Men are made in such a way that even when they’re lying, they tell a kind of truth, and if, on the contrary, it’s the truth they want to blurt out, it’s always accompanied by a kind of lie, however unintentional. That’s why if we started debating what was true and what was false in António Mau-Tempo’s hunting tales, we would never reach a conclusion, we should simply be man enough to recognize that everything he described could be touched with one’s fingers, be it the hare or the rabbit, the muzzle-loading rifle, of a kind that still exists, gunpowder, which is cheap, the tack with which we shoe the poverty of the ill shod, the boot, which is witness to that, the miraculous pile of pepper all the way from India, the stone of course, the newspaper that hares can read better than humans, and António Mau-Tempo, who is right here, the teller of tales, because if there was no one to tell them, there would be no tales.
I’ve told you one story, I’ve told you two, and I’ll give you a third, because three is the number God made, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost of the ear by which the rabbit was caught in the excellent tale I’m about to tell you, You’ve spoiled it for us now that we know how the story ends, So what, we all die, what matters is the life we’ve led or will lead, not the end, All right, tell me about the rabbit, Well, I still had the same rifle, in fact, I’d got so used to it that the sight of those double-barreled ones used to make me laugh, let alone the ones with four barrels, like cannons they are, they should be banned, Why, Think how much nicer it is for a man to slowly and quietly prepare his rifle, loading the gunpowder, tamping it down, measuring out the lead shot, when you have it that is, and watching one of the animals you’re hoping to hunt pass you by, saying to itself, phew, that was a close shave, and you feel full of friendly feelings for the feathered or furry creature moving off, it’s all a question of believing in fate, for their hour had clearly not yet come, That’s one way of looking at it, anyway, what happened next, Next, you mean before, well, on that occasion, too, I had no money to buy lead shot, You never seem to have any money, To listen to you, anyone would think you had never lacked for it yourself, Don’t change the subject, my finances are my affair, carry on with the story, All right, so I had no money to buy some shot, but I had a steel ball, one of those ball-bearing things, I found it among the rubbish in a workshop, and I used the same method, but without the tree this time, the tree worked only with the tacks, What do you mean, It seemed to me that if I could somehow sharpen the ball bearing, it would be like a bullet, and wouldn’t destroy the animal’s flesh or skin, it was all a matter of marksmanship, and, if I do say so myself, I’m a pretty good shot, And then, Then I went into the countryside, to a place I knew, a sandy area where I’d seen a rabbit as big as a baby goat, he was obviously the father rabbit, because no one has ever seen the mother rabbit, she never leaves the burrow, which is as deep as the pool at Ponte Cava, she goes underground and no one knows where she is, Fine, but that’s another story, That’s where you’re wrong, it’s exactly the same story, but I don’t have time to tell it now, So what happened next, This rabbit had given me the slip on other occasions, and had a way of scooting out of sight as soon as I raised my rifle, but that had been when my rifle was loaded with shot, Ah, so you weren’t bothered about spoiling its skin, With a rabbit that big, it wouldn’t matter, But you just said, Look, if you’re going to keep interrupting, All right, carry on, So I waited and waited, one hour passed, then another, and finally it hopped into view, well, leapt really, because, as I said, it was the size of a small goat, and when it was airborne, I pretended to myself that it was a partridge and shot it, Did you kill it, No, it just shook its ears, gave another hop and then another, and of course I had no more ammunition left, anyway, it ran off into some bushes, gave another leap, one of those really long ones, from here to over there, say, and what did I see, What, The rabbit
