A Year in the World

by Frances Mayes

  Évoramonte is spectacular, a lost-to-the-world white village of church, hermitage, castle, and commanding view. In the cemetery perched on the edge of the steep hill, a life-sized marble angel sits at the head of a grave, looking contemplative. I think I never have seen a seated angel in a cemetery. São Lourenço de Mamporcão, with 558 inhabitants, possesses a little church with such a graceful rounded apse and bell tower that I sit down and try to draw it in my notebook. The organic curve looks as though it were shaped in one sweep by a large hand. Our drive ends in the fortress town of Arriolos, where some houses are trimmed in periwinkle and yellow as well as the familiar blue. Is this town real? A man is vacuuming the street—he doesn’t miss a butt—with a contraption a bit bigger than our garage vac. The town business is woven rugs, not needlepoint but a larger weave. In the cooperative a woman tells us the entire history of the cottage industry, beginning with the Moor converts, through art nouveau. She says in English, “Now the rugs are made by women who do not want a boss.” And who does? In the plaza where the wool dying once took place, a hidden fountain sends random jets of water in various directions, riffs moving at changing speeds and patterns, startling dogs and tourists. What fun to run through in the summer. I am everywhere imagining our new grandson travelling with us in a few years, can almost see him in a blue sunsuit making a dash through the arcs of water. The church, all tiled inside with blue and white scenes of acts of mercy, feels intimate. In response to the white, white town, even the sky seems bluer here. Men in berets play cards at a café, and a few women at looms sit in the doorways for more light. A pillory in the plaza is the only reminder that life was not always so serene in Arriolos.

  The next day we move on to the pousada at Évora, magnificent Évora. We have been deprived in our long lives. What if we never had come? The center of town, the elliptical Praça do Giraldo, surrounded by arcaded sidewalks, outdoor cafés full of people relishing the spring air, and rows of small shops, reminds me of Tuscany—much of life takes place in the navel of the town. Pousada dos Lólos, once a convent, faces the impressive columns of a Roman temple. The arcades are not the only hint of the Moors. A few domes and a ruined gate also remind us, as do the spiderweb streets leading us away and around whatever point on the map we’ve chosen.

  One chosen spot is the Carlos-recommended tasca Tasquinha d’Oliveira, small and cheery, with half a dozen tables and walls hung with traditional pottery. The owner immediately starts bringing tapas, so many that we decide to forgo whatever main courses he has cooking. He brings a fantastic red reserva, Monte da Penha from Porto Alegre. Here’s another divine bread, with a slight hint of rye. Stuffed crab, fried cod fritters, cod and chickpeas, marinated mushrooms with mint, chicken tart, and meat croquettes—all small plates, but the quantity accumulates. We think lunch is over, but he arrives again—a spinach soufflé with shrimp. Then a plate of scrambled eggs with wild asparagus. We come to the bottom of the bottle. Then arrives fresh sheep cheese with pumpkin marmalade and almonds. One spoon of the custard dessert, and my appetite rebounds. This is one of the old convent egg sweets. Bless the nuns who must have entertained themselves in long afternoons by making something good. All these convent recipes feature eggs. Egg appear in soups, too. I don’t know another cuisine where eggs are so prominent. Foamy white orbs cover a golden filling. Ed mentions his mother’s graham cracker pie. In the background we hear Karen Carpenter singing “on top of the world looking down on creation,” poor Karen, an anorexic woman whose voice hovers over a feast.

  Outside Évora’s walls, the surrounding countryside is littered with dolmens and menhirs. So much prehistoric activity attests to the desirability of this area throughout history. We see a few of the twenty “noteworthy” castles in the nearby villages and the abandoned Tower of the Eagles, but mostly just roam. I would like to come back to Alentejo when the wheat turns the color of molten gold. At evening early spring sunlight falls like a bridal veil over the fields. I start to hum a camp song: “Highlands, thy sunshine is fairest, thy waters are clearest, my summertime home. Bright stars watch over my sleep like the eyes of the angels in heaven’s blue dome.” Driving through oak forests, we return to our own splendid abode.

