Funeral in Milan

A tall gray Gothic church. Heavy, dusty black hangings at the door emblazoned at the top with a religious inscription in silver tape. The funeral procession arrives and stops. Slow mournful black horses with black blankets and black plumes, a slow mournful black group of followers, the women with black scarfs and red eyes, the men with black hats in their hands, mopping their brows. Many flowers some of them pungent and a little withered, others of tin all tied with black ribbons. Hot sun and dust.

Trams pass, tinkling furiously; taxis scream, children stare.

A butcher’s cart draws up behind the procession. The driver jumps down and, together with a boy whose white apron is stained with blood, they pull from the cart and drag in the dust by the stumpy remains of half-amputated legs, the pale peeled body of a cow.