When the Winds of Change Blow Your Windows Out
...and other anecdotes from a day in the life at our fazenda in Belas, Portugal
I woke today to the sound of the wind blowing a window right out of its crumbling frame. It was in the room that will one day be the dining room of the palaceta - the big main house on the property we bought in Belas Portugal. We sometimes call it Brokedown Palace because at the moment it still looks more like a haunted house than anyone’s home. The window is right above Jake’s dog bed. Thank goodness he wasn’t in it at the time.
We have had very summery temperatures the past week, the workers in shorts and visibly sweating as they repair the calcada walkway that runs in front of the road to the quinta and which has been damaged by endless sluicing rain.
Now the temps have dropped to a more spring-like mid 60s. The dehumidifier plus the heat pump water heater are doing their work well in the quinta (aka the guest house); when first installed, the little temperature and humidity gauge showed the humidity at 85%, which was merely verifying the obvious - when the air is that moist, you can feel it on your face and in your clothes. After two weeks of dehumidifying, it now reads a reasonable 35%.
Yesterday was a particularly busy day - Mondays always are, as this is the day I have my online Portuguese lesson. I have ramped up my studying, which has had the annoying side effect of intrusive thoughts in Portuguese - a little voice in the back of my head helpfully provides the Portuguese word for whatever it is I am looking at or doing.
It’s so annoying, like having a know-it-all ghost (fantasma) in one’s head, I complained to a friend.
Not, it’s great (otimo)! she assured me. That means you are getting more fluent!
Which sometimes feels true, but sometimes not. Yesterday I had a long conversation with an Uber driver who spoke no English and we covered many topics - how moose in Alaska kill more people than bears, helicopter skiing, ultra running, living in Lisbon, the upcoming 25 de Abril celebrations commemorating the Carnation Revolution.
Your Portuguese is so good, he kept exclaiming, but though that is nice to hear, it is not true. For example, I know for sure I said I was strong, instead of lucky to have good neighbors, saying forte instead of sorte. And recently when I was writing back and forth to a Portuguese customer in the course of my job, I confidently wrote em Portuguese - the sentences were simple, and I thought I didn’t need to consult an online translator.
I don’t understand your answer, he wrote back. Mostly people are very nice and encouraging if you make even the smallest effort to speak Portuguese.
Mondays (Segunda-feiras) the h always (sempre) meets with the workers (trabalhadores) to scope out projects for the week (semana), and now (agora) with spring (primavera) underway our neighbor (vizinho) Alberto is over bright and early most days with cuttings, seeds and a review of what needs picking and cultivating in our garden (horta). To add to the chaos I also went to Lisbon (fui a Lisboa) for my second of what will probably (provalvamente) be four tattoo sessions (sessões de tatuagem) which last three hours.
Before class and my trip to Lisbon I had to get my chores and any homework (trabalhos de casa) finished, which had me flying around the property so that I accumulated more than 6,000 steps before 10a, feeding the chickens (two flocks - the northern flock and the eastern flock - at two different location, feeding and walking Jake, and hiking last night’s dishes from the palaceta - where we are currently sleepign - to the quinta where there is a working dishwasher.
Before I do all of this, though, I had to let Princess Leia out of her chick brooder. Peep peep on the floor, I hollered so the h won’t step on her. She is growing into an actual princess, demanding to be with us or Jake all day long, and screeching in a high pitched voice from the top of her warmer if we dare put her back in the box for any reason. A brood of chicks is called a peep, and as far as Leia is concerned we are her peeps. As I write this she sits on my right shoulder, where she also sits during my online lesson, sometimes pecking at the screen.
During morning yoga she will chirp around on the floor but sometimes will leap onto the h when he is in corpse pose and do her two-footed scratch on him, looking for tidbits to eat. The horror writer in me whispers, this is exactly how they’ll find you if you both died in this old house, Leia happily pecking away at your remains.
