Different

João Ubaldo Ribeiro

It Was a Different Day When They Killed the Pig

When they killed the pig it was a different day because long before everyone knew that this was the day they were going to kill the pig. It was known even many days beforehand, although one could never be really sure, because the grownups spoke about the pig in a vague and imprecise manner. In fact, the day they killed the pig happened for the first time in a never well remembered way.

One day, for the first time, it seemed everybody woke up early. And the older people knew that this was the day for killing the pig, and it was usually what they talked about as they prepared clay bowls and stretched cords for sausages and told stories of past pigs, the best pigs this land had ever seen, the best in town. So those older people could say with simpleness: Today is the day they are going to kill the pig. A simpleness which contrasted with the eyes of the younger children, whose first thought as they left their beds was whether they were still on vacation or not, or whether it was Sunday or not; for those boys and girls, when they noticed the same inexperience in the eyes of another their age, passed along the information almost breathlessly and glanced sideways as if they were conspiring. Today they are going to kill the pig. And maybe it was one of those subjects that deserved a glare from the grown#ups when harped upon, one of those secret subjects that made the room fall silent and provoked unknown gestures in the older people if a child entered the room. But the day for killing the pig was always a sunny day, and for some reason on that day the children were left freer than usual. Then, as time passed, the children would wake up already knowing that the pig was going to be killed, and maybe if they were lucky they might be able to tell a younger brother or a girl who lived nearby that the pig was going to be killed, so they could feel wonderment and curiosity in the other and could thus display wisdom and attractions. Also, if the only answer given the children to whom it was not yet permitted to take part in the death of the pig, when they asked what was the meaning of those strident wails they had never heard before, was just, "It's the pig, little one, it's the pig, child," and if the sight of the pig being slain was denied to them, at least they could see the man who was going to kill the pig and many times they gathered enough courage to ask, are you the one who is going to kill the pig? And more often than not he would answer, smiling like somebody who was not going to kill the pig: I am, yes. If the murderer of the pig was a stranger, then it was best to keep a certain distance from him who brought death with a smile, and if some of the children went as far as to talk to him, they would never go alone nor lose sight of the better known and more trusted older people. But there were some children whose pig killers were their own fathers, and so, on those sunny mornings when the sun rose differently and things would never again be the same, the father was the most different thing of them all. Being the father, he could not but be a reason for pride, but it was strange to be in fear of one's own pride, and this made the children's hearts rush and their eyes follow their mothers everywhere, because the mothers did not kill pigs. There were also things to unriddle, since the father spoke, or if it was another adult who spoke he showed his look of approval so familiar to everyone, about the animals and the affection he held for them, and told of the suffering of a cow whose calf had got stuck as it tried to be born. For Aloisio and all his brothers and sisters, the moment was always to be remembered when their father took all of them to see the red sow Noca, and said to them this sow Noca was the miracle of nature. And they all remained looking at the sow Noca suckling her many little pigs, and some of them never ceased to go back there to admire her thick blubbers unfolding over the burrowing snouts of all those little pigs, some more concerned with how the little pigs grew, the others only con- templating the sow and wishing for her to talk and trying to guess her thoughts. Aloisio, this day in which he even mistook the light of the moon that came down through a glass shingle for the light of the sun and almost had a fever from wanting so much to leave his bed, was told that the pig to be killed was the sow Noca herself, but did not dare ask the father why he was going to do that, not so much because he was afraid the father would be angry, although he would not explain anything either, but because he did not want to appear to be a boy who did not understand things and did not want people to say then that they would no longer allow him to see the killing of the pig. He imagined that maybe the reason why the sow Noca had never given an answer to the things he had said to her every once in a while, even when they were all by themselves and with guarantees of secrecy, was that she knew that one day he would betray her and would be watching her execution in all coldness, learning in that operation the manner in which he would kill his own pigs in the future. For, since he was a man, his wife would surely expect him to know how to kill the pigs he raised or fattened, so she could also have her days for killing the pig, like her mother before her and the mother of her mother and all the other mothers, this being the way the world is organized. But he spoke nothing of what he felt, and he was also ashamed to ask what time they were going to kill the sow, so he began to shadow his father wherever he went. He then saw that if the father could not now avoid having another presence, killing the pig was not something

to occupy him more than the time necessary to do the killing.

Because the father had time to go out of the house, already carry#ing the pig-killing knife on his belt, and to walk to the store to buy cigarettes, and to write in his blue-covered notebook. And the mother, without conferring with the father, gave orders for the sow Noca to be taken to the place of death, and remained arranging vinegars, bowls, lemons and all the seasoning she used to pile up on a corner of the stove, on top of the place where the firewood was kept, a smell of feasting already in the air, and it could even be that relatives would come visiting, with their faces that changed from year to year and their slight strangeness, especially on ac- count of how familiar one had to be with them as a matter of obligation. The housemaids and the neighbor women and the per- sons who went in and out of the kitchen and the pantry talked more than usual and also much louder. Aloisio became impatient from watching the father write in the blue notebook, even more so because before each line or word he wagged his pen in airy scrolls without writing anything, and he had the sensation the father was going to die, so he went out to see how they caught the sow Noca and took her to the wooden block where they would tie her, and ignoring her cries would turn her into sausages and pork loins and meats. No, he would never forget the day, he did not know how long ago, when his brother Honorio, who was now in the seminar) and wrote letters the mother would read at night crying and shaking her head, had looked to him so wise and worldly as he told him, as if making a remark on something trivial, that they were going to kill the pig Leleu and would let Honorio watch, but would not let Aloisio, and of course Leonor, watch. Now Aloisio could not resist it, and when he saw Leonor leaning against one of the pillars of the porch and remembered she would still be likely to ask what were those cries as they started to kill the sow Noca, he walked forward pretending not to have seen her, stopped, and as though he was doing his sister a great favor, spoke in her ear: Today we are going to kill the sow Noca. And he even felt more pleasure than he had expected, to see that her face paled and she began to cry. At that moment, he thought he had been revenged a little for all the times she had had an advantage over him because the father always wore a different look when he came home and put her in his lap, and he had never been picked up that way and now onlv the mother would put him in her lap. but very few times. Maybe the father would now be drawn there by her weeping and would scold him, but Aloisio felt an odd confidence as he had never felt before, and anticipating any questions the father might ask, he pointed at his sister with his thumb, and said:

