Falls the Shadow

The T.V. babbled on from catch phrase to clich? and we sat and sucked it in for no particular reason - sombody'd switched it on and as yet nobody'd bothered to turn it off. We didn't speak much, the odd comment or request, and the hours slid by unnoticed, gradually warming up. The man with the unlikely moustache was up against it now; he'd had it coming to him for scenes. He seemed to be intent on getting his head blown off and had rubbed just about everybody up the wrong way. We saw Jess sneaking along the corridor, a mean character who hated double crossers more than anything in the world. The door kicked open and old whiskers without a hope in hell of making it to his gun on the bedside table. Jess grinned and ever so gently closed the door. His grin sharpened as he raised his revolver. 'Don't shoot!' pleaded his prey. 'Give me one good reason why I shouldn't' drawled Jess. There could be no reply, and Jess coolly splattered his brains across the hotel wall seconds before the adverts burst in bright and breezy. Pablo stood up and turned it off.

  'Time we went '

  he declared,

  'I said we'd be there before two and the bus takes ages.'

  We'd been invited to a 'matanza', a slaughter in the countryside. Apparently there'd be a couple of pigs and a lamb, and if we were lucky we'd get there a little late and avoid the actual killing. I wasn't exactly sure where we were going but Pablo'd been there a couple of times before and promised me that I'd enjoy it.

  At the bus station relaxed chaos reigned, as always. There were whole families fretting about seat numbers and window seats. Some people had caged birds or huge cardboard boxes that they wouldn't allow the driver to put in the luggage compartment. Squaddies and young gypsy lads had already broken open the wine and were busy getting stoned. Nuns, school girls, pot-bellied labourers, even the odd tourist, all shouting and flapping and continually getting on and off the bus. Eventually, about twenty minutes late, the driver started her up and we set off as an old lady rearranged the seating plan once more according to ticket numbers, asking at least four or five people to change places before she was satisfied. We sat near the back with the beer and clapping - the bus was only about half full and the hassle about seat numbers seemed more a point of principle than anything else.

  The bus dropped us on the edge of town and wound off into the countryside. Pablo knew the way so I tried to follow him and walk by his side at the same time, something easier said than done. It was hot and dry and we didn't say much to each other. We didn't need to, as we both saw the same things and could tell by a look in the eye what each other was thinking.

  As in most towns and cities here the outskirts are where the gypsies live. They are shanty towns, huts built of old doors and plastic sheeting, or shattered, broken shells of houses made habitable by some rotten furniture. Thin dogs scamper about with their heads bowed and donkeys and horses, hobbled of course, stagger around in the midday heat. Rough-haired children swagger and shout as their huge mothers look on. Patriarchs with symbolic sticks and obligatory side burns glare like old rams at us as we pass, proudly holding their heads high as if kings of their domain. Over towards the railway line two or three older kids have tied a piece of string to a small coloured bird's legs and are playing with it like a living kite. It flies and flaps statically at the end of its rope while the swifts and swallows tease it in their freedom. Here are the families of beggars, of cardboard collectors, rubbish sifters, shoe-shines, dope dealers, car robbers. Here is the home of flamenco - the grated voice, the incredible guitar, dancing, clapping, group expression. The children born to bonfires in the street, rags to wear in winter, the art of flamenco music in their veins, a tradition of dirty jobs to follow to be able to scrape up enough money to live. The poorest, least educated, most down-trodden, discriminated race in the country; the suppliers of the philosophy that penetrates society. We feel out of place, menaced even as we cut across their land. They all watch us, impassively and somehow silently, though there is noise and laughter and shouting. Before we cut in behind the wall of the hypermarket I look back towards the boys with the little bird - but they still haven't let it go.

  Pablo glances at me and shrugs, and we press on.

  We came to a small square and I was introduced to about twenty or thirty people, shaking hands with the men, two kisses on the cheeks for the women. We were told that there'd been a delay and that we'd all eat a little later than planned. Most of them strolled off to the local bars, but our fragile economic position led us to a litre of beer by the fountain. It was then that the pig lorry pulled up. Two formidable beasts banged about in the back, angry and demanding to be released. The two drivers of the truck got out and shook hands with a tall slightly greying man - the butcher. They let down the flap at the back of the lorry and the pigs scrambled out into the square. The idea was to herd them across to the slaughter house, but by now the pigs seemed to have sniffed their fate and began squalling and darting off in all directions. The three men showed no mercy. They grabbed a thick rope from the cab and cornered one of the pigs. The rope was slung under its forelegs and the beast was unceremoniously dragged off - by now furious and wild, but unable to escape. The same was done with the second one. The slaughter house door was slammed shut and a silence fell.

  'They know they're going to die,'

  Pablo explained,

  'They already know what a knife is,'

  and he cut his balls off with his hand. I was rapidly being put off the idea of a 'matanza', but, being a pork lover, I had to accept it. However, I was not prepared for the heart-chilling screams that suddenly came from the abattoir. High pitched, full of the fear and pity and agony of death it cut across the square as neatly as a butcher's knife, and as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. A few minutes passed by and that scream continued to start and stop in my memory. Then the doors were flung open, one of the carcasses was dragged out and heaved up onto a table. A fire was started on the ground and the butcher set about his job.

  Within ten minutes the square was full of the smell of cooking pork and people were queuing up for a prime slice. Wine began to flow, meat was passed round and gradually the actual killing slipped into the past. It must have been about half an hour later when the butcher appeared with the lamb. He brought it out onto the square, with a bucket and a large knife. He stood over it, one leg on either side, and gently stroked the blade up and down its throat. It didn't flinch or make a sound, but stood there calmly, trustingly, looking from side to side. The butcher continued to stroke the blade up and down, up and down, staring out into the crowd of people who, with pork in hand, were to witness the killing. Somehow it all seemed a little perverse, sacrificial even, as the only man there with the balls to kill his own meat stared at us and death hovered over the unwitting lamb. Pointed end in the throat, a cut, a shudder, and hold the trembling creature over the bucket, blood spewing, spasms weakening until only a carcass remains.

  Walking back to the bus stop we chew it over and there's only one conclusion; that there is nothing. That when Big Jess says 'Give me one good reason why I shouldn't' he knows there'll be no answer. Or if there is it'll only be a taking of sides, a stating of contrary belief. There can be no convincing argument, no last word. Philosophy knows no right or wrong, accepts no good or bad. The whole history of human thought is based on a void. There is no set morality, no scheme of things. There is an amoral abyss, and strive as we might for the ultimate reason, we'll fall back into that chasm. It is a taking of sides, this life, and we're all as right or wrong as the butcher, the gypsy kid who tied the string, the lamb, the man with the moustache. That was the nagging feeling I'd tried to avoid by slipping into a nonsense rhyme - that it doesn't matter one way or the other if we live or die, if we achieve something or not, if our plans are realised or cut short. We are 'but dross to the wind', insignificant and meaningless, and that is frightening. Because if I don't matter, if Linda was superfluous, then so are we all, and I shouldn't care a toss if I see the stacked skeletons of Jews, or the Vietnamese in flames, or the dead tortured body of a rebel stude
nt leader. I should shrug and say 'C'est la vie' and thank my lucky starts it wasn't me. The morality of stones.