Meanwhile, their lessons followed a regular pattern. They already had a general notion of the universe, and a definition of life that neither of them understood. Thus they reached the fifth month. In the sixth, Fulgêncio began his demonstration of the existence of man. Caetaninha could not help giggling when her godfather asked if they knew that they existed and why; but she quickly became serious, and replied that she did not.

“What about you?”

“No, me neither,” confirmed the nephew.

Fulgêncio began a general, and profoundly Cartesian, demonstration. The following lesson took place in the garden. It had rained heavily in the preceding days, but the sun now flooded everything with light, and the garden resembled a beautiful widow who has swapped her mourning veil for that of a bride. As if wanting to imitate the sun (great things naturally copy each other), Raimundo shot her a long, all-embracing gaze, which Caetaninha received, quivering, just like the garden. Fusion, transfusion, diffusion, confusion, and profusion of beings and things.

While the old man spoke—straightforward, logical, and plodding, relishing his words, and with his eyes fixed on nowhere in particular, his two students made strenuous efforts to listen, but found themselves hopelessly distracted by other things. First, it was a pair of butterflies fluttering in the breeze. Would you please tell me what is so extraordinary about a pair of butterflies? Admittedly, they were yellow, but this alone is insufficient to explain the distraction. Nor was their distraction justified by the fact that the butterflies were chasing each other—to the left, to the right, then up, then down—given that butterflies, unlike soldiers, never travel in a straight line.

“Man’s understanding,” Fulgêncio was saying, “as I have just explained . . .”

Raimundo gazed at Caetaninha, and found her gazing at him. Each of them seemed awkward and confused. She was the first to lower her eyes. Then she raised them again, so as to look at something else farther off, such as the garden wall; on their way there, given that Raimundo’s eyes lay in their path, she glanced at them as briefly as she could. Luckily, the wall presented a spectacle that filled her with surprise: a pair of swallows (it was the day for couples) were hopping along it with the elegance peculiar to winged beings. They chirruped as they hopped, saying things to each other, whatever it might be, perhaps this: that it was a very good thing that there was no philosophy in garden walls. Suddenly one of them took off, probably the female, and the other, naturally the male, was not going to let himself be left behind: he spread his wings and flew off in the same direction. Caetaninha looked down at the grass.

When the lesson finished a few minutes later, she begged her godfather to continue and, when he refused, took him by the arm and invited him to take a turn in the garden.