The Reform of Nature, by Monteiro Lobato

When Dona Benta, Tia Nastácia, Littlenose, Pedrinho, and the Viscount of Sabugosa set out on a journey to a Peace Conference, the doll Emília sees a perfect opportunity to put an old and bold plan into action: reforming nature. In her opinion, nature had made a series of small mistakes that could be corrected with a few “adjustments.” Emília gradually starts meddling with one thing here, another detail there… All, as she insists on explaining, with the aim of promoting a better use of nature. Originally published in 1941, “The Reform of Nature” (A Reforma da Natureza) surprises with its relevance.

• 1st Part
• The reform of nature
• The frog appears
• The nest-bird
• Hornless’s reform
• Butterflies, flies, and ants
• Reforms in Europe and in fleas
• The living wineskins and the weight
• The next day
• The edible book
• The return of Mrs. Benta
• Not all was lost by Emília
• 2nd Part
• Viscount’s laboratory
• The studies
• The gigantic flea
• The ninety-four-legged creature
• The fear of the world
• The two classmates
• Monster hunting
• It was all fun and games

1st Part

When the war in Europe ended, the dictators, kings, and presidents turned their attention to the discussion of peace. They gathered in an open field under a large tent made of cloth, for there were no more cities left: all had been destroyed by aerial bombardments. They began to discuss, but no matter how much they argued, peace seemed impossible to achieve. It was like a continuation of the war, with curses instead of grenades and spit instead of rifle bullets.

Then King Carol of Romania stood up and said:

— My lords, peace is not forthcoming because we all represent countries here, and each one of us is pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for our own interests. However, there is only one fire and many chestnuts. Even if we discuss for a century, there will be no possible agreement. The way to resolve this situation is to invite some representatives of humanity to this conference. Only these beings can propose a peace that satisfies all of humanity and, in doing so, also satisfies the peoples, for humanity is a whole of which the peoples are parts. Or better yet: humanity is an orange, and the peoples are its segments.

These profoundly wise words greatly impressed those men. But where to find creatures that could represent humanity and not come with the pettiness of those who only represent nations, that is, segments of humanity?

King Carol, after whispering with General de Gaulle, continued his speech.

— I only know — he said — two beings capable of representing humanity, because they are the most humane in the world and also great statesmen. The small republic they govern has always been immersed in the greatest happiness.

Mussolini, jealous, raised his chin.

— Who are these marvels?

— Dona Benta and Tia Nastácia — King Carol replied —, the two respectable matrons who govern the Sítio do Picapau Amarelo, in South America. I propose that the Conference send for these two marvels so that they can teach us the secret of governing peoples well.

— Very well! — approved the Duke of Windsor, the representative of the English. — The Duchess read to me the story of this marvelous little country, a true paradise on Earth, and I am also convinced that only through the wisdom of Dona Benta and the common sense of Tia Nastácia can the world be fixed. The day our planet becomes just like the site, we will not only have eternal peace but also the most perfect happiness.

The great dictators and other leaders of Europe knew nothing about the site. They were amazed by those words and asked for more information. The Duke of Windsor began to recount, from the beginning, the famous adventures of Littlenose, Pedrinho, and Emília in Picapau Amarelo. The interest was so great that shortly after, all those men were sitting on the ground, surrounding the Duke, listening to the stories and reminiscing about the good times when they were children and instead of killing people with cannons and bombs, they played joyfully in games like hide-and-seek and tag. They were moved and approved King Carol’s proposal.

Thus, the reason for inviting Dona Benta, Tia Nastácia, and Visconde de Sabugosa to represent Humanity and Common Sense at the Peace Conference of 1945 was explained.

With great composure, Dona Benta accepted the invitation and decided to go with all her little staff — except Emília. Emília refused to leave because she had the idea that came to her for the first time when she heard the fable of the “Nature Reformer.” It had been months since Dona Benta told her that fable like this:

The reform of nature

Américo Blink-Blink had the habit of finding fault with everything. For him, the world was wrong, and Nature only made foolish things.

— Foolish things, Américo?

— Well, yes! Here in this orchard, you have proof of that. There is a huge jabuticaba tree with tiny fruits, and further on, I see a colossal pumpkin attached to the stem of a creeping plant. Shouldn’t it be just the opposite? If things were to be rearranged by me, I would swap them — put the jabuticabas on the pumpkin tree and the pumpkins on the jabuticaba tree. Don’t you think I’m right?

And while talking, Américo proved that everything was wrong and only he was capable of intelligently arranging the world.

— But the best thing — he concluded — is not to think about it and take a nap under these trees, don’t you think?

And Américo Blink-Blink, blinking away endlessly, lay down under the shade of the jabuticaba tree.

He fell asleep. He slept and dreamed. He dreamed of a new world, completely reformed by his hands. How wonderful!

Suddenly, though, in the midst of the dream, plaf! a jabuticaba fell from the branch right on his nose.

Américo woke up with a start. He blinked, blinked. He pondered over the situation and finally recognized that the world was not as badly made as he said. And so, he went home, thinking:

— What a jerk!… Wasn’t it true that if the world had been reformed by me, the first victim would have been myself? Me, Américo Blink-Blink, killed by the pumpkin I placed instead of the jabuticaba? Hmm!… Let’s forget about reforms. Let everything stay as it is because everything is just fine.

And Blink-Blink continued blinking through life, but since then, he gave up on trying to correct Nature.

Upon hearing Dona Benta tell this fable, everyone agreed with its moral, except for Emília.

— I always thought Nature was wrong — she said — and after hearing the story of Américo Blink-Blink, I think it’s even more wrong. Isn’t it a mistake to make someone blink? Why so much “blink”? Anything in excess is wrong. The more I “study Nature,” the more errors I see. Why so much lip in Tia Nastácia? Why two horns in front of cows and none at the back? Enemies attack more from behind than from the front. And everything is like that. Completely wrong. If I were to reform the world, everything would be enchanting, and I would start by reforming that fable and that Américo Blink-Blink.

The discussion went on that day; everyone was against the reform, but the stubborn little creature didn’t give in. She shouted that everything was wrong, and she would reform Nature.

— When, Marquesa? — Littlenose asked ironically.

— The first time I catch myself alone here.

The frog appears

That moment had arrived. Upon learning that Dona Benta had received an invitation from the European leaders to fix the poor continent, Emília jumped with joy and, with the idea of reforming Nature in her head, declared that she was not going.

— You’re not going, Emília? — Dona Benta said. — Do you think I can leave you here alone?

Emília disguised the true reason for staying. She claimed she wouldn’t go to avoid scandals at the Peace Conference.

— Yes — she said —, if I go, it’s not to sleep in the hotel! I will also want to take part in the Conference — and I have some truths to tell those dictators that you can’t even imagine. And it will inevitably end in a “scandal.” It will be a big uproar. That’s what I want to avoid.

Dona Benta thought for a moment and went to the kitchen to consult Tia Nastácia.

She found her cleaning a pot to make guava jam.

— Nastácia — she said —, Emília is being difficult. She wants to stay. She says that if she goes to the Conference, she will end up in a quarrel with the dictators, and there will be a big international scandal — and I’m afraid of that. I abhor scandals.

— And she will indeed cause one, Madam. After that story of the size switch, Emília has become too presumptuous. She won’t tolerate anything. She will indeed cause a scandal, Madam, and she might even ruin our work over there. Pedrinho told me that things in Europe are worse than a pawnshop when you’re looking for something and can’t find it. Everything upside down, he said. Everything headless and messed up. Our task will be huge, Madam, and with Emília meddling, we won’t achieve anything worthwhile. My opinion is that she stays.

— But to stay alone here, Nastácia?

— She will be with Conselheiro and Quindim — what more do you want? They have enough sense to spare — and then some. I will talk to Conselheiro and explain everything.

Dona Benta thought, thought, and finally convinced herself that Tia Nastácia was right. Controlled by Conselheiro and protected by Quindim, what harm could Emília cause?

And Emília stayed.

Littlenose, however, who knew Emília the best, didn’t believe her pretext of not going to avoid scandal.

— That’s just her story, Grandma! Emília actually likes scandals. I know she wants to stay alone to do as she pleases, to do something even crazier than that business with the size switch. If I were you, I wouldn’t leave her here alone.

But Dona Benta was the embodiment of democracy: she never abused her authority to oppress anyone. Everyone was free on the site, and precisely because of that, they swam in a sea of happiness. Emília refused to go? Then she wouldn’t go. How could she force her to go? With what right? And what good would it do if she went reluctantly, sulking? Emília had permission to stay.

This decision was made on the very morning of the invitation. A month later, the commission responsible for taking Dona Benta arrived. This commission came on the only ship still in existence in the world. All the others were resting at the bottom of the seas, victims of submarines and aerial torpedoes. Dona Benta packed her bags, put on her yellow gorgorão dress from the time of D. Pedro II, told Tia Nastácia to wear her new green polka-dot skirt, and they both went aboard the ship. Pedrinho and Littlenose accompanied their illustrious grandmother as grandchildren; and Visconde, with a bulky folder of scientific knowledge under his arm, followed as the Scientific Consultant.

Emília, Conselheiro, and Quindim were present at the farewell at the gate, listening to the final recommendations from Tia Nastácia about the chickens, the piglets for fattening, and a brood of chicks that were already pecking.

— Don’t try to help the chicks hatch from the eggs; otherwise, they will die — she said. — A chick knows very well how to handle it alone. And don’t forget to water the young cabbage plants in the garden.

Hearing those sensible instructions, the members of the commission exchanged glances, as if to say: “With such people of beautiful practical spirit, so attentive to everything, the Conference will be a true triumph for humanity” (and they were not mistaken).

As soon as she was alone, Emília rushed to the typewriter and typed a letter to a girl from Rio de Janeiro with whom she had been corresponding for some time and planning “things.”

Dear Frog,

I’m all alone — all-alone-ro-all-alone! Everyone went to Europe to fix those countries, all crumpled like old cans, and now I need you to come spend some time here. You’re one of us: one who disagrees. We can carry out our plan to reform Nature. Américo Blink-Blink was a silly jester. He reformed Nature like his nose, and it’s a pity that the pumpkin from the dream didn’t really crush his head. The world would have one less fool. We will make a much better reform. First, we will reform things here on the site. If it works, the whole world will adopt our reforms. Your mother won’t want you to come. She’s “grown-up,” and those so-called adults are just like Américo Blink-Blink. But you will come anyway. Smell half a pinch of the powder in the paper bag — just half, otherwise, instead of coming here, you’ll end up I don’t know where. They left this morning, and I’m already feeling very “tapeworm”…

(After Emília learned that “lonely” was a synonym of “tapeworm,” she started saying “tapeworm” instead. “It’s not grammatical,” she said, "but it’s shorter.")

[Translator’s note: This pun relied on the fact that, in Portuguese, “solitária” means either “lonely” or “tapeworm” depending on context, the term coming from how tapeworms, unlike roundworms, typically live alone in their hosts rather than forming colonies. In order to say specifically “tapeworm”, you would say “tênia”, and Emília decided to use that word instead of “solitária”.]

The Frog, named for her slimness, like an eleven-year-old girl, was as “emiliana” as they come, one who always disagreed. As soon as she read the letter, she jumped ten times and proceeded to divide the mysterious powder into two “bissolutely” equal parts. Under Emília’s influence, she had been using the word “absolutamente” that way. Before reforming Nature, Emília had already made several reforms in the language.

— What are you doing there, girl? — her mother asked, seeing her dividing the mysterious powder.

— I’m “bi-ing” what comes and goes so that it can take me there and bring me back — she replied in the language of the Pythia of Delphi (in Emilian language, “bi” meant “divide in two”).

The good lady, of course, didn’t understand a thing, but as she was already used to her daughter’s enigmatic answers, she sighed and went to attend to something else.

The Frog sniffed the powder, following the instructions in the letter. Immediately, her eyes closed, and in her ears, the famous fiunn! sang. Moments later, she felt dropped on the ground. She opened her eyes: a courtyard! It could only be the courtyard of the site.

But there was no one around. The house was closed. In the air, only two sounds; a snore that must be Quindim in his usual nap and a chewing noise that seemed to be from Stub-Tailed.

