Military (18+)

The right to call a fighter must still be earned

A huge black bull weighing under a ton, which stood in the cold for several days, is driven by strokes of the electric shocker in a narrow corridor. The corridor leads to a cattle -beam, before the entrance to which is a box of stunning, saturated with blood, urine and fear. The bull, feeling the smell of death, rests with hooves and horns, tries to break out of the trap. But the shock of the shocker drive him into this metal box. The door behind the bull is shut with a roar, his head is clamped with an iron block. All. Do not escape.

The bull, clenching his teeth, puffs with his nostrils, searches with the bulging eyes of the one who drove him here. The slap in point blank sets a loaded gun to the head of the bull. Shot! The bull falls on the floor. Through the rising side wall, the body is thrown into the massacre of the massacre. A bull in agony, he is still breathing. They try to throw a chain on him to hang the hind leg, but he with one jerk drops all the bonds from himself, stands on his feet and rushes in fury, knocking down the slabs. One of them throws behind a gun. Two more shots. The bull finally falls. Three pull it by the tail, hang it upside down. The heart of the bull is still beating. In his nostrils, he is inserted by a large steel clothespin with a wire - the same shocker, only with high tension. It is included in 15 seconds. The bull is still alive! - The wheel bends his back, shakes, stretching his legs forward. The shocker is turned off. A powerful pile of muscles sags with a whip.

A fighter - this is what the slabs are called here - cuts the throat of the bull, the blood beats with a fountain.

***

Our farm on the one hand is protected by forest, on the other - a village and a river. Most employees live directly on the farm, in the hostel. All buildings here are white, the same type. Differ only by drawings on them. On the sheep farm - the silhouette of the sheep, on the cow - cows. The cattle beam is not swording in any drawings. It stands detached on the edge of the farm, at a distance from the rest of the buildings. The first thing you feel when you find yourself on the massacre is the metal smell of blood. He can faint an unprepared person, while experienced fighters simply do not notice him.

Today is the slaughter of bulls. Before starting work, the walls and floor of the massacre are doused with water so that the blood does not bake and does not lick, succumbed to washing. The floor is painted red, the blood on it is less noticeable.

The trainee Vovka was entrusted with shooting the bull in the head. He proudly takes a pistol, calling him a joke of the SVD (Dragunov sniper rifle). Vovka - 29, but it is already a little bald, pockmarked, with wrinkles on the neck and forehead, with a thin tuberculosis. His teeth are worn to black roots. But there is something childish in it with all this: shy children's laughter, resentment ...

On the slaughterhouse, Vovka is a little more than two weeks. He studied at the tractor driver in his village near Lipetsk. I worked in the field for a month, paid him 6,000 rubles. More Vovka did not sit down for the tractor. I tried myself a roofer, but there "almost broke." The massacre seemed closer to him: at home in the village they often beat cattle, my mother worked with a milkmaid on the farm all her life. Yes, and the salaries of the fighters are higher ...

On the cattle -beam, like in almost any team, there is its own hierarchy, there are their own "grandfathers". The right to call a fighter must also be earned. Therefore, interns often from the first days they “throw” into the blood. So Vovka independently hangs the bull he had just killed upside down.

It takes a knife huge, like a machete, and cuts the throat. He cuts even ineptly, spraying his face, hands and apron with an pressure of hot blood. But it cuts ...

Uncle Zhenya approaches Vovka and intercepts his knife from him.

“Give me here,” he says in a hoarse, low voice. - Well, what are you *** going on! Cut the bolder! Well, soo!

With a deft movement, Uncle Zhenya opens the artery, and blood flows into the vat with a powerful stream.

- WWII, clean your forehead, and cut your ears *****!

To clean your forehead means to remove scalp from the animal. Vovka cuts off the heavy head of the bull and throws it on a cutting table, carefully taking off the skin from the skull.

Uncle Zhenya is an old wolf among the fighters. He came from the army at the age of 20, having served in the border worships, so all his life on the slaughterhouse. He is 54 now, but by strength he surpasses all young fighters. A wide back, disproportionately large hands, fingers - in cones, corns and scars.

While Vovka is busy with the head of the bull, Uncle Zhenya takes the skin. They begin to take off her feet and neck. Uncle Zhenya works very quickly. Minimum movements, they are all verified and smooth. He does not trust anyone with his sharp knife. He sharpens it with a musat - a steel rod with pointed faces. This is his talisman. Uncle Zhenya found him 35 years ago on a slaughterhouse, since then he has not parted with him. Musat is all clumsy, with a welded handle, for some reason it seems to me like a wand of Harry Potter.

Removing the skin from the extremities, she is pulled from the back of the bull. They cling to circuits, wrapping them on a rotating drum. Then the skin is salted in the refrigerator. Each weighs 35–37 kg. It is straightened on the floor like a blanket, wool down, and rubbed large salt into the inside. The following skin is thrown from above, and so everything is repeated. Surple skins are stored for weeks until they are bought by the tanners.

