Suzanne Duval's "Vachette," from moo to better

A long time ago, the narrator, an academic, had a chat with another academic she met at the National Library. They knew each other. The narrator had asked about his wife, the man had replied that she was pregnant, and to show off, he had added that she was "becoming a big cow," sure that his banal witticism would go down like a letter in the post. This was the case, or almost. Pregnant in turn a few years later, the narrator, whose name is Duval, like the author; who is a teacher-researcher like her, takes what this man had said literally. Gradually, she slips into the skin of a cow—more precisely, a little heifer. The way this man looked at women expecting a child (it happens that women also have this cowish look), the narrator takes it seriously. Did he want to play smart? Let's see how that goes. Being a little heifer, she is happy with that. She has clogs, so what? Is this metamorphosis to be understood literally or figuratively? We hesitate, because the narrator continues to speak normally with most people (however, with her husband or with the nursery staff she moos), and because passersby do not turn around as she passes. This ambiguity, a kind of trick that the author also plays on us, is one of the skills of this singular novel, sometimes sarcastic, always mischievous and funny. Without belonging to the fantasy genre, it reports, in t