THE TRAVELLER WAKES up the next day and opens his bedroom window. He wants to be able to enjoy the freshness of the trees round the Mouchão, its tall poplars and green-and-white birches. Whoever transformed the sandbank that this was in the last century into this cool oasis also deserves a medal. As you can see, the traveller is in a mood to recompense everyone he thinks deserves it.
The monastery is at the top end of town, and must be visited. But the traveller devotes his first attention of the day to a close exmination of the water wheel that is so near at hand that passers-by usually ignore it, perhaps thinking it is merely decorative or is simply some children’s plaything that has been set to one side. Yet as a piece of carpentry, it is one of the finest machines the traveller has seen. It is known as the “Moors’ wheel”, as is common in Portugal when we don’t have any other explanation for something, but in fact experts say it dates from Roman times. The traveller does not know exactly when it was built, but finds it hard to credit that it has been a wheel since the fourth or fifth century. Far more important than determining whether it is Moorish or late Roman seems to him to be when it stopped functioning, and all the art and science of its use. Everybody has their favourite things: the traveller delights in these functional instruments, small works of art bearing the marks of those who used them.
The path up to the monastery is a pleasant one, with plenty of shady trees. To the right, a small avenue leads to the church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, which the traveller would very much like to visit in order to see whether as is claimed, a Renaissance style can remain warm and inviting when it is mixed with the kind of classical purity he has always found cold. But he will not be able to do so on this occasion: the church is only open on Sundays, and the traveller cannot camp outside waiting until then.
The entry into the castle walls is by a path which follows the hill round to the entrance on the eastern side. The traveller walks up in a relaxed mood, indifferent to the flowerbeds and fine gravel of the path. He is not radically opposed to them, but if asked his opinion, he would do it differently: to his mind, there should be some common ground between packaging and content. When two things are adjacent to each other, they should respect one another’s qualities. These thoughts might seem out of place here outside a castle, but the traveller is simply putting into words the thoughts that arise as he sees things, as everyone does who pays attention to the workings of his own mind.
Here is the portal by John of Castile, one of the most magnificent works of art in Portugal. Strictly speaking, a sculpture, this gateway, or even a simple painting, cannot be explained in words. It is not even enough to look, since the eyes also have to learn to read shapes. Nothing can be translated in this way. A sonnet by Camões cannot be rendered in stone. All one can do faced with this portal is to look, identify the different elements according to the knowledge one has, and try to fill in the gaps in this knowledge – but each traveller has to do this for himself, one person cannot do the seeing and explaining for anyone else. A guide would be a help, provided they were not like this one, whose boredom and lack of interest is as insulting to the interested visitor as it is to the things to be seen in the castle. But the traveller must be kind: after all, the man is here every day, looking at the same stones, hearing the same remarks, having to give the same replies to the same questions, giving the same information; even if he were a saint, a model of virtue and patience, he would be unable to avoid a certain weariness in repeating the same words all the time, in coming and going as he does, seeing all those faces. So the guide is forgiven in the light of such terrible suffering.
The Convent at Tomar is the portal, the Manueline church, the Charola or Templars’ oratory, the great window, and the cloister. And everything else. What most impresses the traveller is the Charola, because of its antiquity, of course, because of its exotic octagonal shape, but above all because he can see in it the perfect expression of the idea of sanctuary, a secret place that can be visited but is not on display, a central point that is the focus for believers and around which the lesser attractions are laid out. So the Charola is at one and the same time a radiant sun and the navel of the world.
