My Street and the Mountain by Manuel Tomás

I don’t need another god; the Mountain is enough for me. I understand the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Mountain, always present on the island, shaping it geographically and shaping the lives of the people around the sea.

                        Luísa Franco, The Mountain and the Titanic

Childhood is a gap in time on the street of our memory. It is the smell of the earth plowed in March and of the cornfields that no longer exist, rivaling the smells of the grape harvest, when we heard the sweet wine dripping from the vats. We turned the handles of the mills on the ox carts, stopped on the road, at the door of the shop, and drank a liquid of hope for a life still promising, before the suffocating, intoxicating smell of the still’s dregs, before, before almost all of us emigrated to the Americas or to other islands and to the mainland.

On the island, we are always on the eve of departure, as the poet José Martins Garcia, from Criação Velha, told us. We live at the top of a staircase ready to take us to the boat that will cross the Channel to anywhere, so that we will always be tied to that line drawn on the sea, which soon disappears, but always remains alive and connected in our memories and in our desire to return one day.

We liked to watch the steamers heading towards the horizon, because they were all going west, bound for America and Canada, and that was the dream of everyone on my street, who became even more excited when a letter or a bag of clothes arrived. The bag of clothes from America was an event. Those who didn’t receive one were sad, as was the case with me, because I lived too far away to receive such a gift, as neither my father’s brothers nor my grandmother’s sisters remembered t ly to give us such a present, which, when I went to the post office in the village, I saw in piles up to the ceiling of the room.

My street has history, especially stories, and even has the official name of an illustrious person. Still, in the toponymy of my heart, I only want to know it as Rua de Cima (Upper Street) and nothing else. I want more, I want to know it only as my street, the one I never left, even after I never lived there again. In fact, I only lived there continuously and physically for ten years. After that, I only returned on vacation, for short periods, and not every year. At the end of the ten years, I left, and until I was seventeen, I only returned in the summer, to the amazement of the girls and, above all, to my delight. In the meantime, I wandered around the world.

My street will always be the one where I was born and not the one where I live, because that street no longer exists, and that is precisely why I still live there without having experienced everything it was.

The street where I live now is also my street. Still, it is another street that is mine and not my street, the one where being there is being alone with it, without thinking about anything else, like Pessoa watching the rivers that do not flow in his village and are more beautiful than the Tagus, because “the Tagus is the most beautiful river that flows through my village.” It’s true, the Tagus also flowed on my street! Then it dried up, and it’s not the same anymore, the Tagus that never flowed on my street.

It’s a wandering in search of myself, but I’m no longer there, on the street where I was born and still live! My street is getting smaller, but it used to be big, oh, how big it was, so big that we could see the whole world from there, even without climbing the rooftops.

I haven’t lived there since I was ten, but I relive the place where the girls of my life lived.

From my street, I could see Faial receding a little to the other side of the channel, and São Jorge even further north, in another channel with rougher weather. Above all, I could see and loved the mountain, always in front of us or behind us, but I always felt it was protective, always watching over us. We learned to love it, listening to the adults ask it as soon as they got out of bed, almost always in the early hours of the morning, what the weather would be like that day.

And she, the Mountain, always had the right answer, never lying, although she often did not openly reveal the weather that would befall us on days with four or more seasons. Or else she would hide, and that was also taken as a strong sign of the weather we would have to face.  If there was a cape over the small peak, it was sure to be bad weather; sometimes, in summer, they said that “it showed, but it wouldn’t rain”; if there was a long strip of clouds at the foot and the rest was clear, it was certain that we would have a day of excellent conditions; if the mountain was very “close,” impressively blue in its rugged morphology, almost within reach, no one would escape a heavy downpour, even if the sky was completely clear. That was how men chose the type of work they would do each day, but they usually decided the day before, as they were certain that the mountain was one day ahead of the weather forecast. Much later, I heard a meteorologist at Horta airport say that the peak of Pico showed the weather twenty-four hours in advance!

If I am writing about my street, I owe it to the challenge set by an old friend from there, who called me from Lisbon to say that I wrote about so many things, but never wrote about our street.

How do you write about our street? The life and people I had known there no longer existed, but that was where I had known them, and so I drew on my memories, and it was always the girls from my street who appeared to me, even when I wasn’t talking about them. It was as if it was them I wanted to continue talking to.

You can’t explain it, you just feel it!

And that’s how I brought to the surface some memories from the past, when we were happy and didn’t always realize it, because the horizon of our expectations fit entirely within a small hand, a small child’s hand.

 The whole world fit around us, in such a way that geography was anything but complicated, since we thought, for example, that you could see Spain from Lisbon. We would say to each other that, from our street, with the sea in front of us, and the sea was much bigger than Lisbon, we could see Faial, which was another island, so how could you not see Spain from Lisbon, if they were two shores of our imagination? And they must also be two islands… because those who are born on an island only see, measure, and divide everything and all things as if they were islands.

