The Great Empire--Bilingual Edition

by Joaquim Augusto Ferreira Barbosa De Melo

  - Without even knowing the details and commitments made, there is no doubt in my mind - after this journey nothing will be the same as before! If you have the courage and strength to carry everything through to the end, you will have a place in the history of this country.

  - The important thing for me is to bring to the peasants the opportunity I had - to awaken to a wider life. I don’t forget that the civic gains gained in school, through good training, were the result of your grandmother’s initiatives and courage. The School opened up horizons of knowledge and thought to me, which would otherwise have fallen asleep forever. I am fully aware that the great challenge for this country in the near future is to provide education and knowledge to future generations, so that in the future we can all achieve the development and prominence to which we are entitled in the modern world. I therefore think it is my duty to do everything I can to plant the trees of knowledge that are the schools.

  - I am touched by your determination! As much as I can, I’ve told you this before, count me in!

  - I don’t know if I’ll be able to materialize the goal I proposed to myself - once I reach power, I want to open at least one school per locality in the next nine years. I am sure, however, that this will require a lot of financial resources.

  - That’s not the only problem, but how are you going to get those resources?

  - I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. For me, it is essential to create a national party that can give body to a government that gives a new direction to the Nation. To this day it is not known where the taxes that are subtracted from the peasants are applied. Part of these funds should be used to build these places of knowledge.

  - As you know, the costs of a school are not only those due for walls and teaching material. Teachers and many other means are needed, not forgetting social support for those most in need. It is a complex issue!

  - I know, but we have to start somewhere!

  -By the way, the board is implementing a program to open one school per year. At the moment, work is underway to adapt a building acquired in the capital.

  - Why in the capital?!

  - For reasons of ease in hiring masters. As you see, we have some experience in these matters. With regard to what you said, we would like to help, but for that you need to tell us how we can do it.

  - For now, the important thing is to have a meeting at the end of the day with the largest number of supporters of the movement. Is it possible to do it on school grounds, or am I asking too much?!

  - I’ll see what I can do. By the end of the morning I hope to hear from you. Come by, so we can talk.

  Song left Lili’s house full of questions, but with one certainty – his friend would do everything in her power to help him. The movement needed badly to win several battles besides the financial one.

  The need to communicate with the people led Song to take a short walk through the village. He met many well-known people. Those closest to him took the opportunity to learn new things from far away. The older ones were usually left with a simple greeting, but those of his generation sought to know news of the present time and still remember moments from other times. It was gratifying to know that his village still had him in its memory. Now that he knew other people, the comparison of his land with the others was inevitable. In those others, where he had passed, he had found abandonment, misery and many signs of dissatisfaction among the people. There, people lived better, they were happier! No matter how hard he tried, he found no signs of hostility between the peasants and the lords of the land - in fact, his village was different. Not only because it had a school, where the children of the peasants also had a place, but because the lords of the land were concerned with the development of agriculture and trade, thus guaranteeing the livelihood of the people.

  In the afternoon, Song stopped by his friend’s house to get some news – and it couldn’t be better! The meeting with the supporters of the movement was confirmed in the late afternoon. Hours later, already at the appointed place, Lili opened the meeting by announcing:

  -There’s a fellow countryman with us today that you know very well. He’s going to tell us about a project he embraced some time ago. For the memory of our ancestors, he has, I believe, a vision of the future. He’s committed to pulling this nation from the abandonment and paralysis it’s in. I therefore ask your attention for what he has to tell us!

  Lili’s introduction aroused in those present a high expectation about what Song had to say. Perhaps because of this, he felt obliged to start the meeting with a prior presentation of the movement before moving on to the themes to be developed. For many, those subjects brought by Song were completely strange, as were the news that “the Nation was going through many trials”. What the people of the land felt were that Song knew much more about the country in which they lived than they knew themselves. At the end of several hours of oratory, everyone’s enthusiasm was unmatched. The involvement that Song was able to convey to everyone gave him the courage to continue the struggle alongside the movement he had helped create.

  The following day, Lili developed several fronts of struggle to fulfill Song’s request at the previous meeting. A major event was to take place within two weeks on a weekly rest day. The prestige enjoyed by the school and the respect earned by Lili’s family over several generations, allowed her to mobilize not only the local village, but all those around it. Many of the workers from the vast lands were moved to build the improvised facilities necessary for the announced meeting with a planned lunch at the end for all the participants. In order to make a survey of sufficient resources for this event, Lili sent messengers to the villages in order to collect confirmation of attendance. The enclosure where the event would take place was prepared with the necessary accesses, through which entry controls would be made and support annexes built, with emphasis on the kitchens that, in a quick way, would have to serve the participants. In the School, students and masters were also mobilized for the preparation of posters to be posted in the place with useful indications. Lili did not make restrictions on spending, but did not allow waste. Everything was prepared in detail and with careful management.