Still sitting and dizzy, the girl shouted:

— Emília! Emilinha! Emiloca!…

The nest-bird

The answer came from the orchard, “Here!” Running towards the voice, the girl found Emília so engrossed with a little bird that she didn’t even look at her. She was shaping the back of a finch. All birds have “convex” backs, that is, rounded upwards. Emília was making a bird with “concave” back, that is, with a round hollow in its back. The Frog stared at it without understanding a thing until Emília explained.

"I’m making the bird-nest. Silly Nature arranges things haphazardly, without reasoning. Take birds, for example. She teaches them to make nests in trees. Is there anything riskier? Eggs and chicks are exposed to rain, snakes, ants, and storms. Last year, there was a storm here that knocked down the nest of this finch, over there in my pitanga tree — and there went three lovely eggs, all speckled. And once again, I was convinced of the “torture” of things. I began the reform of Nature with this bird.

The Frog didn’t understand what reform that was and asked:

“What’s that hollow for in the finch’s back?”

“That’s the nest,” Emília replied. “I make its nest here on its back, and that’s it. Wherever it goes, the eggs or chicks go too — and there’s no danger of snakes, storms, or rain.”

“But there is rain,” said the Little Frog. “In tree nests, the female is always sitting on the eggs. But here…”

Emília made a superior expression.

“I’ve anticipated all possibilities,” she said. “I make its little tail very movable, so it can turn backwards and cover the eggs when necessary, like a little roof.”

The Frog was satisfied and attentively watched the preparation of the first bird-nest in the world.

“Ready!” exclaimed Emília at last. “Only the eggs are missing. Run over there and bring me the female finch from the cage.”

The Frog went and brought the bird. Emília took it very gently and squeezed it so that three speckled eggs came out, which she carefully placed in the feather nest made on the back of the male finch — and she let them go, prrr!…

Emília was delighted.

“There they go!” she exclaimed. “No more worries, fears of snakes, ants, or storms. And also, no more impudence of all the work of laying and hatching eggs falling only to the female. Men have always abused women. Dona Benta says that in ancient times, and even today among savages, the men stay in comfort, lounging in hammocks, or they’re only occupied with hunting and war amusements, while the poor women do all the work, spending their lives washing, cooking, sweeping, and putting up with their children. And if they don’t behave very well, they get beaten. Men have always abused women, but now things will change. This finch, for example, has to take care of the eggs. The female will handle laying them, but the male has to take care of them.”

“But then the eggs won’t hatch,” objected the Little Frog. “For them to hatch, the females have to sit on them for a number of days. Hens take twenty-one days to hatch.”

“I’ve already 'anticipated the possibility,’” said Emília, “and reformed this point. In my bird-nest system, it’s not the female that incubates, but the sun, just like with the eggs of alligators, turtles, lizards, and snakes.”

“And what if there’s no sun? Sometimes days pass without the sun appearing.”

“In that case, the eggs will have to be patient and wait for the sun to appear. Why rush?”

The Frog had nothing more to say. Emília was right. Only then did Emília remember to greet her and inquire about everyone at her house. She also examined her hands to see if the nails were mourning. She made her turn sideways and backwards and jump three times. It was the first time the two had met in person.

“I like your physique,” Emília said at the end of the examination. “I was afraid it wouldn’t match the idea I had. Many times we imagine someone, and the opposite comes out. I liked your last letter about the reform of cities and people. I adore you, Frog, because you disagree.”

“Oh, I certainly disagree!” exclaimed the Little Frog. “I always disagree. In us, humans, for example, there are so many things wrong! Why two eyes in the front and none at the back? If I were to reform creatures, I’d put one eye on the forehead and another on the back of the head. That way, I’d double their security.”

“Well, I’d increase the number of eyes,” said Emília. “Why just two? Just as we have ten fingers, we could have ten eyes. I’d put four on the head, at north, south, east, and west. I’d put two on the big toes, to avoid stubbing them. The other day, Pedrinho stubbed his toe on a brick and almost ripped off his toenail. With an eye on each big toe, there’d be no danger of stubbing — nor thorns and burrs. And I’d also give each little toe an eye. The little toe is truly lazy in the hands. It does nothing. It just watches others work all the time. Well, if the little toe had an eye on the tip, it could be very useful. Sometimes you want to see inside a tooth cavity or check if there’s wax in your ear, and you can’t. With the eye of the little toe, nothing could be easier.”

“And that eye of the little toe,” added the Frog, “could be like a microscope, capable of seeing tiny things invisible to ordinary eyes. But there would be an inconvenience, Emília. Hands handle everything, they work a lot, and those little toe eyes would be constantly getting dust or scratched — and it would be painful.”

“Nothing easier to avoid that,” Emília recalled. “They’d use tiny finger-covers when they didn’t have anything to do. They’d be covered when not needed. But for now, we can’t reform people, because there are no people here. All the humans from the site have gone to Europe.”

“And Stub-Tailed?”

“He’s inhumane and very much a quadruped. I’ve thought a lot about reforming Stub-Tailed. We could turn him into a biped and…”

“And get rid of that habit of eating everything he finds,” the Frog continued. “I’d do this: I’d put a sort of mousetrap on his nose, always armed; when he went for a sweet or anything serious, like Littlenose’s wedding crown, the trap would spring and hold his nose. And I’d also give him turtle legs, so he couldn’t escape when Pedrinho chased him with the slingshot.”

Emília looked at the Frog with a suspicious look. Those ideas seemed absurd to her. The mousetrap would prevent Stub-Tailed from eating not only coconut sweets and crowns but everything else, and he’d starve.

“Absurd,” Frog!" she said. “Your mousetrap would end up killing Stub-Tailed, and Dona Benta would be furious.”

“You didn’t understand me, Emília. The mousetrap would only work when he wanted to eat crowns. For pumpkin, corn, cassava, and the rest, it wouldn’t.”

“But how would the mousetrap know when it was a crown?”

“By the smell. I’d give the mousetrap a good nose.”

Emília looked at the Frog with the corner of her eye. That girl seemed to be crazy… Despite that, she entrusted her with reforming Stub-Tailed. The Frog changed the subject.

“In the letter you wrote me, Emília, I found the word ‘bissolutamente’ instead of ‘absolutamente,’ and now you said ‘bissurdo’ instead of ‘absurdo.’ Are you reforming words too?”

“Not yet, but I’ve thought about it. For now, I limit myself to cutting one letter or another with which I get entangled. The ‘a’ in certain words forces me to open my mouth too much — and my jaw might drop, like Nhá Veva’s daughter. Try saying ‘absurdo’ without opening your mouth.”

The Frog tried and couldn’t do it, but she said “bissurdo” almost with her mouth closed.

“There you go!” Emília retorted. “Everything is wrong, even the ‘a’ in certain words. The world is a great muddle. Why, for example, a tail on Stub-Tailed? In the Cow Hornless, the tail makes sense — it scares away flies. It’s a fan. But on Stub-Tailed? What’s the point of that little, bald snail?”

“As a decoration, at the end,” the Frog suggested.

“What end?”

“Stub-Tailed’s end. All ends have tails. It’s the finish. Mom says it’s ugly to eat and leave the plate spotless or drink a glass of liquor without leaving a bit at the bottom. Those are tails. They’re the ornaments of good manners.”

Emília became more and more suspicious of the Little Frog. She seemed like Alice from Wonderland. She only came up with nonsense. And she said:

“Ornaments are useless things. I don’t want any ornaments in my reforms. Everything must have a scientific reason. That idea in the letter about Quindim’s reform seemed crazy to me. I think you want to ‘play’ with Nature, girl. I want to correct Nature, I want to improve it, you understand? It’s not a joke. It’s serious business. That’s the difference between us. In the last letter, you talked about replacing Quindim’s leather with velvet. That’s nonsense.”

“But what does Quindim need such hard leather for here in Yellow Wood, where there are no African thorns?”

“I agree. He could have finer leather, like suede; but velvet, Frog, is too much. Sometimes I think you’re sabotaging my idea of reforming Nature…”

Hornless’s reform

For a long time, the two of them talked about reforms, and more reforms, and since they were under the jabuticaba tree, they kept talking while enjoying the delicious fruits. At one point, Emília said:

“This jabuticaba tree, for example. Don’t you think it’s shameful that a tree this size produces such tiny fruits? And yet, in the vegetable garden, we have a pumpkin plant that produces enormous pumpkins, and it’s not even a proper plant — it’s just a flimsy stem that crushes when you step on it. I’m going to change that. I’ll put the jabuticabas on the pumpkin plant and the pumpkins on the jabuticaba tree.”

“But that’s what Américo Blink-Blink did,” argued the Frog, “and the dream opened his eyes.”

“That fool fell asleep under the jabuticaba tree — and do you know why? So that the fable would be neatly arranged. The fabulist was a big coward; he wanted to create a fable that justified his fear of change — and he invented this story about Américo sleeping under the jabuticaba tree. I’ve already reformed that fable.”

“How?”

“By making Américo not sleep under any tree at all, leaving La Fontaine embarrassed to conclude the fable. I left only a fragment of the fable. An unfinished fable, like that famous symphony. And without a moral.”

“A fable without a moral is an immoral fable,” said the Frog. “It’s a Stub-Tailed fable, without a tail. It’s no good.”

“Your nose is no good,” Emília retorted and went on with the reforms.

The pumpkins felt very awkward and disappointed to find themselves hanging from the branches of that enormous tree, while the jabuticabas fell to the ground, attached to soft stalks and always touching the soil. What saved them was being varnished; otherwise, they would be covered in dust; even so, they looked disgusted, sighing with longing for their old branches.

The Frog watched the changes and offered opinions.

“The oranges,” she said, “I would make them grow with a little knife inside. How many times do we have an orange in hand and no knife nearby?”

“It’s much better to make the oranges grow already peeled,” Emília suggested. “Why peel? It only serves to stain our hands with juice.”

And so it was done. All the oranges in the orchard had to be “naked,” very embarrassed, with their segments exposed, and only on the lower branches. The ground was filled with so many peels that Stub-Tailed approached, sniffing.

The Frog, who had not yet met the famous Marquis, delighted in looking at him.

“How chubby and glossy you look, Emília! Are you still a marquise?”

“What can I do?” Emília shouted. “A title is like a nickname: once it sticks to someone, it never goes away. Around here, we have a seventy-year-old black man whose nickname is ‘Poor Thing.’ Do you know why? Because when he was born, everyone started calling him ‘Poor Thing’ — later ‘Poor Tadinho’ — and he remained Tadinho his whole life, a big black man like that…”

“But you, Emília, don’t seem to remember that you’re a marquise anymore, do you?”

“Sometimes I remember, but without any pleasure. What pleasure is there in being the marquise of such a marquis? You know perfectly well what my dream is…”

“I know — it’s to be the wife of a great pirate, to command a ship. So why don’t you marry Captain Hook?”

“What an idea!” exclaimed Emília. “No pirate demoralizes the profession more than him. First, he didn’t have an arm, and now he doesn’t even have a ship. His Sea Hyena turned into Wave Hummingbird, as you well know — and now it belongs to Pedrinho. I wanted to marry one of those great pirates from the time of the Peruvian gold, the ones who attacked Spanish galleons on the open sea, with knives between their teeth. There’s one called Morgan who would suit me. I also thought about a submarine pirate, but I gave up on that. Submarines make me short of breath.”

Stub-Tailed just sniffed the orange peels. He only liked peels with segments inside.

“And the Cow Hornless?” asked the Frog. “Are you going to reform her too?”

“Of course, and right now. Come with me.”

The two of them went to the pasture of Hornless, who was leisurely chewing on some corn husks. They stood in front of her, with hands on their waists, discussing the reform.

“I would change the milk dispenser,” said the Little Frog. “I’d put little taps on the teats to avoid what happens now: the cowboys squeeze the teats with their filthy hands to extract milk — it’s disgusting. With the tap system, their hands won’t touch the teats.”

Emília laughed heartily.

“What nonsense! It’s clear that you’re a girl from Rio de Janeiro. Don’t you know that the purpose of teats is to give milk to the calves? How can a little calf suck from taps?”

“We would teach the calves to open the taps.”