But every sun sets, and navels wither away. Time is gnawing at the Charola with its sharp, ruthless teeth. There is a general air of decrepitude that comes from both age and neglect. One of the most precious artistic jewels of Portugal is in decay, being snuffed out. Either it gets help soon, or we will hear the usual chorus of lament when it’s too late. When he hears the traveller’s complaint, the guide forgets about being aloof for a moment, and explains that the damage to the lower parts – the crumbling walls, the paint and plaster that has come off – are chiefly due to the large numbers of weddings that take place in here. “Everybody wants to get married here. The guests come and lean against the pillars, climb up them to get a better view, and then amuse themselves pulling off bits of painted plaster to have as keepsakes.” The traveller is appalled, but soon hits on the answer: “Then they should ban weddings here.” The guide must have heard that solution a hundred thousand times. He shrugs and doesn’t say a word. So it’s not boredom on his face, it’s discouragement.
The cloister seems dry and cold to the traveller. To put it another way: just as Diogo de Torralva, the creator of this project, did not identify with the Manueline, and still less with the Romanesque or Gothic styles, so the traveller, who is faced with the product of this succession of historical styles and tastes, can say that this Roman neoclassical style is not to his taste either, and if he is obliged to say why, he will say it is because it seems to him dry and cold. Of course, this is subjective. But so be it. The traveller has a right to be subjective, otherwise there would be no point in travelling – travel surely is the confrontation of the subjective with the outside world. Let’s not get carried away then: it’s not a complete rejection, it’s simply not a complete acceptance. And the traveller admits to being conquered by one thing in Dom John Ill’s cloister: the doors at ground level, where the windows above them seem to him a triumph of straight lines and exact proportions.
Everything has already been said about the Great Window: which means probably that there is everything still to say. Don’t expect any revelations from the traveller. Except for the firm conviction that the Manueline style would not be what it is if the temples in India were not what they are. Diogo de Arruda may not have been near the Indian ocean, but there’s no doubt whatsoever that Portuguese ships carried artists with them, and they brought back drawings, sketches, copies: an ornamental style as dense as the Manueline could not have been created, elaborated and refined in the shade of our olive groves: it is a cultural whole discovered elsewhere and recreated here. Please forgive the traveller these rather bold conjectures.
The traveller is not bold enough, however. He lacks the courage to ransack Tomar until he can find someone who will open the door to the chapel of Nossa Senhora da Conceicáo for him: he can’t get the image of those cloister doors out of his mind. If Diogo de Torralva worked so long in the church, perhaps the traveller will need to review his rather free use of the terms cold and dry. Yet he lacks the courage: come back on Sunday, I can’t, I have to leave, you’ll just have to be patient then.
The traveller continues on towards the west. On his way he sees the aqueduct at Pegões Altos, the proof that utility and beauty are not incompatible: the series of perfectly rounded arches above more open false ones reduces the monumental nature of the construction, making it less imposing. In this way, the architect designed a false aqueduct which serves as a support to the real one carrying the water.
Ourém is high on a hill. This is the old town, set among the most abandoned lands the traveller has seen. It’s well known that it is the lowlands which attract economic activity, industry and commerce, but some people still insist on living in this abandoned place, and the reasons for their insistence should be considered and respected. The death of places such as Ourém is not inevitable. It’s not true to say that old stones such as these should be glanced at then left behind. The old town of Ourém has many reasons to continue to live: the outcrop it is built on, the sixteenth-century layout of its streets, the extraordinary castle perched on its sheer cliff – reasons enough and more for today’s neglect not to become tomorrow’s destruction. Stones should be preserved; people should be defended.
As luck would have it, the traveller took the longest way round to reach the palace. A wise choice, as he was able to see the entire town, with its deserted houses, some of them in ruins, others with the windows boarded up, the wayside shrines stripped of their images, places where even spiders go hungry. It is only at the top of the town that the last few inhabitants were huddled, and there were some signs of life: children playing, a restaurant with silly heraldic pretensions that thankfully was closed, because the traveller was tired of all these noble hostelries and other such fantasies.
