- HUNTING -

So it happened that Nirer, alongside all the other porkers, who also never truly felt a thing, suddenly found himself in a world that, almost like magic, felt completely foreign to the one they knew when they grew up. All of them, without really understanding what was it that had actually changed, gradually found themselves becoming more and more poor.

Luvir Mandrit deciding to get back in business was the town’s talk for almost the entire summer, yet it was met with complete indifference by them. They were done with him. Then, he started acting somewhat unusually, for a porker that is. He began buying out every pig farm, from the ones around Riviella to those way up the surrounding mountains. Nothing else, no wineries, no olive farms, just the pig farms. One by one, big or small, he didn’t care. About their condition or cost, he didn’t care. In the end, only a handful of farms remained outside his hands, those strong and large enough to resist his expansion.

In the Porkerias, they began to notice. There noise around the man had now become too irritating to ignore. Yet, they would only discuss him sparingly, as an amusing rumour that made their work go by a bit faster. And they would go on and on about how he had lost touch with the trade, and how he apparently wanted to go up the mountains, and become a farmer. A few of them had an explanation. They told the others not to worry, that all of them should expect to see Luvir again, and that he’d bring all the pigs that he now owned to the Porkerias, and all would be better once again. For a while, that theory was accepted, in quiet unanimity.

Then Luvir began building his own, foreign porkeria. He made it outside of town, in a field he’d bought. None of the Porkers ever saw the place, but they knew what it looked like, they’d heard the rumours. It was large, larger than any of theirs and made of metal sheets instead of stone. And it had machines, lots of them. People thought only an insane man would live in a place like this. Once again, they were right. After abandoning his father’s house in the Porkerias, barring its doors and closing its windows, Luvir made for himself a new home. It was directly facing the Belir’s palace, so he could, in his own words “waive him good morning every single day”.

In what felt like no time at all, carts full of Mandrit’s products began arriving in Riviella, so many they’d sometimes clog, not only the main road, but the side roads as well. The people of our town, used to eating nothing but salted pork, hunting and river trouts, were now surprised to find not just salted, but also smoked pork appearing in the Stoas and on the Planks, alongside chicken, mutton, turkey, and pheasant. A couple of the oldest and most prominent pork buyers from Gorva, found it much easier and faster to negotiate directly with Mandrit, instead of navigating their way through dozens of porkers down at that smelly district. Some of them even began loading the boars at the barges still alive, and taking them away, to Mirtha, or Trouterri, or even Kefir, and have them slaughtered, salted and packaged there, by machines.

So it began, bit by bit, and every night in the wineries at the Porkerias, a large, dim shadow of bleakness could be seen hanging above heads that would not dare lift their eyes from the table. No matter how hard they tried, no solution appeared on the horizon. One of them tried to ask the priest for advice, he didn’t have any. Another had gone even higher, at the Despot. He’d told him to pray, then find Luvir and beg. He did neither. He went back to the wineries with the others. Some of them were now working just a couple of days a week. Some knew they’d left nothing at home for dinner. And everyone knew, their wives were talking to each other. That they were drinking this poison alongside them, without a word, not even to their relatives outside of town, if they had any. Among themselves however, among the men, no one cried about his misfortune, or complained about his loss. They felt too ashamed in the eyes of the others to talk. And none of them ever turned away, and took on another trade. Such treason, none of them would dare commit. They all held together the Porkerias. They held them like a castle. Like their ancestors. Like nothing had changed. And every hunting day during that winter, their muskets echoed through the river, like a proud roar. Proof, they were still alive.

That most manly of their passions. Hunting. During the large encirclements -when the hunter’s boats circle around the birds from both sides of the river, so they’d fly away and one could shoot them down- when every hunter in town was present, they were always in the front rows. The first and the best. They’d managed over the decades to earn, and hold, the right to be the ones who started every large hunt. The porkers were always the best at shooting down the wilducks, the small waterbirds with the white beaks, and even the prettiest and rarest of birds, the proud wild geese, those so beautiful and harmonic, that underneath their long, tough, outer feathers, one could find a second coat of feathers, thick and smooth and soft as silk. The women of our town called them imperials, and kept them for coating the inside of a good hat, or for treating a flesh wound. A valuable treasure.

In those large, town hunts, as well as his own, small, private ones, Nirer would still experience those old longings and desires that his proud soul called so desperately for. From back when he was young, until now that he was old. That he was poor. That he had fallen. Now, when he’d return home every night, his whole body would hurt. His legs were swollen from the constant standing and moving those heavy boars. His clothes dripping with dampness and sweat. He’d open the narrow door by pushing it with his back, and threw the days hunt on the floor in the middle of the room. Then, he’d lie down on his chest near the housefire and ask his kids to get on his back, all of them, and step on him. Step on him really good. Step on his back that hurt so much. The kids would yell and laugh. They’d dance on his back, and press him down with their feet, and he’d yell and laugh too. Their dog would go crazy trying to figure out to whom it should bark first. It was one of the few truly happy moments that remained inside the bleakness that was descending upon the Porkerias. The only one who wouldn’t join them was his wife. She’d be on her knees, in the middle of the floor, counting and recounting the ducks. Four for them, a pair for her sister, another one for grandma – what if they sold the rest?

This thought she wouldn’t dare to suggest.

The boaters, the islanders, and all the other poor folks around town would always hunt, have their fun, eat all they wanted and then go down to the Stoas, or send their wives, or their children, and sell whatever birds were left. A little extra cash, on the side. A porker would never do such a thing. Not for the Gods themselves.

And so, a week finally came for Nirer, when his workshop didn’t work at all. Not a single day. It stopped completely. The rest weren’t doing much better either, they mostly pseudo-worked. His wife did the best she could during those days to provide by herself. She turned the house upside down, she borrowed from other women, some say she even sold, in secret, some silverware to the Nassaryott scrap dealer, who had, for some time now, taken notice of what was happening in the Porkerias.

She didn’t tell him. She could not even bring herself to look him in the eyes. For the entire week. But it couldn’t go on. She couldn’t go on. One morning, she crossed her arms, sat and cried, simply waiting for later in the day, when the whole family would gather around her, waiting, and she had neither food, nor bread to give them.

He came upstairs, and went inside. He saw her in the corner, and felt the eyes of his children being pinned on him.

“And you left the kids like this?”

She said nothing, but kept sitting in the corner, her head inside the palms.

“Could you not take something from the merchants? Go downther, at the Stoas?”

The woman lifted her eyes, just once, and looked at him. Neither sadness, nor anger, nor lament were in her eyes. They just pleaded him to stop.

He got angry.

“Won’t you say something?”

She lowered her head once again.

“They won’t give us anymore…” she said, ashamed, as if it was her fault.

“And bread? Could you not take some bread from the neighbours?”

“They won’t give us either.”

She got up and left in a hurry, trying to outrun the fear overwhelming her. It was more the unfairness of it all than anything else. The children scrammed, went to their friends. He didn’t know where she went. Probably at her sister’s but he wasn’t sure.

He stayed, all alone in that room, in the empty house. More than their misery, more than the hurt pride, or that shameful display in front of the kids, during all those afternoon hours, he was thinking of the woman. Of the unfairness. He felt a knot, coming up and down his neck. Twenty years together, it was the first time he’d ever really thought about her.