Cleopina and her husband, Mark, had recently been on a spiritual retreat in Rishikesh to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. In the shadow of the Himalayas, while seeking peace and truth by the sacred Ganges, Cleopina had found solace. Mark, most of the time, was bored to death.

One evening, about two weeks after their return home, Cleopina sat down at the small table by the window, opened her tablet, and bit her lips thoughtfully.

She set out to write an article about India for the Farming and Traveling Times magazine as the cuckoo clock was ticking rhythmically on the wall.

It was almost nine p.m., and a heavy rain was falling.

Mark had gone to help Nick change a wheel on the carriage. Five hours later he hadn't returned yet. The rain had caught him there and, of course, this gave them the perfect excuse to empty a demijohn of wine together.

Cleopina began to write.

'From the steps of the ghat on the riverbank I could see Surya Dev, the sun, spread its copper rays over the waves of the Ganga Mata River. In that mysterious sunset these two entities seemed to be kissing each other.'

As soon as Cleopina wrote these words, two knocks on the door brought her to reality. From the noise, it didn't seem like whoever knocked did it with their hand. They sounded more like the blows of a boot or even a cow's hoof. She lived in a small village, in a beautiful house with a wonderful garden that ended, quite abruptly to be honest, at the fence of their neighbors, Nick and Lia. The neighbors had, among other things, two cows. And that's why she thought of a cow's hoof. She got up from her chair and went to the door, already knowing who it must be at that hour. She opened the door. Of course, there was no shadow of a cow. Rather, there was an ox. At least that's the animal that came to mind when she saw her husband in the throes of alcohol. He had knocked with his boot because his hands were occupied with two bottles of wine.

Mark swayed like a cypress caught in a storm, grinning foolishly with his incredibly large teeth in the air like on their wedding day two decades ago.

"I see you forget to come home when you are with Nick!" she said in a sour voice.

Mark placed his hand to his chest and looked at her, grimacing as if it hurt to see her mad at him. His enormous jaw hung more than usual and seemed ready to fall heavily on his shoulders.

He began to apologize in a tearful voice.

"Mami, I'm sorry, it started raining and…"

She thought of scolding him, but it was useless given his state. She took the bottles from his hands and pushed him towards the bedroom to sleep.

Happy that he'd gotten away with that bit, he opened his very thin lips again and it was as if Vesuvius had activated and forcefully expelled dental lava. He spoke, all perked up:

"We're invited to a barbecue tomorrow! Belinda is going to become a mother. I promised Nick that we'd go."

She said nothing. He understood that for the moment they had no dialogue.

He took off his shoes, got out of his trousers and shirt, then nestled into their bed.

Cleopina returned to the table by the window and tried to recollect her thoughts.

With great difficulty, she managed to mentally transport herself back to the banks of the Ganga River.

'As the sun was setting,' she wrote, 'a man emerged from the calm, copper waves. He was a sadhu, a Shiva devotee who had just finished to perform his daily rites and prayers. His black beard almost touched his bare chest, and his ebony hair, tied in a bun on top of his head, shone in the pale rays of the sun.'

Cleopina stopped writing. Strange noises were coming from the bedroom where Mark had started a nasal and guttural symphony. At times his snoring would completely distance from the art of music and the sounds he made were like a herd of swine greedily devouring beech mast. At some point he even seemed to be mooing. She switched off the tablet. It was impossible to write in those conditions.

The next day at noon Mark and Cleopina left the house. On the short walk from their gate to that of the neighbors, Cleopina warned him that if he drank like a pig again and embarrassed themselves at the party, she would divorce him. Two minutes later they were in Nick and Lia's yard.

Their friends had positioned a long and wide table right next to the entrance of the cowshed. They adorned it with flowers and fruit among which were placed platters with all the goodies: cheeses, pork ham, grilled sausages, black olives, green onions, tomatoes, etc. Sour cherry liqueur and the most refined wine from their cellar were brought forward. It was a proper banquet. Cleopina gave Lia the raspberry and sweet cheese tart she had made that very morning, and took the glass of liqueur offered by her. The two friends then started a conversation about the mysteries of life. Cleopina recounted her friend about an extraordinary encounter in India with a man who claimed to be the reincarnation of Shankardev, a poet from the fithteenth century.

"Shankar who?", asked Lia aloud distractedly.

