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.