Thorberto
We have lived in Portugal for a few months now - a period of eleven weeks in the spring, returning to the US for about 60 days, then back to the fazenda in August with our residence visas in hand and no plans to go back to the US until our first grandchild is due in early spring 2024, which coincides nicely with the start of heliski season in Alaska, our US base.
Our first few weeks back were full of visitors, so work renovations advanced more slowly than usual. Now, with no visitors on the calendar and fall closing in, we have turned our attention to the garden. We owe much to our gardener Tiago, recently of Switzerland, who has worked hard in the unforgiving Portuguese sun (we've just had a week of 80+ degrees and clear blue skies) finishing the job the h started clearing the land of thirty plus years’ worth of brambles, seedling trees and roots, and rebuilding the collapsed stone walls and steps around the vegetable garden, orchard and the cottage.
As well, Tiago’s wife stepped in to help us with the circular bureaucracy of getting the electricity turned on; we now have power to one of the houses on the property, which means no more rationing the daily use of our mobile phones and laptops until we can either turn on the generator or make it to the cafe a 15 minute walk uphill to recharge. In the spirit of neighborliness we never use the generator before 10a or after 6p and the cafe closes at 8p, which means our evenings have been largely device-less, a time to do chores that can be done by headlamp.
We owe even more to our neighbor Alberto, who farms a large plot of land across the street and up a sizable hill. He has lived there for thirty years and has been a fount of information regarding many things about our property. For awhile he watched our daily progress from his high vantage point; after watching the h trim most of the trees and remove the thorny brambles and creeping English ivy strangulating everything - all of which I burned in a burn barrel placed in the center of our spacious driveway and where long licks of flame would occasionally shoot from the top and out the side air holes to singe me - Alberto ventured across the street and stood at the gate at the foot of the driveway, beckoning me over.
It looks good! he said, gesturing up the hill at the long staircase to the cottage, which now looks distinctly naked without its gothic green drapery.
Obrigada, I say, pretending he means by soot-blackened face. He stares at me a second and bursts into laughter at my first joke in Portuguese, at my own expense as it should be.
Later that day he came over with a bag of lemons and avocados. The h made lemonade and we had delicious avocado toast, eating on the porch beneath the palm trees and it was so much like California I had to pinch myself.
Over the weeks, Alberto has developed a habit of checking in to see our progress and see if we needed anything. Each time he brings us organic produce from his garden - cabbage, new potatoes, hot peppers, passion fruit, walnuts, coriander and parsley. At summer’s end we have been flooded with a tsunami of grapes.
When the solar panel installers arrived they found the gate blocked by parked cars, something we pretty much have to live with until people get used to our presence. Our house sat empty for decades and the residents of the neighborhood have grown accustomed to treating the area in front of the gate as a public parking lot. Parking is at a premium in Portugal and especially in our little village, so much so that you often find cars parked on sidewalks and even in the exact middle of the street, leaving room for two way traffic to flow around it.
In San Francisco, a quick call to the DPT would take care of it; the errant car(s) would be ticketed and towed in under thirty minutes. But here there is no DPT; the police handle such matters. They notably do not *police* such matters - I’ve watched police cars cruise past wonkily parked cars leaving just inches for pedestrians to squeeze past, showing zero interest in writing out a ticket. If you call them to say someone is blocking your driveway they will advise you to give the driver time to return to their car, and will show up only after multiple calls, and then will not move against the car if it is not blocking your ingress or egress. Persecuting residents for not being able to find parking is not on the police menu here, which is actually a good thing, except when the cars are blocking your own driveway and you, being new in the ‘hood, have no idea who the owner is.
No worries, said the solar panel installers, blocked by one such car. They proceeded to knock on every door up and down the block until they found the owner…or rather the owner’s daughters, who called down from a second story window that the car belonged to their mama who was at work. Instead of being angry at the delay to their work, the installers fretted that the girls, all of ten and eight, were apparently home alone with no adult supervision. Eventually an Uber screeched to a halt in front of our place and mom jumped out and moved the car, looking abashed and avoiding eye contact.
While this drama unfolded Alberto discovered the driveway gate was broken. While the panel installers dug out the railings and cleaned them for easier sliding, Alberto hustled across the street and then returned with a part he had apparently just machined, installing it and voila we have a working, latching gate. Intrigued, the h followed him back to his workshop and came back wide-eyed.
He has four welders in there, he said in awe. When the h noted they were all from England Alberto gave him a sharp, approving look and confirmed that he’d ordered them and had family members from London bring them to Portugal.
Each time Alberto comes to the door he brings us something to eat or drink and volunteers his help with something amiss, which is baasically everything you look at.
You need glass! he said, noting that only one of the panels in the double front doors retains glass - the other three panels having long since fallen from the rotting frames to shatter in the courtyard. One of my first tasks when we came to the property was harvesting broken glass; even after collecting bag after bag (saving back the colored bits for a future mosaic project) there are always new shards being revealed thanks to the constant scratching of the hens and roosters.
One day Alberto sees us unloading chicken feed from our rental car and asks where we purchased it. The h tells him about the place he found via Google and Alberto says Let me take you to a place I know. He drives me to a little co-op that contains all manner of livestock feed, sacks of manure piled as high as my head, hand painted clay pottery, seeds for every vegetable and herb and flower you can think of, even baby turkeys.
A grill, I ask in hesitant Portuguese (uncommon words elude me still). For chorizo? I describe it with my hands, the classic clay tabletop contraption that just fits a loop of chorizo. It is a Portuguese tradition to pour alcohol on the sausage, which pools below, then ignite the alcohol with a flame, fast-cooking the chorizo. Every dinner we’ve shared with Portuguese friends has featured this little tabletop performance; when the h’s mom and her husband visit I spy a hand-painted version of the ceramic grill at the co-op and buy one, and the h cooks up chorizo that night, to everyone’s delight. Food that is performed always tastes better, have you noticed?
