Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [47]
Take note of lesson 3: You don’t let go of the feet too soon it’s a convulsion kick it’s a death-throe & the animal is half-dead but that hurts the most.
And there I see Jak standing hand in the side & watching the whole business. Now that looks prosperous to me Milla, he says: Butcher baker butler then you can make her head-girl over a hundred. If only he’d rather attend to his own business it’s after all entirely at his insistence.
Have just gone to peek again if the outside room’s light is switched off yet do hope everything works out right with hr there in the back I feel all the time as if I’ve forgotten something.
10 o’clock
Everything quiet windows shut tight back there must be sleeping I can’t get the slaughtering out of my head after all it’s just ordinary sheep-slaughtering. Why do I want to write up everything? Did I leave something undone? Didn’t I teach her everything, step by step? Not easy but everybody must go through it the first time.
Lesson 4: Bleed well till empty otherwise the meat is spongy.
Lesson 5: hygiene. Provide a cloth & water you can’t slaughter if you’re covered in sheep manure look how the flies swarm. Bent down there heavy of body as I am & washed the sheep manure from her legs & shoes & next thing her knees start jerking fits fits yell the littl’uns be quiet I say no more from you or you don’t get any lung.
I took her hand with the knife & I bent behind her & I started cutting open from the gash in the throat. Had some trouble with the sternum now you & D. carry on alone I say to A., & press the knife in her hand sing I say to D. so that she can take some strength sikketir sikketir sikketeat sings D. the lamb comes to the block with its wool & its meat sing along A. I say so that you can get some life but her mouth is a straight line & then suddenly she gets some life & she looks me a very straight look & she takes the knife.
Not to cut too deep I say here is lesson 6: We don’t want dung & piss on everything & she cuts shallow & clean all along the belly-line really quite to my surprise.
Then D. took her two hands in his & he pulled the entrails loose & the whole heap of guts fell out & I felt sick & went into the house but I vomited & had done because we were right in the middle & I couldn’t leave A. there alone, then they sorted the intestines so that she could see the dirty & the clean the pizzle & the bladder & the gall-bladder & the small intestine & the large intestine on one side & heartlungskidneysliver on the other. A.’s right sleeve by that time full of blood as if she’d been injured & I nauseous all the time & irritated with the circumstances & the spectators.
Lesson 7: The one place where you can soon find out whether a sheep is healthy is in the intestines. Look for worms in the gut & parasites in the lungs they must be nice & spongy & red & the liver soft & dark the right size like the fist of your right hand. Small & hard or waterlogged means there’s something wrong with the heart quite probably with the whole sheep the heart is the blood’s windmill I teach her if it doesn’t cast the whole animal dries out.
Made A. touch everything & identify everything. Just after a while couldn’t take the bloody sleeve dragging through everything any longer either you take off that jersey I say or we push that sleeve up but A. latches onto the bloody sleeve with her thumb. Dawid hangs the sheep under the bluegums from wire hooks in the heels so then A. can’t reach. He brings an apple box no I say it’s not strong enough cut longer hooks