There were notices everywhere on the cages carrying longer or shorter texts. Budai preferred the short ones of course. They were the ones most likely to give no more confusing information than the species of monkey on display together with its Latin equivalent as was the general custom in zoos. It wouldn’t even be a problem if the latter were written in the so far indecipherable local characters, in fact that might help in offering a key to understanding them. For example, if he knew what the Latin for baboon was — and he happened to remember it was papio — it would be easy enough to work out what character represented what sound, or group of sounds, and that information could then be carried forward to the next word and so on until the whole alphabet was solved… This was all very well but there were so many notices, some of which might be warnings or instructions regarding the feeding of the animals or information about the extent of the animal’s natural habitat, its lifecycle or other such matter, or simply directives not to smoke or leave litter and so forth. Given such a profusion of notices it seemed an impossible task to work out which of them referred to the specific species of monkey behind the bars, particularly in Latin, that is if the Latin name was provided at all.
There were very long queues for the green-painted lavatories with separate ones for men and women, and since there was no way of avoiding them he had to wait for as long as it took… Later, standing on a bridge, having chosen for no particular reason to go one way rather than another, he saw an open-air lido in the distance. There were many pools, both bigger and smaller, and despite the cool wintry weather, all of them were crowded, the various bathers hardly having any space in which to move and yet everywhere one or other figure was leaping into the water, splashing about and making a general noise. People were hanging like grapes off the diving boards. He looked to find the place where the used water might drain away but it was hard to see through the mist and steam and there seemed to be nothing on the surface, no ostensible way of conducting the water. There had to be underground pipes.
It seemed much more like an outer suburb now with fewer houses and those broken up by vacant sites, lawns and play areas, though the traffic on the main roads was no less busy. The fog had lifted: it felt cold and dry and soon the soot-red disc of the sun appeared, its edges sharply defined in the dirty sky. Here and there a few improvised dwellings stood, made out of cardboard or the carcasses of old buses, while in the distance a rust-coloured slag heap closed off the horizon.
He came to a place where both pedestrians and road traffic seemed stuck in a bottleneck so there was no forward motion at all except by thrusting his way through the crush, using his shoulders and hips: there must have been some kind of obstacle stopping them. Budai felt his mission was more urgent than theirs and, knowing there was no alternative, he set about shoving people aside. After some ten to fifteen minutes of struggle and a good few kicks and blows received in retaliation he reached the point at which they were being held up.
Cattle were being driven across the street, a lot of them, an entire herd, proceeding slowly, their lowing mingled with the sound of whips cracking, dogs barking and a general sound of lamentation. The herdsmen wore rubber boots and leather or cord jackets, as well as wide brimmed hats or berets. They looked a cross between cowboys and drifters… Budai thought it might be a good idea to follow them so he left the road and made his way over the grass to walk beside the cattle though he was dressed quite differently from the herdsmen. He couldn’t have explained quite why he was doing this but it hardly mattered which way he went now as long as it was out of town. No one asked him what he was doing there and his presence hardly registered in the constant confusion, in the clouds of dust and the universal movement, from which, occasionally, one of the wilder young bulls would break ranks, causing a great to-do as excited dogs barked and determined herdsmen whooped as, together, they drove it back into the herd.
Now they were on sandy ground, moving past a lumberyard where circular saws whined cutting tree trunks into smaller sections, then past another built-up estate where the herd clattered and beat on the paving with a noise like dull thunder that took a while to die away. Eventually they drove their mobile market into a fenced-off area like a sheep-pen and from there directly into a high-vaulted building. Budai forged ahead of the others here, partly out of curiosity, partly carried along by his own momentum, but once inside noticed that while most of the cattle had already ambled a long way into the great hall he could no longer see the head of the herd which must have been accommodated in spaces further off. Men and cattle completely filled the hall. Beside the drovers there were men in canvas overalls too, bustling about while the mooing and bellowing noise grew ever more baleful, each sound echoing off the bare walls, the air thick with warm, living-sickly smells. This must, no doubt, be the slaughterhouse.
The whole noisy melée was goaded into one vast hall lit by a great skylight. The floor here was running with slippery scarlet blood. The animals must have scented the danger because the smell of blood, if nothing else, made them halt and resist though there was no way back, nowhere to run, because ever more cattle were being driven in behind them. When it came to their turn each was suddenly surrounded by a group of strapping men, one holding its horns, another tying it down with a rope, until it was forced to stand astraddle. Then, whoever had the cleaver brought it down on the nape of its neck. Its poor legs gave way and collapsed. At the moment of collapse another man delivered a blow to its brow, cutting it open. But the beast must have lived on a good while yet for it fell sideways and carried on kicking on the stones, throwing its head back now and then, even when they buried a knife in its throat and drained its life blood, at which point the sad martyred look on its face very gradually glazed over.
Budai could not bear to look. He wanted to turn away but whichever way he gazed there were dying animals sprawling on the ground, ten, twenty, maybe thirty at a time, who would then immediately be dragged further along, cut into pieces, skinned and sliced, while all the while fresh ones took their places under the cleaver so that they too might be cut down in turn, the process lasting, it seemed for ever, blows raining down again and again. It was if every cow in the world were being driven to slaughter. There was no end to it. Budai could not go back for fear of being crushed by the incoming herd so had to move forward right through the thick of the killing, treading over skin and guts and viscera and sections of flesh, wading through blood and the steam of blood, between butchers and youths covered in blood, past blood-stained walls, past bloody pillars. He’d faint if he did not get out soon.