Once in Europa by John Berger

narrow paths like terraces along the slopes. You can wander along one of those paths without really noticing that on one side the drop below is getting steeper and steeper.
    Go fetch Lorraine!
    Marius had his own way of calling. His calls sounded like an order and an appeal at the same time. Everyone discovers how to make their voice carry in the mountains, and everyone knows that animals respond to sounds which are like songs. Yet his shouts were not musical, they were a kind of convulsive cry and each phrase ended with the sound OVER! Johnny bring over! Take over! Over there Johnny over! Somebody suddenly awaking from sleep might cry out like Marius calling to his dog.
    Fetch Lorraine over!
    Dangerous, he said. Lilac fell there two years ago and broke a leg. To save the meat I had to hack the carcass with an axe and take the quarters back to the chalet on a sledge. Alone. No one to help and no one to see.
    The next time Danielle paid him a visit was in the evening. It had been very hot all day, the goats were as languid as she was. When she had finished milking, she climbed up to the pass. There she could hear the bells of Marius’s herd, and at the same time, behind her and much louder, the bells of her own five. She had an electric torch with her in case she needed it for the walk back.
    Marius was sitting on a stool in his stable, empty except for one cow. He looked up from under his hat, his black eyes fixed intently upon Danielle.
    I was doing my best to make you come, he growled, may need your help when it comes to pulling. I know my Comtesse.
    Comtesse, the cow before them, had her tail in the air and glistening loops of mucus trailed from her distended vulva. Danielle approached her head and felt the temperature of her horns.
    What she needs, she said, is some dew on her nose.
    She wanted to joke because she saw that Marius’s hands were trembling. How many calves had he delivered during his lifetime?And now he owned not one but thirty cows. Why should he be nervous? The last sunlight was shining between the slats of the west wall. When Comtesse moved her head the bell around her neck tolled like an animal in pain. It was stifling as though all the wood of the floor and walls and roof, all the wood of the stable, were feverish; Danielle knew why he was nervous. To be nervous like that he had to be a man and he had to be old: it wasn’t the danger of losing the calf or the cow which worried him, it was a question of pride. As if he were being put to a test, as if he were on trial. No woman, young or old, would suffer like that.
    The head’s twisted, muttered Marius, pushing his hat further back on his head, that’s why the bugger doesn’t come.
    For the third or fourth time he rolled back his sleeve to the shoulder and plunged his right arm into the cow. The Comtesse was now so weak she was swaying like a drunk.
    For Christ’s sake hold her up, he shouted, do you want to break my arm? Hold her up! God almighty, it’s not possible! Hold her up, do you hear me? Your father may be my worst enemy but you keep her on her feet, do you hear me?
    Whilst he was shouting at Danielle he was quietly, systematically, searching with his open hand, fingers separated like probes, to find the calf’s shoulders and then its haunches and then with a single hand to turn them so that the calf could engage the passage. He was sweating profusely, so were Danielle and the Comtesse. Mucus, wood impregnated with a century’s smell of cows, sweat, and somewhere the iodine tang of birth.
    It’s done, he grunted. He withdrew his arm and almost immediately two front hooves appeared, forlorn-looking as drowned kittens. Danielle was fingering the rope, impatient to slip it round the hooves and pull, and so finish with a labour that had already gone on too long, yet she hesitated because Marius was standing there, his face a few inches from the cow’s cunt, his eyes screwed up as if he were