A Village Somewhere in the Alentejo.

   Here, there is no story. In this place of one thousand faces and a few more, each heart is singing it’s own song. The cocks crow, the dogs bark, the bulls moan deeply and the sheep go baa..ah, and in between the gentle music of the chocalhos, the cowbells, which the locals make as if to create an orchestra in the fields, as well as to know where Canela and Alfazema and Torro have disappeared to at the back of the cork oak wood. Here there is no story except a thousand years of this, where the church clock strikes at the top of the village, out across the fields and the woods and the rivers, to the blue/green hills, where no one can hear them anyway. Time sits down and has a rest, governed more by sunrise and sunset, by ‘now we ought to go and feed the horses before it gets too dark,’ than by anything else, the horses that amble and stumble in their green winter pastures, nip each other on the neck and stand talking to each other in the cool sunlit haze, where the storks come down from their telegraph nests and pinch the odd frog who wasn’t looking, or walk like old bishops though the aisles of yellow clover.

      Here there is no story, unless you whisper, go from house to house, keeping everything so quiet. It’s quiet here, deserted are the streets apart from the old men in the square who seem to have lost each other today, given each other the slip, or later sit outside a cafe or two on the main road watching the cars go by. There’s a VW Beetle, a mellow shade of orange, driven three miles everyday since way back when, and a Renault Four with a seventy four number plate, I kid you not. This place had the good sense to build itself away from the main road, up the hill a bit, so everyone passing, passes to one side, leaves under the impression that there is nothing there, ‘…We missed it. Did we? No I think that was it. Shall we go back? No I think that was it. Shall we go back? No, there’s probably nothing there…’

     Sssh, there is no story, you won’t find one here. No statues to the navigators or the explorers, to the generals or even an local artist. There’s one statue. Who’s it to? A happy local chap who was just a happy local chap, and that’s that. You see, no need to make fuss, the streets go quiet, there’s young Fonseca stepping outside the bar and finding no one there has gone back in. A voice calls him back from inside, the barman, that’s all, it’ll be the same till the fields are dark, or Saturday or Sunday.

   On Saturday night some gather at the football club, the young side lost today or drew, or scraped a win, anyway, the tv’s on, the petiscos are out, and here are the horses, let’s go and talk to them. A pair of elegant and upright mares stand outside and toss their heads up and down when complimented or patted on the nose. Is that the horses or the mares? I do not know. The riders are Joe and Joane from the stables by the lake. Oh I see. Altogether now, we’ll all drink and chat here in the shadows as the sun goes down and the lights come on, horses and humans, an ancient combination, so close we can even have a laugh together on a Saturday night!

   There is no story here, the library had one customer today and it was me. There is no story here, the man and his daughter who run the stationers have been there since last month and last month was twenty years ago, and you’ll have to go to Évora if you want a battery charger, a carregador. The shelves are full of bottles of pop and magazines from last year, and a book or two, and on the bottom shelf down there, twenty cabbages, I don’t know what they’re doing there. Here on the top shelf are some books like this one I’m writing in, all beautiful and clean, white, pages, all ready for me to write a story in, if I had one. They’re only, what’s that say, ‘quanto é?’ The stationers daughter runs round from behind the counter and squints up through her misty glasses and I squint back through mine and she calls out, ‘Pai?’, ‘Dad?’, and he interrupts his conversation with a man buying a lottery ticket and squints down at us through his misty lenses. Two euros eighteen cents, he says and writes it in an exercise book and his daughter runs behind the counter and finds the change from an old wooden drawer and comes back round and presses it into my hand. It’s still warm now if I feel it.

   There is no story here, well, no, why should there be, you’re all wanting stories like something’s got to happen. The waves come crashing over the deck and Maria Constança, Maria Conceição and Maria João have got to be lost at sea and a big whale comes up from the deep and rescues them, or eats them, or they rescue each other. There are no whales here, except those in the clouds that go floating by, high over the rolling hills and the big blue sky, hot in the summer, baked dry, I don’t know why, flowers in the spring too many to pick, that’s the reason they don’t pick them, it’d be a shame to watch them die. There is no story here except there is no story, the shops open at nine and close at twelve thirty. After lunch they’ll be open again from three til’ five, though some don’t open at all, the antiques shop I’ve been waiting a month, or the clothes shop, last Tuesday, Saturday afternoon sometimes. Still, the man in the supermarket makes good sausages, is that a story? The man in the other one makes lovely little quiches and pies that melt in your mouth, two mouthfuls. The fruit and veg are the best. The lady on the till answers me ever so loudly, thirty seconds after I come in and say good morning or good afternoon. Sometimes she dozes, sometimes she’s on her phone. Later her young son comes in and says he’s having trouble with his homework, she says she’ll be back soon and not to worry, menino, not to worry.

     There’s a wall on the main street that takes all the traffic, the through traffic, the around traffic. It’s full of posters for bullfighting, Évora, Beja, Coruche, Aljustrel, José Palha, Augusto Brito, João Paes, espectáculo, incrível, and a picture of a bull unnamed. They’re torn at the edges and blow in the wind and last week someone, (were they angry or drunk?), tore them down. Gradually, new ones are filling up the space. Is that a story?

      The gypsy kids play up and down, the teenage girls ask me for money if I smile. The younger ones laugh, so I smile some more, and I don’t give them any money, and our smiling eyes meet and we all laugh. And that’s better than any money. Is that a story?

     Here there is no story, except the church clock chimes but no one goes to church. No one goes because they’ve been before and the priest knows what time they’ll come, for weddings and matinées and funerals and prayers. The priest knows the streets have their own sunlight and shadows, the hush and the peace is as close to god as anywhere. There are many other shepperds here too, but out in the fields and the keepers of horses and bulls and bees and olive trees and cork oak trees and hills and clouds and the sun. The church clock doesn’t need to tell anyone the time except a gentle reminder now and then. I heard it in the background last Tuesday. It was some way off, maybe it came from Évora?

     Last Tuesday I was walking along the road, by the cemetery, a group of young men came cycling past, in their lycra, all black and yellow and white and helmets and cycling gloves. They went past in a flash, banking the corner and disappeared by the wall. They came back round again ten minutes later, and one of them shouted in a broad Yorkshire accent, ‘…I told you….. should’ve taken the left fork!’, and they all banked round again and went twenty metres on and came to a halt and collapsed in the middle of the road and then started arguing, and some took their helmets off and left their bikes lying about and so on and so forth, and then got up, all of them, and left. I didn’t see them again, maybe they came from Évora, maybe they got back? I hope so. There is no story here.

     There is no story here because there is no story, that’s the way I want it to be. That’s the way they want it to be, so don’t go there or you’ll spoil it, just stay where you are and then there’ll be no story. Write your own story anyway.

.

.

.