At the end of Rua Garrett, a fashionable Lisbon street, sits one of the most charming statues in the history of civic monuments.
It is of the poet Fernando Pessoa, and he is sitting, legs crossed, at a cafe table. What gives the statue its inspired aptness is that it is at the edge of a real outdoor cafe, the Brasileira.
In hat and spectacles, the father of modern Portuguese poetry presides hourly over Lisbon`s latest version of cafe society. From time to time, someone will thoughtfully put a glass on his table, or take a seat on the chair beside him. One evening, a madwoman sat and tried to engage him in conversation. A Brasileira waiter stood watching the scene; he shook his head woefully and said, ”Poor Pessoa.”
Yet what some writers wouldn`t give to be cast in bronze as the late-night doyen of their city`s streets.
It is in such small touches that Lisbon-and Portugal-impress.
After Spain, which is how so many tourists see the country, almost as an afterthought, Portugal at first looks like a somewhat shabby, less familiar relative.
It is wetter here, and if you arrive in the rain, half the city disappears under the rim of your umbrella. With a downturned gaze, watchful for puddles, you notice that skirts are worn longer than in Madrid, pants baggier, shoes less polished. Men`s socks, which have become progressively paler the farther south you`ve traveled, are here often white, abandoning any pretense toward elegance.
The women seem less attractive than in Madrid, or at least less showy, their clothes more somber. You can stand in a subway at rush hour, in a crush of drab overcoats and sluggish faces, and sense a weariness that seems to transcend the daily grind and to carry something of a deep, inherent disappointment at lost dominions and ancient glories.
Somewhere in time
Everything shows its age. The stucco on buildings flakes. The telephone in your hotel room is a black antique that will get you only as far as the front desk. You give the number to the receptionist so he can dial.
Then the sun comes out and, filtered through the sea mists, shines softer and gentler than in Spain. Tired of pestering the receptionist, you set forth to try a public phone. You enter a cafe. Three schoolgirls, noticing your confusion, pick the right coins from your palm and demonstrate the procedure. Then they watch from a respectful distance, to make sure you`ve reached your party, before going on their way.
No one acts indignant when spoken to in English, and those who can respond in kind (a fair number) do so with pleasure rather than annoyance. A welcome change from Spain.
”This eagerness to oblige is a characteristic of small countries whose languages no foreigner can be expected to speak,” the English writer V.S. Pritchett has noted, ”but with the Czechs, as with the Portuguese, the need to oblige rises out of a deep and curious national craving.”
There are small but telling differences in the similarities with Spain. It often is noted that while both nations honor the bullfight, the Portuguese never kill the bull. Also, they place small wastebaskets under the bars in their cafes as at least an option for the litter-loving Iberian male. Their language, written, looks like Spanish, but when spoken it sometimes sounds like Polish. Portuguese are fond of saying that they can understand Spaniards but Spaniards cannot understand them. They are more reserved, less boastful, much less absorbed in machismo than the Spanish. After all, they face the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean.
So, gradually, inevitably, the city and the people win you over. Even in the most hurried metropolitan settings you often find a droll, incongruous note. One day I saw the old-fashioned lorry of a chocolate company parked on the Rossio, Lisbon`s showcase square. A young woman stood at the back, in long white gloves, giving samples to passers-by from a silver tray. As I approached, she graciously lifted her silver tongs to give me a piece, which, I soon discovered, was a neatly cut square from a Snickers bar.
Elevator by Eiffel
On either side of this commercial basin, created with 18th Century precision by the Marques de Pombal, rise two of Lisbon`s hilltop quarters. To the west is Bairro Alto, which can be reached by a delightfully anachronistic outdoor elevator designed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. (The district at the base of the elevator, the Chiado, was badly damaged by fire a few years ago and is being rebuilt.)
The other hilltop quarter is the famous Alfama, ancient haunt of seamen and thieves. During the day it is safe, and one of the most pleasant places to stroll. Climbing the old, narrow streets you see the city slowly spreading out below you, the freighters at anchor in the Tagus River. Toward the top is a porticoed overlook with benches, pillars, trellises, decorative tiles and the requisite group of retirees discussing affairs.
Lisbon abounds in these peaceful little hilltop parks, floated imperturbably above the fray of the city. An intimate square nearby, with its cafe and shade tree, looks like a Hollywood set for ”somewhere in southern Europe.” A groaning old streetcar jiggles by, as if on cue.
Lisbon is a wonderful city for transportation buffs. The streetcars straddle the hills, while buses weave around them. Taxis are painted black with roofs the color of green apples. Ferries carry commuters across the Tagus and planes fly so low over the city you can almost count their windows. One of the most popular tourist sites, in Belem, is a museum of coaches and carriages.
Belem, at the western edge of Lisbon, also is the place to come to get a sense of Portugal`s navigational past. The Jeronimos Monastery, built here to commemorate Vasco da Gama`s voyage to India in 1497, is one of the undisputed glories of Portuguese architecture. On the banks of the Tagus in front of it stands the imposing, modern Monument of the Discoveries. In dramatic relief, the seafaring heroes of Portugal`s golden age gaze forever across the river.