Even today, a sore goat was brought to the slaughterhouse. Here they are called "forced." The goat all bald, twisted, eyes rolled. Fighters often cut hopeless animals with apprehension, afraid to pick up something from them. A goat with a throat cut with a drag is dragged to the sewer tray, blood is lowered. Uncle Zhenya, under the skin, discovers large pressure sores and a tumor in the insides, similar to eggs in jelly -like mass. The name of the veterinarian.

- What to do with her?

- Continue to cut

- Yes, what are we going to poison people?

The doctor answers with a smile: "Let us let go for processing." That is, to sausage and sausages ...

- Yes, maybe her *****, this sore goat? Let them burn better ...

- No, I said, for processing!

The fighters have complete power over death, but there is no power over those who give orders. They are known, and even if the instructions from above are reckless and destructive, the fighters will fulfill them.

Sick animals are often brought here: with swollen bloodied legs, with abscesses, tumors and pressure sores. Most carcasses go into business. Yura has long stopped resisting, arguing with the authorities about “how correctly how it should be”. Yura is the best student of Uncle Zhenya. He has been on the slaughterhouse for 14 years. He is about 40. Yura sometimes likes to answer with English ligaments: Yes, of Course, it's Okay! But still, his beloved is Russian *** (Op!). The English Yura began to teach when he got a job as the head of the Skotoboyni in the Franco-Russian company. He later left there, English was forgotten.

***

Evening evening. In the room of the fighters they play cards. The room is groomed, smoked, dull. On both sides - wooden bunks. A dried piece of meat hangs from them on the wire. In the far left corner, at the dining table, he sits in Yurka’s shorts. On TV, "why do I need the sun, Monaco ...". Sausage flashes in the pan. Yurka appetizes on the ovarian tile. He finishes the second bank of Zhigulevsky. Next - a stack of vodka. All empty bottles descend under the table, there are already many of them. Nearby, at the same table, Uncle Zhenya mumbles a deck of shabby cards - they play with money in the “second”. His elbow is in a drop of dried blood, not washed away after a working day. He does not notice her. Vovka somewhere got a package of Mahorka, twists the “goat leg”. On the upper bunks lies indifferently by Uncle Sasha, a veterinarian from the cattle yard. He is sick, he has a fever. He does not sleep, tossed on his side, buried in the wall.

Uncle Zhenya gives out cards. Coins are scattered on the table in front of each player. Someone has a handful more, someone has less. In the course of the game, the coins are migrated from one to another. While Uncle Zhenya wins.

“Bulbash I have a debt so ***** and did not return,” Uncle Zhenya says displeasedly. “I wrote it at home.” Card debt is a holy cause. It will be no longer 1500, but 3000 [rubles].

Bulbash - Grisha, a neighbor through the wall, a young guy from Belarus, came to Russia recently.

“Eh, to finalize before retirement,” Uncle Zhenya sharply changes the conversation.

“What, ***, I will work all my life that I will not work ... They will give a minimum wage, the current mi-ni-ni-ni,” Yurka answers indignantly.

- Yes, here you will live to a pension. It will probably be canceled in general when our time comes, ”says Vovka.

“My uncle retired 60, two or three months ... And he died ...” Yurka answers.

From the TV, they are buzzing about the "neo -Nazis and Bender" who seized power in Ukraine. There are video frames of columns of tanks, armored personnel carriers, Grads. Russia recognizes the “DPR” and “LPR”, they say that they will provide military assistance to the self -proclaimed republics.

Uncle Zhenya listens more attentive and says:

- Well, <...>?

- No, what are you, what ***** <...>? They will agree ... - Yurka continues.

- If something starts, I won’t go to fight! Who needs this <...>? Against whom? - says Vovka.

- In the sense, against whom? The Naziki will wet ours, prohibit Russian, and you will sit out? - Yurka is indignant.

-What if you want to live humanly, freely, Nazik right away? Russia is friends with? With Mali, Tsar, Somali and North Korea? Although America is hack, look at Japan, Taiwan, Korea, the same Europe. Do they live badly under the care of America? Let from all of us at least Ukraine will live with dignity, ”Vovka beats off.

Card duel came to an end. Yura lost everything. And he still remained to Uncle Zhenya and Vovka 1000 rubles.

“You will leave me so soon without panties,” Yurka mutters displeasedly.

On the upper bunks, the veterinarian of Uncle Sasha stirred. He went downstairs, looked at Yurka and sadly said: "Well, well!" - And he left the room.

***

On the farm I worked for two weeks, washed the floors. I wanted to write a terrible and honest text about death and about freedom of choice for Novaya Gazeta. We talked a lot with the fighters, I heard many smart and stupid words about the current situation. But then I fell ill with Covid, and when I recovered, the “special operation” began and it turned out that it was no longer possible to write about death and freedom of choice.

Therefore, now it's just a text about the massacre.

Konstantin Bashlaev,
Especially for "new"