  We have been given a bedroom and an enormous living room covered on every inch with frescoes. A balcony opens over a courtyard with a grape pergola. Our bed surely was made for a king. The pousadas’ signature welcome, a bucket with iced champagne, again waits. After such jaunts, what better siesta-time reward than a bath and a bed turned down to linen. Linen promotes good dreams.

  Dinner takes place in the convent cloister, where perhaps the nuns served each other the sweets they spent their spare hours devising. The food tastes of ancient rural pleasures, and even the menu’s translation gives a hint of rusticity: vinegar and mint soup, black pork lower jaws, sautéed steer, duck chest, crackling scrap fat over asparagus, and pumpakin, which sounds more robust than pumpkin. We eat everything. We’re eating our way across Portugal.

  In the kingly bed on the pristine linen, I dream that my mother’s grave has collapsed and I look in, seeing her red-gold hair, then she seeps out of the grave, wholly herself when young, and says, I have something to tell you. But I am horrified, answering, But you are dead. Dead. I have the sensation of swelling all over; I am about to rise off the ground and float. Whatever she wants to say, I do not want to hear. I want her back in the ground. Then Ed is shaking me, “You’re having a bad dream,” and I wake up fully aware of my refusal to listen. If someone comes back from death to tell you something, why not listen? I did not want to.

  I slip out early and go downstairs, just as they are setting up the breakfast buffet. The dream disturbs me, and I want to be alone until it recedes. I sit in the cloister with a coffee and a guidebook. When others begin to come in, I walk out into a chill morning. The rows of Roman columns startle me every time I exit. Évora is one of the great small towns of the world. Seignorial in aspect, with parks and mansions, this jewel box is also graced with fountains, parks, museums, and a cathedral of dimensions that inspire awe. I stop in to visit again the serene painted-wood Annunciation angel. The statue leaves Mary to be imagined. It’s always easy to imagine Mary. Mothers are like that, no?

  By the time I have dispelled my dream, Ed has had the migas with bits of pork we loved in Ronda. Fried bread has first “marinated” for several hours in olive oil, usually garlic, and enough hot water to moisten and break apart, and several pastries. “Did you know—you didn’t scream—but you gave this weird cry that sounded like a ghost, ‘Nooooooo,’ like you were falling down a well.”

  “I think our room must have been the one Queen Isabel died in.”

  The town is full of restaurants, and this month they all are celebrating local soups. Last month they featured pork, and next month will be lamb. When we see notices on the streets for concerts, dance performances, and art shows, we think of the similar intense cultural life of our adopted home in Cortona. Looking at the menus posted outside each restaurant, I find these soups, all of which I look up in my now-essential Maria Modesto cookbook. The Portuguese range of soups astounds me. Carlos said, “Italians have pasta. We have soup.” I’ll skip the fava with pig’s head in favor of dozens of others. Reading the recipes, I can almost taste these traditional soups that are available all over town this March:

  Sopa de beldroegas: purslane, which volunteers in my garden.

  I’ll try this soup with the traditional bread base, garlic,

  and cheese.

  Sopa de poejos: pennyroyal, which also springs up unasked at

  Bramasole. This soup, too, is made with soaked bread,

  with the addition of onion and garlic.

  Sopa de tomate à Alentejana, also Sopa de tomate com toucinho,

  linguiça e ovos: tomato soup made with beef stock,

  sometimes served with sausage and eggs.

  Açordo de espinafres com queijo fresco, ovos e bacalhau:

  “dry” soup of spinach, fresh chee
se, eggs, and cod.

  Sopa de poejos com bacalhau: pennyroyal with dried cod.

  Sopa de peixe com hortelã da ribeira: fish with a strong river

  mint with the appearance of tarragon.

  Sopa de cação: skate with coriander and vinegar,

  sometimes paprika.

  Sopa de feijão com mogango: beans and pumpkin, something

  the pilgrim families might have made.

  Sopa alentejana de espargos bravos: wild asparagus, which is

  also a Tuscan mania. There the bitter little strings are

  usually cooked into a frittata.

  Sopa da panela: many kinds of meat, bread, and mint.

