The bull stands panting, all compressed mass and furious fury. My mother, a tiny figure dressed in a black catsuit and high-heeled boots, steps into the arena. Throwing his arrogant glove at the middle-aged men sitting in the stands of Campo Pequeno, the forcado holds out his cape without waiting for a recipient. My mom is waving bright pink silk in a strange way. The bull lowers his head. I close my eyes tightly.
The year is 1979, I am 12 years old and this is my first holiday abroad, accompanying my father to an advertising industry party he was invited to in Lisbon. This moment – a private bullfight staged for the delegates (none of whom expected one of their partners to enter the ring) – is one of several moments that would mark the arrival of a kind of adulthood, my own Age of Discovery in a built city. a monument to him.
Before this, memories were in small fragments that barely illuminated my childhood. But during those 10 days in May, I made a series of memories that I can recall more than 40 years later. Travel will do that, of course.
According to psychologist and behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, each of us has a “remembering self” and an “experiencing self.” The experiencing self knows only the psychological present; Millions of convenient moments that leave little or no trace. “Does this hurt?” When asked, it is the experiencing self that responds. Whether the answer is important or not is decided by the remembering self, which evaluates which moment is worth remembering.
Kahneman describes our remembering self as an internal storyteller who not only organizes the past narrative but guides us into a future based on the expectation of creating new memories. That’s exactly why we love going on vacation, explains Kahneman. People want lives filled with good stories. Or at least interesting.
I don’t remember how hard my father was breathing on the way to Lisbon, but I see him standing on his five-star hotel bed, an oxygen tank a non-issue in his otherwise elegant room. The Portuguese doctor, with extraordinary foresight, says that if he does not quit smoking he will die soon.
Maybe I’ve heard this word before but now it’s in print: emphysema. Fingers stained yellow from years of squeezing his pipe spread across the white sheets; tubes coming out of his nose like silicone snot. It’s a complex mix: disgust and shame.
At least he’s recovering enough to attend the conference. While the men talk about market share and sales offers, the wives go on trips in and around Lisbon. The palaces of Sintra, especially the Pena Palace – bright yellow Moorish turrets and ornate domes atop a beautiful confectionery – inspire nothing but awe in my narrow-minded eyes.
Then the conference ends and it’s just the three of us left. We revisit Lisbon’s sights, taking photos from the walls of Castelo de São Jorge; The monochrome swirl of the beautiful cobbled streets of Cascais. We eat lobster and Portuguese seafood rice. We are a happy family for the last time.
When I finally returned to Portugal, I was 56 years old; I am two years older than my father was when he died. My husband and I check into Hotel das Amoreiras, a jewel box of a hotel overlooking Jardim das Amoreiras, an oasis shaded by ginkos and maple trees, but within walking distance of Principe Real’s lively bars and restaurants.
There’s an envelope of faded photographs in my bag; On the back of each one was written May 1979 in my mother’s handwriting. These will be my guide: I will revisit all the places where we posed, I will try to reach the remains of the rude girl who is dead to me, like my father in the photographs.
Lisbon is not the first city I looked for traces of the young girl I no longer remember. Johannesburg is the city where I grew up, but the City of Gold is a pure palimpsest, the past constantly being erased by the present, a constant reminder that prosperity does not mean future generations. And why would it be when prosperity is not shared? Decay is a form of social justice.
Lisbon, on the contrary, is developing; This is not just because Portugal’s economy is at its strongest in decades. The city carries its heritage well without fanfare; people live their short, butterfly lives under the Gothic arches of the 16th-century Mosteiro dos Jerónimos or climb the limestone steps of the Torre de Belém. Even the viewing angles have barely changed, from the Miradouro da Nossa Senhora do Monte to the recessed arches of the Cathedral of Se, which come into view from tram 28.
In Cascais I find the restaurant O’Pescador, which we visited several times in 1979. I show the waiter the photo of my father and me standing at the entrance. The sign has changed, the sidewalk has been widened towards the pedestrian street, but the facade is the same.
He hands it over to a big man with a big clock in the corner; The second-generation owner would have been about my age when I last ate at his father’s restaurant. He sends the photo back along with a glass of 30-year-old tawny port. We toast each other silently. As I leave, he calls out, “Don’t wait another 40 years to come back.”
In the marble foyer of the Palácio Estoril, I was introduced to the silver-haired duty manager, Jose Diogo. Incredibly, Jose has been working at the hotel since 1964; He would be here in May. He smiles at my excitement, seemingly unimpressed by a middle-aged woman searching for the past in a hotel that was home to European royal refugees and a “nest of spies” that included Ian Fleming, who stayed there in 1941.
In the interest of research, as I knock back Fleming’s favorite martini, Jose explains that nothing has changed at the wood-paneled bar, and then I follow him into a high-ceilinged reception room with chandeliers hanging like giant grapes, where breakfast was served in the 1970s. We walked over the tables piled high with pastries we’d stolen for lunch, then headed to the pool, which was as big as I remember.
My mother and I spent the last few days of the conference here, avoiding any further sightseeing trips. She escaped the arena unscathed, but her display of bravery set her apart from the delegates’ wives, who were perhaps jealous of their husbands’ admiration.
On our last night in Lisbon, my husband and I dine at Brilhante (00 351 210 547 981), a new restaurant but one that evokes my past more than O’Pescador. My father hated home cooking – “there’s no choice and you can’t send it back” – so restaurants were our de facto dining rooms; Sitting on the stand are the beds from my first childhood.
My father loved this luxurious bedroom, with banquettes in deep red velvet and rose gold mirrors with ribbed details reflecting a richly textured interior.
At the center, chefs lean with intense concentration over stainless steel under blood-red painted pressed ceilings, oblivious to the audience staring at them in brass-buttoned leather chairs. The steak is also in good shape: slightly charred on the outside and very, very rare, just the way he likes it.
Red cut glass glasses shine like jewels under the pools of light emitted by the tassel lamps. I raise one, I drink to the man who shaped me. The photos became the breadcrumb trail that led me to where we went, but I still don’t know who he really was.
how to
Easyjet flies to Lisbon from Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Gatwick, Luton and Manchester; Ryanair flies from Birmingham, Edinburgh, Stansted and Manchester; British Airways flies from Heathrow. TAP Air Portugal flies from Heathrow and Manchester. Hotel Das Amoreiras (00 351 211 633 710) has double occupancy from €196 per night, including breakfast.