Out with a poet
My last night in Lisbon I spent with the poet Casimiro de Brito. I had been given his number by a friend, and when I called him he said he already had plans for dinner, with his girlfriend, and in almost the same breath added that, naturally, I would be more than welcome to join them. The restaurant, Primeiro de Maio (First of May), was near my hotel, he said; he was a frequent customer.
It was the evening before All Saints Day, and the dark streets of the Bairro Alto resounded with footsteps. Many of the more elegantly dressed people headed toward a restaurant that bore a striking resemblance to a hole in the wall. A small window exhibited a few dead fish and bottles of wine; a small open doorway admitted the flow of patrons. An old-fashioned lantern hanging out front, with simple lettering on red and green panes, gave the only indication that this was the place.
I walked down a few steps into a noisy, brightly lighted, cellarlike room and saw a man motioning to me from the back. It was Casimiro. He had an elongated face and long, straight, salt-and-pepper hair that fell onto an old green cardigan. He looked to be in his 50s; his girlfriend, Susana, in her 20s. She was picking at a plate of small clams and ground sausage and immediately offered me a taste. Casimiro poured me a glass of wine, a refreshing vinho verde (”green” or young wine).
”How did you get a name like Casimiro?” I asked.
”He`s from the Algarve,” Susana said, giving me her beautiful smile.
”The south of Portugal is full of strange names.” Her English was excellent, with the soft trace of a British accent.
”It`s true,” Casimiro said with a local accent, and laughed.
I asked Susana if she ever had been to England. She said that except for Spain, she had not been ”anywhere.”
”But,” she added, ”we pride ourselves on speaking languages.” And, among foreign countries, England has long had ties with Portugal, in part through the importation of port wine. Lisbon has an Anglican church, in the cemetery of which lies, among others, the remains of novelist Henry Fielding. A meal with a view
At one point, the people at the next table began examining the wall painting behind us. It was of a city park.
”They`re trying to find the latest addition,” Casimiro explained. ”A customer painted it who couldn`t pay one night, and now every Saturday he comes to add something to it and get a free meal. It`s not very good. But all week people come to see what`s been added.”
After dinner, we headed out into the night. I asked about a good place to hear fado, the mournful Portuguese folk music of loss and longing. During my stay I had seen countless nightclubs, all offering ”folklorique evenings,”
but had not entered any of them. (To the adage, ”Never eat at a place called `Mom`s,` never play poker with a man named `Doc,` ” I would add, ”Never go to a place that advertises `folklore.` ”)
Casimiro and Susana confirmed my view, saying that those clubs were just for tourists, overpriced and inauthentic. There was a small bar nearby, they said, where if you were lucky you could sometimes hear the real thing. They suggested we try it.
The establishment, Sabrina`s, made our restaurant look exclusive. Through the haze of cigarette smoke we could make out several tables placed together beside a long bar. A somewhat comical-looking man sat with a guitar on a stool at the front, a bare electric lightbulb hanging above his head. A dark, stocky man, the singer, stood to his side. He looked like a longshoreman. Before him sat rows of tough young men in rapt attention. The music was languorous and plaintive, the voice gruff and riveting. Casimiro gave an acknowledging nod.
”What is he singing about?” I asked.
”Oh, love, women, guitars,” replied Susana cheerfully. ”The usual fado stuff.”
When the singer finished, a younger man stood up from among the crowd. He had been smoking heavily and looked consumptive, yet his voice was surprisingly smooth.
And so it went, for an hour or more. Nothing was planned, or staged. Other men rose, seemingly randomly, to take their turns. Sometimes five minutes passed between numbers. Once, almost causing the walls to shake, everyone joined in on a song, the refrain of which ran: ”It smells like Lisbon/It smells like flowers and the sea.”
A break in melancholy
Not all the music was melancholy. A moody Edith Piaf song was hummed with playful exaggeration. ”Piafissimo,” shouted Casimiro mockingly, adding to the insinuation that Piaf`s ballads had trivialized sadness. (It occurred to me that the French word for it, tristesse, is pretty and light, with none of the tragic heaviness of the Portuguese saudade. No Portuguese writer ever would think to title a novel ”Hello, Saudade.”) Then the first singer took the floor again and sang with tortured expression, ”I have to sing/For the fado not to die.”
When the gathering finally broke up, the doorway was blocked by crowds of listeners. We fought our way through and walked to a park, the one painted on the wall of our restaurant. The air was cool and fresh. We stood talking by the railing, looking down on the illuminated canyons of the city.
The subject of Lisbon men came up, and the flirtatious lines, known in Spanish as piropo, that they spring on pretty women. Susana was not always flattered to be a recipient. But she told of one satisfying occasion that made me think that poetry is not the exclusive province of poets in Portugal.
She had purchased a rose for her mother`s birthday. Walking to catch her ferry home, she passed a group of men.
”Look,” one of them announced, ”there goes a flower with a rose.”
