Have You Seen Simone? by Virginia Peters

Author:Virginia Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd
Published: 2014-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

*

We were back at the Strobels’ the next day at seven am.

It was one of the last things Simone had spoken to her father about from Australia. Hey, Daddy, when I get home, we’ll go kill a pig. She loved to eat the raw meat, straight after the kill. She would slice a piece of liver as the halves lay open and chew it raw. I was not going to chew raw pig, but when Gustl told me what they had planned for the next day, I wanted to follow through with one of Simone’s last wishes. Maybe I also sensed the need for a bit of blood-­letting after the upheaval of the day before.

As we entered the kitchen, K pointed at the wall, which looked somehow bare. Simone was still there, but Tobias was gone, I realised. They would no longer sit here every mealtime with his face smiling down at them.

‘Die Fotos von Tobias?’ K said, pointing to the wall.

‘Ja.’ Gabi’s lips formed a thin line of resolve. She told us Alexander had removed the pictures the night before.

Out in the courtyard, Gustl and his brother were visions in white in full-­length aprons and white rubber boots. K and I watched silently as they set up a long steel table close to a drain hole—too like a mortuary table, it seemed to me. A line of instruments was laid along its edge, different shapes and sizes. Some were objects I’d never seen before, but most were knives.

Gustl gave me a nod and I followed the men into the stables. The pig snorted on seeing Gustl, and happily nuzzled its nose against his leg as he rubbed the spot between its ears. The necessity of this deception and the gullibility of the pig made me feel sad, but my heart was also pumping with anticipation.

The bang of the bolt being released against the pig’s head was deadened by the clunk of lead hitting bone, a hit between the eyes. The pig’s back legs bucked madly against the wall of the pen, and Gustl slid a blade cleanly across its throat. The neck fell open like a gaping handbag and blood poured out, slurping warmly into a bucket slipped under its throat just in time by the uncle—not a drip lost for the black sausage.

‘How could you watch that?’ K breathed as I returned to the courtyard, which was now filled with sunshine.

How could I not? I had a need to be exposed. Confronted. Wasn’t it just more of the same? Seeing life—or death—for what it really was.

The animal’s rear legs were strung together by the Achilles, and we watched it being levered up by a pulley. With its chest and underbelly laid bare it looked sacrificial. Below, a large cauldron which Gabi had filled from the boiler steamed like a sauna. Down went the pulley, plunging the pig into its scalding bath, and up again, the water yawning and then sluicing down the gleaming body.

Before we could marvel too

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