Ac­cord­ing to very di­verse—and al­ways very re­li­able—sources, the ‘Chas­tise­ment by the Lambs’ is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly com­mon in sev­er­al parts of Buenos Aires and the sur­round­ing area.

All re­ports agree in their de­scrip­tion of the Chas­tise­ment: sud­den­ly, fifty white lambs ap­pear—you could say ‘out of the blue’—and im­me­di­ate­ly charge to­wards their vic­tim, ob­vi­ous­ly cho­sen be­fore­hand. In a few short sec­onds they de­vour the per­son, leav­ing only a skele­ton. As sud­den­ly as they ar­rived, they then dis­perse—and pity any­one who tries to block their es­cape! Many fatal cases were record­ed early on, be­fore prospec­tive he­roes learned from the fate of their pre­de­ces­sors. These days, no one dares op­pose the Chas­tise­ment.

There is lit­tle point in going into the de­tails of the phe­nom­e­non—every­body is large­ly aware of the facts thanks to the media, and pho­to­graph­ic and video doc­u­men­ta­tion is wide­ly avail­able. Nev­er­the­less, the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple are wor­ried by the Chas­tise­ment and its con­se­quences. The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple, how­ev­er, are sim­ple, they lack ed­u­ca­tion and the power of re­flec­tion, and their con­cern is lim­it­ed to a de­sire that the Chas­tise­ment did not exist. Of course, this de­sire does not put an end to the Chas­tise­ment and cer­tain­ly does not help to de­ter­mine its caus­es or rai­son d’être.

These peo­ple’s basic mis­take is that, as im­mersed as they are in the facts of the Chas­tise­ment it­self, they have for­got­ten the vic­tims. Dur­ing, say, the first one hun­dred ex­e­cu­tions, what kept me awake at night was the ir­refutable ex­is­tence of lambs that were not only car­ni­vores but preda­tors—and of human flesh at that. Later, how­ev­er, I ob­served that by con­cen­trat­ing on those de­tails I had been ne­glect­ing some­thing es­sen­tial: the vic­tims’ per­son­al­i­ty.

So I began in­ves­ti­gat­ing the lives of the de­ceased. Bor­row­ing my method­ol­o­gy from so­ci­ol­o­gists, I start­ed with the most el­e­men­tary: the so­cio-eco­nom­ic data. Sta­tis­tics turned out to be use­less, the vic­tims came from all so­cial and eco­nom­ic stra­ta.

I de­cid­ed to change the focus of my in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I searched for friends and rel­a­tives and even­tu­al­ly man­aged to ex­tract the per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion from them. Their state­ments were var­ied and some­times con­tra­dic­to­ry, but grad­u­al­ly I began to hear a cer­tain type of phrase more and more fre­quent­ly: “Let the poor man rest in peace, but the truth is that...”

I had a sud­den and al­most ir­re­sistible in­sight into the sit­u­a­tion and was al­most com­plete­ly sure of my ger­mi­nal hy­poth­e­sis the day the Chastis­ing Lambs de­voured my pros­per­ous neigh­bour, Dr. P.R.V., the same per­son in whose of­fice... but I will come to that.

In an ab­solute­ly nat­ur­al way, P.R.V.’s case lead me to the de­fin­i­tive un­der­stand­ing of the enig­ma.

The truth is, I hated Ne­fario—and while I would not want the base pas­sion of my hate to pol­lute the cold ob­jec­tiv­i­ty of this re­port, nonethe­less, in order to pro­vide a full ex­pla­na­tion of the phe­nom­e­non, I feel oblig­ed to allow my­self a di­gres­sion of a per­son­al na­ture. Al­though it may not in­ter­est any­one, this di­ver­sion is es­sen­tial—as long as I am be­lieved—for peo­ple to judge the ve­rac­i­ty of my hy­poth­e­sis con­cern­ing the con­di­tions nec­es­sary to trig­ger the Chas­tise­ment by the Lambs.

Here is the di­gres­sion:

The fact is, the cli­max of the Chas­tise­ment co­in­cid­ed with a lugubri­ous pe­ri­od in my life. Trou­bled by pover­ty, by dis­ori­en­ta­tion, by grief, I felt I was at the bot­tom of a deep, dark well, and in­ca­pable of imag­in­ing any way out. That is how I felt.

Ne­fario mean­while... well, as they say, life smiled at him, and nat­u­ral­ly so since the only ob­jec­tive of his wicked ex­is­tence was money. That was his only con­cern—earn­ing money—money for it­self—and to­ward this holy pur­pose he con­cen­trat­ed all his mer­ci­less en­er­gy with­out re­gard for oth­ers. Need­less to say, he was over­whelm­ing­ly suc­cess­ful. Ne­fario truly was what you would call a ‘win­ner’.

At that time—I have al­ready said this—I found my­self in a very needy sit­u­a­tion. It is so easy to take ad­van­tage of any­one who is suf­fer­ing! Ne­fario—that greedy vul­ture who had never read a book—was an ed­i­tor. For want of bet­ter things to do, I used to un­der­take some trans­la­tion and proof­read­ing jobs for him. Ne­fario not only paid me a pit­tance but also took plea­sure in hu­mil­i­at­ing me with ex­cus­es and de­lays.

(Suf­fer­ing abuse and fail­ure was al­ready part of my per­sona, and I was re­signed to them.)

When I de­liv­ered to him my lat­est batch of work—an awk­ward and hideous trans­la­tion—Ne­fario, as on so many other oc­ca­sions, said to me:

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I am un­able to pay you today. Haven’t got a penny.”

He told me this while in his lav­ish of­fice, well dressed, smelling of per­fume and with a smile on his face. And of course, as a ‘win­ner’. I thought of my cracked shoes, my worn clothes, my fam­i­ly’s ur­gent needs, my bur­den of pain. With ef­fort, I said:

“And when do you think...?”

