Selected Cronicas

A REMARKABLE LOVE STORY

There once lived a girl who spent so much time observing hens that she came to understand their souls and deep anxieties. The hen is anxious, unlike the cockerel who suffers from an almost human anguish: he is deprived of any true love from his harem. Besides, he has to keep watch all night long, awaiting the first glimmer of dawn in the distant sky before singing those sonorous notes. That is his duty and art. But coming back to the hens, the girl kept two of them as pets. One was called Pedrina: the other Petronilla.

Whenever the girl suspected one of them might have a liver infection, she would sniff under its wings as if she were a trained nurse. She believed this was the first symptom of any illness, because the stench from a live hen is no joke. She would then ask her aunt for some medicine. Only to be told: ‘But there’s nothing wrong with your liver.’ Feeling she could confide in her favourite aunt, the girl explained why she needed the mediine. She also felt it wise to administer equal doses to Pedrina and Petronilla in order to prevent any contagion. There was really no point in giving them any medicine because Pedrina and Petronilla continued to spend the whole day pecking away at the soil and eating all sorts of rubbish likely to harm their livers. And the stench under their wings was something awful. It never occurred to the girl to try using deodorant because where she lived in Minas Gerais people did not use deodorants and their underwear was made of linen rather than nylon. Her aunt continued to give her the medicine, a dark brown liquid which the girl suspected might be water coloured with a few drops of strong coffee — and then there was the awkward business of forcing open their beaks in order to administer the medicine that would finally cure them of being hens. The girl was too young to understand that humans cannot be cured of being humans or hens of being hens: humans, like hens, have their failures and triumphs (the hen’s triumph is to be able to lay a perfect egg), something inherent in the species. The girl lived in the heart of the countryside and there was no chemist in the neighbourhood.

There was a further crisis when the girl discovered how thin Pedrina and Petronilla had become under their ruffled feathers, despite the fact that they never stopped eating all day long. The girl had not yet realized that to fatten them up would only hasten their destiny which was to be killed and eaten. And she went on struggling to open their beaks. She could soon sense every little thing about the hens in that great farmyard in Minas Gerais. And when she grew up, she was surprised to learn that the word hen or chicken in the local jargon also meant coward. The irony of the situation escaped her:

– ‘But it’s the cockerel who is the nervous creature as he goes chasing after the hens! The hens give no bother! But the cockerel moves so quickly he can scarcely be seen! He is forever trying to find a hen to love him! Without success!’

One day the little girl’s mother decided to take her to spend the day at a relative’s house which was some distance away. And when she returned home, the hen whom she had known in life as Petronilla no longer existed. Her aunt told her:

– ‘We’ve eaten Petronilla.’

The little girl had an enormous capacity for love: the hen had never reciprocated that love, yet she had gone on loving it without hoping for anything in return. When she learned what had happened to Petronilla she began to loathe everyone at home, everyone except the mother who did not eat poultry and the servants who preferred beef. But she could scarcely bear to look at her father, for he was particularly fond of eating chicken. Her mother realized what was happening and tried to explain:

– ‘When humans eat animals, those animals become more like people because they become part of us. We are the only two people here in the house who did not eat Petronilla. More’s the pity!’

Pedrina, whom the little girl had always secretly preferred, died a natural death, for she had always been a delicate creature. When the little girl found Pedrina trembling under the blazing sun, she wrapped her up carefully in a dark-coloured towel and then sat her on top of one of those large tiled stoves to be found in all the old farm-houses in Minas Gerais. Everyone warned her that Pedrina was close to death but the little girl was stubborn and insisted on settling Pedrina, all wrapped up, on top of the warm tiles. Next morning Pedrina was a stiff corpse. Weeping bitterly, the little girl was finally convinced that death had claimed her beloved pet hen.

The years passed and she adopted another hen called Eponina.

This time, her love for Eponina was more down-to-earth and less romantic: the love of someone who had already suffered for love. And when the time came for Eponina to be killed and eaten, the little girl accepted the news as the inevitable destiny of any creature born a hen. The hen appears to have some premonition of its own destiny and therefore learns not to love its owners or the cockerel. A hen is alone in this world.

But the little girl had not forgotten what her mother had told her about eating animals one loved: she ate more of Eponina than the rest of the family. She ate without feeling hungry, but with an almost physical satisfaction because she now knew that Eponina would become part of her and be more hers than when she was alive. The cook had prepared Eponina in a traditional brown sauce or molho pardo, made with the blood and some vinegar. And so the little girl went through the pagan ritual which has been handed down throughout the ages, partaking of flesh and drinking blood. During dinner, she felt almost resentful of the others who were eating Eponina. The little girl was made for love: eventually she became a young woman and men entered her life.