Mark, who stood next to Nick in the barbie zone, overheard the name Shankar and knew exactly what they were talking about.

"There we go again. My wife really believes in reincarnation!", he told Nick while he refilled their glasses with wine. The two men giggled as they put more meat to the fire and went back to talking about the vineyard which Nick intended to expand.

After wetting his throat with one more glass of wine, Mark began to stretch his thick, taurine neck looking for Belinda. Nick told him to go inside with Cleopina to see the future mother.

The two stepped respectfully into the parturient's dwelling. Belinda was in labor and didn't even look at them. Usually she was calm and docile, but this time she was terribly fidgety and nervous.

Belinda was rolling around in the hay and mooing desperately, not letting anyone get close to her. She was no ordinary cow. She was a splendid Jersey springing heifer that would soon become a great producer of the well-known protein-rich and fat milk. Being the first time she was having calves, she had been given special treatment: after mating with a specially selected bull, she had been kept separate from the other cow and treated royally. Only goose down as a mattress was lacking, otherwise she had everything that was best in a respectful farmyard.

Other people from the village arrived with presents for mother and baby: some with bells and nose rings, others with garlands of grass and daisies. It didn't take long for them to start the party with folk music and dancing.

Belinda, in all that noise and confusion, continued her labor courageously under the supervision of the vet who had been called to assist and intervene in case of need.

As the sun was setting, the crowd of people was getting closer to the entrance of the cowshed, impatiently waiting for the birth of the calf as if it were the birth of the Savior.

When the seventeenth glass of wine was emptied by Mark, Belinda began to give birth. There were about ten people gathered in a circle around the animal, each wanting to see the exact moment when the bovine head emerged into the yellowish bulb light.

Belinda was mooing as if she were dissected alive.

The vet put into motion a very important maneuver: he climbed onto the heifer's belly and began to slide down like on a sledding hill. By doing so, he gave Belinda an abdominal massage with his muscular buttocks which helped the calf come out more easily. With each slide, the vet was greeted with screams and cheerful giggles by the drunk and euphoric crowd. Some enthusiasts began to sing the French national anthem.

Mark was beginning to feel sick in the small cowshed full of people and hay, and with Belinda bellowing in agony.

Someone suddenly shouted:

"I see the head! The forehead!"

Immediately another one screamed:

"An ear! I can see the ears!"

"Look at the hooves!" another mouth roared.

The pale light of the old bulb began to flicker. There was a risk of it going out and leaving the ensemble of creatures to stumble through the straws in the dark.

The vet continued to slide on poor Belinda's belly, and to press her with his buttocks. The massage had to continue like this until the entire head and hooves were out enough to be grasped well and tear the calf from the darkness of the womb.

Mark began panting. His heart was beating a little too fast with sudden halts.

'It's because of the enthralling event,' he thought.

It was truly an exceptional, unforgettable occurrence, indeed.

He looked at the calf's ears with pain. He had a pain in his left arm.

'Oh, how sensitive I am,' he thought.

It seemed to him that he felt the cow's pain, and the calf's too.

Cleopina was getting closer to the head of the bovine baby. She wanted to be the first to see its eyes.

Mark didn't care one bit about the calf's eyes at this point; he had real problems. His left arm was stiff, and his chest was crushed with pain as if someone had hit it with a hammer.

Nick and Lia were radiant with happiness and looked at the cow's most private opening with eyes glazed with emotion yet at the same time pious as if they were witnessing the birth of Jesus Christ.

Mark fell on his knees. He placed his hands on his chest and pressed hard hoping his heartbeat would slow down.

Nick and Lia were behind him. They too let themselves fall to their knees. It was necessary to pray for the calf to be born healthy and for their cow to remain alive.

The vet slammed his bottom against the cow's belly once more and then grabbed the calf's hooves and began to pull them vehemently.

Mark, meanwhile, had fallen face down in the hay and was gasping and wheezing like a beast caught by the neck in a trap. His struggles to breathe went completely unnoticed. All eyes were staring under the cow's tail.

Nick and Lia saw nothing around them except for the calf that had finally been taken out of the throes of labor exactly when Mark, with his head buried deep in the hay, stopped breathing.

Cleopina, her hands trembling with emotion, removed the traces of placenta from the calf's face and looked into its eyes lovingly. It had amazingly beautiful violet eyes, the likes of which had never been seen before. She looked for Mark but couldn't see him anywhere in the crowd.

