Republic of Consciousness Class of 2020: Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, tr. Frank Wynne (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Between now and 26th February when we announce our shortlist, we’ll be featuring each of the longlisted titles on our new blog page in some way. Today we’re running an extract from Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, translated by Frank Wynne (Fitzcarraldo Editions) - it’s fierce. If you want more, you can get the book here.
Three or four boars are sufficient to impregnate the breeding sows. One of them, the one they have nicknamed the Beast, is the result of years of selection and clever interbreeding. Never before have the men managed to breed such a specimen. The Beast weighs four hundred and seventy kilos, stands one metre forty hoof to shoulder, and measures four metres long. When they parade him past the stalls to check whether the sows are in their heat, the huge testicles swinging from left to right in his scrotum are like a sneer at the men’s impotence, while urine trickles from the vulvas of the sows as they smell his sour breath. Aware of his physical superiority, frustrated by the proximity of sows, his confinement and the competition from other boars, the Beast can be volatile. He has already managed to corner Henri in one of the aisles of the pig shed, pinning him against the bars of a stall, and would have ripped off the hand he was about to bite had Serge not intervened and beaten him viciously. Yet the Beast is the father’s pride and joy. Henri believed in him from the beginning. When he emerged from the womb of his mother, a firstclass breeder, he was twice as heavy as the other piglets in the litter, four of which were so puny that the men had no choice but to destroy them.
‘We’ll not be castrating this one,’ Henri said, pointing to the boar.
When the truck came to take the sow to the abattoir, he took the restraint board from Joël, making it a point of honour to escort the sow aboard. When she finally agreed to get in, he got into the truck with her and laid a hand on the sow’s recalcitrant back, whispering in a low voice. The son watched in silence, thinking perhaps he was promising it an easy death, thanking it for being consistent, reliable, efficient, an excellent meat machine, for having given birth to the Beast, a boar like no other, one that might easily win them first prize in several categories at the next agricultural show. But Henri has always despised agricultural shows, refusing to perform like a circus animal, talking about ‘exposing himself ’ to entertain those from the outside world for whom his hatred and contempt never ceases to grow, as though he himself would be dragged into a pen, exposed, groped, judged.
With this exceptional boar, he vows to revitalize the sales of breeding stock to Germany, Spain and Italy which have declined and affected the overall profitability of livestock ever since the pig rearing business began to slip out of their control, slowly, as a river reshapes a landscape with a movement that is barely noticeable when measured against the span of a human life, but only when measured against generations, where memory is lost, such that no-one remembers and no-one can say when it began to change its course.
—
When he finished whispering in its ear, the sow that gave birth to the Beast and countless other piglets is caged with animals it does not know, as frightened as it is at having been taken from their stalls, herded though the sorting pen into the dazzling light outside, then driven up into the truck before the ramp is taken up. As the motorways, the routes nationales, flicker past, the pigs see the russet, red and ochre earth, the grasslands, sights and smells that reach them through the gaps in the planks. Unloaded at the rear of a squat, silent grey building, they are herded through a narrow chute where already they smell the stench of blood and death. Some struggle to escape, but it is impossible for them to turn around because of the cramped confines of the passageway and the horde of pigs behind, trampling them, scrabbling over them, biting their croups while the men shout and beat them. Others, bewildered by the journey and the blows, uncomprehendingly move forward towards the waiting men in protective coveralls wielding captive bolt guns. Still others drop dead, brought down by a heart attack, and must be carried out of the passageway to the conveyor belt that will devour them. When it comes to the turn of the sow which birthed the Beast and dozens and dozens of other piglets, the slaughterman presses the captive bolt gun to her temple. It takes several attempts, three shots to obliterate her brain, before the sow falls to her knees. She is then stuck through the thigh with a hook, hoisted up and bled out. The slaughterman turns to his co-workers, shaking his head: ‘She wouldn’t fucking die, the bitch!’
—
In early May, as Serge is heading back into the pig shed looking for the pack of cigarettes he left in his coveralls in the changing room, he sees a glow on the control panel indicating that the lights in the boar pen have been left on. He sets off to check the circuit breaker, lacing his boots, cutting through the farrowing house and entering the building reserved for the boars. He finds Henri in front of the boar pen, his arms on the top bar. The father does not hear him come in, does not move. His head is bowed, he is staring at the boar lying in the straw. At first Serge does not dare move for fear that he is interrupting something, a moment of privacy, of confidence or contemplation. Then his father turns.
‘Everything okay?’ Serge says.
‘Yeah,’ Henri says in a low voice.
‘I forgot my cigs,’ the son says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the changing room, ‘and I noticed the lights were on in the boar pen.’
The father says nothing and turns back to the stall housing of the Beast.
Serge steps closer, hesitantly walking along the aisle. He stares at the boar which stares back, motionless, indifferent to their presence, then he glances at his father’s profile, the grim face weathered like old leather. He says:
‘Is there a problem?’
Henri slowly shakes his head. He accepts the cigarette his elder son proffers. The flame of the Zippo illuminates the folds of his face and, for a moment, the smell of petrol overwhelms the scent of the Beast. They smoke as they stare at the animal.
‘Have you noticed that their pupils always reflect our face?’ Henri says. ‘If you look carefully. It’s just a detail, but sometimes I think there’s more to it than that. It jumps out at you. It’s like looking in a two-way mirror or into the bottom of a well. You see yourself, but you see something else, something moving underneath like… It’s as though you see yourself the way they see you with their dumb, animal eyes.’
Serge says nothing. Henri is not usually inclined to spouting this kind of nonsense. An animal is an animal, and a pig is not even that. This is what his father taught him, a fact confirmed in the pig shed every day. Let this boar they tend, feed, clean and masturbate look at them with that contemptuous air of an indolent, lecherous emperor; he will end in the abattoir like all the cull boars when one of his offspring takes his place and his balls dry up.
‘The eye was in the tomb and stared at Cain,’ said Henri.
Serge chuckles politely.
‘I’m going to go, I’m freezing my balls off,’ he says at length.
But he waits a moment longer in the hope that the father will follow him, and then leaves him alone with the Beast and goes back to the changing room.