Eatables and Drinkables.
Artur Azevedo.
From Contos Escolhidos, O Globo or www.dominiopublico.gov.br .
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese language to English language by.
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, 2015.

A while before entering definitely, in the practical life, the bachelor[1] Sesostris, which today is father of family and magistrate, had his literary velleities, and was up for everything; poetry, short story, feuilleton, novel and theater.

It was the manuscript of his first and only play which introduced him in the backstage of a theater, and approximated him of Rosalina, which from our actresses was at that time the first one in beauty and the last one in talent. This Rosalina, which the impresario conserved in the cast of the company in attention uniquely to her plastic virtues, had married an actor on his turn there conserved so only for being her husband.

Saying that she was a second Penelope in what touches conjugal fidelity would be to fail shamelessly to the truth that I owe to the readers of my storiettes; at least the bad tongues, and even the good ones, did not spare her; more than one habitual frequenter of the theater where she exhibited herself was appointed as having solicited, and obtained her most intimate favours.

The bachelor Sesostris was invited by the impresario to make the reading of the play one afternoon, on the stage, after the rehearsal and the set hour, sat before a small table circled by almost all the company, and opened a manuscript.

He was in the midst of the first act, heard in silence with a retirement digne of a tragedy, when the comediographer felt that from the knee of Rosalina, sat to his right, exhaled a communicative warmth which perturbated him. Knows God how could the young man conclude the reading of that first act!

During the second, continued the equivocal manifestations, or rather, inequivocal, and the bachelor, sweating cold, trembling, jesting, let be lost all the comical effects of the situations and the dialogue. The listeners, each time colder and more reserved, attributed the indisposition of the reader to the terrible impression of finding himself there submitted to the opinion and to the judgment of so many artistic summities.

During the third act, Rosalina completed with the foot - a small foot, admirably shoed - the opus of seduction which she had started with the knee.

Finished the reading, the impresario, which during the two first acts had interrupted it with significative and irreverent yawns, and now slept to loose sleep, woke up as soon as he heard the consolating words: "falls the cloth", and said to the comediographer:

- Yes, sir, it is a nice comedy... but it is not for my theater... it is too fine, it has little mockery... However, I don't say that I don't represent it... I shall represent it, but when the theater is more on track[2]. The doctor has much talent: write another comedy, but with thicker salt, with kitchen salt.

- Kitchen?!

- Kitchen, yes sir! This of fine salt does not bring ten réis to the ticket office!

The bachelor Sesostris, which had the inestimable fortune of counting merely twenty-two years, let himself illude; but, when even he received, as a dramaturge, a formal disillusionment, what did it matter to him, if Rosalina, the delightful[3] Rosalina, so greeded[4] by all the men, was there to consolate him of the dreadful struggles of incipient author?

When the impresario finished recommending to him the bay salt, he turned and looked for her with the eyes; she had disappeared, without even saying good-bye...

From then on, the bachelor started frequenting the backstage of the theater, and especially the dressing room of Rosalina; the latter, however, did not renew the manifestations of the knee and the foot, as if resolved she were to showing the young man that he could not go up higher...

Figurated in the company an old actor which said himself very friend of Sesostris, and had captured his trust; the latter chose him for confident of his loves, and told him the provocations of the actress.

The old actor smiled maliciously.

- How is it explained - asked the bachelor - that that woman would quickly change of feeling in regard to me?

- It is explained perfectly: you were going to read a comedy and she wanted to catch the first role. Since the moment she realized the play would not be represented, she made as much case of you as of the first shirt she has worn.

- So if the comedy were accepted...?

- If the comedy were accepted, Rosalina would be yours! And only thus could you have her for free - that is woman of money.

Three months went by, and the theater far from directing[2] as expected the impresario, entered one of those crises so common to the life of our theaters. After five or six disasters, the public went away[5] and the impresario refrained from paying regularly to the artists. The situation was desperate.

Rosalina and the husband suffered as the others, considering themselves happy when they caught ten or twenty thousand réis on account of the late wages.

It was in these circumstances that the foot and the knee of the actress went back to perturbating the tranquility of the bachelor Sesostris.

