One of my legs ached and I changed positions. The branch groaned. The moon-shaped man glanced up, searching among the leaves. When he spotted me, he seemed fascinated by what he saw, and he raised his arm and motioned for me to come down. He had me sit beside him and asked me to get him a glass of water and sugar; he couldn’t reach the pitcher, much less the sugar bowl. Lunch has made me thirsty. As he gulped down the water, he kept looking at me with pitiful eyes. He told me to eat, he said I looked hungry. I stuffed myself with sweets, with cake, with a bit of crème brûlée that someone hadn’t finished.
Here you have me, a man consumed by a never-ending urge to eat. The men who were holding me by the arms are my brothers: the middle one and the youngest. They are waiting for me to die, claws at the ready. I used to eat like a bird, I had no appetite, my growth was stunted. My mother was always preparing delicacies for me. . here, have some chicken livers, have some lamb brains, have some hen combs, have some rabbit cheeks. All light fare, which I scarcely ever touched. I was scrawny. All skin and bones, arms like matchsticks, legs like matchsticks. Until someone told my mother to feed me honey. I had never tasted it before, and I liked it so much that all day long I would cry for more. I kept pots of it beside my bed and spent my nights dipping fingers into it, licking away. And, being small of frame, I slowly developed a considerable layer of fat. This change went hand in hand with my brothers’ glee as I turned into a ball of lard and they saw how any little effort left me winded. In the end they deemed me worthless, even though I had married and produced a son (everybody shouted Miracle! because no one could understand how I had managed to make the boy). My wife and son soon died, and my brothers cast me aside and managed the property without offering me any explanations, although I was the heir. I have seven months to live; my heart has a casing of fat that is slowly choking it. Suddenly, he ordered me to climb back up the tree because his brothers were coming for him and they would scold him if they saw him talking to a stranger.
The two men took him back to the house the same way they had helped him to the table: holding him by the arms and prodding him occasionally from behind. The dancers had left and everything lay enveloped in the shadows of dusk. As I climbed down from the tree I scared off a clutch of sparrows that were pecking at the bread crumbs around the table. The dogs were eating by the portal; this time they didn’t chase after me, perhaps because after seeing me talking to the moon-shaped man they counted me as one of their own.
I raised my head, baa. . baa. . baa. . those sheep cries intrigued me; I had to see for myself what was happening. Behind the farmhouse, near the vegetable garden, three stout men were shearing sheep. The animals had wide foreheads, pointy muzzles, droopy ears, and legs so covered in wool that you could scarcely see them. The men had rough faces. One of them, with white hair and a deeply furrowed brow, immediately spotted me. When I realized he had seen me I made an attempt to flee, which spoiled everything because then the younger one, in a fleece vest, grabbed me by the arm and shoved me to the ground. I kicked him. But he was the stronger of the two. He dragged me to where the sheep were being sheared and, amid shouts and panting, they pinned me down by the arms and legs and started running the shears over my head.