Today, as I felt oppressed by that old anguish that sometimes overflows in my body, I didn’t eat well or drink as much as usual at the restaurant, or eating house, on the mezzanine where I base the continuation of my existence. And, as I was leaving, as the waiter noticed that the wine bottle was still half full, he turned to me and said: ‘See you soon, Senhor Soares, and all the best’.
The clarion call of this simple phrase soothed my soul as if the wind had suddenly blown away a cloudy sky. Then I recognised what I had never clearly recognised, that for these café and restaurant waiters, for the barbers, the young freight workers on the corner, I have a natural, spontaneous sympathy, that I can’t confess to receive from those who deal with me more intimately, improperly said.
Fraternity has subtleties.
Some govern the world, others are the world. Between an American millionaire, a Caesar or Napoleon, or Lenin, and the socialist head of the village—there is no difference in quality, just quantity. Below them, we are the amorphous characters, the addled playwright William Shakespeare, the school master John Milton, the vagrant Dante Alighieri, the young freight boy who brought my message yesterday, me, the barber who tells me anecdotes, the waiter just now, in his act of empathy, wishing me well because I had only drunk half a bottle of wine.