Stanlio
23 may 17
DeRank ™: 2,62
António Lobo Antunes e João Lobo Antunes | Escritores em Diálogo | Festival Internacional de Cultura
In my family, pets were neither dogs nor cats nor birds. In my family, pets were the poor. Each of my aunts had her own personal and incredible poor person, who would come to my grandparents’ house once a week to gratefully receive a ration of clothes and food.
The poor, apart from obviously being poor (preferably barefoot to be shod by their masters, preferably in rags so they could wear old shirts saved from a natural fate of tatters, preferably sick to receive a package of aspirin) had to possess other essential characteristics: going to mass, baptizing their children, not getting drunk, and above all, remaining proudly loyal to the aunt to whom they belonged. I can still see a man in sumptuous rags, resembling Tolstoy even by his beard, responding indignantly and proudly to a distracted cousin who insisted on offering him a sweater that none of us wanted.
"I am not your poor person; I am Miss Teresinha's poor."
The plural of poor was not 'poor people.' The plural of poor was these people. At Christmas and Easter, the aunts would gather in a clique armed with slices of bolo-rei, bags of almonds, and other equivalent delights, and they would painfully make their way to the place where their pets lived, namely a neighborhood of wooden houses on the outskirts of Benfica, in Pedralvas and near the military road, with the aim of distributing, in a royal magi splendor, woolen stockings, underwear, sandals that were of no use to anyone, images of Our Lady of Fatima, and other wonders of the same caliber. The poor would emerge from their shanties, agitated and grateful, and my aunts would immediately shoo them away with the back of their hands:
"Don't get too close; these people have lice."
On these occasions, and only on these occasions, it was allowed to give coins to the poor, a gift always dangerous because they risked being spent ("This poor people have no notion of money") in a deleterious and irresponsible manner. My aunt Carlota’s poor person, for example, was prohibited from entering my grandparents’ house because when she placed ten coins in his palm, recommending, maternally and worried about her pet's health,
"Now see that you don't spend it all on wine,"
he audaciously replied very rudely,
"No, ma'am, I'm buying an Alfa Romeo."
The children of the poor were recognizable because they did not go to school, they were thin, and they died a lot. When I asked why these unusual characteristics, I was told with a shrug, "What can you do, these people are like that," and I understood that being poor, more than a coincidence of fate, was a kind of vocation, like being gifted for the game of bridge or for playing the piano.
"I poveretti" from the "crónicas" of António Lobo Antunes
In my family, pets were neither dogs nor cats nor birds. In my family, pets were the poor. Each of my aunts had her own personal and incredible poor person, who would come to my grandparents’ house once a week to gratefully receive a ration of clothes and food.
The poor, apart from obviously being poor (preferably barefoot to be shod by their masters, preferably in rags so they could wear old shirts saved from a natural fate of tatters, preferably sick to receive a package of aspirin) had to possess other essential characteristics: going to mass, baptizing their children, not getting drunk, and above all, remaining proudly loyal to the aunt to whom they belonged. I can still see a man in sumptuous rags, resembling Tolstoy even by his beard, responding indignantly and proudly to a distracted cousin who insisted on offering him a sweater that none of us wanted.
"I am not your poor person; I am Miss Teresinha's poor."
The plural of poor was not 'poor people.' The plural of poor was these people. At Christmas and Easter, the aunts would gather in a clique armed with slices of bolo-rei, bags of almonds, and other equivalent delights, and they would painfully make their way to the place where their pets lived, namely a neighborhood of wooden houses on the outskirts of Benfica, in Pedralvas and near the military road, with the aim of distributing, in a royal magi splendor, woolen stockings, underwear, sandals that were of no use to anyone, images of Our Lady of Fatima, and other wonders of the same caliber. The poor would emerge from their shanties, agitated and grateful, and my aunts would immediately shoo them away with the back of their hands:
"Don't get too close; these people have lice."
On these occasions, and only on these occasions, it was allowed to give coins to the poor, a gift always dangerous because they risked being spent ("This poor people have no notion of money") in a deleterious and irresponsible manner. My aunt Carlota’s poor person, for example, was prohibited from entering my grandparents’ house because when she placed ten coins in his palm, recommending, maternally and worried about her pet's health,
"Now see that you don't spend it all on wine,"
he audaciously replied very rudely,
"No, ma'am, I'm buying an Alfa Romeo."
The children of the poor were recognizable because they did not go to school, they were thin, and they died a lot. When I asked why these unusual characteristics, I was told with a shrug, "What can you do, these people are like that," and I understood that being poor, more than a coincidence of fate, was a kind of vocation, like being gifted for the game of bridge or for playing the piano.
"I poveretti" from the "crónicas" of António Lobo Antunes
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