Gheorghe
skinned the lamb without saying a word, and now he stood facing me with bloody
hands, the carcase lying at his feet.
E
trecut.
Over
and done with. The five-day-old berbec
had run into the wheels of a goods train two hours before. I was supposed to be in charge, and I had
expected – deserved - a tirade. I had volunteered to look after 21 of Gheorghe’s sheep for a couple of hours
while he was busy elsewhere, and he had, hesitantly, left me looking after a
score of mânzari (ewes which had given birth) and their young. I
could see that he was torn between his doubts about the wisdom of leaving an
inexperienced person on their own with his animals, and wanting to give me a
chance.
I
had felt so smart, a real shepherdess. Poţi sa le lasi acolo, unde
iarba e mai proaspata; nu o sa trec linea.
Gheorghe with his slight lisp, his air of mastery belied by his
unfamiliarity with foreigners, had told me that grazing the sheep by the
railway track would be alright; even during the winter there had not been
enough moisture in the ground to grow grass and now, on 1st April, there was
so little decent fodder anywhere that they needed every available blade.
Like
most of Romania, this quiet corner of north-west Transylvania hadn’t seen serious rain for nine months. In
spite of heavy snowfall in January and February, the ground was parched, and
the hills were the colour of dun and khaki. They won’t cross the line,
he had said, they’ll stay with the most succulent grass.
Of
course I should have reacted quicker but as it was, I just stood there, in
disbelief as the tiny male lamb passed for a split second within reach and
headed straight for the thundering, lumbering train, five feet away. He
ran beside it for yards, while I followed clumsily trying to grab him.
But I was paralysed. Horrified, I saw him falter and his limbs flail
beside the grinding metal. Then he disappeared altogether.
There
had been plenty of warning; the siren from the nearby level crossing had wailed
for three or four minutes in advance. The train vanished as inexorably as
it had come, and I imagined the driver cursing me – he had stood on his horn,
and disentangled the soft and twitching limbs. The lamb had fallen in a
crumpled heap between two sleepers. I cradled him in my arms.
His blood dripped onto my sleeve.
Stricken
with sadness and guilt, I hustled the ewes and their offspring away from the
ditch by the railway track. They seemed unaware that something
catastrophic had happened to one of their tribe. There was no traffic on
the narrow country road which ran beside the line and I harangued them across
it up the low hill which separated us from the village.
I
couldn’t believe I had let the lamb get hit. Every now and then a chill
wind ruffled his ears, mocking my hopes that he would come to again if I held
him long enough. My tears dripped all over him, willing him to live, but
he did not move. His eyes had milked over and his neck hung limp.
He remained warm long after he had died.
Gheorghe
had been busy with arrangements for the 200-km walk to his summer grasslands
high in the southern Carpathian
Mountains. He had
said it would be OK to let the sheep stay near the railway; because that was
where the best grass was, and although he was still feeding them on maize they
were terribly short of fresh food.
As
the minutes ticked by and no-one came - Gheorghe had only left me half an hour
before and I had no mobile phone - the flock grazed on regardless. I had
to quash my urge to run and hide. The sheep cropped the dry spikes with a
frenzied nibbling. Driven by hunger, they had no time for
sentiment.
It
wasn't hard to identify the dead lamb’s mother. She was the only one who
was seriously perturbed. She ran here and there, calling for her baby,
sniffing alien lambs and rejecting them with an impatient jerk of her head or
stamp of her hoof. I watched her with the sickening realisation that her
distress was a thousand times worse than mine. What should I do?
Eventually, I put her lamb down on the grass and retreated. I was still
in shock myself but I thought, She has to know. How else will
she accept its disappearance?
A
long spell passed before she had the courage to come close. She walked
forward uncertainly and then suddenly changed her mind, running away from me as
well as the small white heap on the ground. Then she came back again, her
muzzle outstretched in fearful tenderness, inching closer, not wanting to
believe. Then again, turning her wary, accusing eyes on me, she would
rush away to the safety of her sisters, unable to cope.
It
seemed years before Gheorghe’s van pulled up at the derelict farm where he and
his hired shepherds had lived for the past five months, while over-wintering a
thousand long-haired Ţurcana sheep. The air was so clear that even though
it was a quarter of a mile away, I could see every movement as he busied
himself in the yard. Agonised because I couldn’t shout loudly enough, I
followed him with my eyes, anticipating his sense of anger and loss, dreading
the moment of confession.
As
I was standing there, impatient to leave the sheep in safe hands, Marcel came
up beside me. Marcel was one of Gheorghe’s hired shepherds. He said
he was fourteen and that he had run away from school because it bored
him. Marcel was half man, half child: gawky as a lamb but street
wise. His dark brown eyes, innocent and clever, were set in a flawless skin;
he was as ready to pounce as to submit. He loved laughing, and would yell
his carelessness to the world, heedless of the outrage he caused. Life
should be a breeze to a kid of fourteen.
I
was carrying the lamb again. Marcel looked askance at it, screwing up his
eyes against the sun. Ce s-a întâmplat? When I told him what
had happened, stumbling over the Romanian words, his looked disdainful, but said,
D’you want me to take it? I shook my head; I wanted to face
Gheorghe myself. Fighting against an awful, cold, indifference, I walked
down the cracked slope, past the balance well whose sun-bleached arm looked as
though it were grasping a sword of judgment, and into the farm.
A
split-second stab of shock, then Gheorghe put his emotions aside. Is
it dead? He took the lamb from me; I didn’t want to let it go.
He said, Nobody slows down, neither cars nor trains. I knew it
wasn’t the driver’s fault. Gheorghe had
the lamb by its hind legs so that its head dangled. Where is its
mother? I pointed dumbly behind us to where Marcel’s slender form
stood outlined against the late afternoon sun, the ewes scattered around him,
but not too far.
Gheorghe
took a folding knife from one of his pockets and set about removing the lamb’s
skin. He slit the soft tissue under the belly, peeled the skin forwards
from the tail end forwards, and yanked it expertly over the ghastly head.
As he pulled the curly fleece from the lamb’s skull I saw the extent of the
damage, a bloody mess where two hours ago there had been a bright and
frolicking eye. Finally Gheorghe cut the skin away from the legs.
Several of his dogs - two large white hairy Carpathian ciobănesti and a
Scottie-sized, dark grey heeler called a câine de întors, crept towards
the enticing smell. They shrank back again when their master kicked out
at them, roaring Cuşti-mă!
Throwing
the body into the tumbledown wattle-walled farm house, Gheorghe took the skin
across the yard to a straw-bedded lean-to where the latest newborns and their
dams were sheltering from the cold. Some of the ewes had twins, and
Gheorghe grabbed of them by the scruff of its neck. Fitting the lambskin
like a tight football jersey over the surprised infant’s head, he tied the leg
flaps in place with some red wool that he happened to have about him, tucked
the replacement lamb under his arm and went into the barn next door. Two
ewes were suckling sickly babies in the dark; one of them was snug in a pen
that Gheorghe had made for individual sheep and their lambs by fencing off a
corner with wooden palettes. He dropped the substitute infant into the
next door slot. The other ewe was a first-time mother who didn’t want anything
to do with her off-spring. Gheorghe had tied her to a feed trough so that
the two-day old lamb could get at her teats. He swore violently at the
reluctant mum, letting his stress show for the first time since I had brought him
the dead lamb. Seeing my discomfort, he threw me another peace-offering: Nu
ai fost primul. I hadn’t been the first, and regrettably, I probably
wouldn’t be the last. Then he strode off
to his van and drove back up the hill, bumping over the grass to collect the
bereft and bewildered animal.