The opinion of the old actor had not ceased her to be deserving in the spirit of the young man; at twenty-two the heart is blind for the defects of the woman for whom it palpitates, and when by chance it resolves to analyse them, ends up verifying that they're qualities and not defects.

One night, Sesostris, in saying good-bye to her, left her in the hands a note asking her for an interview, and saying to her that the next night, during the spectacle, he would go pick the answer up to the dressing room.

And went.

The actress let leave the hairdresser who combed her, and told the boyfriend:

- Be prudent! Not one word about the subject of your note.

- But... the answer?

- Disguise... It is there on the window... below the small plate of the clay jug[6]... Make believe that you're going to drink water... Look that the door of the dressing room is open, and there is around a lot of people suspicious of your assiduity.

Sesostris disguised, went to the place of the clay jug, lifted the small plate, found the note, put it in the pocket, conversed still for some moments, in sound voice, about the heat, the lack of audience, etc... and left, impatient to read the wished answer.

In order to flee from any indiscreet looks, he put himself in the public urinal of the theater and it was there, half suffocated by the ammoniacal exhalations, that he read the following:

"Doctor. - Before answering to your lovely note, I want to deserve from you a great obsequy. As you know, the enterprise is owing us three fifteen-day periods[7], day 15 is at the door, and it is probable that still this time we stay holding the bag[8], because the theater hasn't done nothing. We are in the misery. Although this costs me much, I ask to you that you send us, tomorrow, to our house, which the doctor knows where it is, the supplies noted[9] of the included list , and which are for our pantry. I apologize for the discomfort and you believe in the friendship of your - Rosalina."

To this improbable letter, it was, effectively annexed, a list of dry and wet goods - so many liters of beans, so many kilograms of dry-meat, etc.. Nothing was missing: olive oil, pasta, olives, wine, packages of candles, lamps, butter, the devil!

The next day it stopped a cart at the door of Rosalina, taking all those eatables and drinkables[10]; but the bachelor Sesostris, despite his twenty-two years, understood that he never again should appear to that stupid one.

Translation Notes:

[1] bacharel, graduate, bachelor, etc..
[2] encarreirado, on the right track; directed, etc..
[3] formosa, formous, delightful, etc..
[4] cobiçada, coveted, longed for, lusted after, greeded [neologism], etc..
[5] afastou-se, went away, etc..
[6] moringa, clay jug for water, etc..
[7] quinzena, fifteen-day period, etc..
[8] ficar a ver navios, stay seeing ships, stay holding the bag, etc..
[9] constantes, noted, listed, etc..
[10] comes e bebes, food and drink, eatables and drinkables, etc..

Cf. Houaiss; Avery, Barsa.
Cf. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide].
Cf. http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/Default.aspx, norma brasileira.

[On relativity]

From Vida e Morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá.
Lima Barreto.
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese language to English language by
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, 2015.

[M. J. Gonzaga de Sá]
(...)
You must have noticed that the arithmetic resource of the average vassalized everything. It is a powerful and reasonable resource for certain aspects of our activity; but, perfectly inappropriate to give the sentimental feature of a class, of a people, or even translate its determinants of intelligence and character. By its own nature, the intelligence, the character, and the sentimental aspects, with supposing it society, are tyrannically individual. The genious is Rousseau, are not the swiss... You could say: in the average of Rio de Janeiro, per year, so many people are born, because it is treated there of numbers; but you would err grossly, if you said that in the average the cariocas are happy. The happiness, so volatile feeling, unstable, irreductible from man to man, is different thing, and does not consent average to encompass hundreds, thousands and millions of human beings. Imagine you that Mme. Belasman, of Petropolis, has a great bunion, a hideous defect, with which she exceedingly suffers; and the proletary Felismino, of Mortona, takes pride in possessing a son with talent. Mme. Belasman lives crushed with the exuberance of her bunion. She spent her childhood in suffering for it, the adolescence was to her an anguish; and so insignificant augment of her foot, in her conscience, is reflected lastingly, continuatedly, with the most incredible and terrorizing manifestations; meanwhile, Felismino, when he beats rivets, smiles and foretastes the roar that a parcel of his blood is going to cause in society. The fellows believe him insane, and already because once he has referred enthusiastically to the brilliant qualities of the son, has created for the latter, two or three enemies. It is consecrated! Who is happier -- I ask -- Mme. Belasman or the sr. Felismino? And, at the sight of this, can you say that all the ladies of Petropolis are happy and all the foundry proletaries are wretches? Is there average possible to the happiness of the classes? We, the modern, go forgetting ourselves that these histories of class, of people, of races, are types of cabinet, fabricated for the necessities of certain logical edifices, but that out of them disappear completely: -- Are they not? They don't exist. It is comprehended the 'sphere', the 'cube', the 'square', in geometry; but out of there, it is in vain wanting to obtain them. And in such way this mistake is agitating our opinion, that, it seems to me, is going to resurface the famous scholastic debate of the "universals". You know it, no?
(...)