The palace, of which little more than the towers remain, is the work of giants. It may be true that Lilliputians could pile stone on stone until they built a tower reaching to the sky, but these, which do not have such a lofty aim, give the impression they could only have been built by huge arms and muscles. They must have been powerful builders to have constructed such an original fortress, with its Gothic arches and brick adornments that immediately lighten the feeling of massive solidity the whole tends to create. It seems it was built by Jews from the Maghreb, the same ones who went on to build the synagogue in Tomar and the crypt for King Afonso, which the traveller has yet to visit. He recalls the Cristo de Aveiro, probably built by Moorish hands, throws into the same pot newly converted Christians and Arabs, lets the whole lot stew, with the different traditions, new beliefs and their ensuing contradictions, and watches how new forms of art emerge, sudden changes unfortunately flung together before they are properly developed. The synagogue in Tomar, in Ourém this crypt and the tomb inside, and the palace itself: if we delved deeply into the circumstances of the times, the place, and the people, where would it all end? This is the question the traveller was asking himself as he descended the steep road back down to the plain.
It takes many twists and turns to get to Fátima. There are more direct roads of course, but coming as he does from a region that is a mixture of Moorish and Jewish, it is no surprise the traveller prefers the longer route. Today, the huge esplanade is deserted. Only in the distance, in front of the Capela das Aparições, have a few people gathered; a few groups congregate then disperse. A nun carrying an open parasol appears in the traveller’s line of vision as if from nowhere, and disappears just as suddenly. The traveller is a man of opinions, and here his opinion is that aesthetics have failed faith. This is no surprise, in our sceptical age. The builders of the most humble of Romanesque chapels knew they were building the house of God; nowadays they are simply carrying out a commission. The church tower seems undecided as to how to end, there’s no measure or balance in the columns – only faith can save Fátima, not the beauty it does not possess. The traveller, an unrepentant rationalist, has been moved during this journey by more than one belief he does not share, and would like to have felt he could respond here too. But he leaves without feeling guilty about it. What he does feel is a certain indignation, pain and anger faced with the vast number of stalls which are selling – by the million – medallions, rosaries, crucifixes, tiny representations of the shrine, small and large statues of the Virgin. When all is said and done, the traveller is a very religious man: he was even scandalised in Assisi at the cold, holy trading that the friars carried out on the balconies.
The traveller has nothing against caves. He’s well aware that his forebears lived in them after they had grown tired of swinging from tree to tree. And to be perfectly frank, although he would have made a poor anthropoid because of his fear of heights, he would have been an excellent Cro-Magnon, because he does not in the least suffer from claustrophobia. And to continue being frank, he wonders why the natural wonder of these limestone formations, with all their possible combinations of stalactite and stalagmite, should be ruined in these caves at Fátima by the variety of lights, the shocking colours, and the background music from Wagner, in a place the Valkyries would have been hard put to find room in for their horses. Then there are the names with which the different caves have been baptised: the Crib, the Unfinished Chapel, the Wedding Cake, the Fount of Tears: how ghastly! What would the traveller have preferred? A single light that picked out the features of the stone; no sound, apart from the natural one of dripping water; not a description – an absolute ban on hiding what something is with a name that has nothing to do with it.
So now the traveller needs a long period of just looking at landscapes. He wants to relax with the gentle hills of the region, trees that are not storm-tossed, fields that do not fight cultivation. He decides not to visit Leiria yet. He crosses the River Lis beyond Gândara dos Olivais, and heads north across the coastal plain. He meets Amor on the way, which surprises him, as love is usually to be found in more challenging surroundings. The day is bright and luminous, with already a scent of the sea. In Vieira de Leiria there is a seventeenth-century church, Santa Rita de Cássia, which he visits because it’s on his way, but which deserves to be seen anyway. In front of him now is the beach at Vieira, open to the south, and beyond it the mouth of the River Lis. There are fishing boats drawn up on the beach, with long curved prows, their oars folded back as they wait for the tide to rise and the fish to teem.
