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Food.
With food, of course. But that’s not the end of the
story. You
asked me about the smell.
Does
this fellow have something to do with the smell?
I
believe so. One day, early in the morning it was, I awoke
to hear my
pigs snorting like wild hogs. Well, I needn’t tell
you that I ran outside to
see what was what.
What
did you find?
That
young fellow had my favorite sow by the hind legs. He was
a
strong fellow, you see, and it was nothing for him to handle
my full-grown
sow like a wheelbarrow. His pants were down around his ankles.
You’re
joking?
I did the only thing I could do. I bashed his head in with
a large stone
while he was still busy with the sow.
Really?
Yes.
Yes. But I still haven’t told you about the smell.
My swill pit
is rather deep, so I thought it only natural that I put
this young fellow’s body
into it. Let the pigs have their justice, I remember saying.
But the damn
pigs wouldn’t go near it. The body rotted, stinking
the air. I beat the pigs,
hoping they would eat, but there was no persuading them.
What else
could I do? When they started to lose weight, I slaughtered
them all.
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It
is a stench that rarely rises higher than a person’s nose.
Its belly
brushes the ground, and it meanders, wandering the ancestral
country-
side until it finds the sea—a mixture of brine and whipping
waves and it
swirls into nothing. But that young fellow, he can’t seem
to find his way
to the sea.
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A
funny thing happened one night.
We
had supper at the usual time. She tidied up the kitchen, tossed
the
scraps to the pigs. I could hear them, imagined them frolicking
in an exci-
ted, beastly way, their open mouths skimming the surface of
their stagnant |
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