Harmony reigned in my street, because either people hardly spoke to each other, just “good morning” or “good afternoon,” or because they were really good friends and got along well.  Some were godparents, with their respective godchildren. And everything went well until one fateful day when an argument broke out, as it usually does, for a reason that has nothing to do with the real reason that had been growing on the way to the fatal outcome. The same thing happened with my family. I had the misfortune of finding myself in two such situations. I won’t tell you about the family one! The one with my special neighbor happened when I saw her with a glass, one of those wine glasses, at the gate, asking to borrow some sugar, just like my neighbor still comes to ask me for a lemon or a sprig of parsley, and my grandmother, who was already brooding over it for some stupid reason, which I won’t mention either, saying that the sugar was at Mau Preira’s bar, that there was none left at home. I, almost in tears, leaning against the pigsty, watching the scene at the gate and realizing that a long and beautiful friendship was about to end. The friendship glass was spilled, and they stopped talking to each other. I was the only one who continued to go to my neighbor’s house. But on that late afternoon and evening, I cried over the misfortune of the end of our friendship. The rift was so great that they stopped going to each other’s houses, started missing pig slaughterings, didn’t go to a wedding or two, and didn’t see my mother in tears when her godson arrived from Lisbon to greet her at her house, without her waiting for him. He would say that it had nothing to do with any anger between the other people.

Later, as time passed, the anger faded until it disappeared, and the friendship was resumed, which, deep down, had never ceased to exist.

A plate of lentils can cost you your inheritance, a cup of sugar can cost you a friendship. Life is so short that nothing justifies ending a friendship. If it is a true friendship. The friendship was so great, greater than some close family relationships, that my mother told me to tell the neighbor that there had been construction work at our house during the period of estrangement. They got me a room of my own, and to do so, they had to move my grandmother’s loom to a house built mainly for agricultural purposes, installing it on the second floor, where there was more space and better working conditions. They made a door between my room and my parents’ room, and I had to tell the neighbor what had been done because, if the friendship was still in effect, they would have asked her opinion about the work, as they always did.

Gossip has immeasurable power, both today and in those days when it was the gossips who corresponded to today’s cell phones and the internet, albeit at a slower pace, but also very destructive.

 This was just a detail of life transferred to a mere cup of sugar, like the straw that broke the camel’s back, which wasn’t even full when the neighbor asked for it, “just a little bit for my evening barley coffee.”

I was born at home, in my parents’ bedroom, on Rua de Cima, next to a Japanese maple waiting for red flowers, and next to a huge, beautiful shade tree that grew freely in front of the living room counter, where in the summer they held evening gatherings by the light of oil lamps. And our noses were black, and no one told us why.

I will always call it that, even though it has the name of an illustrious man—the streets are almost exclusively named after men, which I have always found very strange and unfair, especially since girls and women were (and are) much more numerous on my street. And in the world.

According to my mother, at around six in the morning, my father was sent to Criação Velha to call the midwife, a curious woman who helped other women give birth, when she went into labor with increasing contractions, which lasted about six hours, as confirmed by my birth certificate, which indicated that I was born at noon. No doctor, no nurse, no support during pregnancy, not even at birth, everything was as it had always been, so anyone who escaped had to be special.

It’s good that everything has changed, but we can’t forget that time and way of life, even to appreciate what we have today and know how to demand it with consistency and responsibility. But it seems that many people think they only have rights and that responsibilities only exist for others, especially for those in government.

My siblings were born in the so-called Hospital (later renamed the “Health Center”), which had one doctor for the entire facility, one nurse, and one assistant, and was just one floor forward. The improvement was so substantial that everything seemed different, even though it was so little. I remember the hospital’s opening ceremony, in the place where I used to go after mass with my maternal grandfather to watch Pico Sport play Atlético das Angústias do Faial. From there I went to have an X-ray and see one of my brothers, because when I broke my head and chin, I was treated at the pharmacy on the pier. I remember the one on my chin, but not the treatment for my head. I must have fainted. And I escaped! Perhaps not from all my ailments! But that’s another story.

However, there is a coincidence with my birthday, or a decision by the Fates who wove it, which I cannot fail to reveal. Coincidence or more, much more, signs from another dimension? Many years after I was born, at around six in the morning on my birthday, I received a phone call, one of the worst of my life, if not the worst. It was the nurse from Santa Casa da Misericórdia giving me the news of my mother’s death. She was ninety-three years old. I couldn’t have been sadder, and the coincidence of the day and time made a big impression on me. Many years ago, at that exact time, my mother was in pain for me, going into labor; at that moment, I was in pain for my mother! An old joy now gave way to permanent sadness.

Some things cannot be explained; you just have to feel them.

My father and mother died, and only my mother knows that my father died, and he doesn’t know that he died, but I know, and I feel sorry for them and miss them. My father had only one suit in the 1950s. It was a black suit with trousers so wide that from the side they looked like full skirts, and he wore it on Sundays in the 1960s, when trousers became tighter, and I felt a little ashamed of my father’s trousers. Little did I know that a few years later, his pants would be back in fashion. My father didn’t even notice and was happy in his very wide trousers, which were long enough to make skirts for the girls on my street. After the mid-1970s, even suits and trousers became more democratic, and I saw my father wearing other suits that were in line with the standards of the time.