Then there are the pinewoods of Leiria, those in the songs of the green pines by Dom Dinis, of the ships and caravels of the first explorers, the fragile wood that ventured across such vast distances. From Vieira to São Pedro de Muel there is a road that cuts a straight line through the woods until it finally turns towards the sea. Seen at this time of day, with its beach deserted, the waves pounding, and many of its houses boarded up to wait for summer, which will possibly not bring as beautiful weather as this, it soothes the traveller’ spirit. And this atmosphere leads him to ask whether there might be a road to Marinha Grande that will allow him to savour the coastal woods for a little while longer. He’s told that there is one, true enough, but it’s also true that he is likely to get lost. He took the risk, did get lost, but did not lose anything in doing so. On the contrary, he gained: several kilometres of true delight, through dense woods where light fell in swathes, in torrents, in clouds, transforming the green of the trees into pulsating gold and then changing back into living sap, until the traveller was so overcome he did not know which way to look. This wood of São Pedro de Muel is beyond compare. Others may have more varieties of trees or be more imposing, but none is so worthy of being inhabited by the little people, the gnomes, fairies and elves. The traveller could swear that a sudden movement of the foliage in the wood must have been the work of an expert gnome in his red hat.
Eventually though, he has to return to the road for ordinary people. Now he’s on his way to Marinha Grande, the renowned centre for the art of glass-making. Perhaps because it has devoted everything to its furnaces and chemical magic, it has little to spare for any other graces. This is an industrial place, with a strange political atmosphere: this is plain from every wall, from the banners in the streets, from the earth itself. When the traveller asks how he might visit a glass-making factory, he finds someone to show him the way, help him get in, and accompany him on the visit.
The word factory hardly conjures up what he sees: a big shed full of holes, open to the winds, with a few other scattered whitewashed stone buildings offering slightly more protection. But the factory, the place where the glass is made, turns out to have its logic: the heat would be unbearable if these windows were closed, or any of the holes stopped up. The breeze constantly blowing in helps keep the workshop relatively cool, and – the traveller imagines – so does the glass itself. Here are the furnaces. Jets of fire are directed ceaselessly into the ovens, inside which a reddish-white liquid mass bubbles and quivers in frightening streams: it is a tiny sun from which objects capable of capturing and holding the light of the real sun will be fashioned. When the glass emerges from the furnace in a soft gleaming red ball that seems to be trying to escape from its long tube, nobody would think it will soon be transparent, diaphanous, as if the air itself had been turned to glass. But this colour is fleeting. The ball is then placed in a mould, blown and turned many times before it solidifies, and finally emerges, still gleaming and rainbow-streaked from its internal heat, in the shape of a jug, and then travels through the air, cooling all the time, to the next stage in the process. This movement is neither fast nor slow, simply measured enough to protect both the workman transporting the piece and the piece itself.
In this hot and noisy atmosphere, against old wooden walls, the workmen move as though they were following the steps of a ritual. It is a simple chain: one man takes the piece and passes it to another man, a delivery service that always follows the same route, and always returns to its point of departure.
The better to understand this chain of work, the traveller went to the workshop where the moulds that go into the ovens are made, moulds in which the fusion of the elements that make up glass takes place, not forgetting the proportion of old glass that is always added to the mixture. There’s no noise here, the door is always shut, the men speak in whispers. This is where the clay is moistened and shaped, slowly, with the feet and with a deliberate precision that seems almost crazy: treading it, piling it up, treading it, piling it up, using a technique that prevents any small part of it from being drier or less worked than any other. There must be no foreign bodies in this clay: not the smallest stone nor any dirt the workmen may have brought in from outside on their shoes. The creation of the shape inside the mould, the ensuring that both halves are identical, the smoothing that is almost polishing, is the work of a sculptor. It’s an abstract task that is repeated over and over, a concrete cylinder closed on one of its two sides, but the traveller can detect not the slightest sign of boredom in the men who make these moulds, only a deep-seated love of their work, which has to be perfect because if it is not, the oven will reject it with the first flame. This is work which, in the most literal sense, is put to the test of fire.