Of Cattle and Men

By Ana Paula Maia

Animals go mad and men die (accidentally and not) at a slaughterhouse in an impoverished, isolated corner of Brazil.

In a landscape worthy of Cormac McCarthy, the river runs septic with blood. Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a cow, then stuns it with a mallet. He does this over and over again, as the stun operator at Senhor Milo’s slaughterhouse: reliable, responsible, quietly dispatching cows and following orders, wherever that may take him. It’s important to calm the cows, especially now that they seem so unsettled: they have begun to run in panic into walls and over cliffs. Bronco Gil, the foreman, thinks it’s a jaguar or a wild boar. Edgar Wilson has other suspicions. But what is certain is that there is something in this desolate corner of Brazil driving men, and animals, to murder and madness. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charco Press
• Release date: Apr 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781913867508

Ana Paula Maia

Ana Paula Maia (Brazil, 1977) is an author and scriptwriter and has published several novels, including O habitante das falhas subterráneas (2003), De gados e homens (2013), and the trilogy A saga dos brudos, comprising Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos (2009), O trabalho sujo dos outros (2009) and Carvão animal (2011). Her novel A guerra dos bastardos (2007) won praise in Germany as among the best foreign detective fiction. As a scriptwriter she has worked on a wide range of projects for television, cinema and theatre.The author won the São Paulo de Literatura Prize for Best Novel of the Year two years in a row: in 2018 for her novel Assim na Terra como embaixo da Terra, and in 2019 for Enterre Seus Mortos .

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OF CATTLE AND MEN

First published by Charco Press 2023

Charco Press Ltd., Office 59, 44-46 Morningside Road,

Edinburgh EH10 4BF

Copyright © Ana Paula Maia, 2013

First published in Portuguese as De gados e homens by Editora Record (Brazil)

English translation copyright © Zoë Perry, 2023

The rights of Ana Paula Maia to be identified as the author of this work and of Zoë Perry to be identified as the translator of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by the applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781913867492

e-book: 9781913867508

www.charcopress.com

Edited by Francisco Vilhena & Fionn Petch

Copy-edited by Fionn Petch

Cover designed by Pablo Font

Typeset by Laura Jones

Proofread by Fiona Mackintosh

Ana Paula Maia

OF CATTLE AND MEN

Translated by

Zoë Perry

For my dear grandmother, Maria Maia

es ist ja bloß ein Tier... nur ein Tier.

(They’re only animals… just animals.)

Theodor Adorno

For the life of the flesh is in the blood.

Leviticus 17:11

Chapter 1

Edgar Wilson is leaning against the door of farmer Milo’s office. His boss is bellowing down the phone, having learned to bellow from a young age, out in the pastures, where he’d had to fight off the calves just to get to the cows’ teats. The office is nothing more than a narrow cubicle crammed next to the slaughterhouse’s gut room.

‘You wanted to speak with me, sir?’

‘I do, Edgar.’

‘Yes, sir?’ says Edgar Wilson, taking off his cap and clutching it respectfully against his chest as he enters the office.

‘I need you to go down to the hamburger plant to make a collection.’

‘Who will slaughter the cattle, Senhor Milo?’

Milo scratches his head, burying his fingers in the curly, tangled strands.

‘I’m short-staffed, Edgar. And Luiz is the only one trained in your job, but he’s supervising the slaughter line today. Let me think...’

Edgar Wilson stands silently, awaiting the boss’s decision. Not a single thought crosses his mind, as it is not his custom to seek solutions unless requested.

‘There aren’t any big shipments for slaughter today,’ says Milo, pensively.

Nor is it Edgar Wilson’s custom to fail to comply with what has been asked of him. Milo is a hardworking man, works fourteen-hour days. He is a fair boss in Edgar’s eyes.

‘Zeca’s slaughtered a few times before, right?’ asks Milo.

‘Yeah, he has. But he keeps the animals awake. The cattle really suffer, Senhor Milo. Zeca’s aim isn’t good.’

Milo looks at the employee spreadsheet and their duties. He mulls it over.

‘Zeca’s on tripe right now, but he’s all I got,’ he mutters to himself.

‘Sir, he keeps the cattle awake.’

‘You already said that, Edgar. What can I do? It’ll die at sticking anyway,’ replies Milo, upset.

Edgar stands there, unruffled, his grey eyes on his boss. The phone rings. Milo answers and asks for a moment.

‘Here’s the invoice, Edgar. The address is written there. Grab the keys for the truck from Tonho and send Zeca over to speak with me.’

Edgar Wilson nods and takes the bill. Milo gets back on the phone. Edgar hesitates for a moment before leaving but goes through the office door and shuts it behind him. He walks down a fetid, dark corridor and turns right, into the stun box, where he spends most of his hours. The line of steer and heifers is long, as always. An employee opens the hatch and a steer that’s already gone through inspection and bathing enters slowly, suspiciously, looking around. Edgar picks up the mallet. The steer comes up close to him. Edgar looks into the animal’s eyes and caresses its forehead. The cow stomps one hoof, wags its tail, and snorts. Edgar shushes the animal and its movements slow. There is something about this shushing that makes the cattle drowsy, it establishes a mutual trust. An intimate connection. With his thumb smeared in lime, Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross between the ruminant’s eyes and takes two steps back. This is his ritual as a stun operator. He poises the mallet and strikes the steer’s forehead with pinpoint accuracy, resulting in loss of consciousness caused by cerebral haemorrhage. Collapsed on the ground, the cow spasms briefly until it goes still. Edgar Wilson believes there was no suffering. The animal now slumbers serenely, unconscious, as it’s taken to the next stage by another employee, who will hoist it upside down and slit its throat.

Edgar signals for the operator not to let the next steer enter the chute. He goes to the gut room and calls for Zeca, who obeys his order immediately. Minutes later, Edgar watches with a heavy heart as the boy leaves Milo’s office and proceeds, grinning, to the stun box. Zeca is an eighteen-year-old kid, he’s troubled. He likes watching the animals suffer. He likes to kill. He is getting ready for the task when Edgar enters the box and cautions him:

‘Put the animals to sleep, okay, Zeca? Don’t let them suffer.’

Zeca picks up the mallet and waves to the operator to let the next cow in. When the animal is standing face-to-face with him, he strikes one poorly aimed blow, on purpose, and the cow, groaning on the floor, writhes in agony. Zeca swings the mallet and smashes the animal’s head with two consecutive whacks, blood spraying onto his face.

‘Like that, Edgar? He’s asleep now, ain’t he?’ Zeca blinks hard several times and noisily sucks his teeth.

Edgar Wilson doesn’t react to Zeca’s affront. He turns around and walks to the bathroom, where he changes his clothes. He puts on jeans and a plaid button-down shirt. After getting the keys from Tonho, he goes to the pick-up truck, bemoaning the broken radio.

Since he’d stopped working in the coal mines, the only job he could get was with cattle, but what he really wants to do is work with hogs. He’s always liked pigs. He hopes to get a job soon at a large hog farm just a few kilometres away.

His precision is a rare talent that bears a preternatural knowledge for handling ruminants. If the blow to the forehead is too powerful, the animal dies, and the meat will toughen. If an animal feels fear, the pH level of its blood rises, which makes the meat taste bad. Some slaughtermen don’t care. Edgar Wilson prays for the salvation of the soul of each animal he slaughters and puts it to sleep before its throat is slit. He’s not proud of what he does, but if someone has to do it, then let it be him, who has pity on those irrational beasts.

After the animals are quartered, they’re sent to two hamburger plants or distributed