A day in the life across the sea

David Sherman

Start the day with eggs, John or Joao, the young man who works here, brought us from his farm. Yolks yellow or orange, depending on the breed and he has several. He started working at the B&B when he was 18. Host, bar-keep at pool, bussing at breakfast, hard-core conversationalist, between shifts at the B&B he tends to his inheritance -- lambs, cows, donkeys -- they keep the fox away – and his egg dispensers that also provide his dinner.  He knows to the penny what each egg costs as he knows the economy of his operation. And the country. He also dabbles in fruit trees, crypto currency and other investments. He's 28, 50 kilos overweight and devours all restaurant leftovers we bring.

Back home it's winter transformed to spring. Chris has been driving to the post office to collect our mail for three months. His mail box is off the 329, closer to his house, but he says he enjoys the trek to fetch our piles of circulars, solicitations and income tax necessities. Gets to meet people, he says. He’s been living and skiing, or living to ski in town for decades, is a dependable actor in the local theatre company, helps raise money annually for la guignolée. Former air traffic controller when Mirabel was still handling international flights, he knows and seems to like everyone. It’s reciprocal.

We’ve decided to gift him a sweatshirt worn by the staff of a restaurant he liked when he visited here but instructions on how to find the store that sells the things are vague.

We hunt first by car, then on foot. The town is basically one main street with a few offshoots into ancient spruced up residential roads that lead nowhere, abandoned husks of homes and long-lost lives.

The sun is shimmering, the houses painted like they were in Montreal’s Mile End when I first moved there. Portuguese, fleeing the fascists, had bought a hunk of the neighbourhood before yuppies like me invaded. Bright blues, yellows and oranges are stark and gleam. As does the ocean across the street and down the hill.

Looking for directions, we stop at Carlos, our favourite restaurant.

Carlos, 40, inherited his father’s name and restaurant and works tirelessly -- greeting, suggesting, serving, cleaning. And lobbying.

“Why you not come here? Why stay in Canada? Sell what you have in Canada and come here, that’s what people do.”

It’s tempting but the town is crushed by tourists in summer. In winter, you can stroll the streets or walk above the ocean at dark and not see a soul. Just rain. And more rain.

We find the shop we’re hunting. In the store is the young man who rents a kiosk at the Intermarché supermarket on the highway to Luz and Lagos and Lisbon. It prints hard copies of whatever I’m working on – “Oh, you’re an ‘escritor’ and sells smokes, sunglasses, magazines and a hemp plant derivative that is legal here through some loophole. Marijuana is illegal to sell, but not to possess. He warns the stuff in the brown envelope is not benign.

We shake hands, big smiles for the secret we share about my habit. The guy who owns the shop is his uncle. “Ahh, you know my nephew.”

Almost everyone in town is related, someone’s cousin, aunt or uncle. Come often enough, shake enough hands, you can trace their family tree.

“Your nephew is a good man,” I say.

“Yes, he a good man. I love him,” says the shop keep. “Special price. Take five minutes. Thirty-five euros.”

He imprints the sweatshirt with the restaurant logo the staff wear, a red circle with a glass of beer. I want one myself.

“If you pay cash, I give you for 30 euros.” I do and he does.

We go back to Carlos for lunch. Order pasta with clams. Carlos asks if we’d like tuna added, odds and ends of blue fin he brings from Spain.

“Clams are enough,” we say.

The plates are piled high. It’s delicious, each clam endowed with flecks of garlic and pepper. Pasta is al dente. Carlos asks how we are enjoying it. We say it’s great.

“That’s good because I added the tuna,” he says. “I knew you’d like it.”

Ordering at Carlos often goes like this:

“I’d like the bitoque,” I say.

“You should try the goat,” he says.

“I feel like the bitoque,” I say.

“You should really try the goat.”

I eat the goat. He’s right.

This year, it’s “What should we have?”

Why waste time?

Often, he drops an appetizer.

“Try this, tell me if you like it.” We always do and it’s never on the bill.

Can’t write about Carlos without mention of Bodie, known to friends as Bode. He’s the size of a door frame, could play tackle for the Cowboys. Last year Bode spoke as little English as I spoke Portuguese, which means none. Calling him reserved would be an understatement but understandable. Black service people are often invisible to the guests they serve.

We made a point of talking to him though he understood not a word. We smiled. A work in progress. I'd offer my hand to shake and he skeptically did.

This week, Bode returned with a smile and a hug after disappearing for a time to Cape Verde, home that long ago threw out the Portuguese colonizers only to have many come to Portugal to work.

We can now speak six words of each other’s mother tongue, his big smile, the killer hug, worth the price of admission.

Carlos’ parents opened the place in ’82. They speak no English so they say only “Tudo bem?”

We come in, the old man stands, gives me a questioning thumbs up. His wife comes over to make sure Reisa is all right. I ate dinner here alone one night and told her Reisa wasn’t well. Ignorant of Portuguese, I rub my stomach.

They have checked with her twice now to make sure she’s recovered.

We trek home and I stop in at the barber across the square where I cut my hair last year. He stops cutting and shakes my hand, smile as broad as the sea that turned orange under the night’s full moon.

“You’re back! Good to see you. How are you?” I saw him for 15 minutes a year ago. Here that means we’re old friends.

Chris works hotel and adjoining restaurant and café. She’s slim, seriously tattooed, moody but has learned to smile, share inside jokes about the people and the place. Her grandmother had a stroke, her mother’s ill. Work seems a prison sentence. On her day off, she’s with her boyfriend at the café squeezed between the hotel and restaurant where she works. It’s a small town, not many places to unwind between gigs.

José, concierge for eons, books us for next season. Rooms with a view go fast and no one asks for a deposit or credit card until you leave. You cancel, there are always people waiting. It’s called trust, a concept forgotten everywhere else we’ve travelled.

He helped push our car when it died blocking the road. I promise he wouldn’t have to push my car again.

“I’ll push your car if it needs a push,” he says.

He’s going home to look after his demented mother. His sister spends her non-working hours doing same.

“It must be tough,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugs.

“We don’t do it because we have to, we do it because it’s love. It’s life.”

The rates are going up a few euros a day next year. He apologizes. Flustered, he shrugs and again apologizes. I tell him he’s been more than kind, not to worry. He shakes my hand hard enough to hurt my knuckles.

After dinner, we walk and then collapse in our room, again chastising ourselves for eating too much. I’ll probably sleep for a few hours. The Canadiens are playing tonight. Puck drop is at midnight local time and I’ll wake to watch. It’s the run-up to the playoffs. Nine euros a month for all the hockey your eyes can stomach, streamed on something called DAZN.

It’s as difficult to resist as the spicy frango piri piri or the juicy Iberian pork and the people who serve it.