Anton repurposed Great-Grandmother’s bed for Ellen, so I moved onto the living room sofa, which didn’t bother me. When the brothers had washed up after dinner, we ate cake and drank coffee and watched the news. And then they went upstairs, leaving me in peace with the faint whistling of the water pipes and the hum of the kitchen fridge.
I didn’t see much of Ellen for the first few days. Only if I woke up in the middle of the night was I lucky enough to sense a shadow passing through the living room, hear the flush of the toilet or the running of the shower or the crying, which sounded like my mother’s. Muffled by a pillow or comforter, or whatever it was that women and girls found to cry into.
During the day, I whitewashed the pig house, working myself sweaty and sore with the skim-milk-thin solution, which I had to stir regularly with a thick stick. The wet layers gradually masked the stink of shit and piss, the greasy deposits of skin and fur and slobber, until it all dried into porous chalk and the wall was clean, cool and smooth under my fingertips.
The pigs stirred restlessly when I came out to them in the morning. The agitated grunts became giddier squeals as they stood snout to snout, chewing the bars over the trough. Their small, intelligent eyes beamed at me in pent-up amusement, and they willingly let me place a flat hand on their wet, hard snouts, still covered in the first compound feed of the day.
Anders threw things to the slaughter pigs so they had something to do. Shredded elderberry branches, turnips that they could roll across the floor and knotty, heavy fragments of rope that they pulled like playful puppies, their tails standing vertically, with abrupt hiccupping grunts that I swear were laughter. Anders stood there, smiling wide-eyed like a child.
“Just look at the little assholes.”
I thought of Ellen. Living with a woman who wasn’t my mother was new. When I walked into the bathroom just after she’d washed herself, I inhaled the steam still hanging in the air, saturated with her Lux soap and the new shampoo Anton had bought, its scent tinged with chamomile. I felt at once high from fever and lightning sharp. To my surprise, I began to crazily and feverishly seek out dark pubic hair in the drain. Stood in front of the mirror with my head tilted in an absurd, impossible attempt to recreate her naked reflection as it might have looked when she considered herself a half hour earlier. Perhaps she had touched her nipples, wearing only the loose jingling bracelets on her wrist and the leather cord with the smooth white mussel shell around her neck. The black hair between her legs moist after the shower.
I stopped whitewashing. Lowered my arm.
“How’s it coming along?”
Anders had once again appeared in the white square of the barn door, and I nodded and waved, fished my cigarettes out of my back pocket. Unlike my parents, the brothers didn’t care that I smoked, as long as I was careful with the butts and made sure to stamp them out completely with my heel.
“It’s fine, Anders. Do you want one?”
I offered him the packet, and he carefully removed a cigarette with his big fingers.
“Thanks.”
He leaned over the edge of the box, lit his own, and pointed at a young sow standing alone in the corner box. I could tell he was happy today. His movements were big and unrestrained, and his water-blue eyes clear.
“Boar-Clausen is coming today.”
Everyone in the area knew Boar-Clausen. A guy who drove his truck around with a boar every time a sow was in heat and had to be seen to couldn’t hide in a small town. The man himself was a bachelor and had a smaller, somewhat run-down farm at Ommestrup, but earned no money from it. It was too small, and Boar-Clausen was a farmer without the right knack, which everyone knew. But boars, he could figure out. I occasionally saw him at Feed Stuffs, where he stood with heavy, wheezing breath, talking nonsense with the other men. Afterward, he went home and shoved a pig with soccer-ball-sized testicles into his car, then drove out to his next customer. Sten almost always doubled over in laughter whenever we talked about him.
Anders didn’t laugh. He stood so close to me that his scent mixed with the ones from the cowshed: pig, chalk wash, straw and dried clover. His bland mixture was of sweat and salt and something sweet that I only knew from him, and that I imagined was his own. Like we’d smelled as pack animals on the savannah before water and laundry. His short-sleeved work shirt was soft with smudges of fine dirt.
“So . . .” He pulled up his pants with one hand and cleared his throat, troubled.
Through the open door, I could hear the truck parking in the yard and its doors slamming. Men greeted each other with one-syllable words that grated on the ear. A brief conversation without superficial frills. I knew Anton well enough to know that in his business, all the practicalities were discussed first. Coffee was offered afterward if he decided to invite you in. Anders waved through the open stall door and trampled purposefully down the center aisle. Moved the wheelbarrow aside and put a few hay bales up to guard the feed bags.
