Lisbon, Façade

After a night of heavy rain we awake to the sun. The rain seems to follow me recently or maybe it’s just that it’s autumn.

Now we’ve seen cobbled streets and trams and towers with lifts that take you up to higher ground. We’ve seen fraternity initiations where young hopefuls dress up as pigs while their chaperones dress in conservative black suits with sewed-on colourful fabric badges like merit badges on a scout uniform.

We got lost in the Alfama neighbourhood as the rain obliged us to dash from one doorway to the next. Eventually we shacked up in a bar where we hung our jackets on the back of two of the many empty chairs.

A tram ride from just outside took us down into the centre once again before climbing up towards the Barrio Alto. We had been warned about this place by a tourist guide in the Alfama, “Be careful” she said, looking us straight in the eye like we were about to cross an uncharted ocean. “Careful pickpockets or careful die?” Glen asked. She paused then smiled. “Careful pickpockets”. That put our minds at ease.

We get offered hash and cocaine on every street corner. It’s just like Barcelona in that respect. Depends on the neighbourhood, that’s true. There is a lot of people hanging around, doing nothing much. We saw a man sitting barefoot in a shop window reading a book, a modern day Zarathustra perhaps.

The streets are cobbled with tiny while irregular stones. In places the edges fray like the shoulder of a jacket that has been carrying a bag too long. The surfaces are uneven, sloping this way and that, at times changing slant to run away in a different direction. Black cobbles trace out geometrical shapes on the white background, at times they present images of boats or other complicated Escheresque optical illusions.

Crumbling facades, layer upon layer of compromised plaster and paintwork chips off or simply reveals itself as if to let the world know that it is there under the cream or red or light blue surface. Nobody runs a hand across it to strip it off and start again as has happened in so many cities. Here the present has yet to leave its mark, the future is still some time away.

Trams slip by jangling as the driver changes gear with his left hand on a lever. The leaver moves about a fulcrum on the dashboard where rudimentary green and red lights flash on and off. Like bumper cars at fairgrounds the vehicle moves off as if injected with life from a heavy metal stationary position.

The rain-threatening sky with fast moving clouds proves impossible to predict. Will it rain or will it clear? Funnily, it seems irrelevant. Lisbon it at ease with the elements, come what may, it seems, she will remain here sitting pretty on the coast, welcoming guests as an efficient waiter greets the hundredth punter of the day.