Subterrâneos

"(...) It was on a certain autumn dawn ...

What a great day, this one! At the end of a deep sleep, he had awakened early, the dawn of the keyhole still barely evident. A silence of communion. The strong odor of the must that was boiling in the wine cellar, sweetish, came through the body inside and made him dream dreams. And in the midst of the dumbness of things and that perfume of leaven, he began to feel such an eagerness to open his chest and sing, that he even thought he had a fever and raved. But not. Fortunately, he was in good health. The strange sensation that tormented him was only the need to expand, to announce to the world he did not know what. Terrified, stunned by fear and shame, he closed his throat in an instinctive defense. It was the same as nothing. It was, if it prevented any longer the departure of a hymn of greeting to the light that had been breaking! No will could muffle the irrepressible cry that was suffocating him.

And sang:

Cá-que-rá-cá!...

He woke up. It was as if a lightning bolt fell in the chicken coop and awakened his mother, brothers, and cousins. He himself, barely the voice flew to his mouth, got cold. And, like the others, he was reduced to a question and a wonder. But he did not even understand what was happening, and a new cry came out of his mouth:

Cá-que-rá-cá!...

The sound this time seemed to him more sane, safer. And she caressed for a moment the fine, sharp drawing of the notes that were echoing in her ears in wonder. Repeated:

Cá-que-rá-cá!...

What fear, what modesty, how nothing! Was he a cock or not ?! Or did he not see how, in all the capoeira alvoraçada, of the astonishment had happened to a rumor of pure admiration? In the capoeira and until there inside ...

"Did you hear the chicken, Antonio?"

- I heard. (...) "

in Bichos, Miguel Torga