I gifted the grill to the h’s mom, thinking the co-op will likely have more but Alberto shakes his head. The co-op does not have another at the moment, but the head shake is also disapproving.
Those things don’t cook the inside of the sausage well, he says. You need a wood fired grill to cook the inside better. I will cook for you!
Upon arriving home he unloads the two bags of manure I bought into the green utility wagon I use to haul cardboard and glass to the recycling center.
Wow, I say. Those look heavy.
Settenta, he says, pointing a the 70 LBS label. Not for the first time I wonder how old Alberto is. He looks to be somewhere in his 70s, but the youthful way he runs up and down his driveway, and the amount of work we can see in his garden, suggest a much younger man.
I thank him profusely for the second trip to the co-op; it was an enjoyable outing, me practicing my Portuguese and doing well enough that we are able to share jokes.
An exmaple: before we leave for the co-op I say, Let me change, indicating my dirty pants. Why? He says. It’s not a party.
At the co-op itself I find a set of keys left on a manure bag and point them out. Alberto shrugs and says nao e problema, they can’t get far without those. We laugh like old friends. Our conversation is equal parts halting Portuguese and halting English and we understand one another perfectly.
Is cheaper, no? says Alberto as I look over the receipt. The co-op is indeed about two thirds cheaper than the place we’ve been frequenting for chicken feed.
I take you to another, larger place, maybe even cheaper, Alberto promises.
The h comes walking up from the newly electrified quinta with a bowl of roasted potatoes he has just made in celebration of having electricity.
Oh you are having lunch? Alberto asks. I will grill you a sausage!
He bustles off, and we eat a few potatoes when my phone rings. Come over! He says. Come see my grill!
We walk over and there in his workshop, which is cool and dim and cavelike and smells just like my daddy's workshop, is a grill with a stove hood. It has two uses, he says, expertly turning the sausage. Grill the meat, and heat the iron. He demonstrates how he uses the grill as a forge.
The h and I look at each other, not at all surprised to find our lunch is being prepared by Thor. While the sausage cooks I look around the workshop which is labyrinthine, and includes a table with a red and white checkered tablecloth.
My wife and I eat lunch here two or three times a week, Alberto says. Then back to work!
His garden is bounteous; the lemon trees are heavy with green fruit, the walnut treats thick with pods. Alberto gestures for the h to give a branch a shake, and the nuts shake lose from the pods. Too bad I don't have a nut cracker, the h remarks, and Alberto scoffs.
Give, he says and cracks the shell open between his two palms and karate chops it. the rest of the way and hands us each. half shell containing an enormous walnut that is not at all bitter - in fact almost sweet. It is my first fresh walnut and I am already envisioning the oatmeal walnut cookies in my future.
Early on Saturday we hear the familiar call “Oi, bom dia, Mister Herbs!” It is Alberto pushing a heavy-looking machine. Having noted hat the ground in the garden has been prepared for raised boxes, he has brought his tiller over. Together the h and Alberto wrestle it up the quinta road and into the vegetable garden, where they spend a hot morning tilling the ground, Jake walking along in the freshly turned furrows like a furry overseer. Before he breaks for lunch Alberto brings some new potatoes and beans to plant, along with bamboo poles and zip ties for the beans to climb.
Tres meses, Alberto promises - we will have potatoes and beans em Dezembro, from our own garden.
He works like a mule, the h says, in a tone that is part admiration, part *almost* - but not quite - complaining (a tone of voice our Portuguese Thor’s wife may be familiar with).
Our projects move ahead at lightning speed. After lunch Alberto arrives with tools to take the measure of our front door windows.
You come, he says to the h, and they cross the street to cut the glass. Having noted that we do not have glass in all of our windows he is not about to let the rains begin before we are protected.
The h comes back with a fresh loaf of corn bread, rolls, jars of olives and tremosos (very much like soybeans), and red wine vinegar - all bounty from Alberto’s garden, or bartered for with said bounty. A few minutes later Alberto is at the door with a bottle of cherry liquor; he pours a small finger of the liquor and fishes out a macerated cherry for each glass.
Is good for inverno, Alberto says with a grin. It is exactly the drink for winter, heating the the gut like an instant summer. It is delicious but so potent that I think we both slur our words a bit when we thank him.
I saw his workshop, the h says later, in awe.
But we’ve both seen it, I remind him.
No, I saw the inner sanctum, the he says. It looks like the wand room from Harry Potter - just millions of drawers from floor to ceiling and you just know he knows what is in every single one. And there was another room, but he didn’t show me - I could see a light flickering through a crack in the door.
I wonder what you’ll have to do to earn seeing that, I muse. The h smiles, confident it will happen.
He reminds me so much of Al, the h says. Al was the handyman for the string of hotels the h’s family operated when he was young. The h would follow Al around with his tiny tool belt, helping, which is how the h has come by his skills as a carpenter, electrician, and plumber.
I had much the same thought when Alberto took out the tape measure from his pants pocket, not even looking as he did so because it’s an action he so obviously repeats often, just like my dad used to. Dad’s tape measure sits a few feet away from me now, with a few other tools the h took at my urging when we last visited mom, just a few weeks after dad passed, almost exactly three months ago now.
We sat there with our eyes misting and then heard a hallo-ing from outside, and Alberto appeared smiling with an aloe vera plant, and canister of diesel.
For the burn! he says, indicating the plant. Take the diesel and mix with the used oil from your generator, he tells the h, and paint it on the garden shed and the bean poles, for waterproofing. He smiles with the satisfaction of helping a neighbor, not noticing the shine in our eyes.