Memoirs of a Basque Cow Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE

  THE AUTHOR

  THE TRANSLATOR

  PREFACE

  FIRST CHAPTER

  SECOND CHAPTER

  THIRD CHAPTER

  FOURTH CHAPTER

  FIFTH CHAPTER

  SIXTH CHAPTER

  SEVENTH CHAPTER

  EIGHTH CHAPTER

  NINTH CHAPTER

  COPYRIGHT

  THE AUTHOR

  Bernardo Atxaga (born 1950) is considered to be the finest Basque writer of his generation. He has written novels, short stories, song lyrics, plays and children’s literature. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and his work in euskera (Basque) and in translation has brought him many prizes, including the Premio Nacional de Narrativa, the Premio Euskadi, the Premio de la Crítica, the Prix Millepages, the Premio Valle-Inclán, and the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation.

  THE TRANSLATOR

  Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers. She won the Portuguese Translation Prize for The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa in 1992 and for The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersão in 2012, and her translations of Eça de Queiroz’s novels The Relic (1996) and The City and the Mountains (2009) were shortlisted for the prize; with Javier Marías, she won the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for A Heart So White, and, in 2000, she won the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for José Saramago’s All the Names. In 2008 she won the Pen Book-of-the Month-Club Translation Prize and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Maias by Eça de Queiroz.

  PREFACE

  One day, while on a walk through some woods up in the mountains in the Basque Country, I met with two surprises. The first was seeing a newborn calf, its eyes still tight shut, lying on the grass; the second, shortly afterwards, was finding the rusting remains of what, at first sight, appeared to be a small plane. I pondered the fate of both. What would become of the calf when she became a cow? What was the story behind that plane? The second question was rather easier to answer. I was helped by a mechanic who went with me to the place where I’d found what was now just a jumble of engine parts and bits of fuselage.

  ‘It’s definitely a war plane,’ he said, pointing to a couple of lumps of metal, ‘because those would have been the machine guns.’ He was an older, rather serious man.

  ‘I suppose it must date from the 1936 war,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed,’ he answered. ‘We’ve never had another war like that here. Well, years ago, of course, there were wars involving cavalry, but not airplanes.’

  The history books explain what happened in Spain in 1936. General Franco rose up against the legitimate Republican government, and that uprising provoked a civil war, a bloodbath that went on for nearly three years, from 1936 to 1939. Thanks, in part, to support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Franco’s troops won, and General Franco then imposed a dictatorship that lasted for forty years, until 1975. The remains I’d stumbled upon in the woods in the mountains were a memento from that civil war.

  The mechanic and I inspected what was left of the wings. I wanted to find out the name of the manufacturer and the plane’s country of origin, but there was no way of telling. The rust had eaten away any emblems or lettering.

  ‘The war was a truly terrible thing,’ said the mechanic, looking around him at the trees in the wood. ‘But the years that followed weren’t exactly good either. There were even groups of resistance fighters living in these very mountains.’

  He was referring to the anti-fascist rebels who fled into the mountains after the war and tried to face down the Franco dictatorship. This surprised me. I’d heard about such rebels living in other parts of the country, in the Serranía de Cuenca and in the Picos de Europa, but not in the Basque Country.

  ‘They were fewer in number, but they were definitely here,’ said the mechanic.

  Having found an answer to my question about the plane, I then started thinking about the life of cows. Not the future life of the newborn calf I’d come across in the woods, but the lives of the cows who had lived through the post-war years in those same mountains, alongside resistance fighters on the run from Franco’s Civil Guard. There was no easy answer to this. Who knows what mysteries might lie hidden behind a cow’s eyes? What does a cow see? And how much does she understand of what she sees? Everything? A small part? Nothing?

  In the end, I felt I had come up with one possible answer. I was helped by logic, but, more than anything, by my imagination. The result is this book which you, dear reader, now hold in your hands, the story of a cow named Mo.

