Ludmila by Paul Gallico. Part 4.
Watch on KineScope.
The little Weakling was most miserable and unhappy indeed. For she was consumed by the hopeless desire to win the right to have her milking stool bedecked with gaily colored ribbons tied to her head at the summer’s end.
It is doubtful whether she had dared dream of leading the procession down from the mountainside, wearing the laurel wreath and the big, copper bell, for such was far beyond the capacities of a small, not too well-bred cow.
But that spring, when with the others of the mixed herd owned by the poorer peasants, she had made her slow, toil-some way up the mountain, through the tunnel and into the high pasturage, she was sure that at the very least she could earn a crimson heart or cross for her owner, and what her simple, gentle soul yearned for most dearly was the decoration of the milking stool to wear upon her head.
But the sad truth, as she and the herdsman soon learned, was that she was not very strong and her capacity limited.
She was small and thin, and on the whole not to be compared with the huge, sturdy Alpine breeds from whom the milk fairly poured in great, warm, frothy, fragrant streams. Her health was not of the best and there were days when she gave no milk at all.
She was not particularly handsome, lacking the broad head, wide-set eyes, and long, curling eyelashes that gave the others the look of slightly aging beauty queens. She was taupe-colored, but darker and muddier in shade, thin-flanked and high-legged, and differed further from the others by her white muzzle, which made her look even paler and more delicate.
The Weakling tried very hard to be successful, but to little avail. As the weeks passed, she fell further and further behind in her yield. And the more she strained and fretted, the less she seemed to be able to produce.
She took her work seriously, eating heartily, cropping the long, sweet grass indefatigably; she did not take too much exercise, or go climbing to higher pastures which might have disturbed her digestive processes; instead she lay quietly in the shade on hot afternoons, ruminating upon what it would be like to be crowned with the milking stool and cheered and acclaimed by the people. She chewed her cud carefully; she spent long hours thinking the proper thoughts about motherhood and the responsibility of producing milk.
But no matter how hard she tried she could not seem to succeed. When the milker came around to her and pegged his one-legged stool into the clay floor of the stable, he would say:
“Ach, it is hardly worth while to bring the pail to you, poor little Weakling.” Nevertheless he would milk her out of kindness, for he was a good man, but the result would be no more than a third of a pail, or perhaps even less as the season wore on, with no froth or body to it, but instead a thin, bluish liquid that was deemed fit only to give to the pigs and chickens.
And the little Weakling would often turn her head and eye the slender, hand-turned milking stool, and so great was her yearning that she could almost feel what it would be like to have the seat touch her forehead between her small horns, and hear the rustle of the gaily colored ribbons as they bound it there. For hours afterward, as she stood in her stall, the spot on her brow between the horns would ache with longing for the contact.
The reason that the Weakling so greatly desired the reward of the milking stool was that she was feminine and through no fault of her own had been denied the physique and constitution that would enable her to play the part for which she had been put on earth. She yearned to give lavishly the sweet milk that humans craved for their children and for themselves, she wished to see herself the creator of tubs of creamy butter and round cannon balls of heavy yellow cheeses that would bring wealth to her owner. And female-like, she desired that adornment on the final day which turned the plainest of cows— which she had the misfortune to be—into the most ravishing creature. Capped with the milking stool, garlanded with paper flowers of all colors, beribboned in maroon and blue, she was sure she would please every eye and would arouse the admiration and appreciation of all.
You who believe that animals are dumb and incapable of reason or emotions similar to those experienced by humans will of course continue to do so. I ask you only to think of the yearning and heartache that is the lot of the poor and not-so-favored woman, as she stares through the glass of the shop window at a gay Easter hat, a particularly fetching frock, the sheerest of stockings, or a pair of shoes with little bows that seem to dance all by themselves; lovable articles, desirable articles, mage articles out of her reach since she can neither buy them, nor earn them as a gift, yet things that she knows would transform her in a moment from someone drab and unnoticed, into a sparkling queen, a ravishing beauty that would draw all eyes to her. Or, if not all eyes, then at least a few, and if not a few, then just one pair of eyes, and in the end, the only pair that mattered.
How deep and melancholy is the wish to be beautiful and loved, to be lauded and admired, praised and desired. What power there lies behind the yearning within the feminine heart; what mountains have been moved, armies destroyed, thrones toppled, nations devastated, because of that feminine hunger for something bright, such as a ribbon, a bangle, a diamond, a crown, or the glitter in a man’s eye. What civilizations have been built and worlds discovered to satisfy her craving for adornment, to confirm her belief that if only her body were outlined in silks from Cathay and her eyes ringed with kohl from India no man could resist her.
Can you really believe that such gigantic forces are engendered and shared only by humans, that this desire to be noticed and admired has not its counterpart in the animal kingdom?
If but the hundredth part of a woman’s yearning from time to time for something beautiful to place upon her head, or at her throat, or in her ears, or on her back was what the little Weakling was experiencing in her desire to be distinguished as the most successful and desirable of her sex, then she was still the most miserable, unhappiest and most forlorn of all cows. For as the summer drew to a close she knew that her chances of succeeding were hopeless and that perhaps never in all her life would she taste that sweetness in the hour of triumph that was to come to her more fortunate companions.
It did not embitter her, however. It only made her sad, and increased the power of her yearning. She continued to see herself longingly, udders distended to aching with rich, creamy milk, and hear the welcome sound as it frothed into the pail until it filled to overflowing. And then she would feel the milk stool upon her head.
But by the end of the summer, the little Weakling was even more unprepossessing. She was gaunt, ungainly, her gait awk-ward, her udders slack and all but dry. Only her eyes preserved their luminosity and more than ever were filled with perpetual sadness.