. He grew old and grey, put on weight, but his face didn’t change. He didn’t recognize me at first, but when I told him about a four-year old boy with a camera he got agitated and willing to talk. However his stories surprised me.
‘Alfi, how you’ve grown,’ the butcher chuckled. ‘I didn’t think I’d see you again, but now we have no job for you. As you see nothing’s as it used to be.’
At first I didn’t understand him. I was convinced I only had photographed and watched them. But I was wrong.
‘I must admit you impressed me,’ the butcher went on. ‘You were four, those pigs were like bisons for a grown-up man. Don’t cheat ourselves, Alfi, they knew very well what would happen, when they stood and waited for death. Like humans, they felt their world would end soon. You have it on your shots. You see how they try to escape, you notice fear in their eyes. But with you it was different.
When for the first time you told me you would lull a pig to sleep I was stunned. We were bloody afraid the pig would harm you, but you approached to it, stroked its head, spoke to it and after a while the pig lied and calmly waited for death. Never before nor after killing took place so quietly. With you all animals died without fear and calmly. You may not remember it, you were only four and there is nothing on your reels and shots, because you were either shooting or putting the pigs to sleep. You can’t do two things at once,’ the butcher laughed. ‘Anyway, you used to come and proudly annouced you were going to distribute sleep. You were so serious, as if it you were on some quest, and nobody dared to smile though you were so funny. Once we had a terribly aggressive sow, all my men were scared of her. The biggest butcher asked me when Alfi would come… Man, what laugh I had. A four-year old dealt with the most dangerous animals and old farts were scared stiff. You used to come for a year and then you got lost. I remember you wanted to slaughter, but we didn’t agree. We thought it wasn’t a job for a kid like you. You got offended and that was it. I never saw you again.’
His story seemed completely unbelievable to me, since I didn’t remember anything from that time. On the other hand the butcher didn’t have any reason to lie to me, besides I found him through my photos. On my way out I passed an old barn. Through a little chink I saw a white van standing on dowels. The barn’s door creaked and the butcher looked out from his cubbyhole. I came in. The van had a sign MEAT AND SAUSAGES on its side. I glanced at its plate and memorized the number 6 YKW 141. The butcher put a hand on my shoulder.
‘What’s up, Alfi? Now you are interested in old boneshakers?’ He smiled.
‘Who drives it?’ I asked.
“Nobody, it’s a junk. Nobody was ever able to drive this freakish son of a bitch, because it was always breaking down! Everybody was afraid they would have to return on foot. Only old Max could do it. The junk didn’t balk when he drove it. And even if it broke down, Max could fix it off-hand in a middle of nowhere.”
‘No one else drove it? Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘What’s your problem, Alfi?’ The butcher was getting annoyed. ‘I know what I’m saying. Nobody drove it.”