Lisbon 1995

It was 1995, and I had settled in Lisbon, a bright city resting on the banks of the Tejo. There were several lovely neighborhoods in Lisbon, including Bairro Alto with the streamers of bougainvillea draped across the western hillside, and the Alfama, a cluster of white Moorish houses huddled on top of the eastern hills, but I lived in the Baixa, the valley that ran north from the river.

The Baixa moved at a staccato pace. It was the center of commerce, busy, gritty, and loud. The narrow streets were full of buses, trolleys, and cars and had broken mosaic stone sidewalks that were covered with dog shit and spit. The praças or squares were a mass of African immigrants, hundreds of them, smoking, chatting, loitering. People moved here and there, opening doors, buying snacks, rushing to and fro.

My apartment was on the Rua da Madalena, on the east side of the Baixa. This street was quieter and lined with small bars where old men in their tweed caps ate sea snails and lingered over their Sagres beer. The cafes were always busy, serving petite cups of black coffee as thick as crude oil, which the patrons slugged back while standing at the bar. Even further up the hill was a shortcut back to the quiet neighborhoods where African families ran small restaurants that served curry and goat stew while people sat near the open doors, smoking cigarettes and laughing loudly.

The building I lived in was one of those built after the earthquake of 1755, a building of beautiful white stone quarried from the banks of the Tejo that had acquired a thick layer of grime that covered all seven stories. The entrance to the building was a heavy wood door about eight feet high beyond which was the entryway, a vast empty space lit by a single light bulb hung from a ceiling many feet up. It was gloomy and, on dark days, you had to feel your way back to the stairs.
The apartment was a seventh-floor walkup. There was no elevator. The climb up the stairs was slow and arduous, especially if you carried groceries or a bag full of teaching supplies. The steps were cut of stone and had worn away in the center from the thousands of feet that had climbed them over the two centuries. The banister was a bare pole, hardly visible in the dim light. At each landing there was a wood door, closed and uninviting. The door on the seventh floor was equally uninviting and the key was heavy and difficult to turn in the lock, but once it did, the door opened onto a room that shone with light.

The apartment was small and there were French doors on either end. The floor sloped noticeably from the living room towards the kitchen where the French doors led to the void, a space where the church around the corner and the building nextdoor came together in a triangular space, seven stories high. The void was where pigeons roosted on the ledges of windows and women hung their wash out to dry. There was nothing to see but grimy walls covered with pigeon guano. Occasionally the sound of a radio playing fado would waft in during the springtime.

The highlight of the apartment was how the roof hung down to the edge of the bedroom window on the west side. On those summer evenings when bands played and fireworks were shot off over the Praça do Comercio, brave, young men would climb out onto the orange brick tiles and watch the sky and the river explode in a shower of colored lights.