Barbarous Tales

By Mongiardim Saraiva

This collection of tales and short stories suggests the presence of many voices, sculpted and tooled in the course of situations and plots that were created as the author wandered around and encountered people and places of different cultures. It can be stated that the words and stories weave a global plot based on experience and in observations of the world. Barbarous Tales defines barbarity as an ambiguous and recurrent concept, in which the word oscillates and determines two states; desirable, nice, and interesting barbarity, and barbarity associated to the blunt, cold, and ferocious world, where humanity seems to find a type of unusual, perverted, and unchanging pleasure.

The Author

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: May 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781071598719

Book preview

Barbarous Tales

Mongiardim Saraiva

Preface

This collection of tales and short stories suggests the presence of many voices, sculpted and tooled in the course of situations and plots that were created as the author wandered around and encountered people and places of different cultures. It can be stated that the words and stories weave a global plot based on experience and in observations of the world. Barbarous Tales defines barbarity as an ambiguous and recurrent concept, in which the word oscillates and determines two states; desirable, nice, and interesting barbarity, and barbarity associated to the blunt, cold, and ferocious world, where humanity seems to find a type of unusual, perverted, and unchanging pleasure.

The Author

About the Author:

Mongiardim Saraiva (António Carlos Mongiardim Gomes Saraiva) was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and has been living in Brazil since 1995. With a Teaching Degree in Portuguese/English and a Specialization Degree in Contemporary Literature, he is the author of six books published in Brazil; Entre o Céu e a Terra, Imagens Escritas, Uma Dieta Quântica, Textos & Contextos, Terras da Irmandade, and Canto do Desencanto. He is a translator, a professor, a plastic artist, and a writer.

Barbarous Tales - Part I

The man who made soap

Everything in that village was leaded by a small religious community, whose pastor was a stern and old-fashioned man. Owner of a strong and vibrant voice, he made anyone who dared to disagree with any of his ideas tremble and everyone was concerned about pleasing him without restrictions.

The children were the first to run whenever his six-feet-and-almost-three-inch self opened a ripped mouth and warned them with a voice of thunder.

Everyone was concerned about praising a God that was shaped to the image of that reality, according to the conditions of most people; the poor, the suffering, and with a very restricted view, shortened even further by the impossibility of leaving to go to new places.

Even so, there seemed to be a sort of rotten and engaging serenity that caused everything to have an aspect of forceful and contagious joy, if it wasn’t for some strange and disturbing stories about people from that place.

Amongst these reports, the eldest had chosen a character that was the main reason for the kids’ fear and left the adults in great uncertainty when it came to that. Or whenever the man showed up in the village, carrying with him all the conceivable and unconceivable curses about him. It was unfair, but that man was destined to a tragic and obscure end, even though, apparently, he had never done no harm to anyone. They said that man was so strange and nefarious that in cases when he was insulted by the children he would take them away in a giant bag and make soap out of them...

And one day, when everyone was beginning a new cult, he suddenly showed up in the middle of the crowd and walked hastily to the pulpit to be the speaker of the evening. He had come to replace the regular pastor, without the knowledge of the group that casually awaited their leader 's arrival. He was not immediately recognized, but his extremely thin and clumsy silhouette, his bony and projected head in which he showed in the glass of