  Bernardo Atxaga

  FIRST CHAPTER

  WHAT MY INNER VOICE ORDERED ME TO DO, OR HOW I CAME TO THE DECISION TO WRITE THESE BOVINE MEMOIRS. I RECALL WHAT HAPPENED ONE VERY SNOWY NIGHT.

  It was a night of thunder and lightning, and the noise and the racket made by the storm finally woke me from my sleep.

  Then my inner voice said: ‘Listen, my dear, has not the hour arrived? Is this not the appropriate, correct and most suitable moment?’ And not long afterwards, without even giving me time to wake up properly: ‘Should you not abandon sleep and comfort? Should you not embrace the excellent, fruitful light? Tell me briefly and with your hand on your heart, has not the hour arrived? Is not this the appropriate, correct and convenient moment?’

  This inner voice of mine has a very prissy, formal way of speaking, and seems incapable of talking like everyone else and simply calling grass ‘grass’ and straw ‘straw’; if she had her way, instead of grass, we would say: ‘the wholesome food grown for us by Mother Earth’ and instead of straw: ‘the unwholesome alternative that one must eat when good food is in short supply’. The voice I hear inside me always speaks like that, which means that she takes an incredibly long time to explain anything, which means that most of what she has to say is very boring, which means that in order to listen to her without screaming, you have to be extremely patient. Even if you did scream, it wouldn’t make any difference, because she won’t go away, she’s not going to just disappear.

  When I was still young, a cow of a certain age called Bidani once said to me: ‘She can’t disappear, because she’s our Guardian Angel. You should be glad to know that she’s there inside you. In this life she will be your very best friend, and will always comfort you when you feel alone. If you find yourself with a difficult choice to make, just listen to your inner voice, and she’ll tell you which is the best choice to make. If you find yourself in grave danger, never fear, just place your life in the hands of your Guardian Angel and she will guide your steps.’

  ‘Am I supposed to believe that?’ I asked Bidani.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied rather arrogantly.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe a word of it.’

  What else could I say? She was older than me, there was no doubt about that, but compared to me, she was also extremely gullible. The fact is that the person has not yet been born who can explain to me exactly what a Guardian Angel is, and so I choose not to believe it. That’s the way I am. When something is clearly true, when, for example, someone puts a pile of fenugreek in front of me and says: ‘This is fenugreek,’ then I go over and I smell it and I say: ‘Yes, this is fenugreek.’ I recognise that what they say is true, but if there’s no proof, or if the proof doesn’t even smell, then I choose not to believe. As the saying goes:

  WHAT DID YOU THINK LIFE WAS ALL

  ABOUT — BELIEVING EVERYTHING

  YOU’RE TOLD AND NEVER

  EXPRESSING A DOUBT?

  No, sir, that’s not living, that’s just playing the fool and behaving no better than a sheep.

  ‘You don’t under
stand, my dear,’ insisted Bidani, as arrogantly as ever. ‘Your Guardian Angel can’t possibly smell of anything. She’s an angel and lives inside us like a spirit; she doesn’t take up any room at all.’

  ‘You should have been a sheep,’ I said with all the impudence I could muster; then, turning my back on her, I stalked off.

  Whatever the truth of the matter, though, and regardless of whether I believed it or not, that inner voice was always there, and I had to accept her. It made no difference what you called her — Guardian Angel, Spirit, Voice or Conscience — she was always there inside me.

  One day, I asked the voice: ‘What’s your name?’ At that time, I spoke to her respectfully, for I was very young.

  ‘Whatever you like, my dear. As far as I’m concerned, I am entirely in your hands, I’m your servant. And, let me just say, I accept my servitude gladly.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure, but just tell me, please, what’s your name?’

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but, as I have just explained, I am entirely at your disposal. It is up to the mistress to name her servant.’

