Countries’ decades are not like people’s decades. The countries’ decades only gained name and fame much later, and they are still talked about some time later. People’s decades, now, before they are quickly replaced by others, are worth a few days. Until they are forgotten and replaced by the next enthusiasm, quick, decisive, total.
Until a while ago, the decades of countries – of many, of few or even the idea of the absurd claim of “all” – were created and named some time later, by people who wrote books, who gave names, who attributed unique qualities to successive and banal times like all the others.
Historians and philosophers talked about the 60s, ah!, the 60s… They talked about the 20s, ah!, the 20s… They talked about the decade of war, the decade of peace, the decade of the end of Colonialism, the decade of the Cold War, the decade of global and definitive peace, the decade of the triumph of capitalism and the end of history. Always with the same decimal certainty, the one that lasted until they finished, at least, their duty to tell a story and until they went to tell a new one somewhere else, on the other side, where we no longer heard them.
Now nobody knows how it works. Time is in crisis – and this must have been written at least a thousand times, in different times, with the same inaugural conviction.
The decade of a Portuguese President is over, the closest we have to a theocratic choice, with all Portuguese voters digging into the entrails of an animal to discover the truth, as was said to be done in ancient Rome, that time when decades are called centuries, republics are called empires and where everything seems to come from. It could be better to just look at the flight of birds and discover in them the will of the gods, that absolutely beautiful thing that, yes, Rome also left us, at least as a fleeting story for a more leisurely dinner. The decade is over, long live the decade. Republican royalty is equally transitory and absolute, like all constituted powers.
And now, José? “What now, José?”, when his sidekick left. Yes, by Cardoso Pires, and before that by Drummond de Andrade, and even regarding Lobo Antunes, that great describer of things. That’s right, no more, no less, in the right measure of question and legitimate doubt because eternal and of absolutely no interest.
“And now, José? The party is over, the lights went out, the people disappeared, the night got cold, and now, José? And now, you? You who are nameless, who mock others, you who write verses, who love, protest? And now, José?”
Yes, the decade is over, the party is over. Everything is fine. There is still a mouth, there is still a tongue, there are still words. There is blood, a few more beats. It’s okay, even if the memory ends up among the bad days in the writer’s pen.
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