KNOWLEDGE OF HELL

so there's this book, and there's an english translation from the portuguese because i found one that i could have bought online, but the thing is that, well, it was one of those things: i didn't want to pay the international shipping. also, and serendipitously, i was going to take the trip that serves as the background for the plot -- and in a car, even, although not over the course of so much time. (the description of "knowledge of hell" that i found online says that antunes takes "one long day and evening" to get his psychiatrist from the algarve to lisbon, but i think that we made it in something like four hours, and that with stopping for lunch with the three sisters in alentejo.) unfortunately, i couldn't find the book anywhere in faro in the week before we left. or, rather, i should say that i couldn't find it in english translation, because each of the four bookstores to which i entrusted the fruition of my plan had a half a shelf at least of antónio lobo antunes, and two of them copies of "conhecimento do inferno" in portuguese. but oh well. anyway, i didn't really think that i was going to be reading the book in the car. and, of course, even if it would have been nice to have had it before arriving, i shouldn't have any trouble finding the book in lisbon. that's what they said, anyway. it's lisbon, they said. no problem. lisbon, however, had been thinking differently -- and it didn't bother to say. ler devagar has about a million literature titles in french, but the only english books it sells are nonfiction. not at the fnac in benfica, nor at the one in chiado. the room that was supposed to have the books in english at the old bertrand up the street was just full of tourism books and magazines, and the woman manning the counter at the bookstore where i stopped just in case (on my way from not finding the book at the bookstore at the british institute) just seemed confused. but maybe i wasn't asking for what i thought i was. in the end she recommended i try at fnac, and so i said good afternoon.

it was a pretty good afternoon, too, except that i hadn't brought with me anything to read, because, you know, they'd said that i'd find the book in lisbon. instead, i found a barber in alfama, to whom i think i must have communicated myself even more poorly than i had to the woman who had all but pushed me out of her bookstore to try fnac.

luckily it didn't stay light forever. but by the time it got dark it was time to have my ride tell me where i'd be staying that night and then start trying to find wherever that was, so i texted the gallega (who had texted me while i was at the barber to say that she was, in fact, the one that i'd met in the wee hours of the feria that morning and thanks for finding her and getting in touch with my number) that i wouldn't be able to get together with her that time around because i didn't want to inconvenience my host by arriving too late and because, sadly, i was heading north in the morning. (i hadn't yet forgotten my camera, so i didn't yet know that i'd be back two nights later.)

when my ride picked me up (again, although we were now two and a half days out from the algarve), she told me that we might as well check the bookstore at the fábrica braço de prato, which just happened to be celebrating its fifth anniversary as a bookstore-gallery-studio complex that night. and it wasn't far from where we were staying. and, it was more than worth it just to see the bookstore -- not to mention for the fifty cent beers and the butoh performance. the bookstore clerk, however, told us that anyone with a computer could have told us that although the book had been translated it hadn't been published by a portuguese publisher and so wasn't going to be available anywhere in portugal. the news could have been quite sobering, except for the fifty cent beers.

the french like to use the area around the fábrica braço de prato to shoot movies, my host told me the next morning as we were passing through the neighborhood on the way to take her son to school. because there aren't any modern buildings around. but they're everywhere around her son's school in olivais. after the dictatorship, she told me, it was a kind of utopian project. they integrated subsidized housing with private housing development for the middle class, and in the spirit of the years immediately after the dictatorship, the project was a success. the spirit of unity and equality and excitement for the future, she said. and drugs. and the urban planners didn't plot any sidewalks until a year after the area had been inhabited. how could they have known from the outset, she said, how people would want to get around? they couldn't know so early where the café with the best coffee would be, or where and how long it would take someone to have a cake before he had to rush to the bus stop. they were optimistic, she told me, i don't know if i would have shared in the spirit of olivais had she not told me its story.

the story of the area around the train station at oriente is different, and much simpler: don't go the way of the site of the ninety-two universal expo in seville. when lisbon hosted it in ninety-eight, the city wanted to make sure that its construction investment wouldn't go to ruin as it had across the border. and from the looks of it, the city's fear has wrought success. the office buildings around the calatrava skeleton that comprises the station building and the shopping mall across the street are occupied, including by the employer of my host, who works nearby as an architect. at a glance, there's no sign of the continuing crisis. people have forgotten for the time being, anyway, distracted by the national soccer team's success so far in the european cup. the flags are out, and they're singing the national anthem in the streets. her son sings too, because he dreams of being a singer, and it's a song he knows, whether or not he knows exactly what it means or why the old men in the neighborhood are so proud when they see a five year old walk by singing it. but i understand. because i know how ever present at is at the same time that it's also completely occulted. that knowledge of hell.