“Let’s do this,” his tone was op­ti­mistic and pro­tec­tive, as if he were try­ing to help me. “I can’t do this Sat­ur­day, be­cause I am tak­ing a short break on the Rio beach­es. But the fol­low­ing one, around eleven in the morn­ing, come to my house and we will set­tle this lit­tle ac­count.”

He shook my hand cor­dial­ly and gave me a friend­ly and en­cour­ag­ing pat on the shoul­der.

A fort­night went by. The yearned-for Sat­ur­day ar­rived, and so did I at the beau­ti­ful 11 de Sep­tiem­bre Street. The green of the trees, the smell of veg­e­ta­tion, the ra­di­ance of the sky and the beau­ty of the dis­trict all made me feel even more des­o­late.

At five past eleven I rang the bell.

“The mas­ter is rest­ing,” I was told by a maid in uni­form.

I hes­i­tat­ed a mo­ment and said:

“And the lady of the house?”

“Who is it, Rosa?” I heard some­one ask.

“It’s me, madam.” I raised my voice, cling­ing to the pos­si­bil­i­ty: “Is mis­ter Ne­fario at home?”

Rosa went in­side and was re­placed by the cos­met­ic-cov­ered face of Ne­fario’s wife. In a tone that re­mind­ed me of a heavy, cig­ar-smok­ing ty­coon, she en­quired:

“Haven’t you been told that the mas­ter is tak­ing his rest?”

“Yes, madam, but we had an ap­point­ment at eleven...”

“Yes, but he is rest­ing just now,” she replied in an un­ap­peal­able man­ner.

“Might he have left some­thing for me?” I asked stu­pid­ly, as if I did not know Ne­fario!

“No.”

“But we had an ap­point­ment at...”

“I am telling you, he did not leave any­thing, sir. Please don’t be an­noy­ing, sir.”

At that mo­ment I heard a jab­ber­ing, bleat­ing sound and wit­nessed the ar­rival of the Chas­tise­ment by the Lambs. I moved to one side and, so as to be more se­cure, climbed the fence, al­though my con­science told me that the Chas­tise­ment was not search­ing for me. Like a tor­na­do, the lambs burst into the front gar­den and, be­fore the last ones could ar­rive, those in the lead were al­ready in­side the house.

In a few sec­onds, like a drain swal­low­ing water from a sink, Ne­fario’s door ab­sorbed all the an­i­mals, leav­ing the gar­den tram­pled, the plants de­stroyed.

Through an ex­quis­ite­ly de­signed win­dow, Mrs. Ne­fario ap­peared:

“Come, sir, come!” she plead­ed tear­ful­ly, her face con­gest­ed. Please help us, sir!

Out of a cer­tain sense of cu­rios­i­ty I went in. I saw the fur­ni­ture over­turned, mir­rors bro­ken. I could not see the lambs.

“They are up­stairs!” I was in­formed by Mrs. Ne­fario as she pulled me in the di­rec­tion of the dan­ger. “They are in our room! Do some­thing, don’t be a cow­ard, be­have like a man!”

I man­aged to re­sist, firm­ly. Noth­ing could be more against my prin­ci­ples than to op­pose the Chas­tise­ment by the Lambs. A con­fused ca­coph­o­ny of hooves could be heard com­ing from up­stairs. The round, wool­ly backs could be seen shak­ing hap­pi­ly, ac­com­pa­nied by some force­ful move­ments aimed at an un­seen ob­ject with­in the mass. For one fleet­ing mo­ment, I per­ceived Ne­fario; it was only for a sec­ond: di­shev­elled and hor­ri­fied, he shout­ed some­thing and tried to at­tack the lambs with a chair. How­ev­er, he soon sunk into the white, curly wools like some­one vi­o­lent­ly swal­lowed by quick­sand. There was an­oth­er cen­tri­cal com­mo­tion and the grow­ing noise of jaws tear­ing and crush­ing, and every now and then the thin, sharp noise of a bone being cracked. Their first with­draw­al ma­noeu­vres told me that the lambs had ac­com­plished their task and soon after the lit­tle an­i­mals start­ed their swift de­scent of the stairs. I could see some blood­stains in the oth­er­wise un­pol­lut­ed white­ness of their wool.

Cu­ri­ous­ly, that blood—to me a sym­bol of eth­i­cal af­fir­ma­tion—caused Mrs. Ne­fario to loose all rea­son. Still ad­dress­ing me with tear­ful in­sults and telling me that I was a cow­ard, she ir­rupt­ed in the liv­ing room with a large knife in her hands. As I knew very well the fate of those who at­tempt­ed to ob­struct the Chas­tise­ment by the Lambs, I re­spect­ful­ly re­mained in the back­ground while ob­serv­ing the short and re­mark­able spec­ta­cle of the dis­mem­ber­ment and in­ges­tion of Mrs. Ne­fario. Af­ter­wards, the fifty lambs reached 11 de Sep­tiem­bre Street and, as on many other oc­ca­sions, they es­caped by dis­pers­ing into the city.

Rosa—I do not know why—seemed a lit­tle im­pressed. I called out a few com­fort­ing words to her be­fore, free of hate, say­ing good-bye to the girl with a smile.

It is true: I had not and would not man­age to ob­tain from Ne­fario the pay­ment for that awk­ward and hideous trans­la­tion. Nev­er­the­less, the green of the trees, the smell of veg­e­ta­tion, the ra­di­ance of the sky and the beau­ty of the dis­trict filled my heart with joy. I start­ed to sing.

I knew then that the dark well into which I had sunk was be­gin­ning to be lit up with the first rays of hope.

Chas­tise­ment by the Lambs: I thank you.