The h has trained Leia to come with just a click of the tongue. She zooms over to stand at your feet, craning her fuzzy neck upward - the h never makes this sound unless he has a nice snack for her, usually a fly or a worm. She can grab the fly tweezed between your fingernails without even touching your hand. Chickens are amazingly fast and accurate with their beaks, which will leave little round dark spots on your skin if you don’t quickly discourage them from pecking your legs for attention.
My tattoo artist, Maria, who has perfect fair skin and long hair dyed shocking pink, is happy with the healing from the last session. As she works I remark that this time it is not as painful. She says that is good, unless I like pain. I don’t hear the joke in her voice and say No, I am not a masochist. Later I ask her, are there people who really DO like the pain? No, she says. I was joking. English is her second language; she is Russian, and does not yet speak Portuguese - one of the few people in the country who I can confidently say I speak better than.
While Maria works I text my colleague, Denis, a young man from Siberia who lives in Montenegro, that I will be unable to respond to customers except slowly as I only have one hand in action, the other being under occupation by a tattoo artist. He texts back, I do not have the courage to get one.
I respond, Well, it’s painful, I won’t lie.
He writes, In Russian there is a saying, For beauty there must be sacrifice.
I pass this along to Maria, who says Tell him I know this saying and I agree. I text Denis the message. A beat passes and his response comes like a poem that has been circling my mind ever since, the way birds flock in the springtime sky, pausing you in your tracks to contemplate:
I never cease to wonder how big and small the world is at the same time.
When I got home from my tattoo appointment I didn’t have to ask the h what he was up to while I was gone - it was readily apparent, all the mildew power washed off the long wall (muro) and sidewalk that line the driveway. The wall was freshly painted just last fall, but we failed to use a mildew-proof paint and so it was green-stained and ancient looking by winter.
I was very pleased not to have to step around the thick matting of chicken shit that builds up on the section of sidewalk just past the gate under the tree branches where the flock likes to roost at night. Happily that is now permanently a thing of the past as the h and Tiago pruned all the limbs overhanging the walk. The chickens are still roosting in the same place but no longer raining guano down on the walk and the sewer grate and the occasional unwary visitor passing under. (Did the thief (ladrao) who robbed us in our first days on the property get pooped on, I wonder? I heartily hope so).
A few days ago I heard Alberto halooing and went outside to see him escorting his wife Rosa up the driveway. She is on crutches and moving slowly after a knee replacement. We have not seen her since before the operation about a month ago.
Tudo bem? I ask her. Voce ainda tem dor?
Menos. Estou melhora, she answered, and I did a little mental dance for having a whole conversation, no matter how short, in Portuguese. Rosa does not speak English, or if she does, she is far too shy to use it, so it is up to me to initiate any communication. Alberto stood by smiling; when I first asked him the name of his wife, his answer was like a poem: My wife is named for a flower, he said. I think it is not an accident that the fencing around his garden is heavy with rosas cor-de-rosa.
In addition to Rosa, Alberto brought coriander seeds, parsley (salsa) seeds and two more varieties of onions (cebola) to plant. He also brought a tupperware container with leftovers for our lunch (almoco) plus a bagful of lemons.
This past weekend (fim de semana) we ate a meal (refecao) entirely from the property - eggs and roasted carrots (cenoura), onions, garlic and beets, with lemonade made from Alberto’s limões. It tasted like winning.
After a few false starts spring is very definitely sprung. The apple (maca) tree is blossoming and the flowers (provided by Alberto last fall) in the boxes around the courtyard are in full bloom. Rosa inspected them - and the blue lilies and yellow trumpet bushes also provided by Alberto - with a little grunt of satisfaction (satifacao).
Nowadays if I can’t find the h I know to go up to the horta where he will be in the greenhouse or the garden shed. A few days ago he intercepted me just outside the shed, a finger to his lips.
I was sitting in there for hours, he said. And all the time she was there (la).
I peeked in and just under (embaixo de) the lawn chair a hen sat on a nest of eggs. Later I entered quietly and left her food and water. So that’s why the black-chested rooster (Preto) has been hanging around the entrance to the garden.