  Sopa de alface com queijo fresco e ovos escalfados: lettuce

  with fresh sheep’s cheese and eggs, which we had at

  the pousada one night. It had a clear broth with

  floating ingredients, like a Japanese soup.

  Sopa de feijão e batata com ossos de porco: beans, potatoes,

  and pork bones.

  Sopa de túberas com linguiça e toucinho: truffle soup with

  sausage, fatback, and eggs.

  Açorda à Alentejana: bread and garlic.

  We reach Óbidos by noon. A walled and white town on a hill crowned by a castle and tower, Óbidos’s beauty has earned it a stop on every traveller’s itinerary. There are few of us at this time of the year, but all the commercial activity in town is geared toward the tourist trade. Something inevitably goes out of the life of a town when that happens. The houses are appealing, bedecked with flowers and the whitewash often trimmed with sunny yellow borders. The largest wisteria trunk in Christendom travels along the side of a village house. Many sweet churches invite one to stop awhile. After Estremoz and Évora, we’re less enchanted here. We could have been the first tourists ever in Estremoz as far as I could tell, and Évora, a UNESCO World Heritage site like Óbidos, is not at all subsumed by tourism.

  Since we’re celebrating my birthday today, Ed urges me to find something special. Because Portugal is known for table linens, coverlets, and sheets, I stop at a shop on an upper street. Everything looks enticing. I select creamy white scalloped sheets with hand-embroidered flowers my mother would have wanted.

  At the pousada, the castle at the top of town, we are given the room in the tall tower. At first, we’re thrilled. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair. We cross a battlement with an enormous view to reach the tower. The entrance opens into a lower room with a little place to sit, an armoire, and a bathroom. To reach the bedroom, you essentially climb an almost vertical, ankle-breaker ladder into a dungeon room with a wood-paneled, curtained canopy bed (how did they ever get it up here?) and a small desk on which waits the pousada’s chilled champagne. The three windows are slits through which arrows were shot from crossbows. Since hardly any light comes in, we turn on the bedside lamps, both of which have Christmas-light wattage. The room is literally stone cold. Up this high the wind screams around the corners. Do I feel the tower sway? Downstairs is even colder, and our two bags take most of the space. Although it is only late afternoon, we decide to open the champagne and toast my having a birthday in a real medieval tower. How often will that occur? Ed turns on the television, and from under the duvet in the knight-in-armor bed, we watch a hilariously terrible Elvis Presley movie in English with Portuguese subtitles. By the end, we have finished the whole bottle. To add to the surreal, the pousada dining room is empty except for one table of extremely large and well-dressed Portuguese who look as if they stepped out of Botero paintings. They hardly speak at all through course after course of an excellent dinner.

  What dream will come to me on my birthday high in a tower? Images influenced by the wedding of Afonso V and Isabel, who wed in the peaceful church on the parque when the groom was ten, the bride eight. Or maybe a narrative about the famous Josefa de Óbidos, the seventeenth-century local woman artist much revered, though only two of her paintings remain in town. Nothing, I hope, about the pillory outside Santa Maria. But after the champagne, after the red wine with dinner, I sink into the dark, dark bed and sleep with no dreams at all. Ed is dreaming something because he laughs aloud in his sleep. “What’s funny?” I ask in the dark.

  “You.”

  We leave early, after a walk around the town walls and castle. Some distance restores the original enchantment of Óbidos. Moorish porches, stone steps up and down passageways, and the moon-white houses in the early morning certainly cast their spell. And anywhere the scent of orange blossom drifts, I’m happy.

  The roads bear much more traffic in the north than in the Alentejo. Portuguese drivers seem rather reckless. We’re used to Italian roads, where people drive fast but with their minds on their business. They usually have considerable skill at the wheel. We trail a truck loaded with cork for miles as it weaves down the road. At each bump the cork flies in the air. A man sits on top of a hay wagon pulled by a donkey, driving others on the road to rash acts. Two lanes become three—the middle of the road seems totally what the boys in my hometown used to call “guts go.” You keep to your far side and venture into the middle to pass, straddling the yellow line. Two wagons full of Gypsies, pulled by horses with other horses attached behind, trot down the highway. Women ride up top, wearing flowered scarves and nursing their babies. Everyone swerves around them. This is crazy. And dangerous. I try to control Ed’s urge to pass by frequent screams.