  On the day announced, all the preparations were timely completed. Very soon people started arriving from the most distant places and, little by little, they were directed to their seats. The enclosure gradually filled up in such a way that when the hinges were heard, announcing the beginning of the event, all the guests were in their places. Thus, to Song’s great surprise, the meeting began at the appointed time. One of the schoolmasters welcomed the participants, asking for attention to Lili’s expected words.

  - First of all, I want to thank the generosity of those who, with effort, dedication and tenacity, made this event possible. I hope it will be a pleasant day for everyone. We are here to listen to a son of this land, who has many important things to tell us. The time when the certainties of the past allowed us to build the future without upsets or anguishes is long gone. The world outside is no longer what it was, it has evolved and we have remained in the comfort of our routine, rocked by traditions, without following the renewal of times. Today we have to pay a high price for it! The later we adjust to these new realities, the harder it will be to get out of this suffocating lethargy in which we live! Since the death of the Empress, the country has been abandoned. The government we have is no longer able to stop military quarrels, while the whole empire disintegrates and dies. As you know, the country is experiencing one of the most serious and difficult periods in its history! For better days to be possible, there are many people working to make this a reality. The man that will talk to you was a student at the school I run, founded, as you know, by my ancestors and through which a better future has been possible for many. Following this effort, very soon we will also be present in the capital. That delegation that is going to open there will provide opportunities for many other young people. Here, too, we will very soon have a space for the training of new professions - but we will give in
formation about this in due course. Now is the time to listen to our guest!

  Song, with his speech, represented a genuine political proclamation, inflamed in his own words. He remained calm, but vigorous, he made courageous interventions, reaffirming republican convictions (very much in vogue in some neighboring countries). Most of those present understood almost nothing of what Song said, or rather what he wanted to say, not least because it was not the words of Lili and the population did not know that the country was going through many difficulties, “one of the worst periods in its history.” Those people, what they felt in their daily lives, were very different from the words spoken. Thanks to the perseverance and good conduct of Lili’s family business, over generations the people lived in abundance in those parts. Those who worked in the fields received good compensation for their efforts, as did the craftsmen in the workshops and in the trade. Contrary to Song’s words, the workers there had a school for their children and had a life that they felt was worth living.

  At the end of the speech, Song realized the weak enthusiasm of those present. He had only one explanation for it - his words were strange to the listeners. In those villages, a large number of people had never left those lands - they did not know how was live in the immense country to which they belonged. There were no means of communication, and they travelled long distances, most of the time on foot or on horseback. A large part of the population spent a lifetime without ever leaving their own homeland, much due to the absence of roads or railways. For most of those present, that meeting was a memorable day, not because of the news revealed, but, above all, because of the opportunity to relate with people from neighboring towns. It allowed relaxed conversations during lunch, accompanied by good things, both by the variety of dishes served and by regional sweets - some of them old relics to everyone’s taste. For Song, however, the day was disconcerting! He was used to the background noise of crowds thirsting for justice and moral comfort. Almost always applauded by waves of enthusiasm and euphoria, generated by his inflamed words of patriotic spirit. There, in his own homeland, everything had been different for him. Instead of populations hungry and thirsty for justice, he had found people happy and satisfied with life, so the reaction to his speech, in its result, was almost indifference. The next day, Song said goodbye to Lili with reinforced affection. He missed his homeland, his family and the people who lived there. However, he left with an emptiness of notoriety that he had become used to in other parts of the country. That political disaffection ruined his soul, only mitigated by the conviction that those days represented a deserved pause in his fight for the republican ideal. He was reassured, however, by the thought of an old popular proverb “Saints of the house do not work miracles!”

  Days later...