“No,” declared Emília. “Too complicated. For Hornless, I want reforms that are useful for her and not for the creatures exploiting her. I’ll put Hornless’s tail right in the middle of her back because, as it is now, it only reaches half her body. How can the poor thing shoo away the flies sitting on her neck when the tail only reaches her ribs? Everything is wrong…”

And she planted Hornless’s tail in the middle of her back so that she could shoo flies from her entire body: north, south, east, west. And she moved the teats to the sides, half on the left, half on the right.

“This way, we can milk one side while the little calf suckles from the other. Reform is no joke. It requires science.”

“Excellent!” agreed the Frog. "And we can put little taps on the right side teats — for the milkmen. The ones on the left side stay as they are — for the calves' use."

Emília approved the idea. Then they considered the horns.

“Every respectable cow has horns,” said Emília, “except this poor thing, who is hornless. I’ll give her long horns, but without sharp tips.”

The Frog remembered that fencers use foils with a padded tip. They could give Hornless two pointed horns, but with padded tips. Emília immediately improved on the idea.

“Instead of padding, Frog, we can stick solid rubber balls on the tips — removable balls, that is, ones that can be taken off at night.”

“Why?”

“So she can defend herself against any nocturnal attacks. The horns are her only defense, poor thing.”

“But what nocturnal dangers are there around here?”

“The danger of jaguars, my dear. Uncle Barnabé says that one of this Hornless’s ancestors was eaten by a jaguar.”

During the day, Hornless could use the balls because jaguars only attack at night.

And so, Hornless was adorned with two splendid horns elegantly twisted like corkscrews, each with a solid ball on the tip — removable balls.

The cow’s fur also underwent a reform. It became soft like plush and iridescent.

As they were busy with Hornless’s reform, a beautiful blue butterfly flew over them.

Butterflies, flies, and ants

Emília forgot about the cow and ran after the butterfly, shouting, “I don’t have this one yet!” But she couldn’t catch it; tired from the chase, she explained:

“I’m collecting a beautiful butterfly collection, and I can’t get these blue ones. They are the most elusive. We also need to reform butterflies.”

“Impossible, Emília!” cried the Frog. “Everything about them is so well-done, so neat and beautiful that any reform would ruin them.”

“My reform of butterflies,” explained Emília, “is not in their beauty but in their character. I want them to be ‘catchable,’ like beetles. Have you noticed that beetles don’t run away from us? Very docile. But butterflies, especially the blue ones, are pests, so elusive. When I find one sitting and approach it, it ‘flies away’!”

And the blue butterflies were reformed, becoming as gentle as beetles.

“And what about flies?” asked the Frog.

“The flies,” replied Emília, “will be wingless because they are useless and annoying creatures. Without wings, they will have to walk on the ground, like ants, and the ants will quickly deal with them. Why have flies in the world? By removing their wings, we’ll get rid of flies.”

“And mosquitoes too?”

“Of course. They are even worse because they transmit diseases and make Dona Benta spend a lot of money on insecticides. The Viscount says that yellow fever, malaria, and other diseases are transmitted by mosquitoes. I’ll cut off their wings, and goodbye mosquitoes, goodbye yellow fever, goodbye malaria…”

The Frog argued that this would reduce the music in the world because mosquitoes sing the Fiun song and suggested another reform:

“Instead of removing their wings, we can make them lose their taste for blood and learn other songs besides Fiun. They can feed on sugary water or flower nectar. And we can make tiny cages, made of hair strands, the size of matchboxes, to have singing mosquitoes at home. It would be charming. A customer comes to a shop and says, ‘I want a mosquito in a cage, a good one.’ And the clerk brings several cages for him to choose from, each with a Fiun singer inside. But I think mosquitoes are too small. I would make them the size of mice.”

“Oh no!” protested Emília. “I’m against size. I think that as things improve, they get smaller.”

The conversation shifted to size. Emília recounted several episodes from the time she destroyed the size of human beings, as it is told in The Size Switch.

“Size, Frog, is the folly of follies, a useless thing that only causes trouble. If all the necessary organs for life fit inside an ant, including a heart, brain, lungs, and the rest, and if they manage so well in the world being so small, why do we need giants like Quindim, for example? If men were the size of fleas, they would be happier. The misery of men lies in their size. Colonel Teodorico is almost two meters tall and weighs a hundred kilos. But what good does it do? He can’t win an argument with the Viscount, who weighs less than half a kilo and is only two palms tall. When something starts to improve, it becomes smaller. Those huge animals of the past — the brontosaurs, for example. Why did they disappear? Because they were too big. There wasn’t enough food. Today, there are few very large animals, and it seems they are all getting smaller. The number of small ones is increasing. There are millions of microbes. Here on the farm, we waged war on size and got stuck. No one grows. Pedrinho and Littlenose have been the same size for years — like Peter Pan.”

The Frog became sad and confessed that she was growing. Her height and weight increased every year. Emília solved the problem:

“Well, stop growing. Do as I do. Do as the Viscount does. Mammals are getting smaller. You are a mammal. Dona Benta said that in the beginning, they were almost all enormous, and now they are much smaller. And those that insist on being big go to ruin. Why do men go to war and kill each other in so many ways? Because of their size. If they were as small as aphids, they would all live in abundance and without wars. Dona Benta says that the cause of wars is the lack of food. A man like Colonel Teodorico eats two or three kilos of food a day. If he were the size of a flea, he would be satisfied with tiny morsels. What he eats in a day would feed a million ants for a month. If Dona Benta and Aunt Anastácia can’t reconcile the men over in Europe, they will continue to kill each other in wars until not a single one is left for medicine.”

“And if that happens, who do you think will take care of the world?” asked the Frog.

“The ants, I have no doubt about that. They are incredibly smart. Their idea of making their cities underground is the best idea ever. With just that, they escape a thousand things, a hundred thousand dangers — even aerial bombardments. What do men do to protect themselves from air raids? They imitate the ants — they dig underground. In the areas devastated by war, there are no animals left — but the ants are still there. Only them — imagine how wonderful!”

“But the ants seem behind in many ways,” the Frog said. “They don’t even have wings…”

“How can you say that? They have wings when they want to. During the ‘ovation’ period, the sky is full of winged ants. Then they come down to dig holes and lay eggs, and the first thing they do is shake their bodies and drop their wings. In October, I see a lot of that around here.”

The Frog became thoughtful.

“Why do they drop their wings, such precious things?”

“Because they only need wings on one occasion, when they rise, very high, in October, to absorb the sun’s vitamins for their eggs. After they come down and open their holes, they don’t need wings anymore. They would get in the way inside the anthill.”

“But it must be very dark inside anthills,” the Frog observed. “I really like light, a lot of light, only light.”

“What a mistake!” exclaimed Emília. “You spend nine hours a day with your eyes closed, sleeping, why? So you won’t see the light. Only light, all the time, tires, bewilders us. Ants use darkness comfortably. When they leave the anthills, they revel in the light; when they return, they revel in the darkness. That’s how to live. Only light is as terrible as only darkness. That’s why we have Night and Day.”

“And what reform do you intend to make with the ants, Emília?”

"Ah, none. I studied the case and saw that there’s nothing to reform with them. Everything is perfect. I’ll give a sweet to anyone who discovers a way to improve the ants' lives."

The Frog thought and thought, and finally agreed that it’s really difficult to improve the little ants' lives.

Reforms in Europe and in fleas

They spoke about Dona Benta’s trip to Europe. The Frog believed she wouldn’t achieve anything because humans are wrong from birth. Emília disagreed.

“I know ‘Grandma’s’ ideas,” she said. “The first thing she’ll do at the Conference is to turn the world into a Universal Confederation. All countries will become part of this confederation, like the States of the United States. And she will end armies and navies, cannons, and machine guns.”

The Frog, who understood a little about politics, thought that the great nations were too proud to subject themselves to becoming mere states of a great United States.

“Well, if they don’t submit, worse for them,” declared Emília. “Dona Benta believes that men should form something in the world like the ants. They are of many races — red, black, leaf-cutters, soldier ants, who knows what else — but they live perfectly side by side without warring or destroying each other. If ants can do that, why can’t men achieve the same?”

“But do you think the big ones over there — kings, dictators, important men — will follow Dona Benta and Aunt Anastácia’s advice?”

“What can we do?” replied Emília. “As long as they follow their own heads, only lice will come out of it: misfortunes and more misfortunes, endless destructions. They must be convinced that despite all their importance, they are nothing more than tremendous pieces of donkeys.”

The Frog agreed.

At night, when they went to bed, they both stayed in the same bed talking late into the night. The topic was always the same: reforms, more reforms. At a certain moment, a flea bit Emília. She turned on the light and began to hunt for it on the white sheet. She finally caught it. She rolled it tightly between her fingers and let it go “to see.” And what she saw was the flea revive and escape by hopping.

Emília got annoyed.

“It always happens to me! I rub and roll up fleas, and they un-rub, unroll, and jump away. I have to reform fleas too.”

“How?”

“I could make them springy like flies. Have you noticed that, for their size, fleas are the hardest things in the world? Harder than rubber… And I will also change the jumping speed of fleas. I’ll make them jump in slow motion, so that people can catch them in the air with ease, as if we were catching a ball.”

The Frog suggested an even better “improvement.”

“What if we cut the flea’s jump in half?” she said.

Emília didn’t understand.

“Cut, how?”

“The flea jumps. When it reaches the highest point of the jump, it stops. It stays suspended in the air, like a period. And we, calmly, catch it and squeeze it between our nails. I really like to hear the popping sound of fleas. It’s the only insect with that ability.”

“Cockroaches can pop too,” Emília recalled. “Every time Littlenose steps on one, it pops. It’s the language of fleas and cockroaches. And also of whips. Pedrinho has a whip that’s a master at popping.”

The living wineskins and the weight

The Frog mentioned bedbugs, some nonexistent creatures in the area, and had to tell the story of the bedbugs from Rio.

“They stink terribly,” she said. “I have a real horror of those nocturnal monsters. They suck our blood while we sleep and get so fat they can hardly move. And when we crush one, Emília, oh, the smell! It stinks up the place. Just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach.”

Emília had an idea.

“Well, we can reform those bedbugs in a very simple way: by making them have delightful scents instead of bad smells, better than all the perfumes in the stores. That way, they’ll become very important in the world. They’ll be small living bladders full of perfume. Do you know what a bladder is?”

The Frog knew. She immediately remembered those wine bladders that Don Quixote punctured with his sword, spilling all the wine from the innkeeper’s inn.

“Yes,” Emília continued. “They are vessels made of skin or leather that people used to use in the past. Dona Benta has a small rubber bladder that she fills with hot water to warm her feet on very cold days — but she doesn’t call it a bladder, she calls it ‘my water bag. Who took my water bag from the bathroom?’ And it’s always Pedrinho who messes with the bag for some pranks. So, the bedbugs can become living bladders with perfumes inside. Perfume stores can create different kinds of bedbugs. Girls will come and ask for a dozen of Bouton d’Or bedbugs, or Kananga of Japan, or Heliotrope, and when they want to perfume themselves, all they have to do is take one from the crystal little pigsty they’ll have in their dressing tables, and squeeze it on a handkerchief, their chest, their neck, or the tips of their ears. Then they’ll go out onto the street, all vain. And when two of them meet, one will ask the other, ‘Which bedbugs are you using, Quinota? The national ones or the foreign ones?’ And Quinota, who is a high-class girl, will proudly reply, ‘I only use Parisian bedbugs, from Coty’s creation’ — and there she goes, swaying like a cutia.”

The little Frog approved the idea — and from idea to idea, they moved on to weight. Emília had a thing against weight. Every time she wanted to move an object, a chair or a piece of wood, she had to call the Viscount or Aunt Anastácia.

“What’s the use of weight?” she said. “If things didn’t have weight, the world would be much more interesting. I find chairs awfully heavy. Only grown-ups can deal with them. Let’s reform Dona Benta’s little chair with sawed-off legs?”