Then he got other suits, several of them, and that caused a funny scene. He took some euro notes with him to the grave. It wasn’t much. After the funeral, my brother asked my wife if she had taken anything from his coat pocket. She said no, she hadn’t even put her hand in her pocket. So, after checking the other jackets, he concluded that there was money in that grave. When, seven years later, because of my mother, the same grave was opened, there was no sign of any money. A sign that euro notes are not eternal. If he had been an ancient Roman, the money would have been used to pay the boatman…

I don’t remember my father ever getting into the terylene fashion or the white shirt with collar stays. He had two ties. One black and one greenish with branches. A pair of shoes and some black socks, always inside the shoes, going from one use to another. He had wool socks for his sandals, but they didn’t fit in his black shoes, which were made by his brother, who was a shoemaker. On Sundays, before mass, he would send me to fetch his shoes and socks. They already had a special smell, but I had no choice but to try them on every eight days.

I’ve always been one to rummage through everything. I really liked opening drawers and investigating. I looked through the notebooks my father kept from his time in elementary school and saw how neat and tidy his work was. And I discovered that I had always had a crush on my mother. Even in elementary school, I got into trouble because my grandfather was the owner of the oxen, and I wrote receipts for him. At that school, we learned a lot, even how to write receipts for large sales.

Before I started school and had the same teacher as my father, I discovered something strange that also smelled strange. I ran into the kitchen screaming and crying because my mother was very sick and almost dying. I was carrying in my innocent hands some white cloths covered in blood, taken from the bedside of my mother in her room. There were other clean cloths, and I thought they were to help with her illness. If there were so many and some were so bloody, it was a sign that she was very ill and dying. It must have been a very bad illness. I only knew about my own fevers, and none of them were associated with blood. So this must have been very serious. They snatched the clothes from my hands. Violently. My mother. Screaming and hitting me mercilessly on my head, which hadn’t been cracked yet, and my father and grandfather were silent, only my grandmother told my mother to stop, that she wanted to continue, and I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a friendly look from my grandmother and realized that maybe the danger wasn’t that great. I just didn’t know how badly I had been beaten. After all, I wanted to save my mother. I didn’t want to lose her. The screaming continued, telling me not to move where I shouldn’t, to shut up, but I opened my mouth wider and cried copiously without stopping. I didn’t understand anything. It seemed that everyone knew about the problem except me. No one explained anything to me, just as they hadn’t before. I had to keep quiet and not touch the minister’s pigeonhole anymore. Of course, I continued to peek, secretly, and saw fewer bloody rags. Something had changed; there were fewer, and I thought my mother’s health was improving.

That night, I prayed for my mother’s health and waited for morning to make sure she was alive. There was a little help from my grandmother. The mischievous smile I saw on her face, through my tears and snot, was real. She came to my ear and told me that it was all natural and that everything was fine, not to worry, that it was just the way it was, but she didn’t tell me what “just the way it was” meant. Anyway, I felt more relieved, and when I saw my mother early in the morning, I felt really fine. There weren’t so many bloodstained rags anymore. Perhaps my innocent curiosity contributed to better hygiene, which I only understood much later.

When I was seventeen, I saw my first sanitary pad. I was already in high school in Horta. Some of my closest friends would open their bags to show us their pads, and we would laugh and laugh, and that was that. They were “forbidden things” or Catholic morality didn’t like the subject to be talked about. How sad and ignorant!

But I will never forget that when I wanted a hug of solidarity, I got a tremendous slap, one or more. Always learning, from an early age!

The girls on my street never talked to me about this, and some of them already had their periods, but they were older and I didn’t trust them. The ones my age only talked to me after I moved away from my street. I love them all the same.

A chapter from the new book As Raparigas Lá da Minha Rua by Manuel Tomás.

Translated by Diniz Borges

The review done in Portuguese about this wonderful book will be published in English here on Filamentos.

This book can be purchased in Portuguese through Companhia das Ilhas.

Homepage

Brief Literary Biography of Manuel Tomás (from Companhia das Ilhas website)

Born in Madalena do Pico in 1950.

Main publications: A Música das Sete Cidades (essay, 1999); Entre Sei Lá E o Quê (poetry, in collaboration with Marta Oliveira, 2012); Picolândia (chronicles, 2012); Maroiço (poetry, 2013); Nunes da Rosa, Estudo e Antologia (2013); Hélder Fernandes – Empreendedor (biography, 2013); Ainda Há a Chuva a Cair (poetry, 2015); O Pintor Excessivo (novel, 2015); De Amicitia (in collaboration with Marta Oliveira and Gracinda André, poetry, 2015); Falquejando os Dias (poetry, 2018); José da Rosa – Vida e Obra de um Músico (biography, 2018); As Raparigas lá da minha Rua (chronicles -that really can be read as a novel-, 2025).

Books by Manuel Tomás published by Companhia das Ilhas.