Gonçalo Tavares - The Neighborhood

“The best thing to do would be to gather all these facts and events into a book, and then reduce this book to half its size, and so forth, until one managed to condense all the knowledge of this world into a sentence of ten words. Then all of us would learn just that one sentence and we would then have time to seriously enjoy ourselves drinking glasses of absinthe, one after another, just like the Gods recommend.

“In the meanwhile, for quite some time now, I haven’t been able to concentrate wholeheartedly on my glasses of absinthe on account of my intellectual needs. I have almost as many intellectual needs as physiological ones.

“If I were to keep an account, in this jar down here, of the number of times that I need to pee urgently, and of the number of times I feel the need to know facts in that jar up there, the total up there would undoubtedly be far greater than the one down here.

“And all this keeping in mind that absinthe tends greatly toward liquidity.

“As strange as it may seem to you, at the end of the year I show a clear deficit in the lower jar. With a greater tendency toward intellectual matters than physiological ones, there is no doubt at all that, in truth, I can include myself in the category of intellectuals. I have more intelligence than physiology, my dear friends. And one only needs to look at your faces for an instant to comprehend that the same is not the case with all of you. I hope you are not offended, but the truth is that your faces, my dear friends, are purely physiological. They’re physiology with a nose, that’s what your faces are. While my face, if you look closely, is a bit of physiology with a bit of nose, it’s true, but, first and foremost, it is a dynamo of intelligence, an animal of profound thoughts, a philosophical industry.

“Just to give you an example: Do you know when the first aircraft carrier was inaugurated? Nothing: it’s just physiology. You, my dear sirs, even smell of physiology, which is extremely rare. It was in 1918, nineteen-hundred-and-eighteen. Make a note of that and don’t forget it.

“When Mister Henri is no longer here with you, that’s when you’ll feel his absence, that’s right.

“A round of absinthe for everyone. On me. Today I’m feeling particularly happy.”

Elegance

Mister Henri said, “The wheelbarrow was invented to give men strength, while women were invented to sap their strength.

“I know I’m a boor, and to compensate for that I’ll buy a round of absinthe for every woman present in this extraordinary shrine to viticulture.

“Sir, dear sir, my extremely excellent sir: how is it possible that an establishment like this exists, with this quality of walls and mildew, with this quality of potential diseases due, on the one hand, to a faulty system of plumbing, to the humidity that reigns supreme here, and to the foul and noxious and putrid smell? In short: how is it possible that there is not even one beautiful woman to be found in this realm to compensate for this?

“This may seem to be a grave architectural error, that of not being able to see any women in this establishment; however, one cannot blame architects for all the shortcomings of this world.

“The truth is that the wheelbarrow was invented to give men strength, while women were invented to sap their strength, hence one feels the absence of women because, despite everything, they are the other face of usefulness. In a coin, if you were to find usefulness on one side, you would surely find a woman on the other. Women are the most useless of all man’s tools because women are beautiful things.

“But my dear Excellency, the day that a woman should set even one foot in your hall to pay you an extremely excellent visit, I, yes, me, your eternally obliging Mister Henri, in his turn, will not do so: that is, in my turn, not another foot of mine shall ever cross the threshold of this honorable hall to pay you extremely excellent visits! Because women bring worse luck than an empty bottle in the cellar.

“That’s what I think. And I beg your pardon if I have offended anyone.

“And this is because women are elegant creatures and elegance is the last quality that has the right to enter these hallowed halls. Every establishment has a mystique, a soul; and the soul of this establishment is to never let elegance set foot in here, I have always maintained.

“And another glass of absinthe, my dear sir, because that was a rather long speech. My throat is drier than a desert between noon and four-thirty in the afternoon.

“Thank you very much, my dear sir, this is what is going to immediately bring me back to the land of the living.

“Here goes.”

Bones

Mister Henri said, “Steel knives have to be polished regularly in order to get rid of rust. This bit of information may seem insignificant to those who do not have steel knives, but for those who do have steel knives it isn’t insignificant at all.

“A glass of absinthe, Your Excellency!

“They say that one doesn’t know for sure if the Archimedes’ Screw was invented by Archimedes. I always thought that the most important thing was to know how to use the said screw. But if Archimedes’ Screw was not invented by Archimedes one needs to change its name immediately. Not another century with errors like this.

“Another absinthe, for pity’s sake.

“Our bones belong to us just like the house we’ve bought,” said Mister Henri. “The only difference is that when we don’t pay the bank, it isn’t so easy to deprive us of our bones as it is for them to deprive us of our homes. The skeleton is the most private of private properties.

“For each glass of absinthe that I drink, I see myself as a gardener watering his garden. My bones need as much absinthe as a garden needs water in summer.

“Another glass of absinthe, my dear sir,” said Mister Henri.

“Absinthe makes our bones solid, strong, intelligent, agile, flexible, durable, alert, and, in addition, it’s good for our bones. The fact is that bones don’t get drunk because drunkenness is always something superficial. One can drink ten glasses of absinthe and your skeleton will not tremble even an inch; what does shake are the nerves around the bones. There are more than a hundred thousand nerves for each bone or some figure like that.

“I’ve even read a treatise on anatomy where some body parts were missing. I’ve read a treatise on anatomy where the authors forgot to include both legs and an arm. They went from top to bottom and some things got left behind. A treatise on anatomy that overlooks some body parts is like a summary of the holy Bible on three sheets of paper with twenty-five illustrations.

“For me, absinthe.

“Just so that you, my dear sirs, can understand this, I am going to conjure up an image for you, my dear sirs. For me, absinthe is like a book on anatomy in which no body part is missing. It’s like being protected from above and from below and from all other sides as well. So, long live the King, bones, and absinthe! And that seems a rather good summary to me.”

The Sneeze