Cf. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide].
Cf. Houaiss, Avery, Barsa.
Cf. http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/Default.aspx , norma brasileira.

The Moment.
Lima Barreto.
From Coisas do Reino do Jambon.
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese language to English language by
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, 2015.

I always was against the republic. I had seven years of age and came from primary college[1], of the great college of which I always remember with tenderness and filled with longing of my good teacher, Dona Teresa Pimentel do Amaral, when they told me that it had been proclaimed the republic.

I did not have in those times other cogitations which were not the one of glory, the one of the great, immense glory, made by myself without favour, nor misericorde, and saw that the such republic, which had been made, spread through the streets packed[2] soldiers, of carabines in funeral.

Never again I esteemed it, never again I wanted it.

Without being monarchist, I do not love the republic.

João Ribeiro told me, certain time, that the republic was the brown culture; well I am like the Mister João Ribeiro; there were never years in Brazil in which the dark, the cursed of mr. Haeckel, were put more to margin.

Our present regimen is of the most brutal plutocracy, it is of the most intense adulation to the strange elements, to the international capitalists, to the business agents, to the tainted charlatans with a wisdom of inferior article[3].

There is not between the rich, between the powerful, no generosity; there is no piety, there is no will, on their part, wish of attenuating their happiness, which is always an injustice, with the protection of the others, with the support to the needful, with the religious fervour of doing good.

They are afraid of being generous, they are afraid of giving an alms, they are afraid of being good.

If the dissolution of customs which all announce as existent, exists, before it existed the dissolution of the feeling, of the unfading feeling of solidarity between the men.

I, more than twenty years ago, saw the implantation of the regimen. I saw it with distaste and I believe I had reason.

Tr. Notes:

[1] colégio, school, college, etc..
[2] embalados, packed, etc..
[3] pacotilha.

Cf. http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/Default.aspx , norma brasileira.
Cf. Houaiss, Avery, Barsa.

The republican politics.
Lima Barreto.
(Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto)
From Marginália, www.dominiopublico.gov.br.
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese language to English language by
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, 2014.

I do not like, nor treat of politics. There's no topic that repugnates me more than that which is called habitually politics. I see it, as all the people see it, that is, a gathering of pirates more or less diplomated who explore the disgrace and misery of the humble.

I would never want to treat of such a topic, but my obligation of writer leads me to say something about it, lest it should seem there is fear in giving, about the subject, any opinion.

In the Empire, despite everything, it had some greatness and beauty. The formulas were more or less respected; the men had moral elevation and even, in some, there was disinterest.

This is not a lie, and so much thus, that many who passed through the major positions died very poor and their descendency only has of fortune the name it received.

What existed in them, was not the ambition of money. It was, certainly, the one of glory and of name; and, because of that, little would they bother with the profits of the "political industry".

The Republic, however, bringing to surface of the public powers, the sediments of Brazil, transformed completely our administrative customs and all "arrivists"[1] made themselves politicians in order to get rich.

Already in the French Revolution the thing was the same. Fouché, who was a wretch, with no office nor benefit, going through all the vicissitudes of the Great Crisis, ended up dying a millionaire.

As him, many others which I do not quote here in order not to be fastidious.

