by All pin cushion mass and glowering fury, the bull rises, panting. My mother, a tiny figure in a black suit and high-heeled boots, enters the arena. The forcado who threw his haughty gauntlet to the middle-aged men sitting in the stands of the Small Field (without ever expecting anyone to accept it) hands over her cloak. My mother clumsily waves the bright pink silk. The bull lowers his head. He closed his eyes tightly.
It’s 1979, I’m 12 years old and this is my first holiday abroad, attending an advertising industry meeting that my father was invited to in Lisbon. This moment – a private bullfight organized for the delegates (none of whom expected one of the wives to enter the ring) – is one of many that will mark a coming of age of sorts, my own Age of Discovery in a city that He built a monument to it.
Before this, memories are fragments, tiny fragments that barely illuminate my childhood. But during those 10 days in May I accumulate a series of memories that I am able to 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. It is the experienced self that responds when asked, “Does this hurt?” Whether the answer matters is decided by the remembering self, the one who evaluates which moment is worth remembering.
Kahneman describes our remembering self as the inner storyteller, curating not only the narrative of the past, but also leading us toward a future based on the anticipation of creating new memories. That’s precisely why we like to go on vacation, explains Kahneman. People want lives with good stories. Or at least, interesting.
I don’t remember the difficulties my father had breathing during the long trip to Lisbon, but I see him lying in his five-star hotel bed, with the oxygen tank out of place in the elegant room. The Portuguese doctor says normally that he will soon die if he does not stop smoking.
Perhaps you had heard the word before but now it is in print: emphysema. Fingers stained yellow from years of tamping his pipe are strewn across white sheets; Tubes coming out of his nose like silicone snot. It’s a complicated mix: revulsion and shame.
He recovers, at least enough, to attend the conference. While the men talk about market share and sales proposals, the wives go on tourist trips in and around Lisbon. The palaces of Sintra, particularly the Pena Palace (its bright yellow Moorish turrets and beautifully crafted domes) evoke nothing less than awe in my provincial eyes.
Then the conference ends and it’s just the three of us. We revisit the sights of Lisbon, taking photographs from the walls of Castelo de São Jorge; the monochromatic swirl of the pretty cobblestone streets of Cascais. We eat rice with lobster and Portuguese seafood. We are, for the last time, a happy family.
When I finally return to Portugal, I am 56 years old, two years older than the age at which my father died. My husband and I stayed at Hotel das Amoreiras, a jewel of a hotel overlooking the Jardim das Amoreiras, an oasis shaded by ginkos and maples, but within walking distance of Príncipe Real’s lively bars and restaurants.
In my bag is an envelope with faded photographs; May 1979 scrawled on the back of each one in my mother’s handwriting. These will be my guide: I will revisit all the places where we posed, I will try to find some remains of the clumsy girl in the photos, dead to me like my father.
Lisbon is not the first city in which I have traced traces of the young woman that I no longer remember. Johannesburg is the city I grew up in, but the City of Gold is pure palimpsest, the past constantly erased by the present, a constant reminder that prosperity does not mean posterity. And why should I, when prosperity is not shared? In decadence there is a kind of social justice.
Lisbon, on the other hand, is prospering, and not just because the Portuguese economy is the strongest in decades. The city shows off its heritage well, without fanfare, people live their lives, brief as butterflies, under the Gothic arches of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos from the 16th century, or climbing the limestone stairs of the Belém Tower. Even the privileged views, from the Miradouro da Nossa Senhora do Monte to the recessed arches of the Sé Cathedral, visible from tram 28, are largely unchanged.
In Cascais I find O’Pescador, the restaurant we visited several times in 1979. I show the waiter a photograph of my father and I, standing at the entrance. The sign has changed, the sidewalk has been widened to become a pedestrian street, but the façade is the same.
He takes it to a burly man with a thick watch sitting in the corner; The second generation owner would have been about my age the last time I ate at his father’s restaurant. He returns the photograph with a glass of 30-year-old tawny port. We silently toast each other. “Don’t wait 40 more years before you come back,” he yells at me when I leave.
In the marble lobby of the Estoril Palace I am introduced to the person in charge on duty, the gray-haired José Diogo. Incredibly, José has worked at the hotel since 1964; He would have been here in May. He smiles at my excitement, seemingly unfazed by a middle-aged woman searching for the past in a hotel that has hosted royal European refugees and “a nest of spies” that included Ian Fleming, who stayed here in 1941.
In the name of investigation, I sip Fleming’s favorite martini while José explains that nothing at the wood-paneled bar has ever been changed, then follow him to a high-ceilinged reception room where breakfast was served in the 1970s. , with chandeliers hanging like giant grapes. on tables laden with cakes that we stole for lunch, then we went out to the pool, huge as I remember.
My mother and I spent the last few days of the conference here, avoiding further tourist travel. She had left the bullring unharmed, but her display of bravery separated her from the wives of the delegates, perhaps jealous of the admiration of her husbands.
On our last night in Lisbon, my husband and I had dinner at Brilhante (00 351 210 547 981), a new restaurant but one that evokes my past even more than O’Pescador. My father hated home-cooked food – “there’s no option and you can’t give it back” – so restaurants were our de facto dining rooms; The cabin can accommodate the beds from my early childhood.
Lined with dark red velvet banquettes, rose gold mirrors with fluted details reflecting a richly textured interior, my father would have loved this louche dressing table.
In the center, chefs hunch over stainless steel in fierce concentration under pressed ceilings painted oxblood red, oblivious to the audience facing them in brass-buttoned leather seats. The steak is shaped, too: lightly charred on the outside and very, very rare, exactly how he liked it.
Under pools of light cast by tassel-fringed lamps, red cut-glass glasses sparkle like jewels. I raise one, toast to the man who formed me. The photographs have been a trail of crumbs that led me to where we went, but I still don’t know who he really was.
How to do it
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. The Hotel Das Amoreiras (00 351 211 633 710) has double rooms from €196 per night, breakfast included.
