The Transylvania Joem: A Young Peace Corps Volunteer in Romania

*Warning: Graphic details.

On Thursday, December 17th, Harlem and I took part in a pig slaughter. I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, and reached over my head to touch the slick, ceramic tiles of the ‘soba’ behind me. It’s warmth was passing away– the coal and splintered stumps of wood just memories of heat ground down into ash during the night. The sky was grey outside, empty of light and full of cloud and cold.

Harlem and I rose slowly and drank a few glasses of water from our nearby jug, then layered ourselves liberally in warm clothes. A cold snap had come in the day before, and all of southern Romania had been pressed down by snow and hard wind. In this little village, about 20km north of the Danube river in the South Western corner of the country, the temperatures fell under -15C whenever the sun went away.

I smothered my feet in two sets of thick, hand-made wool socks, and shoved them into a pair of rubber work boots. My toes hugged themselves together in a tangled mess. Harlem and I left the main house and walked through the courtyard to the kitchen to drink coffee.

In Romania, a farm house typically has a kitchen that is ‘outside’ of the main structure. The kitchen is enclosed, but usually uninsulated. This is helpful during the summer when cooking in the stale heat is unbearable. To compensate during the winter months, these small enclaves are warmed by their ceramic ovens, which have metal surfaces to boil water and heat food.

Harlem and I squatted on tiny benches, barely big enough for a single adult to rest on. We contemplated our coffees, and I chewed on the eternal grinds floating in the bottom of my cup. Finu, a neighbor, was already there. None of us said anything– Finu is  silent by nature, and this day was nothing extraordinary to him. It merited no extra words. Conversely, Harlem and I prepared ourselves in quiet for an event that we had never seen before.

Pisto came to us, and said “it’s time, boys.” He had his lamb leather hat cocked onto his head, and the hilt of a long knife snug alongside his calf in his right rubber boot. We followed him to the small, chain-link yard where the pig shed was propped into one corner. Finu took a section of rope and disappeared inside.

I glanced at Harlem, but his eyes were on the walls of the shed. So were Pisto’s. Time stepped up its pace, grabbing against the rough edges of this morning moment. It was like when river current suddenly catches upon the rocks in a steppe. Everything moved together, tightened, quickened, blurred. The sow began to scream.

There were no words of preparation, or orders from Pisto. The moment had come unannounced. Finu came out of the pig shed, with the line tied to one of the sow’s back legs, and we all rushed to it. We pulled her backwards along the snow, about 20 feet, to a vertical wooden support holding a piece of metal siding over a corn storage container. Finu wrapped the cord around the beam, and Pisto told us to let go. Harlem and I obeyed, and Finu tied a quick knot.

“Grab the legs!” Pisto yelled, “and turn her over.” The four of us heaved and puffed, and rocked the sow back and forth, trying to get her off balance onto her side. She kicked and screamed until Pisto yanked her front legs sideways and she toppled over. Harlem and I grabbed her back legs by the ankles–they were slippery with brown slime and snow. We both used one hand on each leg to restrain her, while Finu held her front legs. Pisto pulled the knife from his boot and put his weight onto her shoulder. I braced myself against the wooden beam and held hard. I watched the tip of the knife steady itself along the sow’s throat.

A voice somewhere deep inside of me muttered a soft “goodbye.” The tip of the blade pushed into the throat and the skin held for a moment, resisting in a flash of shallow dimple before the pressure succeeded and the hilt followed the blade to the skin. Pisto flicked his wrist left and right, slicing the jugular without at all increasing the size of the wound. The wind pipe was severed, and the screaming stopped.

Time slowed again. I became aware of the tension in my arms holding the kicking legs against the warm, soft belly. Their floorless dance slowed and rippled into stillness. After 30 seconds, Pisto told us to let go. The four of us stepped away and rubbed snow onto our hands to wash them. The sow held on, resisting whatever it was that she was experiencing. Pisto put his weight on her throat, forcibly pumping more of her blood onto the ground. She kept on, like she was finishing some pig-like prayer, and needed just a little more time.

A neighbor’s cat slunk over the fence. It dodged the sow’s twitching front legs and came to nip at the large, congealing bits of blood on the ground. Pisto wiped his blade on the side of his pants. The sow finally said ‘amen.’

We moved her onto a sled, and dragged her to the courtyard outside of the kitchen enclave. The rest of this was all pig preparation. We took a short break to drink hot, plum moonshine spiced with pepper, cloves, and sugar. It got me a little drunk, and I snuck inside to sit a while, and warm my aching feet. Those rubber boots couldn’t hold away the cold.

Finu went home, and Pisto went to work. Harlem and I helped Pisto with what we could, which wasn’t much. He burned and scraped the pig’s skin. He sliced away the head, and opened it’s belly. He divided the organs apart, one by one by one by one. We made a half dozen different dishes over the course of the day–things boiled, things sauteed, things to be smoked. The entire pig was used, except for a few pieces passed to the  dogs, chained to their small houses by the front gates. They danced and yipped happily when I approached with my red-stained, cupped palm. They knew exactly what I was carrying–they had been waiting for this the entire year.

I am relentlessly intense, did you know? The entire day, I tried to draw significance from this moment. I had a subconscious recording inside of me that said “what have I learned here?” on a loop sewn onto itself and that never slowed. In American culture, I feel like we try to hide from the reality of death. We resist our knowledge that it exists, brush away it’s presence, or forget it entirely. When this inquisitive American boy touched death for one of the first times in his life, an answer to his “what have I learned here?” question had to be found.

I think it was something to the effect of, “A: my death will be insignificant.” In Hollywood, a hero’s passing is grandiose, with the fate of an entire world perched on the outcome. Did our sow dream of being a superhero, selflessly giving herself to a greater cause? Did she fantasize that she would be remembered forever and have her image blazed into copper statues? “Where are my hymns of praise and thanks?” she must have thought, “and  where are the teary eyes sewn into the hem of my forever memory?”

I think that most of our deaths, mine included, will pass quietly. There will not be a “this is it–ready yourself” moment. Will I be in any position to compose and deliver a set of “last words,” so extraordinary that they’ll rock human souls and alter the fate of the world? I doubt it.

Instead, when whatever death feels like passes over me (I imagine it’s a druggy, warm docility), I would count myself lucky to be alongside at least one loved one. In that moment I might wish for one thing only: to turn in their direction, and for a voice deep inside of me to mutter a soft ‘goodbye.’

Harlem posted pictures from the pig slaughter (and the rest of our week in the country). They can be accessed here.