Until this point I forgive all kind of revolutionaries and regime-overthrowers; but what I do not find reasonable is that they should want to model all the souls in the form of their own.

The Republic in Brazil is the regime of corruption. All opinions must, by this or that payment, be established by the powerful of the day. No one admits that it be diverged from them and, in order for there to be no divergencies, there is the "secret allocation"[2], the reserves of this or that Ministery and the little employments which the mediocre can't conquer by themselves and with independence.

Life, unfortunately, must be a fight; and the one who doesn't know how to fight, is not a man.

The people of Brazil, however, think that the existence of ours must be the submission to the Acacios and Pachecos, in order to obtain help of costs and sinecures.

Comes from this our mental sterility, our lack of intellectual originality, the poorness of our moral landscape and the disgrace which is noticed in the general of our population.

No one wants to discuss; no one wants to agitate ideas; no one wants to give the intimate emotion they have of life and things. Everyone wants to "eat".

The jurists "eat", the philosophers "eat", the physicians "eat", the lawyers "eat", the poets "eat", the novelists "eat", the engineers "eat", the journalists "eat": Brazil is a vast "eating"[3].

This aspect of our land for whoever analyses its present state, with all independence of spirit, was born to it after the Republic.

It was the new regime which gave it so disgusting semblant to its public men of all the colours.

It seemed that the Empire repressed so much sordidness in our souls.

It had the virtue of modesty and implanted in us that same virtue; but, proclaimed that was the Republic, there, in Campo de Santana, by three battalions, Brazil lost the shame and its sons became rugs, to suck the public safes, in this or that way.

Independence of thought or of spirit is no longer admitted. When it is not managed, by money, it is smothered.

It is the politics of corruption, when it is not the one of the stick.

Live the Republic!

A.B.C., 1918-10-19.

Tr. Notes:

[1] "arrivistas", "arrivistes".
[2] verba, fund, allocation, allowance.
[3] "comilança", stuffing, eating, overeating.

Legend of Mani
Native-south-american tupi nhehengatu legend

Couto de Magalhães.
From O Selvagem, http://biblio.etnolinguistica.org/magalhaes-1876-selvagem , https://archive.org/details/O_Selvagem .
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese version by
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, 2014.

One of the legends, to which I referred above, conserves the tradition that the use of mandioca[1], which performs so important a role in the life of the indians, was revealed to them through a supernatural way. Mandioca is not only the bread of our savage, as also the substance from which they draw diverse wines, like the 'kauin', the 'maniquera', the 'puchirum' and others. Its discovery was to them more important than the one of wheat was to the aryas.

Although this legend belongs more to the domain of poetry than to that of science, I can't deprive myself of the desire of inserting it here, as a curious specimen of the product of the imagination of our savages. Here you have it such as it was referred to me by the mother of Mr. colonel Miranda, ex-treasurer of public finances of Pará, respectable mistress of about 70 years of age, and who resides in Belem. The legend says that mandioca was discovered like this:

"In gone times appeared pregnant the daughter of a savage chief, which resided in the immediacies of the place where is today the city of Santarém. The chief wanted to punish in the author of the dishonour of his daughter, the offense which his pride had suffered and, in order to know who he was, employed in vain pleas, threats and at length severe punishment. Before the pleas as well as before the punishment the young woman remained inflexible, saying that she had never had relation with any man whatsoever. The chief had deliberated to kill her, when it appeared to him in a dream a white man, which told him not to kill the young woman, because she was effectively innocent, and had not had relation with man. After the nine months she gave birth to a very beautiful girl, and white, causing this last fact the surprise, not only of the tribe, as also of the neighbour nations, which came to visit the child, to see that new and unknown race. The child, which had the name of Mani, and which walked and talked precociously, died at the end of one year, without having gone ill, and without having shown signs of pain.

She was buried inside the house itself, uncovering it, and watering daily the sepulture, following the custom of the people. After some time a plant sprung from the grave which, for being entirely unknown, they refrained from pulling off. It grew, flourished, and bore fruit. The birds which ate the fruit became drunk, and this phenomenon, unknown by the indians, augmented in them the superstition for the plant. The land at length fissured itself; they digged it and judged to recognize in the fruit they found the body of Mani. They ate it, and thus learned to use of mandioca."