Out in the yard, the truck’s tailgate rattled, metal on metal, and Boar-Clausen cursed in his deep, gravelly voice. Cloven hooves had hit the loading ramp hard and unevenly.
“Dammit, not again!”
Anders had positioned himself by the young gilt’s box with his hand on the bolt. Ready to open at the right moment and armed with the broom so he could push the gilt back if she tried to escape. The slaughter pigs had begun to squeal excitedly, and the mood was thick with anticipation. They could smell him, the stranger, and maybe what was about to happen, too. The beast finally appeared in the doorway. Enormous and hunched, with a body that was hard and lean under the coarse bristles, he was clearly eager. Knew exactly what to do, stumbling blindly ahead down the center aisle with white foam dripping from his mouth.
Behind him, Boar-Clausen walked with a rod, which he used to hit the swine on the sides as he shouted and whistled the boar down toward the gilt. If Boar-Clausen was embarrassed by his work, he hid it well. Silent with his jaw jutted forward, he gave Anders the sign to open the gate and the beast followed its snout, trudging directly into the young animal.
“Would you like to see it?”
Anders let his heavy forearms rest on the edge of the box while he followed the two pigs with his eyes. I positioned beside him, trying to look as relaxed as Boar-Clausen, who hopped over the partition and stood between the large animals. Rubbed the gilt on her back as he gazed inattentively out the window. The boar stuck his snout between the gilt’s hind legs and fervently smacked his lips. The size difference between the two animals was terrifying. The boar was almost twice as large as the gilt, who stood there stiffly, her expression implying she was listening.
“That was the smallest . . . you had?” Anders said, tilting his head toward Boar-Clausen’s truck in the yard. He moved his hands restlessly on the edge of the box.
“Him here? No, he’s big, but the others are almost as big—I picked him ’cause he’s usually good with the ladies. Not so aggressive. Since she’s a gilt.”
The balls on the boar were enormous. I’d seen such things before, of course, but they still managed to surprise me every time. Their weight and exposed position near the animal’s ass. They rocked heftily when, with a start, it suddenly placed itself on the gilt’s back. She stood still as stone.
“Looks like she’s taking it well,” said Boar-Clausen. It was nothing other than a dry statement of fact, and neither he nor Anders blinked an eye when the boar’s thin, twisted penis swelled under his stomach. The boar thrust forward aimlessly and missed his target. The boar let himself fall; his hooves left two long, red marks down the gilt’s sides, but she remained standing there, patient.
Anders clicked his tongue, and Boar-Clausen pushed the boar again with the rod, letting it slide along the animal’s neck and then whacking it lightly on the side of its head to make it turn back toward the gilt.
“Come on, you big bastard. We don’t have all day.”
The boar jumped up again, huge testicles swinging underneath—a spastic jerk in the air. Boar-Clausen struck him on the back.
“You damned moron!”
He bent down breathlessly over his own large paunch, glaring at the boar’s protruding dick. Then he moved laboriously onto his knees, grabbed the boar’s cock and placed it between the gilt’s dirty red flaps. The boar thrust again as the flesh under his pig bristles trembled. Slobbering and grunting, his snout was pressed against the gilt’s neck for what seemed like an eternity.
I should have gone about my business, but it was impossible to look away now, and even if I could, it seemed more childish and embarrassing than staying. Neither of the men seemed to be bothered by it, but I felt a terrible, deep shame as the pig emptied itself, still with Boar-Clausen’s hand around the root of his corkscrew cock, a tired-of-life expression on his face.
“That’s her seen to,” said Anders, clicking his tongue. “That’s how it goes, Jacob. But you knew that well already?”
After Boar-Claus had gotten the boar back in the truck, drunk a cup of coffee, and driven off again, Anders rubbed the gilt’s scratched back with cow udder cream. He mumbled low and comfortingly, smiling at me as the gilt leaned against him, letting him scratch her behind the ears. “A good boy,” as my mother always said. “Anders is such a good boy.”
But his body was sharp and hard under his shirt, as if he were made of wood and iron and stone.