As that famous chair was there in the room, they immediately reformed it: they removed its weight. But something unexpected happened. The poor chair rose into the air and stuck to the ceiling. The two reformers were astonished by that. Suddenly, Emília understood the phenomenon and shouted:

“I know! The Viscount explained this to me. Weight is what holds things to the surface of the Earth. He says that weight comes from a force called gravity, which pulls everything toward the center of the Earth. This force of gravity is attraction or centripetal force. You can’t imagine, Frog, how much the Viscount knows! A smart little devil! He also said that the opposite of centripetal force is centrifugal force — instead of pulling things toward the center of the Earth, it pushes them away from the center of the Earth. That’s what happened to Dona Benta’s chair. Since we removed its weight, the centripetal force disappeared, leaving only the centrifugal force — and that’s why the chair ended up on the ceiling. And if this room didn’t have a ceiling, the poor chair would disappear forever into infinite space…”

That experience made Emília respect the weight of all other things, or else the site would be even more devoid of objects than Quindó the pharmacist’s head was devoid of hair.

Then, the cuckoo in the dining room began to chime the hours — “hu-hu, hu-hu…”

Emília counted ten.

“Already ten o’clock! It’s late… That’s why I’m feeling so sleepy. There’s something we can reform, Frog: sleep — ah, ah, ah…” and she yawned.

“How?” the Frog asked.

“For instance…” Emília began, but she opened her mouth, let out three more “ahs,” and began to close her eyes — and the sleep of human beings escaped the reform.

Emília fell asleep — and what a beautiful little nap! She knew how to sleep so well! The Frog leaned back on the bed, her head supported by one hand and the elbow propped on the pillow, and she looked at her and imagined a thousand things. “What a pity that the children in the world can’t see what I’m seeing!” she thought to herself. “Emília is sleeping like an angel. And who knows if Emília isn’t actually a real angel, with wings, walking around the world disguised as a little person?” She examined Emília’s back to see if there was any sign of wing stumps. There were indeed two slight bumps that looked very much like wing stumps — and the Frog remained in doubt. Could she really be an angel disguised as a little person?

The Frog adored Emília. She knew all of Emília’s mischief, all of Emília’s “jokes,” all of Emília’s foolishness, all of Emília’s mischievousness, and now she considered herself the happiest girl in the world because among all the girls in the world, only she had the privilege of seeing the marvel of marvels that was Emília’s little nap.

“Oh, when the others find out! When they find out that I was here, talking to her, playing with her, lying in her little bed, watching her sleep and smile…”

A beautiful dream must have been reigning in Emília’s head, judging by the enraptured smile that adorned her fair — light brown — face. “The other girls don’t know this,” the Frog thought to herself, “that Emília is a little brownish girl. They don’t know she has dark brown hair,” and she took the opportunity to pluck one of those strands, which made Emília trade her dreamy smile for a funny face. The Frog coiled the hair, mentally murmuring, “I’ll keep it in my copy of ‘Reinações.’ It will be my bookmark.”

The Frog spent a long time admiring that prodigious little creature who was born a mere ordinary rag doll but evolved into what she already was. And a thought came to her: “What if she continues to evolve and becomes a real angel, with wings, and flies away to heaven? Or if she becomes a fairy, like that fairy Tinker Bell from Peter Pan?” The Frog’s imagination began to prance around like a young kid, until the first “ah, ah, ah…” of sleep came, and then a second — and finally she fell asleep too.

The next day

The next day, they jumped out of bed very early and resumed their work of reforming Nature. Everything was examined and reformed to their liking. The little Frog continued to have the most absurd ideas, truly crazy. The reform of Quindim, for example, which the Frog did alone, was the strangest thing imaginable. Instead of the famous horn on his nose, which is characteristic of all rhinoceroses, the Frog placed a Cupid’s arrow with a roasted heart on the tip. Roasted, can you imagine? And she decorated Quindim’s hooves with paintings: Snow White with all her dwarfs. And she replaced the rhinoceros’s four legs with four different ones — one of a deer, another of a goose, another of an alligator, and another of wood. And she replaced that tough leather with a very nicely woven chair straw covering. She gave him two tails; then three, then ten, then a hundred; leaving him with a veritable array of tails, going all the way around the poor animal.

The reform of Quindim turned into such a disaster that he couldn’t even walk — one leg didn’t follow the other, and there was a tremendous mess of so many tails, all different, some with tassels on the end, others with hedgehog spines, others with little bells.

When Emília went to see the “work,” she couldn’t help but laugh. It was the “absurd of the absurds.” Quindim had been transformed into a real mess.

“That’s not reforming, Little Frog!” she said. “That’s messing up a poor creature. He’s not a rhinoceros anymore, nor any possible animal. He’s become a grab bag, a peddler’s trunk. What a mess!...”

“And you’re letting him stay like this?” begged the Frog, fearing that Emília would undo this masterpiece of human absurdity.

“For now, I am,” Emília replied. “As punishment for his laziness, old age, and neurasthenia that he’s been showing lately. On the day of the plebiscite about size, Quindim betrayed me — he refused to vote. His lack of that vote gave victory to the Size, and I was deceived. Now, let him endure it. Later, I will reform him again, but with ‘scientific criteria’...”

The Frog was either really crazy or was “sabotaging” Emília’s reforming work. All the ideas she presented were silly, like the one about changing the hills. The Frog took a pencil and drew a picture like this:

[Drawing of hills with peaks pointing downward]

“What’s this?” Emília asked.

“Oh, this is one of the reforms I find most necessary: the reform of the hills. Whenever I have to climb a hill, I get tired and out of breath. So, I imagined something like this: the peaks will be pointing downward instead of upward, so that when we have to go to the peak of a hill, we go down instead of up…”

Emília looked at the Frog, then at the drawing. It was a reform that kept everything the same. When someone who “went down” to the peak of the hill had to return, they would have to “go up” to the valley…

“No. That idea is silly. It’s much better to make the hills very low, so that they won’t tire us out, or leave the hills alone. Why climb a hill?”

The edible book

Most of Frog’s ideas were of this kind. They seemed like jokes, and that annoyed Emília, who was taking her world reform program very seriously. Emília was always a very serious and convinced little creature. She never did anything playful.

“It seems incredible, Frog!” she said. “I called you to help me with ideas for the reform, but so far, not a single useful thing has come out of that little head of yours — only ‘demoralizations’...”

“Not true! The idea of the udders with taps in the Cow was mine, and you liked it very much. The flea idea too.”

“Just those. All the others I had to throw in the trash. Let’s see one more thing. What do you think we should do for the reform of books?”

The Little Frog thought, thought, and couldn’t remember anything.

“I don’t know. They seem fine as they are.”

“Well, I have a very good idea,” said Emília. “Make the book edible.”

“What’s this story?”

“Very simple. Instead of being printed on wooden paper, which is only edible for woodworms, I will make books printed on wheat paper, very well seasoned. The ink will be studied by chemists — an ink that is not harmful to the stomach. The reader will read the book and eat the pages; they read one, tear it, and eat it. When they finish reading, they will have had lunch or dinner. How about that?”

The Little Frog liked the idea so much that she even licked her lips.

“Great, Emília! This is more than a ‘mother idea.’ And each chapter of the book will be made of paper with a certain taste. The first pages will taste like soup; the following ones will taste like salad, roast, rice, bean paste with pork rinds. The last ones will be dessert — taste like blancmange, orange pudding, sweet potato dessert.”

“And the index pages,” said Emília, “will taste like coffee, they will be the reader’s final coffee. They say that books are the bread of the spirit. Why not also be bread for the body? The advantages would be immense. They could be sold in bakeries and confectioneries or delivered in the morning by carts, together with bread and milk.”

“No more need for bread, Emília! The old bread would become a book. The Book-Bread, the Bread-Book! Those who can read will read the book and then eat it; those who can’t read will eat it alone, without reading. This way, the book could enter every home, whether of the wise or the illiterate. An excellent idea, Emília!”

“Yes,” she said, very satisfied with Frog’s enthusiasm. “Because, after all, making books only edible for woodworms is nonsense — we can make them edible for us too.”

“And who gave you this idea, Emília?”

“It was my reasoning. The book exists to be read, right? But after we read it and keep the whole story in our heads, the book becomes useless in the house. Well, by making it edible, we reduce its uselessness.”

“And what if we want to reread a book?”

“Buy another one, just like we buy another bread every day.”

The idea, after being discussed in all its aspects, was approved, and Emília reformed Dona Benta’s entire library. She made a very tasty and easily digestible paper, with quite varied flavors and scents, so that all tastes would be satisfied. She only didn’t reform the dictionaries and other reference books. Emília thought of everything.

They also reformed many things in the house. Beds rose to the attic in the morning, after being vacated, in order to increase the space in the rooms. Locks no longer needed keys; people just had to put their mouths in the hole and say, “Open Sesame!” and they would open by themselves.

“And the mute people?” asked the Little Frog. “How will they manage? Unless they walk around with a gramophone in their pocket that pronounces the word ‘Open Sesame’ for them.”

Emília was baffled by the mute people’s situation and left it to be solved later.

Milk boiling on the stove would whistle when it reached the right point, alerting the fire, which would immediately stop working. The same with all the foods — and thus, the unpleasant story of “feijão com bispo” was over.

And they did so much and so much that if we were to tell half of it, we would have to fill two volumes. By the end of the week, the Picapau Farm was completely transformed, showing no trace of its former self. It was on that occasion that a letter from Dona Benta arrived, announcing her return.

“We have already completed our service in Europe,” she said. “We left the continent transformed into a perfect place — everything in order, and everyone content and happy. The commission that brought us will take us back there again. We should arrive next Monday, and I hope to find everything in order.”

Emília read the letter to the Little Frog, saying:

“This old lady is something! She went there and did what all those dictators and kings couldn’t. Now we have to prepare the house to welcome her.”

The return of Mrs. Benta

On the appointed day, around ten o’clock in the morning, Emília and the Little Frog heard the sound of a car on the road. They rushed to the porch. Several cars were coming, with Dona Benta, Aunt Anastácia, and the children in the front car.

As they entered the yard, Emília stepped forward to welcome them. The commission members dismounted and bid farewell to Dona Benta with many words of thanks and kindness.

“That’s it,” said the kind old lady to them. “Follow my instructions there in Europe, and everything will go well. Goodbye, goodbye! Give my best regards to King Carol and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor — I liked her a lot. And tell Mussolini and Hitler to come when they can for a visit to Quindim. Goodbye, goodbye!”

The commission’s cars left in a rush.

After they disappeared around the bend, Dona Benta entered the sitting room with the children, and Aunt Anastácia went to the kitchen. But… what was that? They didn’t recognize the old entrance sitting room. Everything was strange, everything different.

“What’s this, Emília? What do these changes mean?”

Emília told them everything.

“I reformed Nature,” she said. “I always had the idea that the world around here was as messed up as Europe, and while you fixed Europe, I fixed the farm.”

“Fixed the farm?!” repeated Dona Benta, not understanding a thing. “What’s this story?”

Littlenose intervened:

“I told you, Granny, that she wanted to be alone to do crazy things. I went to my room and found the bed hanging in the attic, can you imagine!...”

“And I,” said Pedrinho, entering, “went to the library and found your books smelling of garlic and onions. I opened one, tasted it: it tasted like soup; a few pages later, it tasted like roast meat…”

Dona Benta’s astonishment had no limits, and no matter how much Emília explained, she remained the same. Suddenly, she noticed the Little Frog.

“Who is this girl?” she asked.

“It’s Frog.”

“What frog?”

“The Little Frog da Silva, my friend from Rio, who came to help me in the reform of Nature.”

Dona Benta’s astonishment grew, and it grew even more when Aunt Anastácia appeared screaming.

“Ma’am, ma’am, everything is strange in the kitchen! I put the milk on the stove, and as soon as it started boiling, it whistled!...”

“Milk whistled, Anastácia?”

“Yes, ma’am, it whistled, and the fire immediately went out on its own. It’s witchcraft, ma’am. Some witch has been here…”

“The witch is her,” said Littlenose, pointing to Emília. “She says she reformed Nature…”

Dona Benta was still in shock.

“But what nonsense, Emília, reforming Nature! Who are we to correct anything that exists? And when we reform anything, many consequences that we didn’t foresee immediately appear. Nature’s work is very wise; it can’t suffer reforms from poor creatures like us. Everything that exists took millions of years to form and adapt; and if it is in the state it is now, there are a thousand reasons for that.”