The fruit received the name of 'Mani oca', which means: house or transformation of Mani, name which we conserve corrupted in the word mandioca, but which the french conserve without corruption still.

This legend encloses two things common to all asian religions: 1.o the attributing to a god the teaching of the use of bread : 2.o the conception without losing virginity. Will this be a simple product of imagination, will it be a law to which the human understanding is subject, or will it be some recollection of old asian beliefs, conserved confusely by oral tradition? Any of these things is possible, but for now it is nothing but simple conjecture.

Tr. Notes:

[1] mandioca, cassava, manioc, etc.

I
MAI PITUNA OIUQUAU ÃNA
How the night appeared
Native-south-american tupi nhehengatu legend

Couto de Magalhães
From O Selvagem, http://biblio.etnolinguistica.org/magalhaes-1876-selvagem , https://archive.org/details/O_Selvagem .
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese version by
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil, 2014.

'This legend is probably a fragment of the 'Genesis' of the ancient south-american savages. It is perhaps the degraded and corrupted echo of the beliefs they had, of how was formed this order of things in the midst of which we live, and, undressed of the coarse forms with which probably dressed it the grandparents and the foster nurses, it shows that everywhere man has proposed to solve this problem -- where is it that we come from? Here, as in the 'Vedas', as in the 'Genesis', the question is in the deep solved in the same way, that is: in the beginning everyone was happy; a disobedience in a love episode, a forbidden fruit, brought the degradation. The legend is in short as follows: in the beginning there was no distinction between animals, man and plants; everything spoke[1]. There was also no darkness. Having the daughter of the Great Snake married, she didn't want to cohabit with her husband while there was not night over the world, such as there was in the deep of the waters. The husband sent for the night, which was sent to him enclosed in a pit of tucumã, well shut, with express prohibition to the conductors of opening it, penalty of losing themselves and their descendents, and all the things. At first they resist the temptation, but afterwards, the curiosity of knowing what was there inside the fruit made them violate the prohibition, and thus they lost themselves. Substituting the fruit of tucumã for the forbidden tree, the curiosity of knowing for the temptation of the evil spirit; it seems to me there is at the bottom of the episode so much resemblance with the asian thought that I hesitate and ask if it will not be a degraded and transformed echo of that thought?'


In the beginning there was no night -- day only there was in all time. The night was asleep at the bottom of the waters. There were no animals; all the things spoke[1].

The daughter of the Great Snake, they tell, had married a young man.

This young man had three faithful servants. One day he called the three servants and told them: -- go walk because my wife does not want to sleep with me.

The servants left, and then he called his wife to sleep with him. The daughter of the Great Snake answered him:

-- It is still not night.

The young man told her: -- There is no night; there is only day.
The young woman said: -- My father has night. If you want to sleep with me send for it there, by the great river.

The young man called the three servants; the young woman sent them to house of her father in order to bring a pit of tucumã (*).

The servants left, reached the house of the Great Snake, who delivered to them a pit of tucumã very well shut, and said to them: --- Here it is; take it. Eia! do not open it, or else all the things will be lost.

The servants left, and they were hearing noise inside the tucuman coconut, thus: tem, ten, ten... xi... (*) it was the noise of the crickets and small frogs which sing in the night.

When they were already far, one of the servants said to his fellowmen: -- Let us see what noise this will be?

The pilot said: -- No; otherwise we will lose ourselves. Let us go, eia, row!

They went and continued to hear that noise inside the tucuman coconut, and they did not know what noise it was.

When they were already very far, they gathered in the middle of the canoe, lit fire, melted the darkness which enclosed the coconut and opened it. Suddenly everything became dark.

The pilot then said: -- We are lost; and the young woman, in her house, already knows that we opened the coconut of tucuman! They continued the trip.

The young woman, at her house, told then her husband: -- They have released the night; let us wait for the morning.

Then all the things which were scattered by the woods transformed into animals and birds.

