Lisbon, 1989

The bus rolled through the rainy night. I looked out the window, trying to see something, but all I caught was my pockmarked reflection.

I was coming from two dispiriting weeks in Spain, where I had been sent in my new job as a newspaper travel editor. I had lived four years in Europe but had never traveled anywhere on assignment. The weight of expectation made me uneasy. I visited the sights with the other tourists; I ate the specialties by myself. Nothing interesting happened. No memorable moments occurred that would distinguish my stories from all the others about Madrid, Barcelona, and Seville.

Now I was on my way to Portugal, a country I had never been to. My Spanish was bad, my Portuguese almost nonexistent. And my grand entrance into Lisbon was going to be late at night, in the rain, on a bus.

We pulled into the station. I grabbed my leather bag and lugged it through the splattered streets. The first lodging I came to featured a grim stairwell that deposited me into a room filled with men staring despondently under fluorescent lights. I had entered a hostel for Angolan refugees.

A few blocks away, I checked into a business hotel. In the morning, I opened the curtains and got an unobstructed view of the hotel generator.

Outside, the city was still being washed by rain, a soft, steady drizzle. I found my way to the center, sliding over small stones in black-and-white patterns. Because of the weather, I kept my head down and my glasses clear, though in this way I was able to admire the pavement artistry. The people around me were dressed more conservatively than Madrileños; the women’s hemlines dropped a bit lower. When they spoke, the words that on paper looked like Spanish sounded almost Polish, with their showers of sibilants.

Ducking into a subway station, I boarded a train and found on commuters’ faces the usual urban underground tedium, though here, I thought, it seemed to transcend the quotidian and express something deeper, a collective regret for lost glory. I remembered the Portuguese word saudade, which goes beyond sadness to encompass a rich panoply: longing, melancholy, nostalgia, dolor. Had I already found it, or was it just the crush of wet raincoats?

The following day, the sun came out, filling the streets with watery light. The city had a worn, overlooked feel—here at the southwestern edge of Europe—that I found endearing. Yellow streetcars climbed the hills as if in an Old World San Francisco, and stout ferries crisscrossed the Tagus River. Taxis had ink-black bodies and seafoam green roofs that gave them a soothing, out-of-time look. Planes flew so low on their approach to the airport that they, too, seemed to be a part of civic transport, as if all you needed to do to flag a ride was raise both arms and hop onboard.

My favorite spot quickly became Rua Garrett. It was a stage set that masqueraded as a shopping street, at least the block that held the Art Nouveau coffeehouse A Brasileira. Placed at the edge of the café’s outdoor tables was a statue of Fernando Pessoa. It is sometimes said that if Pessoa hadn’t written in Portuguese, he would be as famous as Joyce and Kafka. (Another reason for the long faces on the subway?) The great writer didn’t stand on a pedestal. In fact, he didn’t even stand; he sat, at a café table that was part of the sculpture. Occasionally someone would place a glass on his table, or sit in the chair next to him. One evening, a tipsy woman tried to engage him in conversation. A waiter, watching the scene, shook his head woefully and said, “Poor Pessoa.”

I was becoming familiar with the street because I had moved to the Hotel Borges, next door to A Brasileira. Heading out in the morning to see the sights, I wondered whether I might get a better story simply by hanging out at the café, watching the parade of people, and talking to patrons. Because foreigners weren’t expected to speak Portuguese, a good number of Lisboners spoke English. And those who didn’t rarely let it hinder their native penchant for kindness.

Yet I was still too shy to try to engage with strangers who looked so focused on their own affairs.

One day, though, I got up the courage to call a friend of a friend. I went to a café (not A Brasileira) where three young women plucked the proper coins from my palm, inserted them into the phone on the wall, and then retreated to a polite distance. As soon as they saw me speak into the receiver, they waved goodbye with mission-accomplished smiles. Casimiro, on his end, suggested that I meet him and his girlfriend for dinner that evening.