“I don’t think so!” contested Emília, crossing her arms. “Nature’s work is as full of ‘bissurds’ as human work. Nature is always experimenting and making mistakes. It gives centipedes a hundred legs and not even one to earthworms — why such injustice? It creates such beautiful peaches and lets flies lay eggs inside them, and then bugs come out of the eggs and rot the beautiful peach flesh — isn’t that a shame? It dresses beetles with a too-thick shell and leaves earthworms more naked than Quindim’s head — that’s a mistake. The more I observe things, the more I find everything crooked and wrong.”

But without delay, she began to be contradicted. A finch entered the room and said in great despair to Dona Benta:

“My good lady, deliver me from what Emília did to me. She turned me into a nest bird, with eggs on my back, and it’s been a terrible mess because it won’t let me fly freely, and that way I can’t escape my pursuers.”

“What’s this story of being a nest bird?” asked Dona Benta, and when she heard everything, she opened her mouth wide. Emília’s audacity was too much. To alter Nature in that way! To change things that took millions of years to balance… And taking hold of the finch, she undid the nest on its back and kept the three eggs to put them in the natural nest it would make by the old system.

She was still dealing with the poor bird when Pedrinho appeared again, very frightened.

“Grandma, what happened here at the farm seems like a dream! I found Quindim completely transformed, with straw leather, Snow White with the dwarfs painted on the hooves, four different legs, a hundred tails, and instead of a horn, a Cupid’s arrow with a heart on the tip. Imagine! It doesn’t give the slightest idea of a possible creature!”

Dona Benta’s mouth was wide enough to fit an orange.

“And Stub-Tailed, then?” Pedrinho continued. “He has a lulu dog’s tail, all curly, and only two feet — and turtle feet. And with a mousetrap on his snout and a self-wiping handkerchief on his nose!...”

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” Tia Nastácia returned, shouting. “The world is lost. I don’t understand anything anymore. I went to see Hornless, and you know what I found? A creature with no purpose, with its tail in the middle of its back, corkscrew horns with a rubber ball on the tip, and udders out of place, with two little taps, ma’am, imagine! And the ground is full of wingless flies. And a mosquito sang in my ear a song exactly like the one that Mr. Churche sent the musicians to play for you at the conference — exactly like that! I won’t stay in this house for another minute. This has turned into a hospice for witches, ma’am! Everything is messed up, without any rhyme or reason. No one understands anything. I found your little chair, ma’am, nailed up there in the attic! I climbed the little ladder for washing windows, grabbed the chair by the leg, and pulled — and who said the chair came down? It seems to be nailed to the attic with elastic. You let go of it, and it goes back up again.”

“It’s centrifugal force,” explained the Frog.

“Centripetal,” corrected Emília, and she told the story of the suppression of weight.

Tia Nastácia put her hand on a bump she had on her forehead. The black woman was truly dizzy.

“And there’s more, ma’am,” she said. “Imagine that I sat under the jabuticaba tree, and you know what happened? Suddenly, something huge fell from above onto my head. It was a pumpkin, ma’am! A pumpkin this big! I was dizzy for a long time; I don’t even know how I didn’t die. Pumpkins now grow on jabuticaba trees, ma’am. See how a ‘bissurd’!”

Not all was lost by Emília

Dona Benta was examining the bump on Tia Nastácia’s forehead when she heard some tapping on the door. She told Littlenose to open it. It was the jabuticabas.

“Dona Benta,” they said, quite upset, “we’ve come to complain about the trick Emília played on us. Can you imagine that she transferred us from our mother jabuticaba tree’s branches to a pumpkin plant – these flimsy stems that crawl on the ground? And we got stuck there, pressed against the earth, getting dirty with dust and debris. Well, this is nonsense because we are fruits of branches, not the ground, like certain slobs we know.”

(Little Frog whispered to Emília: "This must be an indirect reference to the strawberries.")

“You are right, little jabuticabas,” said Dona Benta, “and I will put you all back in the right place. It’s impossible to have delicate creatures like you crawling on the ground. The ground is only good for pumpkins.”

And turning to Emília:

“Go and undo what you did!” she ordered sharply.

Emília pouted and said to the Frog:

“She was democratic when she left here. After dealing with the dictators in Europe, she returned authoritarian and full of ‘do this’ and ‘do that’. Well, I won’t go.”

And she didn’t! The pumpkins and the jabuticabas had to figure it out themselves.

Pedrinho came to say that the oranges from the orange trees were peeled, and there were a million birds on top, destroying them all.

Dona Benta explained:

“Emília, I recognize your good intentions. You did everything with the certainty of acting for the best. But you didn’t calculate a lot of inconveniences that could happen – and are happening. The oranges, for example: it would be great if they could come already peeled – but if that were the case, the trade of oranges, transporting them from one place to another, would become impossible. And, besides, once peeled, they become much more susceptible to attacks from birds and insects. The peel is an indispensable defense. The same goes for the pumpkins on the jabuticaba tree. They are fruits too big to stay on trees; Nature knows what it’s doing. It puts large fruits on the ground and small ones on trees.”

“That’s not true!” protested Emília. “The largest fruit I know is jackfruit, and jackfruit is a fruit from a tree, huh!”

Dona Benta was stumped.

“I also made the fruits only grow on the lower branches of the trees,” Emília continued, “to make it easier to harvest – and I want to see what you say to that.”

Dona Benta declared that this reform was only acceptable from a human point of view but explained that fruits didn’t exist for us to pick and eat them – they existed for the well-being of the tree, and they appeared on all branches, both the lower and upper ones, because that way they were better distributed throughout the whole tree, increasing the quantity.

“The lower branches will be only half of all the branches of the tree,” she said. “By making the fruits only appear on the lower branches, you reduce the number of fruits on a tree by half.”

Emília agreed that she had made a mistake and, along with the Little Frog, restored the old system.

“Now, yes,” Emília was saying, “now she gave a good, clear reason that convinced me, and that’s why I’m undoing what I did. But with that ‘Go!’ at the beginning, it wouldn’t work! Let Hitler go. Let Mussolini go. With me, it’s all about deep conviction, scientific argument!”

And that’s how almost all of Emília’s reforms were reversed, but none of them by Dona Benta’s imposition. The good lady argued, proved the error – and then Emília herself took it upon herself to restore the old system. But even so, many of the reforms remained, such as the one concerning books.

“Yes, Emília, this idea of the edible book seems great, a real find. But not for all books. It’s good to have the paper book and alongside it, the edible book. Whoever wants can buy one, whoever wants can buy the other. New things never completely replace the old ones. Remember that in New York, the city with the most cars in the world, we saw the carts delivering milk in the morning pulled by horses. I approve the idea of the Bread-Book and I will propose to an industrial friend of mine to study the problem and create the new industry. But you will do me the favor of leaving my books as they were, because otherwise…”

At that moment, Pedrinho rushed into the room, very flustered.

“Grandma, imagine what happened! Stub-Tailed entered your library and devoured Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s complete works…”

“If they hadn’t taken the mousetrap off his snout, nothing would have happened,” said the Frog. “Serves him right!”

“You see, Emília?” said Dona Benta. “Not all books should be edible, only the ones of secondary importance, purely recreational, or the bad books. A book that is not fit to be read, at least it should be fit to be eaten. And now? How will I manage without my Iliad and my Shakespeare?”

Emília agreed that indeed not all books should be edible and went to the library to “unedibilize” most of them – except for the “bad” ones.

And so ended Emília’s adventure of the Reform of Nature. Emília learned to thoroughly plan any change in things, no matter how small. She saw that reforming blindly, as certain governments do, always ends up producing more harm than good.

The Little Frog stayed there for a week, listening to the stories Dona Benta told about the Peace Conference. Then, with a heavy heart and much regret from everyone on the farm, she smelled the dust of fiun… – and off she went to Rio de Janeiro, where she found her poor mother in mourning with red eyes, convinced that her beloved daughter had disappeared forever.

“Forgive me, Mom. I got too excited about Emília’s reform program and went to Picapau Amarelo without telling you anything. I’ll never do that again. I’ve reformed myself on that point.”

“And what else?”

“Ah! Tia Nastácia liked the whistling milk and kept the system.”

“It was such a bother, that milk business,” she said. “I had to stand guard there in the kitchen, otherwise, it would boil and spill. Now, no. I put the milk on the fire and don’t even think about it anymore. Delightful. Emília is quite a little devil. Another thing I liked a lot was what she did with the fleas. I entered my room and saw some black dots standing in the air. I grabbed one. I looked at it. It was a flea, Madam, a flea standing in the air – and a soft flea, Madam, soft like any soft little creature! This reform was good because the older I get, the harder it is for me to catch one of those fleas from the old system…”

Dona Benta approved the change regarding fleas as well as the one regarding flies and mosquitoes. And with her great wisdom as a philosopher, she said:

“All right, Emília. I will carefully examine all the reforms you made because I see that there is a lot of useful stuff among them.”

Emília winked victoriously at Viscount."

2nd Part

Viscount’s laboratory

Dona Benta and her grandchildren’s trip to Europe, where they provided assistance to the war-torn continent, turned the Viscount of Sabugosa into an even greater sage than he already was. During their stay there, the famous corn cob doll had the opportunity to meet various renowned scientists and learned great things from them. His studies focused on physiology, the science that studies the functioning of organs in living beings.

For example, he learned that in the human body and in other animals, there are things called glands, which are of utmost importance for life. The glands control everything; they make the body grow, gain weight, and sweat; they make water come to the mouth when someone thinks of something tasty or smells Aunt Nastácia’s cookies. An enormous gland called the liver produces a thick, yellow-greenish liquid called bile, which aids in food digestion and “dissolves” fats — it does to them what soap does. Other glands called kidneys, which have the shape of two large kidney beans, filter the poisons that form in the body and expel them through urine. There are mammary glands that produce milk. The lung is another very important gland…

“But then, is everything inside just glands?” asked Emília, to whom the Viscount was explaining these things. Dona Benta replied:

“Inside the human body, there are numerous glands. They are like the power plants in cities, producing everything necessary for urban life. Without these power plants and glands, neither cities nor organisms could live and develop. When you sweat or cry, where does the sweat or tears come from?”

“From some tiny plant.”

“Exactly. They come from the sweat glands and tear glands, those little factories that produce sweat and tears. Even for the little bit of fat that people have under their skin, glands are necessary — the sebaceous glands.”

“Producer of grease, how ugly!” exclaimed Emília. “So, inside us, we are like a real city, with factories even for grease?”

“Of course! And a very complex city at that. Besides those factories for bile, tears, sweat, and grease, there are those that produce gastric juice in the stomach; there are those that produce saliva in the mouth…”

“How disgusting! Saliva is spit. What good is spit? Just for spitting.”

“No, Emília. Saliva has a very important role in digesting food. We eat rice, beans, meat, potatoes, a thousand things. But they have to be transformed into blood, because blood is the honey that nourishes all the cells that make up the body.”

“How funny!...”

“And that’s not all. It’s not enough for the blood to appear; it has to always stay in good condition, nice and red; and it’s another gland, the lung, that does the job, repairing the spoiled blood.”

“But how does blood get spoiled?”

“Very simple. The body is made up of microscopic building blocks called cells. These building blocks only feed on blood. Blood is there to feed them. But from the blood that reaches them, they only take what they need and reject the rest. That rest is what I call spoiled blood.”

“And where does it go?”

“It goes to the lung, which is the blood-repairing workshop. When it reaches there, the spoiled blood undergoes a thorough cleaning, takes a bath of the air we breathe, gets brushed, combed, and becomes nice and red again, just as it was. Then it moves on to the heart. The heart pumps it, forcing it to take another trip through the arteries until it reaches all the building blocks in the body. And so on.”

“But how does the spoiled blood not mix with the fresh blood?”

“Each has its own path. Fresh blood flows through the arteries, which branch out like tree branches until they become as thin as needles. The spoiled blood, on the other hand, flows through another network of little canals called veins. The arteries are like the clean water pipelines in cities, where only clean water runs. The veins are like the pipelines for sewage water.”

Emília was thoughtful, with her eyes gazing into the distance.

“How wonderful it would be if we took a journey through the human body!” she murmured.

“Well, if we took that journey, I’d only want to see the glands,” said the Viscount. “They are amazing. There’s nothing they don’t do. And there are two that interest me a lot: the thyroid and the pituitary.”

