woman blinked her eyes, upset. The man's stolidity and calm
did not transmit any stolidity or calm to her; they only irritated
her.
As for the man, his muscles worked with exactitude, slowness, and certainty. And nothing bothered him, as if he were carrying in himself the great silence of the plants in his Tertiary
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How a Man Is Made
plot as a defense that could not be transferred to others. Where
he would return every afternoon, the way a man returns home.
And where he would remain sitting on a stone.
And it was good there. There no plant knew who he was; and
he did not know who he was; and he did not know who the
plants were; and the plants did not know who they were. And all
of them in the meantime were just as alive as it is possible to be
alive. This was probably that man's great meditation. Just as the
sun shines, and just as the rat is only a step beyond the thick flat
leaf of that plant-this was his meditation.
Martim had blue eyes and heavy brows; his hands and feet
were large. It was a question of a heavy man with an idea in his
head. He had a lively, attentive look, as if he would only answer
when he had heard all sides. That was his real side and also his
external side, visible to other people. Inside-much more difficult to reach than his exterior form that had preceded it-inside he was a man of slow comprehension, which was basically a kind
of patience, a man with a confused way of thinking, who sometimes with the embarrassed smile of a child would feel himself intimidated by his own stupidity, as if he had not deserved so
much. It was true that inside he was also wise, always ready to
take advantage of a possibility. In the past this had led him to
ignore certain scruples and do certain things that would have
been sinful had he been a person of importance. But he was one
of those people who die without really knowing what happened
to them.
As he sat on the stone in his realm his thoughts, so to speak,
reduced him to nothing more than a man with big feet sitting on
a stone. What he had not noticed is that he was already
beginning to take some care in being exactly just what he was.
Sometimes a thought would glisten in him in his alert torpor the
way the chip off a rock would. "This region is dry," he thought
profoundly. "You can still see charcoal around," he seemed to
think, sitting upright on the stone. The statement had a dull
virility about it. It was like a man sitting on a stone knowing
how to hope, of course! If a man sitting on a stone knew how to
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hope, then the humidity would help the roots, nuts, fruit, and
seeds to rot. That obscure piece of logic seemed to suffice him
perfectly.
Sitting on the stone, he also felt satisfied at the fact that he
now knew how to work so well in the country. His knowledge
was slight but his hands had gained a wisdom. "A man is slow,
and it takes him a long time to understand his hands," he
thought looking at them. His thoughts were almost voluntarily
enigmatic, and in his plot he felt the pleasure that one gets from
certain empty moments, as if everything in truth had been
created out of pleasure. The plant, for example, was nothing but
pleasure.
It was true that sometimes the intense stillness of the plants
now seemed to bother him in a dull sort of way, and to bring on
the beginnings of unrest. Then he would patiently change the
position of his legs without understanding. He did not realize
that there he was slowly making his first arrow and sharpening
his first spear.
Nor did he realize that he was now completely different from
that man who had looked out at the plot at dawn. Nor did he
realize that by changing the position of his legs so many times he
was becoming impatient for the first time, looking out upon a
world that was ready to be hunted. He was dimly upset as he
began to feel himself superior to the plants, and to feel himself
in some way a man in relationship to them-because only a man
could be impatient. Then he changed the position of his legs
again. And furthermore-only a man was proud of his own
proud. It was that generalized vanity which sometimes came
over him and which had no trouble existing side by side with the
prudence of not risking himself beyond that reassuring somnolence of the plot by the woodshed. Reassuring but no longer sufficient. The man was growing and he was uncomfortable.
But that restlessness, which was almost only physical, would
only happen for moments at a time. And it was still happening
so far away from him that it had not yet affected the wholeness
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How a Man Is Made
of the world in which he moved. And soon, with the great
p�easure that there is in the restraint of one's own energy, he put
himself once more into a state of "not knowing very much."
Beca�se that was the condition essential to his plot. In not
knowing the man had an unsmiling happiness, just the way the
plant grows thick.
Sometimes that man, who was always missing important
links, would grab the land like a person who owned land.
And he would sit with the fistful of earth in his hand. Crude,
with the earth in his hand; the best way to be. What were that
man's thoughts? Satisfactory and substantial they were thoughts
that were scarcely profound. One afternoon he came to the point
of thinking along these lines:
"Extinct animals are legion."