  We’re looking for our country-villa-turned-hotel near Coimbra. When we find it, finally, we come upon a teensy oasis, a dreamy, dreamy house ringed by industry and apartment blocks: what they don’t show you on a Web site. The place itself, Quinta das Lágrimas, is glorious, a sprawling yellow villa with converging stone staircases on the second level. It’s a microcosm of the city of Coimbra, a fabulous small city on the Mondego River, with ugliness all around. We walk in from the hotel, past a fantastic park for children. All the architectural styles of Portugal are reproduced in a miniature village. Once again we say to each other what a perfect vacation Portugal offers for a family with children. The interior of the town drops us into the Old World. A woman with a basket of bread balanced on her head makes her way up a flight of stone steps from one street to the other. Another two carry on their heads big baskets of laundry. The university, oldest and most venerable in Portugal, centers on a square surrounded by buildings where students and professors for centuries have studied and learned. The bell tower dates from 1728. One of the bells, known as the cabra, the nanny goat bell, keeps the official time of the city. This is a walking city. The café next to the Santa Cruz church has stoked generations of intellectual coffee sippers both inside, in part of the former church, and at tables outside on the praça. The church itself, once elaborately carved in the Manueline style, looks as if a big wave came over a drip castle. Inside, the calming blue and white tile. Outside, a playful fountain with some of the worst street musicians in the world perched around it. We follow the patterned sidewalks for a four-hour walk, absorbing the vibrant life of the town.

  Carlos has given us the name of a tasca. Fortunately, because it’s so local we might never have ventured inside if we’d simply peered in the door. Half the size of a one-car garage, the tasca is lined floor to ceiling with notes and drawings from patrons, on napkins, notebook paper, matchbooks—anything. One flick of a match, and we’d be torched. We’re squeezed into chairs at a tiny corner table, and three regional cheeses are quickly brought, along with a basket of bread that could bring tears to your eyes. Then we are served bowls of cabbage soup. The Portuguese man at the next table offers us some of his wild boar. This never has happened to me in any other country in the world. Then the waiter appears with a pewter platter of grilled pork with chunks of garlic, coriander, and olive oil, followed by a terra-cotta oven dish of rice and beans in broth. A table of men gnaw at what looks like a heap of bones, then move on to pork stew and a bowl of spinach steaming with garlic. We don’t even know the name of the place. Is it Manuel ze Dos Ossos?
Carlos’s address, scrawled in Ed’s notepad, says Beco do Forno, 12, behind the Astoria hotel. We couldn’t find it and asked several people for the tasca. All of them, including a policeman, pointed us here. Every bite is de-lish, and we relish the atmosphere of workers and businesspeople all chowing down on hearty food.

  The restaurant of the country villa, Quinta das Lágrimas, is called Agua. Open just two weeks, it’s in the modern addition to the villa. For my taste, they’ve made a mistake with this addition. It feels like an industrial park café. But the young German chef is deft, and I am blessed with salmon in a poppy sesame crust, a game pie with a dark truffle sauce. Ed has spinach lasagne with saffron and figs. Yikes! But he says, “Not bad.” And because he loves cod in all its forms, he orders it with mustard and shallots. This is the first meal we have had in Portugal that only tangentially refers to local tradition. Instead the chef takes in the influences of colonial Portugal. Maybe the people of Coimbra will enjoy this fusion of Portuguese ingredients with references to all the discoverers’ conquests in the Americas and the East. I don’t know about that saffron and figs, though.

  Our trip is coming to an end. So much of Portugal we have missed. We’ve seen only a few towns in the north, and nothing of the lower Alentejo or the Algarve. I would love to go to Madeira and the Azores. To those ancient gods of the crossroads, I acknowledge how little our choices allow us. Will we return, take another month to explore Portugal? I would like to come back every year and see another piece of this rich puzzle. How little I know. The privilege of this kind of trip is the immersion course in history, art, cuisine, and landscape. How fortunate that our last stop in the north becomes our favorite town.