“What names!”

“The thyroid is located in the neck. It’s tiny, shaped like a ‘U,’ and the color of wine sediment. It’s filled with a yellow liquid called thyroxine.”

“What is it for?”

“It releases that liquid into the blood with marvelous results. It makes the creature grow, imagine that! And it also makes everything active in the body. It’s like a whip. When there’s a lack of thyroxine, the body becomes weak, laziness sets in, the pulse drops, the temperature goes down, the person loses their appetite, speech becomes sluggish, the brain becomes dull, hair thins, the skin turns yellow, and the flesh swells — it’s a disaster, Emília! Children with little thyroxine in their bodies stop growing and become foolish — they become cretins.”

“Ah, so, cretin means that?”

“Yes. A cretin is a poor creature whose thyroid gland is not functioning properly. If you fix the gland, the person changes immediately and loses their cretinism.”

“How peculiar!”

“Another troublesome one is Madame Pituitary. Very small, about half an inch in size. She resides inside the head. Her concoction, pituitrin, has a prodigious effect on the body, especially on the intestines and kidneys. If she produces more of that liquid than necessary, the person develops a furious appetite for sugar and sweets, and becomes obese.”

“Come on, Viscount,” said Emília excitedly, “let’s take a journey through the human body! It seems even more interesting than going to the Moon.”

“We shall go, and then we will see that pituitrin also governs body growth. When there’s too much of it, the person becomes a giant; when there’s too little, they become a dwarf or a midget.”

“So, when we see Major Trancoso, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall, we know that he became that way because of too much pituitrin?”

“Exactly. And when we see Zezinho from the Estiva, who is only 4 feet 7 inches tall, we know that he became that way due to the pituitary not working properly.”

The Viscount talked at length about that subject, mentioning the pancreas gland, the pineal gland, and all the others he knew. He said that the pineal gland was the most mysterious. The wise men still don’t know what it really serves for. It’s the size of a pea and is located in the brain. The ancient philosophers said that the soul of creatures lived there.

“What do modern philosophers say?”

“Modern philosophers don’t bother talking about glands. They leave that to physiologists.”

“And what do those physiologists say?”

“They say that the pineal gland seems to be an eye that vertebrate animals once had but no longer have today. This eye disappeared and is now reduced to that pea-sized gland. On this journey to the Country of the Body, I would decipher the mystery of the pineal gland.”

And the Viscount talked so much about it that they had the idea of setting up a laboratory for experiments on animals.

“If glands regulate everything in living beings,” said Emília, “we can study the glands, grafting some onto others, and do more things to see how animals turn out.”

The Viscount, who was truly a sage, never rejected the opportunity to learn new things; for this reason, he approved Emília’s idea.

“But… what about the microscope?” he said. “Without a microscope, we won’t manage.”

“We have Dona Benta’s binoculars,” said Emília. “With a little pretend gland juice, we can turn it into a marvelous microscope.”

“And the laboratory location?”

“In the Cova do Anjo. It’s the only safe spot here on the farm.”

The Cova do Anjo was the enormous hollow in the Big Fig Tree where Emília had hidden the Winged Angel when the English children invaded the farm. No one entered there because it was dark and had many bats. They could set up the laboratory in the hollow without the people in the house noticing — because if they noticed, they would get involved, especially Pedrinho, who, after the trip to Europe, became quite authoritarian, Mussolini-like.

In an instant, they arranged the laboratory, with the binoculars transformed into an excellent microscope, empty glass containers, a Gillette blade to serve as a scalpel, various needles and pins, cotton, iodine, etc. Emília also got the Viscount a little apron and a white cap like the ones real scientists wear in laboratories.

“Very well. The laboratory is ready. Now we need to get some 'patients,’” said the Viscount, putting on the apron.

“What patients?” asked Emília.

“The living beings on which we will conduct experiments,” explained the great sage. “If they are human, they are called anima nobile — noble souls; if they are animals, they are called anima vile — vile souls.”

And they started with ants. Emília caught a bunch of big-headed leaf-cutting ants and brought them in an empty glass container.

“Ready, Viscount. Here we have a good batch of anima vile — as the wise men say.”

The studies

No one knew what the two of them did during the days and days they spent examining the inside of ants and discovering their glands. And after discovering the glands, they made various mixtures, pasted some together, or grafted one ant’s glands onto another’s to “double the strength.” Most of the poor leaf-cutting ants didn’t survive the operation, but with improvements in the Viscount’s “technique,” many started to survive; and after being “operated,” they were placed in a little pasture outside the hollow, with water to drink and little herbs to have fun.

Then came the turn of a worm, which was “glandulated,” as the Viscount said, and finally, they operated on a centipede, that strange little creature with a hundred legs.

“Outrageous! One little creature with so many legs, and another with none.”

Emília took the opportunity to pluck six legs from the centipede and graft them onto the worm.

They were in the middle of it when a whole week of rain came, during which the two little savants couldn’t leave the house. However, as soon as the weather cleared, they rushed back there — but to their great disappointment, they saw the enclosures empty. All the operated creatures had escaped!

After getting tired of operating on ants, they started experiments on crickets and had to set up another little pasture for the operated crickets. One day, Emília entered the laboratory with a flea.

“Today, Viscount, the novelty will be this flea. Let’s graft a formic’s thyroid and a cricket’s pituitary into it. It should yield something interesting.”

And they performed the operation.

“What a nuisance!” exclaimed Emília. “So much trouble for zero results. The darned flood washed away all our ‘patients’...”

“The work of science is laborious, my dear,” said the Viscount. “We must start again. True wise men never give up on their endeavors.”

But Emília, already tired of gutting and grafting little creatures, gave up.

“For me, that’s enough. I’m out. I’ll go help Pedrinho with the motorless airplane he’s building. Imagine, Viscount, how delightful it would be to fly through the skies without any motor tormenting our ears with that awful noise!...”

“Well, I’ll redo all the experiments,” said the devoted endocrinologist.

Endocrinologist is the name of the wise men who study the body’s glands. The name is ugly, long, and difficult, but the thing is good.

The gigantic flea

Many weeks later, Dona Benta was on the porch when the mail arrived with the newspapers of the day. She unfolded them and started reading. Suddenly, she looked interested and said to Littlenose:

— There’s something curious in this newspaper. Read it.

The girl read. It was a news item that said:

“A hunter from Juiz de Fora is telling a story that, even if not true, is well found. He says that he was on a partridge hunt in a field near this city when he saw something Black in the sky, which grew in size and finally landed a hundred meters from the spot where he was waiting for the partridge. A Black and enormous Thing, the size of a tapir. Intrigued by it, he aimed his shotgun and approached. But when he raised the gun to shoot, the Thing jumped and disappeared into the sky. He says it’s an extremely strange animal, like nothing else he has ever seen or heard about from anyone. It looked like a monstrous flea.”

— What could that be? — asked Dona Benta when the girl finished reading.

— Nonsense, grandma! — said Littlenose. — These newspaper people are always inventing lies.

And the matter ended there.

However, a few days later, the newspapers repeated the news more or less in the same terms, but this time the Thing was seen in another place. It was spotted in Catanduva, in the state of Paraná. Then it appeared in Pilão Arcado, in Bahia. And later in Blumenau, in the state of Santa Catarina; and in Vassouras, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. And always in the same way: descending from the sky like a cannonball, in a curve; landing on the ground; and suddenly jumping again, disappearing into the air.

The repeated accounts made the men of science interested in the matter. The terror in the cities where the monster appeared was enormous. Absurd legends were created. It was a general opinion that it was a gigantic flea, as not only did the Thing resemble a flea, but its way of jumping was that of a flea.

Pedrinho became very interested in the case; he started collecting the news and comparing them. However, the absurdity was so great that he came to the conclusion that it was a tremendous hoax by the newspapers from the country and abroad, aiming to create a topic that would increase single-copy sales.

— Nonsense — he said. — They won’t fool me, these fools.

They were at this point when Zé Candorra appeared at the farm, an ugly caboclo who lived in the neighborhood.

— What’s up, Candorra? — Dona Benta asked, receiving him on the porch.

— What’s up, Dona Benta, is that I’m moving from this area and came to offer you my farm. The land is good for cassava and corn. It’s a great deal. Almost given away.

— But why, my dear, do you want to move from a land where you have lived all your life?

The caboclo invented some pretext or another, but Dona Benta, who was a “psychologist,” saw that he was lying and said:

— Tell the truth, Candorra. I can read in your eyes that the reason is not at all what your mouth is saying. Speak the truth, and I will buy your farm anyway, no matter the cause of your move.

The caboclo, demoralized, decided to tell everything.

— Don’t you see that lately I’ve been somewhat scared? The other day, I went into the woods to pick some wild figs, and suddenly, what do you think I saw?

— ?

— I saw, Dona Benta, an ant the size of a tapir! No kidding, Dona Benta. My wife laughed too when I told the story, but as punishment, she came across another ant of that kind, and now she’s so afraid she moved with the children to the house of Compadre Zidoro, over there in Água Fria.

— It can’t be, Candorra! — said Dona Benta. — Ants are very old creatures, millions of years old, and it is not known that any larger than the leafcutter ant has appeared so far. Not even in Africa, which is the land of large animals, are there ants the size of tapirs.

— Well, the one I saw, Dona Benta, was even bigger than a tapir — and the one my wife saw, she says, was the size of a capybara.

Dona Benta laughed.

— You are falling victim to some hallucination, my dear. How can you see things that do not exist, and have never existed? Absurd.

— Dona Benta — said the caboclo —, I don’t need you to believe anything, I just want you to buy my land, because I won’t stay here for one more day. I curse it!

Pedrinho, Littlenose, and Emília were present and very interested in the conversation.

— This is one of those things you have to see to believe — intervened Pedrinho. — Take me to where the big ant is, Mr. Candorra. I want to see it to believe it.

— I’ll go too — said Littlenose. — I’m like Saint Thomas. And you, Emília?

Emília replied that she wouldn’t go, that she had something to do in the orchard, but she had a strange look, suspicious. And as soon as Pedrinho and the girl left with Candorra, she ran to the laboratory.

— Viscount — she said —, Candorra came with a story about an ant the size of a tapir, and his wife saw an even larger one, the size of a capybara. I’m afraid they might be the ants we operated on and escaped from the enclosure…

— It could be — said the Viscount without taking his eye off the microscope. — We made tremendous pituitary grafts, and if the ants didn’t die, they could very well be the size of tapirs or even larger.

— And what now? — asked Emília, frightened.

— Now it is as I said — replied the Viscount. — They will be wandering around, scaring the ignorant, and eventually they will die, because they cannot reproduce. Oh, if they could reproduce, it would be a huge problem for people! Imagine millions and millions of ants the size of tapirs, spread all over the land! How would Homo sapiens cope? If the tiny ants already give us so much trouble, imagine if they were the size of tapirs!

Only then did he lift his eyes from the microscope.

— I would like to see that — he continued. — If it’s true, we inadvertently made the greatest discovery of the century, Emília — and we’ll win the Nobel Prize! We can apply the process to cattle and obtain cows the size of mountains. For supplying meat to butchers, a cow of that size would be the biggest of mines.

Emília looked worried; finally, she spoke:

— So, the Black Thing that the newspapers say appears in one place or another is our operated flea?…

— It might be — agreed the Viscount. — But even that flea won’t reproduce. It will die one day, and that’s it.

— The latest news — Emília continued — says it attacks cows and sheep to drink their blood…

— Quite natural. Fleas are “hematophagous,” that is, bloodsuckers. The tiny ones bite the animals and suck a little drop. If our fleas are this big, they can only find enough blood in a cow or a sheep. Quite natural.

— And how far can they jump? — Emília wanted to know.

— Very easy to calculate — replied the Viscount, taking a pencil. — From what you tell me, this flea is the size of a tapir.

— A big tapir — confirmed Emília.

— Very well. A dog flea weighs one milligram, and a large tapir weighs around two hundred kilograms. Now, since two hundred kilograms correspond to two hundred million milligrams, “our” flea is two hundred million times heavier than a common flea. And as a common flea jumps about one foot, our big flea could jump two hundred million feet, or forty-four thousand kilometers, or more than one full circle around the Earth!

