The sow squealed, slid farther on her rump, gasped for air, her feet stuck out, stiff, and she squealed again, so shrilly, so long, and so loud it sounded like a human scream; she writhed, then stiffened again, but somehow her body preserved — more precisely, it refined — the rhythm the two of them had found before; and not for a second did she take her eyes off Kálmán, she remained fully alert, and his eyes were also glued to hers, even as he raised his soaked, gooey arm, illuminated by the lamp, and held it before him as if it were some strange object, and just as abruptly as he had started yelling moments before, he now fell silent; if I were to say the sow's eyes were pleading for help, if I said she was begging him to do something and was also guiding him toward that goal, if I said she was grateful to him and urging him on, with her willingness reassuring him that Yes! Yes, we're on the right track, let's keep going! then with my sentimental human notions I'd be defiling that direct raw but by no means brute sensual power that I suppose only an animal's eyes can convey.
The pig responded to his screams with squeals of her own, and he answered her silence with silence.
In spite of being apart now, they stayed together.
The depth of the open vaginal orifice was frothing and bubbling with spasms and thrusts whose rhythmic repetition was like breathing or the beating of a heart.
He reached in again, back to the very spot that had made him recoil before, but this time matter-of-factly, the way we return to familiar places when necessity compels us.
Simultaneously he turned his head away from the sow in my direction, but he closed his eyes.
The animal was quiet now, as if to oblige him by holding her breath.
It seemed he kept his eyes closed because he was doing something inside and did not want to see anything, the better to feel what he was supposed to do.
And then he pulled out his hand, slowly, wearily, got on his knees; his head slumped forward and I couldn't see his face.
It was still quiet, the animal lay motionless, but then, as a delayed response to his manipulation, her side began to undulate, then her whole body was moving in waves from the pressure and the gasping, and at the end of each spasm she let out an alarming squeal that died away in the stifling stench of the narrow pen.
She won't make it, he said, she can't do it, he said quietly, as one who could not be moved even by this undulating suffering because he already saw what lay ahead, he could see all the way to death; and though he did not move away, he stayed put, there was nothing for him to do.
But whatever was happening in the animal's body was far from over.
For in the next instant something red appeared in the heaving folds of that slit, and he, shrieking and wailing like the pig, jumped to grab it; immediately he fell silent, because that something, as if a strange bone had gotten into the sow's flesh, slipped out of his fingers; he grabbed it again, and again it slipped out.
The rag, he screamed, and this was meant for me, yet I felt that a very long time, important and precious time, went by until I grasped that there must be a rag here somewhere.
A sudden paralysis, a grievous failing at this moment, might keep me from finding the rag.
There was no rag.
It was as if suddenly I had no idea what a rag was, had lost the meaning of the word, in my own language! and in the meantime that thing — Get me a rag! — slipped out of his hand again.
He was howling at me.
And then the lamp's glass cover almost tipped over; I was going to look outside, and the lamp accidentally knocked against the door beam, and in fact the rag was there, I could see it, the dog was beating it with his tail, but I had to catch the glass first.
It didn't break — what an accomplishment! a victory I haven't experienced since! — and I could make a grab for the rag, too.
Two tiny cloven hooves were sticking out.
He wrapped the rag around them and pulled; he slowly backed away, still squatting, while the pig pushed and squealed.
It's the struggle that is long, the event itself unnoticed.
The little body slipped out so smoothly that Kálmán, still squatting, couldn't retreat fast enough; he plopped down on his butt, and between his spread legs there it was: the palely glistening lifeless body of the newborn, inside the glassy sac resting on the filthy floor.
I think all three of us stopped breathing.
The mother was the first to move, I think; she lifted her head as if wanting to see for herself, to make sure the thing had indeed happened, but she sank back from sheer exhaustion, though just as her head hit the floor some new excitement of elemental force coursed through her body, a happy force, because it made her nimble, adroit, quick, resilient, and inventive — which one would never have expected from such a large ungainly animal; she managed to shift her weight and turn over slightly, the long umbilical cord allowing for the movement, so that the piglet still between Kálmán's legs hardly stirred; grunting and snorting jubilantly, she leaned closer, sniffed her baby, trembled with joy at recognizing its smell, and then with two sharp snaps bit through the cord; while Kálmán maneuvered his way out of the pen, sliding clumsily on the seat of his pants, the sow got up, sprang up really, and began licking and prancing around the little body, grunting as she impatiently prodded it, poked it, lapped it up almost, until it finally began to breathe.
When about an hour later we shut the pigpen door and the wooden bolt slid quietly home, there were four piglets sucking on their mother's hot, milk-filled, purple-red teats.
The summer night was silent, dark, and full of stars.
The dog followed us.
Kálmán went to the back, dropped his pants, and took a long leak.
I was alone in the middle of the yard, with only the dog standing next to me.
There, in the manure pile, Kálmán also buried the afterbirth.
There was nothing left for us to say, and I felt that we would never need to say anything to each other again.
It was more than enough that I could stand there while he relieved himself, listening to the long, cascading sounds of his rich stream.
Because when the first of the litter was already out and he quickly got out of the stall, and I stepped aside, raising the lamp high, there was a single moment when our eyes locked, and while our movements crossed, our looks were caught up in the sameness of pure bliss, and that moment grew so long, became so intense, that real time seemed to have slipped away, as if everything that had still remained trapped in us from the struggle could break free only in our sudden oneness; it was the insanity of a grin that the lamp was illuminating: our faces were very close, his eyes vanished in the grin, I could see only his mouth and teeth, his sharply protruding jaw, his drenched hair matted on his forehead, and the sudden appearance of his face so close to mine made me realize that this face was a double of my own, because I was also grinning to myself with the same eager, insane grin, and it seemed that the only way we could break out of the frozen time of our grin and truly enter our oneness was if we were to fall on each other.
If for the sake of this oneness we would love each other.
And it still wouldn't have been enough; even with that we couldn't have measured up to the pig's victory.
Instead, we broke into a dialogue.
Into the laughter of words.
I almost broke the glass, I said; the little thing must have been lying in the wrong position, he said; and I asked him why he started yelling like that, what the hell was he yelling about; his father couldn't have done it better, he said; first I thought the pig was only sick, I said, and it was lucky about the umbilical cord, and I didn't know where the rag was; that was one smart pig, he said.