  I got annoyed then and said: ‘Oh, you are a pest! You’re the very peskiest of pests. I don’t know whether you’re an angel or an evil spirit, I don’t know what you’re doing inside me either, but I know exactly the kind of person you are, I should say I do. You’re the kind who always has to have her own way.’

  Then, nursing the little bit of anger I felt, I made a decision: I would call that supposed Guardian Angel ‘The Pest’. And ever since then, that is precisely what she has been: The Pest, The Pesky Pest.

  ‘Well, I can’t say it’s the nicest name I’ve ever encountered,’ I heard the voice say, ‘but it could be worse.’

  That said, and despite everything, I didn’t really think that badly of my inner pest; I couldn’t honestly disagree with all those who spoke in her favour. Sometimes she did seem like my best friend, a good companion when life was pleasant and an even better one when life turned sour, and when she spoke to me, I listened gladly. Indeed, I remember what happened during my very first winter. Then she was a true companion, then she really did behave like a real friend. It all happened one snowy day.

  ‘Look, my dear, it’s snowing,’ the voice inside me said. ‘It’s started to snow and we’re quite far from the house. It might be a good idea to begin making your way down the hill.’

  ‘Down the hill? You must be joking!’ I said bluntly. It was the first time I had ever seen snow, and I didn’t understand how dangerous those snowflakes melting on my back could be. So I again turned my attention to eating grass, because, it has to be said, I can’t resist that short, succulent hilltop grass; I’ve never been satisfied with boring field grass.

  I’m not sure how long I spent there nibbling the short grass, without even once looking up, but I don’t think it could have been very long — maybe half an hour, maybe an hour. Nevertheless, because of the snow that had fallen, it was soon impossible for me to go on eating. I stretched out my lips in search of more grass, but all I got was a mouthful of snow. I snuffled the ground as I’d seen pigs do, and all I got was another chilly lump of snow. Irritated, I raised my head and looked around me. Then I really did feel afraid. And who could blame me, given what I saw.

  There was a black rock, a lot of snow, and nothing else. The meadow where I’d been grazing was white, and the next one was white too, and all the others were white as well. And the path that crossed them to go down to my house was nowhere to be seen; it had disappeared beneath all that whiteness.

  ‘What’s going on here? How will I ever get home now?’ I said to myself, taking a few steps towards the black rock. I felt quite worried.

  I mooed to see if some companion would reply and guide me back to the homeward path, but the silence swallowed my voice the way a frog swallows a fly, and my calls for help simply disappeared. There was nothing but the silence, the whiteness of the snow and the blackness of the rock. And The Pest didn’t say a word. She was obviously hurt by my earlier rude reply.

  The whiteness was just as white when the first star appeared, and when the second star appeared too. And when the third, the fourth and the fifth appeared, it was still the same. Then it was the moon’s turn, and that did change things slightly, by adding a few shadows to the landscape. Nothing very much though. The whiteness covered almost everything. And there I was. As the saying goes:

  A HILLSIDE UNDER SNOW MAKES

  FOR AN UNHAPPY COW.

  I was that cow and I was very unhappy. Where was the path home? Would it never come back? It certainly didn’t look like it.

  ‘Well, have you got nothing to say to me, Pest?’ I said at last. I really had to do something to get myself out of that situation. If I didn’t, I might simply die of boredom.

  ‘I’m going to say something, but it won’t be what you want to hear.’

  The voice was obviously angry, because she didn’t even call me ‘my dear’. Now that I think of it, The Pest must have been very young in those days too; otherwise, she wouldn’t have got so angry over one cheeky reply. I say worse things to her now, and she takes no notice. Now, of course, I always obey in the end and do what she wants me to do.

  ‘Go on, then. I’m so fed up, I’ll listen to anything,’ I replied.

  ‘You owe me an apology. When the snow started falling and I suggested that you should go home, there was no reason why you should obey me. You’re a free agent and you can do what you like, but, my dear, you had no right to reply in that rude, vulgar, ill-bred fashion. You had absolutely no right to do that, my dear. Manners come first, above all else.’