Emília laughed.

— How absurd, Viscount! The jump can’t be related to weight. At best, it should be related to size.

— In that case — said the Viscount — we have to do another calculation. A common flea is two millimeters long. A large tapir will be two meters long, or two thousand millimeters. So, the tapir is a thousand times bigger than the common flea. And since “ours” is the size of a tapir, it will jump a thousand times more than a common flea. Therefore, it will jump a thousand feet, or two hundred and twenty meters.

— Well, that sounds more reasonable — said Emília, agreeing with the Viscount’s second mathematics — and she started to think.

— What are you thinking about? — the Viscount asked.

— I’m thinking that if the war hadn’t ended, men might have used our fleas for bombing cities. Funny! Instead of howitzer factories, they would make flea farms with a bomb attached to their tails…

As soon as Littlenose and Pedrinho arrived at Candorra’s farm, they went into the woods where the giant ant was said to be. Pedrinho carried his slingshot and a machete. If he encountered the monster, he would do as Hercules did in Greece: crush its head with a shot and then cut its neck.

But they found nothing; no matter how big an ant is, it is not easy to find it in the middle of the forest, so the expedition was about to fail. Pedrinho only found two parakeets and a toucan, to which he did nothing because he didn’t have the courage to use the slingshot near Littlenose. The girl didn’t allow parakeet-icides or toucan-icides.

— Come on, Mr. Candorra! — he said. — It seems that the case is just as grandma said: hallucination. You people from the countryside see many things that don’t exist. It’s fear. Nothing to create monsters like Mr. Fear.

— But I swear I saw it, Pedrinho! I saw it with my own eyes. And so did my wife. If it weren’t true, she wouldn’t have fled with the children to Compadre Zidoro’s house, who’s a rascal.

— All right. If you swear, it’s another matter. I have to believe it. But it’s a shame that this ant only appears to you and your wife…

Before he finished saying that, a shiver ran down his spine. Something was moving in the nearby thicket.

— Shh!

Pedrinho approached stealthily, aiming the slingshot. He kept getting closer and closer… Suddenly — prrr! — a huge thing jumped out of the thicket and disappeared into the air.

Pedrinho’s heart was pounding. He ran back to the girl and the caboclo.

— What a scare!… I got a good look. It wasn’t the giant ant, no, it was a cricket the size of Stub-Tailed! I could have shot it, but my hand trembled at the moment. A big green cricket. As soon as it noticed me, it jumped and vanished into the sky.

Littlenose was greatly impressed.

— I saw it too — she said — and if it’s like that, the story of the monster ant may be true, and so is the story of that Black Thing that jumps! Candorra and the newspapers are right. What could that be, dear God? Changes like these in the animals of Nature are things that books don’t talk about. It has never happened before.

— I don’t know — said Pedrinho. — My ideas are all messed up. I don’t understand anything.

They ran back home.

— Grandma — said Pedrinho as he entered —, we didn’t find Candorra’s ant, but the story must be true because I came across a cricket the size of Stub-Tailed, and it wasn’t a hallucination. Littlenose and the caboclo also saw it when the big cricket jumped out of the thicket and disappeared!…

Dona Benta widened her eyes. Tia Nastácia, who was passing by, murmured “Mercy!” and crossed herself three times.

— If things are going to be like they are over there in that Greece place, I’ll leave this world — grumbled the maid.

— And where are you going, fool? — the girl asked.

— I’m going back to the Moon. At least there’s only Saint George’s dragon there, and it’s gentle. A cricket the size of Stub-Tailed, an ant the size of a tapir, a flea the size of a tapir — is this life? If all the animals start growing in size and invade people’s houses, where will we end up? If an ant of that size appears here, I’ll die of fear — ah, I will!

— Well, I’ll hit it with a slingshot — said Pedrinho. — If it were a wasp, okay; but an ant… I’m not afraid.

The ninety-four-legged creature

Weeks later, poor Tia Nastácia almost died of fear. While making corn porridge, she went to the woods to get caeté leaves to roll the porridge. The caeté bushes were in a ravine where a stream passed through. The poor black woman was cutting the leaves with Pedrinho’s machete when suddenly, she screamed. She dropped everything and rushed back home at a speed of a hundred kilometers per hour.

She entered breathless, gasping:

— Ah, ah, ah…

Dona Benta ran to meet her.

— What’s the matter, Nastácia? What happened?

And the black woman:

— Ah, ah, ah…

She couldn’t speak.

Littlenose brought a glass of water.

— Drink! — she ordered.

The black woman took a sip, and continued with the “ah-ah-ah” of someone who lost their breath, only wetter. Finally, after about five minutes, she managed to speak.

— Let’s leave this place, ma’am. The farm is bewitched. You wouldn’t want to know what I saw in the ravine…

— But what was it? Tell us…

— An impossible creature, ma’am. Worse than the Minotaur. It had so many legs…

With great difficulty, the kind black woman explained what had happened. She was almost done cutting the caeté leaves when she looked up and saw an extremely long thing, standing there, looking at her.

— It was a never-ending creature, dirty yellow, as thick as a tree trunk, and with that multitude of legs.

— A multitude of legs? — repeated Dona Benta. — How is that possible? All animals have two, four, or six legs, like insects. There are no creatures with a multitude of legs.

— There are! — Emília reminded them. — The centipede has a hundred.

— That’s true — said Dona Benta —, but the centipede is a tiny little creature, only a few centimeters in size.

— But maybe a big one appeared — said Emília.

— Appeared? Silly girl! Animals don’t just appear out of nowhere.

— Maybe some, for example, with an overdeveloped pituitary gland…

Dona Benta widened her eyes. Emília talking about the pituitary gland seemed even stranger than Tia Nastácia’s “hallucination.”

— What is this, Emília?

— The Viscount taught me about the glands…

— Hmm!

Nastácia continued describing the monster, and finally, Dona Benta had to agree with Emília. Yes, it could only be a gigantic centipede. But… but how?

Pedrinho was already holding his slingshot.

— I’ll go see, grandma, and if it’s true…

Pedrinho went — and he saw. The monster was still there, standing, looking. Pedrinho was so scared that he returned even faster than the black woman and dropped the slingshot on the way.

— Oh, grandma, it’s true! — he said, catching his breath. — It’s a monstrous centipede, hard-shelled, all covered in rings, and with those horrible one hundred legs.

— Ninety-four! — Emília corrected, to no one’s understanding.

— I used to be scared of wasps, grandma, but the centipede made me run. Yes, I was scared, I confess, and I doubt there’s anyone in the world who wouldn’t be scared and run from such a horror…

The case left Dona Benta extremely puzzled. Obviously, it wasn’t pretend, no. It was pure reality. And even though she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she couldn’t doubt the testimony of so many people — Candorra and his wife, Pedrinho, Littlenose, Tia Nastácia… And in her bewilderment, the only solution was to turn to Emília.

— Emília, what do you think we should do?

Emília was already sure that these monsters were the little animals operated on in the Viscount’s laboratory and therefore not dangerous. They just needed to be killed, and that was it. When an animal can’t reproduce, it can’t perpetuate, so there is no danger. She replied with the utmost calm, although a bit mysterious:

— It’s of “least importance.” These “cases” are rare. They scare people and that’s all.

— How do you know they’re rare? — Littlenose asked.

— I know because I don’t ignore it — replied Emília, pouting. — It’s just glandular disturbances. Tricks of the thyroid and pituitary…

Nobody understood.

The fear of the world

Viscount’s experiments numbered in the twenties, so there were about twenty incomprehensible monsters roaming the Earth — some in the form of ants; one in the form of a cricket; another in the form of a centipede; and another in the form of a worm. This monstrous worm was first seen on a nearby farm. A man was riding on a horse and came across it on the road. The horse got scared, threw the man off, and galloped away. The poor fellow arrived at the farm on foot, all crushed and trembling.

— The giant worm!… Coming this way!… On the road… — it was all he could say, but it was enough for everyone on the farm to run to the top of a very high hill.

The news spread. The newspapers reported the new event in the same column where they talked about the new feats of the giant flea. It was seen in Corumbá, then in Manaus, then in Belém do Pará.

The newspapers all over the world had nothing else to talk about. Governments were in action. Anti-aircraft guns were placed in various locations to shoot down the Black Thing — but how, if they never knew where it would appear? Fighter planes were in the air, searching for it.

The first place where the Black Thing appeared was in Juiz de Fora, so an international investigation team went to that city. They wanted to find the point of origin of the monster. They gathered all the possible information; many people, besides the hunter, had seen the Black Thing flying through the air, and with this information, the investigators gradually became convinced that the point of origin was in the vicinity of the Yellow Woodpecker Ranch. This made Dona Benta’s farm the main focus of the investigation.

— It must be around here — said Dr. Zamenhof, the team leader. — The first giant ants were seen here, the gigantic Ninety-Four-Legger, discovered by Mr. Pedro Encerrabodes de Oliveira, and also the giant cricket and the giant worm. We have to organize a search and start closing the circle.

The day before, the newspapers reported that the Black Thing had appeared near the Panama Canal and was caught drinking the blood of an American military horse stationed there. As soon as it jumped, the anti-aircraft guns of the Canal’s defense opened fire, and one of the bullets hit it.

— Did it crack when it died? — Emília asked Dona Benta.

— Crack?…

— Yes, fleas die cracking…

Dona Benta laughed.

— The newspaper doesn’t say anything, Emília. But, with or without a crack, the monstrous flea came by land and was taken to the Museum of Natural History in New York. The newspaper also reports that there’s such a large crowd of curious people that there’s a line in the street. The scholars are extremely puzzled; they don’t know how to explain the strange phenomenon.

— There’s a scholar who surely knows: the Viscount — Emília recalled. — To me, the case is quite simple: it’s just an exaggeration of Mrs. Pituitary Gland. When she starts fooling around with a body, nobody can deal with her life. That little devil…

Dona Benta was surprised by those words but said nothing. Pedrinho was coming in with Dr. Zamenhof, a very bearded scholar, with double glasses on his nose.

— Grandma, here is Dr. Zamenhof, the chief of the “monster seekers.” His studies indicate that the source of these creatures is somewhere nearby because they are first seen here and only later farther away.

— Not the flea, though — said Dona Benta. — It was first seen in Juiz de Fora, which is far from here.

— You are mistaken, madam. We found an old black man around here…

— Uncle Barnabé — Pedrinho interjected.

— Precisely — confirmed the scholar. — Mr. Barnabé Semicúpio da Silva, who lives in a small house near the bridge, told us that he saw the flea in his little pasture. But he didn’t believe what his own eyes saw; he thought it might be a “vision of an old black man” and didn’t tell anyone about it. And he saw it two days before the appearance of the monster in Juiz de Fora. So all the monsters that are scaring the world were first seen here. Therefore, the probabilities are that the source is around here.

— It’s possible — said Dona Benta. — I wouldn’t be surprised by anything. So many things have happened on my blessed farm…

The two classmates

Dona Benta told numerous stories of the wonders and surprises that happened there — the trip to the Moon, the arrival of the little angel, the visit of the English children, the thrashing Popeye the sailor got, etc. Then she mentioned that a great colleague of Dr. Zamenhof lived there.

— I’ve heard of him — he said. — Viscount of Sabugueira, isn’t it?

— Bugosa — Emília corrected.

— Yes, that’s it. Well, I would be delighted to exchange ideas with the distinguished colleague. Where is he?

— I don’t know — said Dona Benta. — Lately, the Viscount hasn’t been around much; he keeps to himself, surely immersed in his studies. Go see if you can find the Viscount, Emília.

Emília went, and minutes later, she appeared accompanied by the little corncob. Dona Benta introduced them.

Dr. Zamenhof was amazed. He expected to meet a man like himself, a bearded scholar with glasses, and instead, they presented a talking corncob wearing a top hat! Thinking it was a joke, he almost got angry.

— Madam — he said —, it seems to me that this mystification is going a bit too far…

Dona Benta didn’t understand.

— Mystification, doctor?

— Yes, they told me about a scholar and presented me with a talking corncob! If I don’t deserve respect, I think the science I represent should be respected.

Dona Benta realized and laughed.