She is crying because we are going to kill the sow Noca, can you imagine? Now why did you tell her. the father said, but without showing annoyance, and started to stroke her head. If it was me, Aloisio thought, people would laugh. But he got over that quickly, because he remembered that his sister was a woman and women cried a lot. and besides she was not going to see the death of the sow. Indeed, when he was already near the wooden block, and the tree, once so familiar, gave out a loaded shade full of things not known, and all objects were now sinister, the father propped his right boot on a root to tighten the straps a little more and made a low-pitched comment which brought warmth to Aloisio's face, and he wanted very, very much to be a man. he wanted nobody to be ever, ever able to sav that he had not been a man even if only for an instant. Women are like that, the father said almost whispering, with the same amused chuckle he would have when he was talking in a low voice to his friends, and Aloisio. his face on fire, nodded and managed to say. speaking with as deep a voice as he could, "That's right, that's right." Then the father finished tying his boot, put his hand on Aloisio's shoulder, and they marched together toward the block, and Aloisio remembered he was also wearing boots and thev were new. The sow Noca was tied down and whining, knowing very well what was going to happen. Aloisio decided he would not turn his eyes away nor would he show emotion, but he could not keep himself from feeling an immense fear when, after all the preparations and rites he had never imagined, he saw the father surmount the loins of the great sow and, with a face even more distant than when he talked about life to the mother, raise the knife. The sow began to be killed, and all around Aloisio’s eyes there seemed to be a dark wheel and one could only see the middle of this wheel, where the sow Noca lay being killed. In the very beginning, less blood came out than he had expected, but soon everything turned into a red, spattering ball and shouts and imprecations from the men, and brisk motions among troughs, cloths and bowls, and the sow tumbled down with a thump. Aloisio, his breath arrested, was not even able to notice the moment they started demolishing the sow Noca as though they were demolishing a house, and was only aware of feeling sick, and he did not know there existed so many black and gray and white and red and limp and throbbing and slippery things inside a pig and that many of those things gave out a hideous smell and the father's hands were covered with blood, with bits of those things and with that slime up to his elbows. Neither did he know that they would use saws and hatchets, and he tightened his jaw very hard as he looked at the men sawing the sow's hindquarters on top of the block and filling the bowls with all those things. Those there, the father said as they were getting ready to head back to the house, are the bowels, which we are going to clean, which we are going to make sausage skins out of. He nodded yes and hoped the father had not noticed he had closed his eyes and had glanced only furtively at the bowl filled with blue, stenchy snakes. Without touching him because his hands were dirty, the father made a gesture with his chin and they went back to the house, and although Aloisio knew he had behaved in the most correct way, he was ashamed to be feeling sick and could not even remember well what had hap#pened. He saw that his boots had been sprinkled with the blood of the sow Noca, and almost retched. He imagined that as soon as he went in the house he would go to the bathroom, but he did not want to run, so no one would take notice of anything. And then, while time dragged itself on like a snail, they went in the house and stopped in front of the mother, but fortunately the father was in a hurry to wash himself and the mother had to go about her chores in the kitchen, and also fortunately the father preferred to wash at the backyard spigot, instead of in the Bathroom. He had never known one could sweat so much, while he scrubbed the stains, real and imaginary, from his vomit spewed all over the bath#room because he had hardly been able to close the door when his cheeks were filled up and before he could bend over the toilet, he exploded as if he were going to turn inside out. But he managed to relieve himself anyway and was patient enough to clean all the mess he had made and to still wash his face twice, one time for the vomit, the other time for the sweat. Looking in the mirror to study the expression he wanted to have as he left to participate in the comments about the sow, he opened the door and came out and was happy to see that neither the father nor the mother was on the porch, where it was perfectly natural for him to stay, looking ahead and enjoying the breeze, after all he had seen his first pig.

He was still secretly bothered by what had happened, but was confident that the next time it would not be like this, although he did not think now that he would have the courage to go near the block again. But people grow up, Aloisio thought, trying to imagine whether he would grow a moustache when he grew up, and then, through a crack between the doors that opened onto the porch, he saw that the father was talking contentedly to the mother, rubbing a towel behind his ears. He guessed they were going to talk about him, came close to the door, put his ear against the small opening and listened to the father telling the mother—and he was sure of the way the father was smiling—how Aloisio had behaved fine during the sow's dying. He is a man, the father said with admiration, and Aloisio felt his eyes wet, and pride with sickness again, and pulled back to the porch, not knowing what it was that he had. Maybe this is the reason why when he now sees the family gathered together on sunny holidays or when he wakes up among the noises of his children, and grandchildren and parents and grandparents and all relatives, when he sits in a quiet corner and looks at all this, his chest feels heavy and he has the impression that if someone speaks to him, he will begin to cry without ever again being able to stop.

Translated by the author.