Back at our quaint little apartment across town, Anna is still awake. She is sitting at the dining table, doodling on a large piece of paper. Vera retires to the bedroom almost immediately. It’s been a long day for her; she has seen enough. Rita crashes on the couch. Kicks her shoes off her feet.
“How was your evening?” I ask Anna. “Did you connect with the muse?”
Anna shows me a pile of blue ink drawings she made while we were out. They look like the patterns on the azuleijos she photographed during our walks. Each sheet of paper consists of a different intricate design. They are pretty, but to me they look more like art therapy than art, but I am not one to make a judgment. Maybe she is planning to do something with them.
“Show her your jewelry,” Rita calls from the couch. “They are really special.”
Anna puts her hand over a necklace that hangs above her sweater. It is a blue crochet thread with several seashells, beads, and other small objects hanging on it. Some of objects are partly covered with the same blue crochet. I recognize the necklace. I saw some of its sisters when I visited Rita’s booth in one of the festivals she worked in after she returned from her last trip to Israel and Spain.
“Who would buy something so ugly,” I blurted out to Rita when I first saw one of those “special” necklaces. They were notably different from the eclectic collection of jewelry on Rita’s festive table.
“People have different tastes,” Rita shrugged, unmoved. “Someone will buy it,” she predicted.
Back then, I believed Rita’s wisdom. She’s been selling custom jewelry for quite a while and knows her clientele. But now I feel somewhat trapped looking at Anna’s necklace hanging around her own neck rather than spread on Rita’s table. What am I supposed to say?
I know etiquette requires that I appreciate the necklace, but integrity calls for the truth. Silence might be the best solution. While I try to decide how to graciously maneuver out of the unfortunate situation, Rita joins us at the table.
“Did you start building a website to sell your jewelry?” Rita asks Anna. Rita has a Facebook page where she promotes her own jewelry business, but the traffic on it is sluggish to say the least.
“I don’t have a website, but I have pictures on my phone,” Anna responds. She picks up her phone and scrolls through some stuff. Then she shows us the pictures.
I can recognize a master crocheter and Anna is one. My mother, too, was a master crocheter, but she had never called herself an artist. She did it to occupy her hands when she watched television or was cooped up in her bombproof bedroom during aerial bombings. When she was lying on her deathbed, she bequeathed to me a magnificent table cover that she completed during the First Gulf War. Anna on the other hand, uses this art form to hold the world around her together. She shows me pictures of a tree trunk and rocks of different sizes that she covered in crochet patterns. Even a part of a garden fence.
Looking at Anna’s work, I get a better sense of her angst. Her art seems more like an obsession, an uncontrollable urge to interrupt the world and make it into something that it is not, or maybe cannot be. I am not an expert on art, but I understand some rules of esthetics and none of the work I see follows them.
Anna is unperturbed by rules, not in her art, her parenting style, or traveling decisions. She has her own rules or aspirations, which I am still trying to decipher. She puts away her phone and begins preparing her camp site on the floor between the wall and the dinner table. Rita drags herself back to the couch to scroll down her phone and see if she missed any new video posted on her page. For me, the day is not yet over. I want to be outside, get some fresh air. Just to be polite I ask the two women if they want to join me. To my relief they turn me down.
* * *
No one is out on the street at this hour but me. A few buildings up the hill, I spot a menu inside a golden frame hanging by a heavy wooden door. If there is a restaurant inside the quiet building, it is completely hidden. A man comes out with a large trash bag and throws it inside a bin standing by the sidewalk. He does not acknowledge me or even look up. Maybe he didn’t notice me. I continue down a narrow alley, trying to see if there is life behind the closed windows, but nothing gives. No lights, no music, no people anywhere. The blue light of television screens spilling out of living room windows, which is so common where I come from, is nowhere to be seen. A few blocks away from the apartment, I pass a large mansion surrounded by a tall white wall. I can’t see the entrance to the mansion, not even a pedestrian gate.
I continue down the hill all the way to the main street, where I saw a street car passing by earlier in the day. Even this street feels deserted, but I feel safe. A young woman passes me on the sidewalk. She could be a student at a local university or maybe she has just finished work and is on her way home. A few restaurants are still open. One tiny restaurant is full of people. The tables are covered with white tablecloths and white napkins can be seen on plates giving the place an aura of respectability. The diners appear to be having a good time. Wine glasses are full, candles are shimmering in the soft light, and the sound of silverware clinking against plates can be heard through the window. I pass another restaurant. The small dining area is below street level. I look in. A man in a knee-length white apron is sweeping shards of white china piled on the floor. It does not look like an accident. I wonder if there has been a celebration of some sort earlier on. I should check if they break china in Lisbon as they famously do in Greece when they get excited. Maybe it is a Greek restaurant.
I cross the street and turn into a small park attached to an art museum. At the bottom edge of the park, an open-air restaurant is closing. I can see the river from where I am standing and a long bridge that connects Lisbon to somewhere on the dark horizon. On the other side of the bridge there is a tall, lit statue with a cross on top. I saw that monument earlier during the walk to the Tower of Belém. Probably another pilgrimage spot with a story behind it. I can always ask Google.
I enjoy seeing the city in the dark, alone, without a guide and other tourists. I get to feel the ambience without the nervous energy of having to see everything or figuring out how to get to the next attraction and why even bother. I am by myself, no one is pushing me to go anywhere, see anything, buy stuff, eat when I am not hungry, or learn about something I don’t care to know. I can just be. Feel the pulse of a city I don’t know and discover that it does not exist only for the sake of tourists, but mostly for the sake of its own residents, who also work in furniture stores, barber shops, dental clinics, graphic design and small startup companies. Not just in souvenir shops, restaurants, bakeries, museums, or high-end boutiques.
When I get back to the apartment, Rita lies awake on the couch, scrolling on her phone and giggling to herself. Anna is on the floor, sleeping under a pile of blankets.
“That was a short walk,” Rita says, not lifting her eyes from whatever she is watching on her phone.
Since I did not time myself, I have no idea how long I was out. All I know is that scrolling down a phone makes time fly. So maybe for her I was out for only a minute. “It was long enough for me,” I say and wish her a good night.
I go to bed. A few minutes after I turn the light off, I hear Vera’s voice. It start as a loud argument just like on the night before and slowly develops into blood curdling screams. This time I am not horrified. I know she will go on and off for about ten or fifteen minutes and then it will be quiet again.
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