Butcher

‘Mr President, the Austrian journalists have arrived.’ A secretary announces the appointment to Tine Butcher, director of Butcher Inc. meat products.

In truth, Tine Butcher is not the president of a country, he is president of the board of directors of a meat-processing company. But Tine Butcher is a practical man, so, to facilitate communication with his foreign business partners, he changed his last name. And to facilitate association with the company, which he both directs and owns a majority share in, he changed its name, too. In this way the Agricultural and Food Processing Cooperative of Upper Drava Livestock Farmers and Meat Processors became Butcher, Inc. His employees are expected to address him accordingly with the proper respect, especially at the headquarters of the company over which he presides.

‘Please have a seat, gentlemen. May I offer you a cup of coffee, tea, juice?’ Butcher asks while signing a few documents on the desk.

A bland, modern office interior: walls painted in somewhat incompatible shades of cream and rose, a tallFicus benjamina in the corner, a gigantic plasma television, a desk with the company flag on it, leather armchairs on the other side of the president’s desk, the feeling that we could be anywhere were we not exactly where we are.

‘You’re local, aren’t you? I don’t need to tell you about the Maribor Automotive Factory and how they went under, do I? Anyway, it was on the site of that former industrial giant that we started our business sixteen years ago. Hitler himself ordered a factory to be built there, which produced aircraft-engine parts until the end of 1944. After the Second World War the same site boasted the biggest Yugoslav factory for the manufacture of truck and tank engines as well as light weaponry, mostly hunting rifles. But that’s all gone. We don’t manufacture rifles and aircraft any more, the way Hitler and Tito did. Today all we make are scrumptious local Kranj sausages,’ Butcher says confidently, as if he had trotted out the same sentences countless times before.

With a nod of her head Rosa Portero thanks the secretary for the Coca-Cola she has brought her then checks the Dictaphone to make sure it’s actually working. Despite the grey winter’s day, she wears sunglasses and seems exhausted. Every now and then, during the president’s performance, Adam Bely leans over to her and quietly recapitulates his declarations in German.

‘You’ve mentioned Kranj sausage,’ Bely cuts in politely. ‘We are talking about the crown jewel of your product line, correct?’

‘That is correct,’ replies Tine Butcher. ‘Annually we produce about 16 million hand-skewer-bound sausages, first-class sausages. We export them to over forty countries worldwide. Our sausages travelled into space with the American astronaut Nancy Sing, who has Slovenian roots; and, if we’re lucky, it will become the first sausage ever to land on the moon. Negotiations with NASA are well under way.’