That was the kind of thought that had no possible answer.
And on that very same day he thought like this:
"Once, more than a billion years ago." Martim did not know
exactly how much time there was behind him, but since there
was no one there to stop him from making a mistake, he puffed
up, impassive and great. And he continued making statements of
greater importance. Another time, for example, this was his
thought : "Maybe there is the head of a mastodon somewhere
here under six feet of rubble." Thinking had now become transformed into a method of scratching on the ground. And then one afternoon, with the most legitimate pleasure that comes
from meditation, he remembered nothing more except that
"buffaloes exist." That gave the plot great space, because buffalo
move slowly and in the distance.
Anyone who might have looked at him, so satisfied and
dominating, would have shaken his head in envy at his good
fortune in having been born when the global ice caps had
already melted. He was enjoying a favorable land. Sometimes,
for example, he would get the desire to eat-and he would note
it with approval. Now he had all of the senses of a rat and one
more by which he verified what was happening-thought. This
was the least corrupt way to use it. He was letting himself be
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cured by that complete thing there is
in plants. With a feeling of
relief he placed his singed portions into the coolness that
existed. It was damned fine not to lie. Well, sitting on the stone,
that was exactly what he was doing: he was not lying.
For example, Martim was not sad-Martim who was finally
to be free of the whole moral duty of tenderness. That man had
come from a city where the air was filled with the sacrifices of
people who were unhappy and therefore searched for an ideal.
"I'll bust in the face anybody who messes with me! " he said
aloud, making use of his soul and perhaps trying to provoke a
rage in himself which in some way would put him in tune with
that quiet energy around him.
Then he stood and looking up at the sky he calmly urinated.
High up the clouds were passing by. He stood there, stupid,
modest, haloed. His unity seemed to be a unity.
"This region is dry," he thought again. And it gave him a
very satisfactory pleasure. He looked up at the dry sky. The sky
was there-high up. And he was underneath. It was impossible
to imagine greater perfection.
When he slept, he slept. When he worked, he worked.
Vit6ria gave him orders, he gave orders to his own body. And
something was growing with a shapeless sound.
Chapter
THEN during those first days there was the feeling that there was
a man on the place. And moreover one could guess that the
person in charge was a woman; for despite the threat of drought
and the fundamental necessities of that poor attempt at a farm,
what suddenly was worrying Vit6ria most was the appearance of
the place. It was as if she had not noticed the neglect of the
fields until his arrival . Now she was trying furiously to transform
them. She appeared to be facing some set date for a festival,
before which everything had to be in readiness. A feverish
precision took control of her. And the minutiae to which she
had descended had the air of a fly in motion. There she was in
the middle of the morning, pointing at the twisted fence. And
the man's calm strength straightened the fence. Off in the
distance Francisco, distrustful and skeptical, watched the
woman pointing at the disorder of the few flower beds and
smiling, he watched in silence as Martim dug, cleaned, and
pruned. Between Martim and Vit6ria a mute relationship had
been established that was already mechanized and in full swing.
Its basis was the coincidence of the facts that the w01nan
wanted to command and that he acquiesced in obeying. The
woman was avidly the mistress. And something in her had
become intensified : the happy severity with which she now
stood on what was hers, disguising the glory of possession with a
challenging look at the passing clouds.
"And what about the cowshed?" she asked attentively one
day. "You never did clean up the cowshed! " she said impatiently
with that blinking her eyes the way one does who no longer
knows what she wants; but time was pressing.
Thus it was that Martim-as if he had been imitating in his
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task of becoming concrete a fateful evolution whose traces he
felt groping-thus it was that his new and confused steps led
him one morning out of his realm in the plot into the half-light
of the cowshed, where cows were more difficult than plants.
His contact with the cows was a painful effort. The light of
the cowshed was different from the light outside, to the point
that at the door some vague threshold was established. The man
stopped there. Used to figures, he recoiled at the disorder. Inside
there was an atmosphere of entrails and a difficult dream, full of
flies. Only God does not feel disgust. He stopped at the entrance
and did not want to go in.