The things which were scattered through the river transformed into ducks, and into fishes. From the pannier was generated the jaguar[2]; the fisherman and his canoe transformed into duck; from his head were born the head and the beak of the duck; from the canoe the body of the duck; from the oars the legs of the duck.

The daughter of the Great Snake, when she saw the morning star, told her husband:

-- The dawn comes breaking. I will divide the day and the night.

Then she coiled the string, and told him: -- You shall be cujubin. Thus she made the cujubim; she painted the head of the cujubin white, with tabatinga; she painted him the legs red with urucú, and then told him: -- You shall sing for all eternity when the morning comes breaking.

She coiled the string, shook grey above it, and said: you shall be inambú, to sing in the various times of the night, and at dawn[3].

Since then all birds have sang in its times, and at dawn in order to joy the beginning of the day.

When the three servants arrived the young man said to them:

-- You have not been faithful -- you have opened the pit of tucumã, you have released night and all the things have been lost, and you too that have metamorphosed yourselves into monkeys, shall walk for all eternity by the branches of the woods.

(The black mouth, and the yellow line that they have in the arm they say that is still the sign of the darkness which enclosed the pit of tucumã which dripped over them when they melted it.)

(*) The 'tucumã' is a very beautiful thorny palm tree that grows in the valleys of the Amazonas and Prata. Its coconut, of a very shiny orange coloured red, serves as food for the savages, which with its pulp prepare a juicy porridge, of pleasant savor, but indigest.

(*) When the savages narrate this part they imitate the humming of the insects which sing in the night.

Tr. Notes:

[1] falavam, spoke, talked.
[2] onça, jaguar, Panthera onca.
[3] madrugada, dawn, early hours.

Cf. Houaiss, Avery, Barsa.

A Sick Man

Coelho Netto (Caxias-MA, 1864-02-21 -- Rio de Janeiro, 1934-11-28)
From: Contos da Vida e da Morte
Translation by Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto

-- It depends on me. It's a question of will, say you. It seems to you. You think, perhaps, that I don't react, that I let myself be dominated passively by this kind of possession. You're wrong. I do as much as I can to combat it. I walk by foot, hours and hours, tiring myself, I search for distractions and diversions: I smoke, I drink; I have already even tried the stupefacients. It was worse. The excitation was aggravated. In the silence or in the rumour, isolated or in the multitude I'm always the same martyr, the same tortured one. The idea accompanies me, doesn't leave me for a single instant: it is an interior shadow held to my soul as the exterior one is held to my body.

-- However, whoever sees you in society, as yet, days ago, in the small palace of senator Balduino, joyful, making phrases and puns from group to group and dancing all the marks...

-- Ah! yes... whoever sees me...

'How many people which laugh perhaps exist
Whose only venture consists
In seeming venturous to the others.'

I'm in the roll of these miserable people, of these hypocrite wretches who cloak themselves in laughter so that their sufferings are not discovered. I'm like that peach of which speaks Dumas the son in the 'Demimonde' when he refers to occult rottennesses; sane aspect, however whoever examines it meticulously will discover in it a little black point, almost imperceptible defect by where penetrated the larva which makes itself worm in the pulp and goes slowly devouring it.

In me this point does not appear but in hours of solitude, when the despair irritates me[1]. Only I know what I suffer! The terrible worm does not leave me and, the more I combat it, it seems that the more I excite and irritate it. Everything I do is in vain. I open a book, I put myself to reading. Soon it opposes itself to my eyes a kind of brume which obscures and stuns the attention and I'm taken from the subject by the exciting idea and there's no escaping it anymore. So must it be with the octopus in the holes[2] of the ocean. Wherever I am it is always it which governs me. I hold myself to a book, contemplate a work of art, stare at a woman, all useless: the obsession drags me, attracts me, captivates me and it's over. I converse animatedly, I seem attentive to the spectacle, to the game, or to whatever it is I have before my eyes... mistake, everything is appearance, illusory placidity -- the torment continues latent. I'm under the dominion of the one infernal idea, it is it which fills vassalizingly my brain, which agitates itself in it, which goes corroding it, as the worm does to the fruit. Travels... Why? At sea, at the mountains, everywhere I find it, as that eye which pursued Cain even in the depths of the earth:

'O mon père! L'oeil a-t-il disparu?' dit en tremblant Tsilla. Et Cain répondit: 'Non, il est toujours là.'

