Читать книгу Kaleidoscope. English edition - Irina Bjørnø - Страница 5

Miss Pigli was thinking, while lying on her side. She was feeling warm and comfortable. Her relatives and friends were next to her. They were standing or lying around in this yard, which was full of wonderful, tasty smelling food, poured into metal trays.

The room wasn’t very big and Miss Pigli heard other pigs behind other walls. There were “oinking” and “squealing”, but there was neither fear nor anger in the voices around her. Everything was quiet and very nice in this pig’s world.

Miss Pigli, her relatives and friends had been here in this yard for two hours already. They were taken here in a big spacious truck, and she remembered the road and the bumpy way with an unpleasant feeling. Why were they taken here from her home?

One of the door opened, while she was thinking about it, and a man, wearing an overall came in with a spade in his hands. Miss Pigli was used to these people with spades wearing overalls from her childhood and wasn’t afraid of them. She knew that these people were there to feed them, to wash and to take care of them every day. She thought that their pigs’ kin was probably very important, otherwise why people would serve them and fulfill all their whims and wishes. And they didn’t have many wishes: just to eat well delicious food, to play with friends, to wallow in a puddle, and to have a warm sleep.

People in overalls did all these things for pigs: they washed them under the water jet, removing their excrements, cleaning their yards, pouring them warm hogwash made from steamed barley or wheat.

Sometimes pigs were given the leavings from beer production being to ferment oil cakes of barley with wort and hop. It was favourite dainty for sows and for herself, Miss Pigli.

Miss Pigli was born in Denmark on a pig farm, her mum was an old pig, who had many piglets. She didn’t know that there were three pigs corresponding to every living person in Denmark and that due to them, pigs, this small country had the opportunity to build free schools, hospitals and the seniors centres. Sows were an important chain in assistance for unemployed people as the taxation from selling pork (Denmark took the third place in the world selling pork to Japan, England and other countries) was sufficient enough for developing the tiny kingdom of Denmark.

Miss Pigli didn’t know about it, but she sensed herself as an important ‘person’ who people worked for, devoting their time, strength and life. Miss Pigli really enjoyed such a position.

She liked her pig farm, her mum, her brothers and sisters and the people, who made her life easy and comfortable. In these people’s world pigs’ money was respectable and desired and moreover, pork had been preferred food for Vikings since olden times. They enjoyed eating fried cracklings of well done fore ends of pork cooked in a stove with mustard and horseradish.

Sows played an important part in the women’s beauty as well: lipsticks and facial cream had some lard and the beauties’ legs were warmed with the boots made from the pigs’ skin. Danish men used strong hog leather to produce trousers’ belts and for irreplaceable wallets which were made from the same hog leather for keeping indispensable money. Diabetic patients were grateful to pigs for insulin, produced from viscera of these farm animals.

People used pigs for their senseless social animals experiments, because pigs were the next intelligent animals after dogs and monkeys.

Miss Pigli didn’t know anything about it, but she had an idea that she was an important figure in this world. Why then neither Muslims nor Jews liked her or her brothers, she couldn’t understand that.

Was she really worse than silly rams or always frightened, dung smelling sheep with felted hair? Her meat was more delicate than old goat’s or smelling mutton one. She looked like a small plump baby as by structure as by smell.

Miss Pigli couldn’t understand these people with their religions, the God, and thousands of silly rules, but here in Denmark she was loved and she was considered as the national animal, even the holly one for the descendants of great Vikings, for whom the Christmas and the fried pork were almost the synonyms.

When the representatives of the Allah countries started to move to Denmark in the 90-s, who didn’t love those pink snots and curious round eyes, Miss Pigli and her family thought that their time was over and people would no longer serve the pig’s family, but nothing like that happened.

Farms were not closed and pork processing plants didn’t stop working, so pig’s money flew through the taxes distribution system into the pockets of orthodox Muslims as well as their five-times prayer – Salat (Namaz). They went to the Danish municipalities and received their benefits for life, paid for with the money from pork’s sale, they kept those obtained without any labour money in wallets, which were made from pig’s skin, and their wives and daughters put on their lips bright lipsticks made from pork fat.

And what about Allah? Maybe he had not seen these deviations from its rules, as he didn’t notice the migration of orthodox Muslims to the country of atheists, pig-eaters and alcohol drinkers?

Miss Pigli looked at the man, who nodded his head:

“It is time, dear,” he started to push her to the open door gently but firm.

Miss Pigli looked once more into the man’s eyes and saw there no anger, no danger. She grunted funny and went into a long corridor. Her brothers and sisters were following behind her without fear or doubt. The next door opened in front of her, and she found herself in a dark room. While she was thinking out where the exit was, she suddenly lost her consciousness. There was no air around her but some gas, made her close her eyes and calling her to sleep. Miss Pigli fell down on her side and at the same moment fell asleep – without pain, without violence. The floor under her went away, but she was fast asleep. When her body left this dark room on the transporter, the trusting heart of Danish Miss Pigli was still beating – as calmly as it did when she was alive.

She was driven up to the man clothed in iron gloves and an apron – like a medieval knight in the last tournament. He picked up the pig carcass by a hook and suddenly thrust a tube, sharpened on one side like a knife into Miss Pigli’s chest. The tube was very sharp and went straight into the heart of Miss Pigli. From there, a stream of lively, warm blood of definitely dead piglet gushed out. The blood flowed into the special container and later black bloody pudding and medical drugs would be made from it.

The Miss Piglet’s carcass went on for a further butchery. The transporter was long and there were about twenty people, each doing their job, transforming Miss Pigli’s body into meat, viscera, skin and bones. There was a packing machine at the end of the transporter and boxes, already packed with pieces of fresh pork.

Most fresh meat and heads with eyes and noses were sent by air to Japan, where the price depended on the freshness of the meat and was reduced with each hour passed. The remaining parts were sent for processing with slower traffic to different parts of the world.

Miss Pigli’s parts found themselves in Paris, London, Hong Kong, Berlin, Parma, and many other places of our planet. Even in the small shops of Damascus, with their leather goods, even in hospitals of Tel Aviv and Tehran, where the insulin was used to treat local Muslim people eating too many sweets, and therefore suffering from diabetes.

Miss Pigli was omnipresent and indestructible, continuing to live her ‘lives’ in the bodies and on the skin of others. She kissed the lips of Parisian women and covered with hijab Syrian ones. She was keeping the lives of children in hospitals in Iraq. She warmed old legs of the Jews in Jerusalem with her skin. She was indestructible and eternal. Like the God who created her. Like the Allah himself, who cursed her.