26.
If you’ve ever read this
book you’ll possibly remember a chilling account of a killing - a depiction of
a pig being slaughtered in the nineteenth century, not behind the closed doors
of a modern abattoir, but out in the open in a family’s backyard. It wasn’t an
easy thing to do then, as it isn’t now.
In his book Jude
The Obscure, Thomas Hardy illustrates the same betrayal of the animal which
we still feel today, by contrasting the pragmatism of Arabella, who was used to
killing animals, and the tender heartedness of her husband, Jude, who was not.
Each was aware of their dependence on the food the pig would provide or the
money it would bring when sold.
It
was thick snow and the pig-killer was over-due. It seemed he was not likely to
be coming after all and the pig had to be killed that day since Jude and
Arabella had run out of the barleymeal feed the day before. Jude would have to
slaughter the animal himself. The pig had been starving since the day before.
Jude says to his wife Arabella “What - he has been starving?”
“Yes. We always do it the last day or
two, to save bother with the innerds. What ignorance, not to know that!”
“That accounts for his crying so. Poor
creature!”
“Well - you must do the sticking. There’s
no help for it. It must be done”.
He went out to the sty and placed the
stool in front with the knives and ropes at hand. He got into the sty and
noosed the affrighted animal who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose to
repeated cries of rage ... they hoisted the victim onto the stool, legs upward,
and while Jude held him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs
to keep him from struggling.
The animal’s note changed its quality. It
was not now rage, but the cry of despair; long drawn, slow and hopeless.
“Upon my soul I would sooner have gone
without the pig than have had this to do!” said Jude. “A creature I have fed
with my own hands.”
“Don’t be such a tender-hearted fool! There’s
the sticking-knife - the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don’t stick
un too deep.”
“I’ll stick him effectually, so as to
make short work of it. That’s the chief thing.”
“You must not!” she cried. “The meat must
be well bled, and to do that he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score
if the meat is red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that’s all. I was brought
up to it, and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long. He ought to be
eight or ten minutes dying, at least.”
“He
shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat may look,” said
Jude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the pig’s upturned throat, as he
had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat; then plunged in the knife with all
his might.
“ ‘Od damn it all!” she cried, “That ever
I should say it! You’ve over-stuck un! And I telling you all the time ”
“Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little
pity on the creature.”
... However unworkmanlike the deed, it
had been mercifully done. The blood flowed out in a torrent instead of in the
trickling stream she had desired. The dying animal’s cry assumed its third and
final tone, the shriek of agony; his
glazing eyes riveting themselves on Arabella with the eloquently keen reproach
of a creature recognizing at last the treachery of those who seemed his only
friends.
“It is a hateful business!” said he.
“Pigs
must be killed.” said she.
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