A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [11]
‘Is that a warning to vegetarians?’ I asked José.
‘There are no vegetarians in Portugal,’ he said.
The mustachioed man I took to be the chief assassin – he was holding the knife, a nasty-looking blade with a slot in the middle and a wooden handle – began his approach to the barn. Everyone joined in the expedition, a look of neither sadness nor glee on their faces. Only José’s expression was readable. He was watching me, a wry smile on his face, curious, I was guessing, as to how I’d react to what was about to happen.
At the far end of the barn, a low door was opened into a small straw-filled pen. A monstrously large, aggressive-looking pig waggled and snorted as the crowd peered in. When he was joined in the confined space by the three hired hands, none of them bearing food, he seemed to get the idea that nothing good was going to be happening anytime soon, and he began scrambling and squealing at tremendous volume.
I was already unhappy with what I was seeing. I’m causing this to happen, I kept thinking. This pig has been hand-fed for six months, fattened up, these murderous goons hired – for me. Perhaps, had I said when José first suggested this blood feast, ‘Uh no . . . I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it this time around,’ maybe the outcome for Porky here would have been different. Or would it have been? Why was I being so squeamish? This pig’s number was up the second he was born. You can’t milk a pig! Nobody’s gonna keep him as a pet! This is Portugal, for Chrissakes! This porker was boots and bacon from birth.
Still, he was my pig. I was responsible. For a guy who’d spent twenty-eight years serving dead animals and sneering at vegetarians, I was having an unseemly amount of trouble getting with the program. I had to suck it up. I could do this. There was already plenty in my life to feel guilty about. This would be just one more thing.
It took four strong men, experts at this sort of thing, to restrain the pig, then drag and wrestle him up onto his side and onto a heavy wooden horse cart. It was not easy. With the weight of two men pinning him down and another holding his hind legs, the main man with the knife, gripping him by the head, leaned over and plunged the knife all the way into the beast’s thorax, just above the heart. The pig went wild. The screaming penetrated the fillings in my teeth, echoed through the valley. With an incredible shower of fresh blood flying in every direction, the shrieking, squealing, struggling animal heaved himself off the cart, forcefully kicking one of his tormentors in the groin repeatedly. Spraying great gouts of blood, the pig fought mightily, four men desperately attempting to gain purchase on his kicking legs, bucking abdomen, and blood-smeared rearing head.
They finally managed to wrestle the poor beast back up onto the cart again, the guy with the mustache working the blade back and forth like a toilet plunger. The pig’s movements slowed, but the rasping and wheezing, the loud breathing and gurgling, continued . . . and continued . . . the animal’s chest rising and falling noisily . . . continued and continued . . . for what seemed like a fucking eternity.
I’ll always remember, as one does in moments of extremis, the tiny, innocuous details – the blank expressions on the children’s faces, the total lack of affect. They were farm kids who’d seen this before many times. They were used to the ebb and flow of life, its at-times-bloody passing. The look on their little faces could barely be described as interest. A passing bus or an ice-cream truck would probably have evoked more reaction. I’ll always remember the single dot of blood on the chief assassin’s forehead. It remained there for the rest of the day, above a kindly rosy-cheeked face – an eerily incongruous detail on an otherwise-grandfatherly visage. Imagine your Aunt Minnie bringing you a plate of cookies as you sat in front of the TV, a string of human molars strung casually, like pearls, around her neck. I’ll remember the atmosphere of business