What’s my team? Anyone, as long as they are playing against Brazil. World Cups are my astral hell, as I’ve said before. In the previous game, against Portugal, I managed to find a restaurant that had no television. Miracolo! – I thought to myself.
Holy illusion. At three pm – I always have lunch late – all employees had disappeared and a perplexed waiter looked at me expecting me to ask for the bill.
With the first goal today, I lost any hope of peace. I was already beginning to deal with the idea of a hexachampionship when, at 1:08 pm I get an email from another dear friend of mine: “Something very good happened today … and the noisy herd will now start to hide their horns in the bag. Are you gonna write on the subject? Kisses.”
Kiss back. How not to write? Few things make me as happy as seeing Brazil losing a World Cup. Then it ends this obscene binge. But the reader shouldn’t assume that I’m willing to cheer for any team. The truth is that I didn’t even know the outcome of the match. I went to UOL and found out that my beloved homeland was kicked to a corner. Pardon the pun,
Save Holland pendant of hope,
Save august symbol of peace.
Thy noble presence to our minds,
The misery of the nation brings.
I do not like puns. “C’est la fiente de l’esprit” (They are the droppings of the mind), said Balzac. But today I could not resist it. I’ll have peace in the coming days. Honor and glory to the brave Dutch, who made the country go back to work and ended this yellow-green farce.
I confess I do not know what causes me more disgust in these days of loathing, if the noise of horns and firecrackers or the uniform mediocrity.
A little earlier, an angry reader – and probably psychoanalyzed – wrote me: “If you do not like people, joy, you should rush to find yourself a psychoanalyst, life is passing and you cannot enjoy what is most human.”
I like people, yes. And I also like joy. Who doesn’t? But I don’t like either this rabble or this fanatical joy. I’m no exception. I have no soccer fan in my small circle. I choose my friends very carefully and I don’t run the risk of seeing any of them dressed in green and yellow.
Incidentally, the fraternization emails are starting to pop. Piaia, one of my faithful interlocutors, writes: “All hail the Dutch people!”
Yesterday, I read somewhere some statement of some popular idol, I think an Yankee, claiming that 50 million people cannot be wrong. It is exactly the opposite. 50 million are certainly wrong. One hundred million, even more so.
Intelligence does not grow on trees. When I see a thought shared by millions of people, I know it must be silliness. I’m going further: if I had one day a hundred thousand readers, I would look in the mirror and ask Cristaldo what kind of bullshit he’s been writing.
All hail the Dutch people! All! All! All!
Janer Cristaldo – he holds a Ph.D. from University of Paris, Sorbonne – is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and lives in São Paulo. His e-mail address is janercr@terra.com.br.
Translated from the Portuguese by Arlindo Silva.