  I looked to the left and to the right, I looked to one side of the black rock, I looked to the other, I looked everywhere, and there wasn’t a sign of the path. The hill was either white with snow or black with night, with nothing in between. I was very bored and very fed up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said at last.

  ‘You’re forgiven, of course,’ said The Pest, with very good grace, forgetting her annoyance. Then she added with a sigh: ‘Just look where we are!’

  ‘Where?’ I said, cheering up. That was exactly what I wanted to know, where I was and how I could get home, but The Pest was talking about something else.

  ‘We’re in a desert, my dear. That’s how I would describe it; a white desert has fallen out of the sky, bit by bit. What solitude! What desolation! Here one truly feels how very small and feeble one is!’

  ‘I’m a cow, what do you expect! What can you expect from cows! We cows are nothing,’ I exclaimed in a fit of honesty. Because, frankly, I’ve never thought being a cow was anything very special. The way I look at it, we cows pass through this world almost unnoticed, along the vulgar path of mediocrity, and to tell the truth and, sad though it may seem, the creature we most resemble is the sheep. As the saying goes:

  WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A

  COW AND A SHEEP?

  ONE’S LAZY, THE OTHER’S WEAK.

  Of course The Pest doesn’t think like that, she thinks there’s something rather grand about cows, and that the rest of the animal kingdom is a bit beneath us. She naturally disagreed with my view and then — what with the snow and the solitude created by the snow — she composed a kind of hymn of praise to our race.

  ‘You’re wrong to talk about cows in that way, and you shouldn’t run yourself down,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, prudently.

  ‘Of course you shouldn’t, my dear. A cow isn’t just anything. Consider, for example, what is happening here. Who is here in this frozen desert, in the midst of this great solitude? Only you, my dear. Or to put it another way, the cow is here. The cow and not, for example, the mole. In autumn, yes, in the warmth of autumn, the moles would be toiling away here and there and frolicking about, but where are they now? And what about the worms and the ants and all the other creatures? They’re nowhere, because they have run away; they have fled under the earth, burrowing deeper and ever deeper; and who knows where those cowa
rds are now, possibly at the very centre of the earth. And what can one say about those who walked, or rather slithered, among the grasses — snakes and serpents of every kind? Or the lizards who peered out of the cracks in the rocks? They’ve all run away and are now sleeping in some hidey-hole. Even more superior creatures have fled — the birds, for example, the squirrels and the pigs and the chickens. Yes, my dear, they have all run away, every one of them, and only you, the cow, remain. A cow understands about solitude and desolation, and armed with that knowledge, can face up to life. Being a cow is really quite magnificent!’

  ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t disagree with you there,’ I said, looking at the black rock in front of me. It seemed to me that The Pest was right in a way; the ability simply to be there quietly, fearlessly, was no mean feat.

  Nevertheless, fear is one thing, boredom’s quite another, and whilst I might be able to face up to the former, the latter was not the same thing at all. I was getting tired of that icy place, and time was beginning to drag — and drag. When would dawn come? When would daylight show me the way home? But it was no use, I had better just resign myself. It probably wasn’t even midnight yet; the moon and the stars had been out for some time. In the end, and most reluctantly, because it wounded my pride, I resorted to the only company I had to hand.

  ‘Tell me, Pest, how are we going to get out of here?’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I can’t tell you everything. If I told you everything, you would never learn to think for yourself, and you would become as simple a creature as a sheep. Why don’t you just apply your mind to the problem, my dear? If you did that, you would find the way home in no time.’

  If I hadn’t been in such an awkward situation, something might have occurred to me, but it was a very awkward situation indeed and getting worse by the minute. I made an effort to see how I had got there, where the house was, what the path looked like, but I felt as if I had a great slab sitting on my mind, crushing any answers.