The Pork Man
- Feb 5, 2020
- 4 min read
by Sobia Ali
The pork-man is of the pariah cast. He sits on the chipped, twisted iron bench outside his shop. The shop is lemon-green with a big pink pig painted on the front. The shop is like a big toy money bank. The shop is small, 7 by 7 feet. The pork-man is so big he had to bend his shoulders to enter the shop.
The shop is in the outskirts of the city where, alongside the old constructions, new buildings are cropping now. And on both sides of road shops and stores have started to open. Here is Hardware Repairs, Milk Diary, Photo Shop, Tea Shop, Snack Bar, etc. But they are not built shoulder to shoulder. There are spaces between them, empty lots through which peep out the parallel fields.
The pork-man’s belly protrudes out ahead of him, as he sits swatting at flies, catching them, stuffing them into his mouth. He has a bottle of cheap beer, which he tosses into himself at intervals. He palms up the bottle hole and slides it down his pot belly.
There is an old neem tree in front of the shop, twisted and dust-ridden, partly hiding the half face of the drawn, smiling, healthy pig. Up on it a pair of crows have their nest. They peer out of it into the shop. The pork-man belches out loudly. Mongooses come out of the paddy fields to the rim of the road and stand on their front paws looking at him.
What does the pork man think all day? And where does he go in the nights? Does the pork-man try to look at faces when they pass by his shop? Does the pork-man like it when women come to buy pork? Does the pork-man love? And more importantly, does the pork-man have someone to love him? Does the pork-man get hot, passionate embraces in the dead of night?
From inside the shop comes a low squeal; the pork-man smirks. The thin scraggly dog at his feet opens his eyes, and stands his ears on ends. There is a sudden curious stir in the crow family. Mongooses turn their heads, puzzled.
Inside is a tiny weeny pig. It feels queer and lonely, for it was separated only this morning from the litter by the pork-man. As it dug the dust heap with the whole drove, the pork-man had appeared, rubbing his sleepy eyes, drunk and limping.
He had stood against the wall, picking his teeth, picking his target. This tiny pig had looked out of the corner of its eyes at him. He had taken out potatoes from his pocket and flashed them at the little pig. Before the pork-man used to net them big, but now his catches are getting smaller.
Why had the little pig gotten waylaid? Because the pork-man had resembled a pig so much? All pigs had walked away from him, wary. They had known what he was up to. They had smelled their own blood on him.
But this tiny pig hadn’t paid attention to their warning snorts and padded up to the pork-man. The pork-man had scattered potatoes before the little pig and from somewhere conjured up a cord and bound it round its neck. It had squealed out shrilly and the pork-man had taken out a mouth web and put it on the pig’s muzzle — to stop its oink oink.
The pig, defenseless then, had panicked and started to push against the rope, trying to run, to escape the pork-man’s grip. But the pork man had known how to manage. He had been doing it for a long time. He had dragged it towards the shop just as an orange dawn started breaking through the eastern sky.
And now the little pig stomps around on the straw, rooting for food, and sometimes feeling frightened it gives out low squeals. The pork-man does not go inside the shop to give a hard blow on its head. He always waits for a customer to appear first before he goes in and butchers the pigs.
And all the while, you have been hiding behind the tree trunk. You don’t want to be that first customer to go up and ask for pork. You hope someone else will come along and cause the pork-man to take the hatchet to the piglet.
You think about the little pig. Its blinking, trustful eyes, its bent humbled head, its shuffling shy gait through the street. Its humorous snout digging the dust heaps. You are ashamed you can’t love it like the pork-man does. You are ashamed you don’t trust the pork-man like the little pig did.
And the pork man knows you are there behind the tree. He knows of the hunger clawing at your insides. Of the meagre coins in your pocket. Of the feverish taste buds of your mouth. Of the secret repulsions buried deep in your heart. That smirk on his cup-on-saucer-like face tells you as much. Come on, kid, take its blood on your head, it says. I won’t take it on mine.
Sobia Ali is from India and has a Master’s degree in English Literature. Her work has appeared in Atticus Review, The Punch Magazine, The Indian Quarterly, The Bosphorus Review of Books, ActiveMuse, Ombak Magazine, Literary Yard, and is forthcoming in Gone Lawn and kitaab International. She is currently working on her novel.