That's it. Elle est toujours là! Is the people freed from the shadow moving from a site to another? No. Thus is the idea. How was it formed? How did it appear to me? I don't know.

-- But what is that idea, after all?
-- I won't ever tell it. It is a satanic idea or even worse: ridiculous, repugnant. So repugnant that I vex myself of bringing it in thought. If someone was pointed to me who found themselves in my case, I swear to you that I'd have aversion of receiving them. It is one of those anomalies which are not explained, an aversive extravagance; sickness, my friend, sickness as the carbuncle or cancer. A corrosive degeneration, an evil which invades us and suddenly explodes, whose origin we search for in this, in that, attributing it, at length, to heredity. I don't know! The cancerous one resigns or revolts himself. Some await patiently for death, letting themselves be devoured little by little; others run from the torture by the door of suicide. I...

-- But listen. If that idea is that sordid... Forgive my expression.
-- Sordid, you say well.
-- Well then there it goes. If it is a sordid idea... Criminous, I don't believe it is?
-- Criminous... And do I know, in truth, what crime is? Before the bar of conventionalism everything which deviates from the guide line of the duty is crime. The Morals has a privative code, a kind of internal regiment for the domestic cases and everything which transgresses the rules of such an advertence[3] is considered crime against the virtue of the home, profanation, outrage and so on. It is as I tell you. My case, studied serenely, can only have one name: madness.
-- And if you realized[4] that idea, which does not involve crime, as you affirm to me, don't you think you'd be cured?
-- Maybe.
-- Well then, my friend, do not hesitate. Do as if you were taking a bitter remedy or one of those theriacs[5] which provoke nausea in us, but which cure. What you must not is continue in this state of suffering. It can be only a caprice, a depravation of taste, as the craving[6] in the pregnant women. Whatever it is it is a torment.
-- Yes, a torment which can take me to the worst of deaths, which is insanity.
-- Not that.
-- How not? Where do I have the sense? I'm a plaything of this idea which has become an axis, around which my soul spins in vertiginous turbillion and everything which tries to settle on it is repelled with the violence with which a rotating disk throws off[7] what is thrown at it. That's it. I'm a plaything of this fixed idea which tortures me, which does not consent for me a moment of peace, which pursues me day and night, and, sometimes, even in sleep manifests itself in dreams the most bizarre. Already one night it occurred to me to do as you counsel me. I tried and do you want me to tell you? It was not for fear that I gave up, it was for shame, pudency.
-- You took the remedy to mouth and repelled it. You did bad.
-- I did bad? Do you think then...?
-- Yes, my friend. We have the obligation of defending life against everyone and against everything. If you feel that that idea goes each time penetrating more in your spirit and in it destroying all the faculties, why won't you try the supreme resource? It is not about a crime which stains with infamy or blood, but a question of scruple.
-- Of cleanliness, my friend; of cleanliness. Depravation, you said well. That cannot be but sickness.
-- Well you have the remedy at hand. Cure yourself.
-- And then? Let us admit that I cure myself, that the idea disappears, how will I behave before this raffish creature, which will be capable of imagining that I... It is horrible! my friend. Horrible.
-- Listen here. After you take the remedy what does it matter to you, the glass or the box which contained it? The cure you were searching for you had it in the drug, the rest... glass or box, break it, lay it off, and it's over. Look, my old one, there is no worse thing than castor oil and I, in my crises, it is to it that I appeal. You're sick, you've got the medicine at hand, cure yourself and retake your place in life. That's it.

Notes:

[1] me assoma, irritates me, or comes over me.
[2] madrigueiras.
[3] monita.
[4] realizasse, realized, executed, effected, did, etc.
[5] triaga, lit. theriac; Latin theriaca; antidote, bitter substance, etc.
[6] antojo, craving, desire, etc.
[7] alija, jettisons, throws off.