Mist rose from the animals and slowly enveloped them. He
looked deeper inside. In the dim filth there was the sense of a
workshop and of concentration, as if from out of that shapeless
entanglement little by little one more form were taking shape.
The crude smell was one of wasted raw materials. Cows were
made there. Out of disgust the man had suddenly become
abstract again like a fingernail tried to retreat; he wiped his dry
mouth with the back of his hand like a doctor facing his first
wound. Nevertheless, on the threshold of the stable he seemed to
recognize the dim fog that came out of the animals' snouts. That
man had seen that vapor before rising from sewers in certain
cold dawns. And he had seen it emanating from warm garbage.
He had also seen it like a halo around the love of two dogs; and
his own breath was that same light. Profound cows were made
there. A man of little courage would have vomited at the foul
smell, and seeing the attraction that open sore had for the flies, a
clean person would have felt ill watching the tranquillity with
which the cows stood heavily wetting the ground. Martim was
that person of little courage who had never before put his hands
on the intimate parts of a stable. Nevertheless, even though he
turned his eyes away, he seemed to realize with reluctance that
things had been so arranged that once in a stable a child had
been born. That great smell of matter was right. Only Martim
was not ready for such a spiritual step. More than fear, it was a
kind of delicacy. And he hesitated at the door, pale and
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How a Man Is Made
offended, like a child to whom the root of life has suddenly been
revealed.
Then he disguised his cowardice in sudden rebellion. He
resented Vit6ria's having pulled him away from the silence of
the plants to that place. There with disgust and curiosity he
suddenly remembered that there had been a dead era in which
reptiles had wings. There a person could not escape certain
thoughts. In that place he could not escape feeling with an
objective horror and joy that things are always fulfilled.
Could it have been that realization, by chance, that had
turned his stomach, or was it just the warm stench? He did not
know. However, all that was needed was a step backwards, and
he would have found himself in the full fragrance of morning,
morning-a thing already perfected in the smallest leaves and
smallest stones, a finished work without fault at which a person
can look without any danger because there is no place to enter
and lose one's self. A step backwards would have been all he
needed.
But he took a step forward. And he halted, confused. At first,
as when one enters a cave, he did not see anything. But the
cows, used to the darkness, were aware of the stranger. And he
felt in his whole body that his very substance was being tested by
the cows. They began slowly to moo and moved their feet
without even looking at him-with that ability that animals
have of knowing without seeing, as if they had already tran..,
scended their own subjectivity and had reached the other side :
that perfect objectivity that no longer need be shown; while he
in the cowshed had been reduced to weak man-that dubious
thing that could never transcend anything.
With a resigned sigh the slow man understood that "not
looking" might also be the only way to enter into contact �ith
the beasts. Imitating the cows with an almost calculated mimicry, he stood there not looking at anything, in fact making an effort not to look at anything. And with an intelligence brought
on by the very inferiority of his situation, he l�t himse�f re�ain
submissive and attentive. Then, sacrificing his own idenbfica-
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tion, he almost took on the form of one of the animals. And by
doing just that he suddenly seemed to understand, with surprise,
what it was like to be a cow.
Quite motionless and somehow understanding, he allowed
himself with profound insight to accept the cows' recognition.
Without the exchange of a single glance he gritted his teeth and
allowed the cows to recognize him with an intolerable slowness.
It was as if hands were exploring his secret. Uneasily he felt that
the cows saw in him only that part of him which was like a cow;
just as a thief would see in him that part which was avid for
theft, and as a woman would want of him what a child would
not even understand. Except that the cows chose something in
him that he himself did not understand-but which was growing little by little.
This had been a great effort on the man's part. Never until
that moment had he become such a being. To make himself like
the cows had been a great work of intense concentration. The
fingernail finally hurt.
For a moment in which faith had deserted him, the man had
had the certain feeling that he would lose and never attain the
admission to the cowshed. He was confronted by one long look
after another, followed by a long moo from a heavy raised head;
he was rejected. In the midst of the intense smell of the
cowshed, the cows had sensed the acid human smell about him.
But it was also true that in that moment joie de vivre had
already come over him, the delicate joy that sometimes comes
over us in the midst of our own lives, as if a same musical note
had been intensified. That joy took hold of him and guided him