Bottom in the air, head sunken in the hay, Mark was physically present but spiritually absent.

After a few minutes the calf stood up to everyone's applause.

"Welcome into the world, Samuel!" Nick and Lia said in chorus, with tears in their eyes.

"Long live Samuel!" shouted the other people, clinking glasses and splashing wine on the calf.

The calf, already tired from the long hard work of coming into the world, was hungry.

He opened his mouth and mooed claiming his right to suckle at the udder.

Much to Cleopina's wonder, instead of the typical cartilaginous plate on the upper arch, the calf had well-formed incisor teeth, large and somewhat flared, exactly like Mark's.

"Mark!" Cleopina shouted looking around her.

"Mark!!"

But Mark had become eternally deaf.

Cleopina finally saw her husband's bottom in the air through the people's legs and rushed towards him. She turned him face up. He was unresponsive. She performed the mouth-to-mouth technique on his thin, blue lips, along with a cardiac massage. It was all useless. Her Mark was dead.

Mark's funeral was held three days later, when the festivities in honor of the calf ended.

The burial was performed with all traditions and honors, with hens thrown over the grave, while the mourners wailed heartily between a hiccup and a glass of brandy. Then, a magnificent funeral banquet followed, with the priest at the head of the table and a fiddler who slowly ran his bow on the violin strings, producing eerily, lugubrious sounds.

Cleopina's days passed slowly and surreally at the table by the window, now that she was alone in the empty house. She only ate when she remembered to do so, while the rabbits were starving in their cages and the hens were already pinching each other from hunger with cannibalistic desperation. In her solitude, she often thought of Belinda's calf. At those big, human teeth. They looked like Mark's teeth, she thought one morning, for the thirtieth time. Yes, there was no doubt about it, they were his teeth from the first to the last.

Another thought flashed through her mind. Only now did she realize that Samuel was born right when Mark… When Mark's life abandoned him. A new awareness came upon her. She whispered:

"Sam is…. Sam is Mark…"

She had completely convinced herself that Mark had been reincarnated as a calf.

Of course, she thought, those teeth the man and animal shared, the taurine neck and bulging upper back… Besides, she recalled that he even mooed a few times in his sleep the night before he died. These were all proof of reincarnation.

She got up and went straight to Lia.

Her friend listened to her theories. She was concerned for her friend, though.

Cleopina asked her permission to see the calf. As soon as she entered the cowshed, she fell at the animal's hooves and addressed the calf by the name of her late husband. She asked questions and Samuel, in whose body dwelled Mark's soul, according to her, answered with a short bellow if the answer was yes, and with a long bellow if the answer was no. At least that's how Cleopina interpreted the situation.

Lia was watching the scene from the threshold in disbelief.

Cleopina continued for a while the human to animal sort of conversation, inquiring about his state of unearthly grace, but then she wanted to know his heart. Did he still love her? As an animal, was he capable of such feelings?

Samuel/Mark's answer was eloquent: a short, sharp bellow pierced Cleopina's heart. She threw her arms around the calf's neck and kissed its forehead, then pressed its head against her chest and wouldn't let go off the animal.

Lia, worried, went into the garden in search of Nick. He came with the vet who had come to vaccinate the cattle, and they took her out of the cowshed, speaking to her gently as one usually speaks to those who are unhinged. They tried to convince her that Samuel could not be Mark, while she did her best to convince them otherwise.

Three days later, Cleopina took the flight to India. She had prayers to pour into Mata Ganga's womb. Prayers of gratitude for the new life of her husband and for being given the capability to recognize him in his new form and thus continue their life together somehow.

About three years have passed since these events. Samuel has meanwhile become a handsome bull and is very much in demand for mating.

Cleopina visits Samuel/Mark almost daily. The bull, according to her, has developed an amazing vocabulary for an animal. With the precious help of her reincarnated husband, Cleopina wrote the book, "One Life After Another," which won the prestigious Best of the Farm literary award and quickly became a global bestseller. She also writes weekly, under her bull/husband's moo-like dictation, a new column for the magazine Farming and Traveling Times: "The Extraordinary Sentimental Life of the Human Bull," and, it must be said, together, the unlikely couple is enjoying resounding success in the literary field.

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