— You’re right, doctor. It’s so strange, this case of our talking corncob, that a normal man like you can’t have any other impression. But talk to him and see for yourself whether our Viscount is a scholar or not.

— Talk to him? — Dr. Zamenhof repeated. — So he can speak?

— Oh, yes! — Emília chimed in. — And he speaks about scientific matters only! Give it a try.

Dr. Zamenhof didn’t understand anything at all and continued to firmly believe that everyone was trying to trick him. He even blushed to the roots of his hair. But he almost fell backward in astonishment when he heard the Viscount open his mouth and say:

— I remember my lecture with the professors at Princeton University in the United States. They were also greatly surprised that a creature like me could speak…

The shock made Dr. Zamenhof lose his words. The little corncob was indeed speaking, and very well! Tia Nastácia came with a glass of water, which the scholar drank in one gulp. Then he said:

— Excuse me, madam — addressing Dona Benta —, I was wrong in my suspicions — but who wouldn’t forgive this most human mistake? The matter seems so absurd that I even doubt myself. Could I be dreaming by any chance?

— Pinch yourself to see — Emília said.

Dr. Zamenhof pinched himself. Yes, it wasn’t a dream. He was wide awake. But he remained in the air, unable to put his ideas in order.

— Coffee! — Dona Benta shouted to the kitchen. — To fix these mental situations, nothing beats Tia Nastácia’s coffee.

The coffee came with little cakes. The bearded scholar drank it and started to collect his thoughts. Minutes later, he was arm in arm with the Viscount, strolling through the living room and deeply absorbed in a profound conversation about glands.

— I’m interested in discovering the true function of the pineal gland — said the Viscount.

— Yikes! — exclaimed Tia Nastácia, who had come to pick up the coffee tray. — That language is frightening…

The conversation between the two scholars was interrupted by a commotion outside. They all rushed to the balcony. An agitated group of men was coming, searching for Dr. Zamenhof.

— What’s happening? — he asked from a distance.

— We found the Ninety-Four-Legger! — the man in front shouted. — It’s one kilometer from here!…

Dr. Zamenhof bid a hasty farewell and rushed away, followed by the Viscount and Pedrinho. He didn’t want them to kill the monster. His intention was to capture it alive and place it in a zoo.

Monster hunting

The Ninety-Four-Legger was there in the same damp ravine as Tia Nastácia’s caeté bushes, always standing, looking. It seemed that she had a taste for stopping and looking. Dr. Zamenhof and his men surrounded her from a distance and examined her with binoculars.

— Ninety-four legs, indeed — observed the sage —, evidently, six were torn off, as you can still see the holes where they should have been. The body is made of horny rings, exactly like those of tiny centipedes. The external appearance is the same as centipedes, and I assure you that this monster is nothing but a gigantic centipede that lost six legs in some disaster.

After examining her carefully through the binoculars and measuring the monster’s dimensions with his “eyemeasure,” he discussed with his assistants the means of capture.

— We have to build a tube twenty meters long and one meter in internal diameter, with caps on both ends — he said finally.

— And how do we get it to enter the tube? — asked one of the assistants.

The biggest problem was that. Dr. Zamenhof scratched his beard. He was undecided.

— I know how — said Pedrinho. — We can make a corral of woven sticks in the shape of a funnel, or that narrows down until it reaches the mouth of the tube. Then we can throw stones and make noise to scare the monster; it will get scared, walk towards the narrow end of the funnel, and end up entering the tube.

Since there was no better idea, Pedrinho’s plan was approved — and the group immediately set to work.

Building the tube took time; they made it from woven taquaras, like the cages for chickens. Then they built a corral of stakes in the shape of a funnel. The creature’s slow behavior greatly facilitated the work. She was a perfect idiot.

Emília couldn’t resist the temptation to show up as well, and the sluggish manners of the monster amazed her.

— To me, doctor — she said, addressing the sage —, this creature seems to have a thyroid defect. The gland must have atrophied, not producing enough thyroxine; hence the slowness, the “paralysis”…

The bearded scholar looked at her wide-eyed.

After preparing the tube and the corral, the problem of herding the creature forward arose, so that it would walk towards the narrow end of the funnel and enter the tube. But neither stones nor shouting made her leave her “paralysis,” as Emília called it.

— This won’t work — said the doctor. — We need to think of another way.

Thinking and thinking, it was Pedrinho who came up with another good idea.

— We can use a lasso — he said. — We’ll make a long rope from woven cipó and pull her into the tube.

Dr. Zamenhof ordered them to try the idea. In a few minutes, they made a thick rope from the best cipós in the forest. Then they fed it through the tube. Now the hardest part remained: getting the noose around the creature’s head.

It was a difficult and time-consuming operation, but they managed it as best as they could. The persistent “paralysis” of the monster greatly facilitated the task. Done! Now they just had to pull her.

But Dr. Zamenhof’s six assistants, no matter how much strength they exerted, couldn’t budge the Ninety-Four-Legger from her place. An animal with ninety-four feet clings to the ground like glue.

— And now? — exclaimed Dr. Zamenhof, already a bit discouraged.

— Only with Quindim — Emília recalled.

But the sage, who had never heard of Quindim, remained clueless.

— What’s that all about? — he asked.

Emília laughed.

— Instead of explaining — she said —, it’s better to show you. Hold on a moment; I’ll be right back — and she rushed back home.

The men waited, with dumbfounded looks, looking at each other, and then at Dr. Zamenhof, who only responded with a pout, as if to say: “I don’t understand anything about all this.”

A few minutes later, a shout was heard.

— Help! A new monster is coming! — one of Dr. Zamenhof’s assistants, who had distanced himself from the others, yelled.

The poor man was running frantically.

— A monster that looks like a rhinoceros from Uganda! — he said, frightened, upon arriving. — Get ready your weapons!

Everyone ran to get their rifles and knelt down, waiting.

But Pedrinho intervened.

— No shooting! It’s our rhinoceros, who is very gentle and friendly. This is the Quindim I mentioned.

Dr. Zamenhof wiped the sweat from his face. What a strange land, my God! Everything is weird, everything incomprehensible! Scientific corncobs, friendly rhinoceroses…

Then the huge figure of Quindim appeared, with Emília riding on his horn. The amazement of the sage and his men increased even further, and it was hard to calm them down. Some of them climbed the nearby trees like monkeys.

After a thousand explanations, calm returned to the expedition, and Quindim was harnessed to the end of the cipó.

— Let’s go, Quindim! — Emília ordered from her perch — and the rhinoceros moved heavily. The cipó stretched like a viola string, and the Ninety-Four-Legger, despite her ninety-four legs glued to the ground, had no choice but to vanish into the tube. As soon as they saw her inside, the men rushed with the caps and closed both ends.

There you have it! Thanks to Pedrinho’s ideas and Emília’s reminder, the tremendous natural phenomenon was now confined in the enormous chicken cage. Now they had to build a special cart to take her to the zoo.

— Alright — said Dr. Zamenhof —, you guys take care of the cart while I go have another conference with the landowner. — And they separated.

Apparently, what he really wanted was not a conference but another cup of Tia Nastácia’s coffee…

— Madam — said the doctor upon entering —, accept my congratulations for your grandchildren. Thanks to the suggestions of these kids, we caught the monster and got it into the tube.

— Grandchildren? — Dona Benta repeated, not understanding.

— Yes — said the doctor —, here’s Mr. Pedro and there’s Mrs. Emília.

— Oh — exclaimed Dona Benta, laughing. — She’s not a grandchild, Dr. Zamenhof. Emília is a doll that evolved into a little person.

The wise man widened his eyes. “A doll that evolved into a little person?” Was the old lady making fun of him?

Seeing his confusion, Dona Benta said:

— The story is very complicated, doctor; it can’t be explained in a few words. But believe it or not, it’s as I told you. I have two grandchildren, Pedrinho and Littlenose — although Emília, when she wants to please me, also calls me “grandma”…

It was all fun and games

Dr. Zamenhof was lost in thought when his assistants came to report that they had discovered the minhocão.

— A very strange animal! — they said. — It looks just like a regular earthworm, but it has six legs that completely confound it. The pairs of legs are five meters apart, so the body of the minhocão wobbles in between. A perfect roller coaster, up, down, up, down. That’s why it can’t move or burrow into the ground. We don’t understand the phenomenon…

— Those must be prosthetic legs — Emília suggested.

— It doesn’t seem so — the men said. — The shape of these legs resembles those of the monster we confined in the tube. More than resembling, they are exactly the same. It’s almost as if someone took the legs from one and put them on the other.

— Ahn! — Dr. Zamenhof exclaimed. — That must be it. That’s why the gigantic centipede only has ninety-four legs. The missing six ended up on the earthworm. But the phenomenon is completely incomprehensible to me. There’s a great mystery surrounding all of this…

Emília glanced at the Viscount from the corner of her eye.

On the same day, the investigators caught the first armadillo ant, and when they brought it to Dona Benta’s house, everyone was amazed.

— Good Lord! — Tia Nastácia exclaimed. — It’s just like the leafcutter ants that eat our rosebushes, but a size I’ve never seen before. Yuck!

The stingers looked like open arms. Pedrinho tested them with a stick. The ant closed its stinger and stuck the stick. They made a cage and put it inside.

The next day, they caught the second ant, even more monstrous than the first, as it had an extraordinary development of its jaws and front legs. It was almost all jaws and front legs.

Dr. Zamenhof began studying it, without understanding a thing. At one point, Emília couldn’t contain herself and said:

— This seems to be a case of “acromegaly.”

The doctor looked at her over his glasses.

— Yes — Emília continued —, it’s certainly a result of Mrs. Pituitary Gland’s mischief. When this gland starts producing too much of its potions in adult animals, this happens: instead of the whole body growing, only the face grows, and the hands and feet get thicker too. The creature ends up like this: “acromegalic”…

Dona Benta couldn’t help herself. She grabbed Emília’s arm and pulled her closer.

— Come here, little devil. Your words have been mysterious for a long time, and I’m almost convinced that these monstrosities are just another of your pranks, like those famous Nature reforms. Come on, spill the beans.

Emília glanced at the Viscount and finally told the truth.

— This time it wasn’t me, Dona Benta. It was the Viscount over there. During his stay in Europe, he started studying glands, and when he returned, he set up a laboratory in Cova do Anjo. There, we performed what he calls “in anima vile” experiments, that is, experiments on vagabond animals like ants, crickets, fleas, centipedes, and earthworms. We tampered with their glands and put them in a little enclosure for observation. But the cursed week of rain in February messed up the business. While we were stuck at home, the torrent washed away the enclosure and carried the operated ones somewhere else. That’s what we did. Now, if these monsters that are showing up are the operated ones, it’s not our fault — it’s the fault of those Lady Thyroid and Lady Pituitary.

Those revelations filled Dr. Zamenhof with great astonishment. It seemed impossible that a simple scientific corncob, assisted by a little person like Emília, had performed “endocrine miracles” much greater than those accomplished by all the top specialists in Germany and North America. Absolutely astonishing!

— You know — he said to the Viscount —, you’ve done the greatest thing ever achieved in the realm of science? Do you know that you solved tremendous problems and that from now on, science will be based on your wonderful experiments?

The Viscount smoothed the corn husks around his neck and modestly thanked him for the compliment.

— I want to see your laboratory — said the doctor. — It must be the most marvelous of marvels.

But when he went to Cova do Anjo and saw that the marvelous laboratory was nothing more than a hole in the fig tree, with a microscope made from an old binocular without glass, a Gillette blade, some needles, and bits of cotton, he didn’t know what to think or say. That was positively the most astonishing thing of all, the wonder of wonders.

— I don’t understand — he said. — It seems utterly impossible that with these rudimentary resources, the Viscount achieved the prodigious results he achieved. I don’t understand. And I believe that if I stay here a few more days, I’ll end up going crazy. I’m increasingly amazed by the things I see…

— Don’t worry, doctor! — Emília said. — Our secret is Pretend Play. There’s nothing you can’t achieve with Pretend Play. Our great secret is that.

The bearded sage remained just as clueless, with a perfect ass’s face, and once again murmured:

— I don’t understand…

— Well, pretend you do, doctor, and let’s have some coffee. This time it’s with popcorn… — Emília concluded, pulling him by the lapel of his jacket.