Gonçalo Tavares - The Neighborhood

“But these low aircraft,” murmured the Boss, “trained to fight fires are … cars?”

“No, Boss.”

“They’re the firemen!!”

“The firemen?”

“Exactly, the firemen. But forget that word. The new name for fireman, adopted by us, is precisely that of LOW AIRCRAFT.”

“And the firemen’s fire trucks?”

“Not all of them are out of order.”

3

“Therefore, high aircraft are those that fly, low aircraft are those that do not fly.”

“Exactly.”

“But we then had to subdivide them into two more categories; among the low aircraft there are high low aircraft and low low aircraft.”

“How?”

“We established a reference: one meter and seventy-five centimeters. Firemen who are shorter than one meter and seventy-five centimeters are classified as low low aircraft. They never attack a fire from above.”

“Very well.”

“Firemen who are taller than one meter and seventy-five centimeters are then classified as high among the category of low aircraft.”

“Very well.”

“Keeping in mind our human resources, and this management of heights, we further decided that only firemen who are less than one meter and seventy-five centimeters would go inside the helicopter. Thus, on the ground we have more apparently low, but high, aircraft.”

“A good strategic decision.”

“Yes.”

“There is just one problem,” murmured the Boss, suddenly.

Everybody was quiet. The Boss was pondering the matter and he had raised one arm.

“The problem,” said the Boss, “is that, by considering the firemen to be low aircraft it is true that we will have an abundance of aerial resources.”

“Yes?”

“But we will then no longer have any terrestrial resources!”

“Oh, Boss, we didn’t think of that!”

Some neighbors fortuitously ran into Mister Kraus and commented, “I have been reading your chronicles in the newspaper …”

But before they could continue, Mister Kraus smiled, expressed his appreciation for the compliment with a slight movement of his head, murmured half a handful of polite words, and continued on his way, “I’m late! Sorry.”

“At least a pistol,” said Mister Kraus that day, when he had moved away, on the verge of yelling. “It’s reasonable not to use a sword during the twenty-first century! But at least a pistol.”

An Exemplary Boss

The Boss liked to give examples. But apart from this he did not like to give anything to anyone.

When some wretch approached him, saying, “I need some funds to invest in my company,” the Boss would immediately respond with the sentence, “Look, for example,” and would then embark on a long speech where he did, in fact, exemplify.

When the wretch returned home, his wife asked him, “So, the Boss? Did he support you?”

And the man responded, “He gave me an example.”

On other occasions, they had very concrete requests for the Boss.

For example, that he should order a pothole in a road to be repaired — because the hole had already caused various accidents.

“Oh, Boss, would it be possible to order that pothole to be repaired?! It’s dangerous! And it won’t cost much to have it fixed. It will take only two hours to repair it.”

Even so, the Boss did not desist. “It’s not quite that simple, you see …,” he would begin, and soon went on to say, “look, for example …”

And he would give his example.

Conversations when people returned home after talking to the Boss were therefore fairly repetitive:

“So, did the Boss give orders to proceed with repairs on the road?”

“No. He gave me an example.”

Paying More Taxes Is Very Good for Those Who Pay More Taxes

1

“Essentially, it is …”

“Exactly, Boss. Essentially!”

The Boss coughed, he was in the middle of a sentence — it was not yet a suitable moment for servile interruptions.

“Essentially, it is,” the Boss began again, irritated, “a problem of belief, not money.”

“Of belief, Boss?” murmured the First Assistant.

“Yes, of belief. We have to transmit the idea that taxes are good for the people who pay taxes. The more they pay, the better it is for them. That is what they have to believe.”

“Oh, Boss …”

“And we have to transmit this in a pedagogical manner; also using, as far as possible, complex formulae and complex economic theories.”

“But isn’t that what we’re constantly doing?” murmured the First Assistant.

“Aren’t we being sufficiently complex?” asked the second, fearfully.

“That’s precisely it!” said the Boss, all at once. “Sometimes you simplify things, and that is fatal.”

“Life is never simple,” immediately philosophized one of the Assistants.

“Exactly. We must therefore invest even more in technical and obscure publicity. We must invest more in complexity.”

“We have to hire more economists!”

“That’s it.”

2

“It’s simple: taxes serve to improve the nation’s living standards. Right?”

“Right.”

“Therefore …”

“Therefore: the more taxes an individual pays, the more the nation’s living standards improve.”

“In other words …”

“In other words: the less money that each person has per month on which to live — owing to the fact of paying more taxes — the more money the nation has in general. At most: when somebody buys some bread and butter and eats it, he is, objectively, stealing the bread and butter from the nation.”

“In other words: the worse each individual citizen lives the better for the nation.”

“Exactly.”

“So, long live the nation!” exclaimed the First Assistant.

The second assistant agreed.

“The question is: Are we here to serve the interests of individual citizens or the nation as a whole?”

“The nation as a whole, Boss!” yelled the Assistants in unison.

And they repeated it again, with their arms raised, “As a whole! As a whole!”

“And the nation belongs to everyone!” insisted the First Assistant.

“Exactly. To everyone!”

“Therefore, if our patriotic objective is to improve the nation’s living standards, what we have to do is …”

“Worsen the living standards of each citizen!”

“That’s it!”

“Some politicians interpret the word ‘people’ as though it were one of their pseudonyms,” said Mister Kraus. He then murmured, “Democracy!” And fell silent.

He then further added, “In optimistic statistical terms, if the common man decided four times on the basis of his intelligence and another four times leaving it to chance, he would have four chances of getting it right.”

His neighbor, Mister Henri, nodded his agreement.

The List of Contents

1

An enormous committee of Economists entered the central halls. They had brought a gigantic report. It was a prognosis; it contained the state of the nation’s economy, in great detail. Three months of work involving more than thirty-two thousand Economists. They were well paid, it’s true, but they deserved it: the report had over six hundred pages. And a list of contents.