Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia 🐄 

(CONTAINS SPOILERS!) After reading “Of Cattle and Men”, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Ana Paula Maia has written another book entitled, “Between Fighting Dogs and Slaughtered Pigs”. I also wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she’s a vegetarian. In no particular order, the themes that I found emerging from her novel were: (a) the concept of male honour in the context of Brazilian society; (b) the search to find meaning in one’s work; and (c) a plea for environmentalism. If there’s any significance in Ms. Maia’s main character being Brazilian, yet having an Anglo-Saxon name, Edgar Wilson, I couldn’t figure it out. The name Edgar Wilson brought to my mind Edgar Allan Poe and his short story, “William Wilson”, but I’m pretty sure that’s just happenstance. The epigraph Ms. Maia chose for her novel, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood”, from the Book of Leviticus, reminds me of Dracula’s famous remark to his nervous visitor from London: “The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield.” Edgar Wilson believes in the importance of respecting and being respected by his co-workers at the slaughterhouse where he works. The first time we see him, he is taking off his cap and “clutching it respectfully against his chest” as he enters his boss’s office, whom he addresses as “Senhor Milo”. There is no hint of insubordination or proletarian revolt in Edgar’s conduct or attitude towards his boss. Edgar has found Senhor Milo to be a fair man who works long 14-hour days, and that makes him worthy of respect. Lest we assume that Edgar’s deference towards his boss is a sign of weakness, we soon learn that he is deadly serious about expecting others to pay him the same respect he affords to them. One day, Edgar is assisted in the slaughterhouse by a young man named Zeca. Unlike Edgar, Zeca enjoys seeing the cattle suffer. He blatantly ignores Edgar’s instructions to kill the animals quickly when he’s working in the stun box. Later that day, Edgar finds Zeca alone and kills him with a single deft mallet blow to the forehead, just as he does to the cattle in the stun box. He then dumps Zeca’s body into the nearby river. It is not just that Zeca was guilty of making the animals suffer unnecessarily, he disrespected Edgar by wilfully disobeying his instructions. We see that Edgar is not a man to be trifled with. Edgar’s personal sense of honour and respect for his boss prevents him from lying when Senhor Milo asks him if he knows where Zeca has gone. Edgar answers straightforwardly that Zeca is at the bottom of the local river and that it was he who put him there. Senhor Milo accepts Edgar’s rough justice towards Zeca on the grounds that, “No one goes unpunished.” Edgar’s self-respect is all the more important to him because he has little else to sustain his sense of self-worth. He is not proud of how he earns his living, doing “other people’s dirty work” in the slaughterhouse, yet it is important to him to carry out his duties well, and to know that his boss values his commitment to a job that no-one would choose to do if they had any other option. In contrast to the calculated, cold-blooded death he metes out to Zeca, Edgar demonstrates grace and compassion to the cattle he kills by the dozen every workday. Before dealing them the death blow with his mallet, Edgar soothes the animals and makes the sign of the cross on their heads. We are told that he prays for the salvation of their souls, even though when he looks into their eyes in search of some spark of thought or awareness, he can see nothing. Edgar’s solicitude for the cattle he kills seems to have a two-fold rationale. My sense is that Edgar would like to add something to the value and worth of the bloody and brutal job he does day after day. If he can find some evidence that the cattle he kills are more than just dumb animals, then maybe he will be perceived as being something more than just a butcher. When a troop of university students come by for a tour of the slaughterhouse and question him about his work, Edgar readily admits to being a murderer, probably because, from his position in the socio-economic scale, being thought a murderer is marginally better than being called a butcher. Edgar is particularly interested to learn that Muslims slaughter cattle according to a specific religious ritual. This appeals to his wish to impart some meaning to his own work killing animals. Although Edgar sees no sign of any intellect looking back at him from the depths of the bovine eyes he carefully scrutinizes, he is correct in thinking that there is something unusual going on with the cattle being processed by the slaughterhouse each day. Several times in the novel we are told of how well attuned Edgar is to the animals he kills. In fact, sometimes Edgar even questions in his mind, “who is man, and who is ruminant”, as if the two are on some kind of continuum. When the cattle begin acting strangely at night and try to breach the fence confining them to their pasture, the slaughterhouse workers assume the animals have been frightened by a jaguar or a wild boar. With his insight into the cattle, however, Edgar knows they are acting of their own volition, not because of a predator. Towards the end of the novel, the cattle react in a humanlike way to their dire situation. Rather than wait to be slaughtered, they choose to die on their own terms. One night, they escape from their holding area and run off along a treacherous road and over a cliff to their deaths. The slaughterhouse has to cease operations and Edgar moves on elsewhere to a job killing hogs. “Maybe one day he’ll find another job, one that’s clean”, thinks Edgar. “For now, he’ll keep slaughtering hogs; impure but morally acceptable, that’s how he feels.” Edgar seems to have found a strange sense of exclusivity about the bloody work he does, “for men like him, slaughterers, are few and far between.” “Of Cattle and Men”-notice the cattle receive precedence over men-takes place in a nightmarish setting called Ruminant Valley with a river flowing through it reeking of blood and offal from Senhor Milo’s slaughterhouse. Everywhere there is the stench of blood, guts, and death accompanied by the buzzing of blowflies. (Well, maybe it's not all like that.) There is an eerie episode where Edgar and a few others drive to a local ranch looking for some missing cattle. When they arrive, they find the ranch has been deserted for some time, for no apparent reason. It gives the reader an odd sense that the world of Ruminant Valley cannot be sustained, but that as long as some people have a taste for animal meat and there are others willing to kill to provide it to them, we’ll all continue to live in Ruminant Valley; at least, until the animals stage a final revolt.

i love you Kiran