  Back in the whirlwind of emotions, in distant lands, he felt in his skin the ardor and anguish of the battlefield experiences. Everything had become complicated by his absence. His colleagues in the movement, not possessing the same capacity for oratory or organization, missed him. The movement reflected the personal action of the leader, so Song’s absence was evident to everyone - without him the movement was in rapid decline. He mobilized wills, ravished emotions and had an unusual determination to overcome obstacles, however difficult they may have been. The realization of this reality initiated a growing aura of personal fascination for Song, not only shared by colleagues in the movement itself, but also by others who began to focus all their hopes on him. The expectation and growing fascination for Song, however, added difficulties. It is one thing to be a leader, but quite another to ask him to perform miracles one minute after the other. Song could not overcome many of the difficulties that were growing uncontrollably every day: he could not make the loaves multiply and take away the hunger of the supporters who joined the movement; he could not change the uncontrolled attitudes of the hungry and stop the looting of the people they passed through. At those times, he was reminded of the words of one of his former schoolmaster: “a leader does not arise from chance, but rather he is a product of effort and perseverance”; “he is the one who, however long the path may be, does not give up pursuing the ideal that animates him”; “he is made of bone and flesh and therefore feels like the others the tiredness and pain”; “he possesses, however, a difference - he subtracts in feeling, to multiply in continuing, even beyond the limits of tiredness and pain”. For Song, the movement was growing unmeasurably and uncontrollably. He therefore had to jump to a more stable level and acquire structures. It was therefore time to transform the movement into a party and to bring its voice to the whole nation to conquer power as it needed to. In those (painful) moments he no longer had any doubts about what to do, but how to do it. A new party represented a gigantic effort in structures and human resources. The road to its constitution was therefore uncertain, long and full of traps. However, this question was nothing like the problem he had in his hands (still to be resolved) - the journey of awareness to be continued inside the territory and which could lead to a humanitarian disaster of difficult proportions. What Song had ahead of him required determination and courage, but also a great degree of detachment from the suffering caused, for the sake of a more promising tomorrow for future generations. However, before Song and his colleagues could make a consistent decision, they were faced with an avalanche of events that would precipitate the direction and future of the movement forever. Long before the end of their journey, they could not prevent death from spreading to the villages they had passed through, starving thousands of people - a large number of peasants enthusiastic about Song’s words followed the movement, abandoning the cultivation of the fields (which guaranteed their livelihood and that of their families), thus producing a humanitarian catastrophe of great proportions.

  Months later...

  The movement turned into a party, Song had gone from thinking and words to action. He managed to gather around him several scattered movements and thus gain sympathy around his candidacy. This beginning represented, however, a bitter taste of gall, not because of the long journey where he found a little of everything: applause; flowers; traps and thorns; but because he felt morally responsible for the thousands of people that lost their lives on the journey where he had been the main worker. And also for the blood spilled in the armed struggle that followed.

  Song’s subsequent confirmation as Party President was an open door that would open many more for him. His name was thus perpetuated in the memory of the villages he passed through and in that of millions of others who learned of his glorious journey of struggle. He was now remembered as a “tornado” that ravaged the landscape, leaving a vast trail of destruction and death in its wake. His thoughts were now remembered as “strong winds” that changed the landscape and his words represented a “flood of emotions” that eventually dragged millions and destroyed many lives. For Song’s followers, the vast painful winter that had passed the country would allow the sun to shine again and with it the earth would finally sprout again filling with flowering trees. One day, when he was at the head of the government, the fruits would appear and with them would return the smiles and the well-being of the people.

  Night In

  20th century

  All over the square, overlooking the palace, the commotion was great. The greatness of the ceremony that was being prepares for the following day was noticeable by last preparations and retouching. Some more curious people exchanged opinions about the event, which would forever mark the lives of millions of citizens. It was not every day that that great nation prepared to attend the speech of its President. He was, after all, the most important citizen on whom they placed all their hopes. In the palace, the frenzy was great and the corridors noticed what was going on inside - in the main hall the new President would offer a dinner in memory of the recent victory of the party over the most backward forces of the empire. There would be all the main leaders, as well as many of the prominent figures who directly or indirectly contributed to the results. Lili’s presence represente
d for Song the crowning glory of his work, for who more than she had influenced him to reach the prominent place he was now going to take! Those moments represented victory over many others: anguish; suffering; and limiting resistance to adversity. The past hardships were great, both personal suffering and that of those who fell in the ranks of the hard battles - between the moment of the Party’s constitution and the seizure of power, Song and his colleagues had to go through the trenches of armed struggle. These were extremely difficult times, only possible because the Party was joined by many dissident soldiers of the previous regime, who were also fed up with so many injustices and violations of human dignity.

  That moment was not appropriate to look back on, quite the contrary - new times of hope, but also of much effort, awaited them. With art and ingenuity, they had to carry on a nation so badly treated. For Song that dinner would allow, first of all, the share of ideas for those new paths to travel. The nation urgently needed hope and progress. It was time to launch infrastructures: administrative; in education; in agriculture and industry. The country was lacking almost everything and didn’t have any financial resources. A nation completely impoverished. The administrative structures were practically non-existent and the few connected to the palace simply did not work. The forces of law and order, completely disarticulated, did no more than observe a country voted to abandon. Song saw himself as a flag waving in the wind in the midst of chaos. A gigantic challenge that troubled his thought: “where to start?” he wondered. It was with this question that at dinner he opened conversation with some of those present. His party colleagues, surprised by the President’s question, shrugged their shoulders and answered: