In a stall separated from the other pigs, a huge sow was lying on her side; Kálmán had raised the lamp so high that the light was partly cut off by the door frame, and at first all I saw were her teats sprawled on the sloshy floor and her rump turned in our direction — the sounds were coming from the darkness.
I wanted to ask what was happening but decided not to.
Certain questions one had better not ask Kálmán; he wouldn't answer them.
He must have been standing there for a long time, that's why he was resting his forehead on the door beam, staring into the pen, motionless, almost indifferently, but I knew him well enough to recognize this look as a sign of tension near the breaking point, if not the point of explosion.
And as I stood next to him and watched what he was watching, the sow's eyes and open snout began to emerge from the dimness; we listened to her rattling, the sudden breaks in her breathing, the whistling of her narrowing and expanding nostrils that became a sharp squeal; and all this time she was trying to stand up, though her short, thrashing legs seemed unable to find the ground, as if a great force were holding her back; her thick skin rippled helplessly over the heavy layers of fat on her foundering body; contradictory impulses made all her muscles twitch at once; then suddenly, without even looking at me, Kálmán thrust the lamp into my hand and climbed into the stall.
I tried to hold the lamp straight; the glass cover was hot, and if the kerosene sloshed a little over the wick, the lamp started to smoke and the flame blackened.
Kálmán must have been afraid a little, because he flattened himself against the partition of the pen, ready for any eventuality.
Maybe he was scared the sow would get angry and bite him.
But then he grabbed hold of the pig's head, at the base of her ears, scratching her, trying to calm her, and though the animal gave an angry grunt, he managed slyly to keep her head flat against the floor, so that with his other hand he could explore, and not too gently either, the mountainous belly and sunken hollow of her flank; to this she responded with expectant silence.
And then he made another curious move — until then I hadn't noticed that under the darkly wrinkled anus, her fully dilated vaginal cleft, like a huge multilayered set of pink lips, spilled out of her body and hung, swollen, clean, firm, silky, and smooth, over her rump streaked with feces and urine; Kálmán now passed his finger ever so carefully over this live, burning crater of flesh, and the responding quiver of her rump was just as delicate as his touch had been, but then he quickly backed out of the stall and obliviously wiped his finger on his thigh.
The animal seemed to be looking straight at us.
Impatiently Kálmán grabbed the lamp from me; the pig's watchful eye dissolved in the darkness, she was quiet for a few seconds, all we could hear were the restless grunts and stomping feet of the other animals in the adjacent stall; and once again Kálmán leaned his forehead against the splintery beam.
It's been an hour, her waters broke at least an hour ago, he said.
It would have been silly to ask what waters.
And they left her here, just upped and left, he said, the words erupting with such force that the lamp began to shake in his hand, the glass knocking against the door beam, and he cried out again, desperately, but his body remained stiff, the tension wouldn't let the tears come, he tried to swallow but choked; they left her here alone, he repeated a third time, even though they knew, they knew and still they left, the bastards.
The sow's rump twitched on the slick floorboard, her head fell back and flip-flopped, then slipped along the floor, because she kept opening her mouth as if gasping for air, and it was horrible to hear no sound issuing from her despite the cramped straining.
Something was happening inside her that was not ending.
He must get his father.
Kálmán's father and his two much older brothers were bakers; the bakery where they worked used to belong to them, so Kálmán, being the son of a former property owner, was considered a "class alien," as was Krisztián; the men would leave in the afternoon to prepare the dough and light the ovens, and return early the next morning, after the bread had all been baked and delivered; his mother also left the house after the two cows had come back from the pasture and she had milked them; she had a night job cleaning wards at János Hospital.
So we were both free; no one at home ever asked me where I was off to, and Kálmán was left alone every night.
At our feet, the dog was switching its tail and whimpering quietly.
Kálmán shoved the lamp into my hand again, and he seemed hesitant— I thought he was going to run for help, after all, which would have meant leaving me there, alone and helpless, with this horrible thing; I would have liked to say, You stay here, I'll go — or just go without saying anything — but now the pig was slipping and sliding so quietly that Kálmán decided to climb in again.
I moved closer, to give him more light; I wanted to do it right, though I had no idea what he could possibly do, or whether he knew what one was supposed to do in a situation like this; but somehow I trusted him, he'd know what to do, even if at the moment he looked as though he didn't — when it came to plants and animals, he knew everything; to me the sight was so incomprehensible, the feelings it aroused so confusing, and the suffering (which, because of our helplessness, immediately became our own suffering) so overwhelming, giving us neither time nor strength to escape, that I was grateful to him for not leaving me there, for trying to do something, in a way doing it for me, so that all I had to do was hold that lamp straight.
He crouched behind the animal's rump and for long seconds did nothing.
In the stench and stifling heat it was getting harder and harder to breathe, but that didn't bother me then, because I sensed the presence of death, though I knew I was witnessing birth.
And then he slowly lifted one of his hands, raised it from his lap, oddly, tentatively, with a pensive look on his face, his fingers loosely crooked, and slipped the hand through the thick folds of those swollen rosy lips; I could see his hand disappear up to his wrist.
This made the animal twitch, and she was finally able to breathe; when the next contraction wrenched her body, the sound she emitted was not so much a rattling as a retching one; she was kicking and slobbering, and snapping her teeth, as if ready to bite Kálmán.
He yanked his hand free, but could not get away while still crouching, I was blocking his way, standing with the lamp in the narrow doorway, too scared to jump back quickly; he plopped down on his butt, right into the muck.
But the pig dropped her head back, her mouth still open, hawking and gasping in irregular bursts, snapping at the precious air, and from below bristled lashes, her light-brown eyes seemed to be fixed on Kálmán.
I could feel the even panting of the dog on my leg.
As the sow lay there, looking at Kálmán, I saw that the whites of her eyes, bulging almost completely out of their sockets, were all bloody.
By then Kálmán wasn't trying to figure out what to do — he was also watching those eyes — he got on his knees, sank his hand again into the animal's body, and as he slowly penetrated farther, paying no attention to slipping and sliding in urine and shit, he laid his body on the animal's swollen side, pressing down with his full weight; they were looking at each other all the while and breathing together, because as he pressed down, the animal exhaled smoothly, and when he lifted his body slightly, she inhaled helpfully; his arm was inside her, up to his elbow, but then, as though hit by an electric shock, he jerked out his hand and, his whole body shaking violently, he began to yell at the top of his voice.
He was yelling something but I couldn't understand what; I heard him yelling words but couldn't make them out.