Late last night the h said, I have a gross story for you.
It’s romantic in a way - I am a horror writer and I tend to write a lot of body horror (I write other things but horror is my happy place). Though I can get just as easily grossed out as the next person, it stays lodged in my mind like a sore tooth, where I poke at it with the tongue (lingua) of my imagination until a story comes of it. The h did not disappoint.
You know tht sewer grate at the foot of the driveway? the h asked. Like the two at the foot of the quinta road (estrada)?
I knew it, but had never paid it much mind. Thank goodness the h is more vigilant than me in that regard - he pays close attention to all the details, knowing that such innocuous things need taking care of or they will rise up and smite you some day.
Most people (pessoas) wait for problems to raise their heads before addressing them. Not the h - he is not a waiting (a espere) kind of guy - a necessary thing on a property of this size. With four houses, a chicken coop, a pool (piscina) and pump house, a garage, and at least four other buildings that have yet to have a designated function, plus five acres, all surrounded by crumbling walls and containing a multitude of trees and foliage and one enormous koi pond with fountain (fonte), unattended tasks can quickly snowball into major problems.
The sewer grates sit on either side of the foot of the quinta road, where it meets the driveway. During the heavy rains (chuvas) of winter (inverno) and then the heavier rains of spring, they backed up so that water formed a pool at the base of the road. The pool got quite deep at times - the quinta road is long and slopes on either side, and water drains very efficiently down its winding, one hundred yard length.
One day the h decided to address the pooling and found that each iron grate sits atop a hole at least two feet deep, and both were clogged with debris - fallen leaves (folhas), dirt, fermented apples and olives. He cleaned them out and now when it rains there is no more pooling, no longer requiring me to make an ungainly leap over the standing water - a risky thing, as calcadas are notoriously slippery even when not wet. I wear Danners around the property (propriadade) - a sturdy hiking shoe with lugged rubber soles that grip the calcadas like a lover, but sometimes I wear old Nike running shoes (sapatos) with the soles worn smooth which are fine on dry hot (quente) days but on wet days might as well be glass bottomed slippers. I warn all visitors to leave the heeled shoes at home and wear only grippy brands like Hokas, Tevas or Birkies, but sometimes ignore my own advice, at my own peril.
Remember (lembra) how I told you I gave Princess Leia her first worm? the h asked, continuing his story.
I had assumed that (que) the worm came from the garden, but it turns out it was merely one of many that had colonized the detritus beneath the driveway sewer grate, which after an afternoon of power washing the h found to be well and truly clogged with chicken shit, rocks, fallen leaves and the mouldering remains of food (comida) that the village ladies used to throw to the chickens when the property was abandoned (vago) - lettuce, uncooked rice, dinner leftovers, bread. All of this apparently formed ideal living conditions for worms.
How disgusting was it? I asked the h.
There were thousands of them, the h said. It filled about ten buckets’ worth.
There was a silver lining though - one man’s (or woman’s) fodder for horror is another man’s (or rooster’s) fodder, period. The flock loved it - the h tossed each bucketful of the Kingdom of the Worms over the wall into the Secret Garden, where the hens and roosters gathered for the feast.
That’s disgusting, I said happily.
Isn’t it though? the h responded, and we laughed so hard we woke Jake snoring away at the foot of the bed (cama).
Thanks for taking this leap with me, the h said. Leap is the right word - I’m not sure we really knew what we were getting ourselves into, buying this old ruin. But I have no regrets.
What would you give your experience here so far, I asked. On a scale of 1 to 10 (dez)?
He thought (pensou) about it for a moment. I know he was weighing the same things I was - the negatives like the break-in, the long weeks of hauling junk out of all the buildings and uprooting the colonizing ivy and brambles, the rats, the constant trespassers - against (contra) the positives: the many neighbors who are now friends (amigos), the rapidly productive garden, the quinta renovations nearing completion, Jake safely arrived.
I almost feel asleep before he answered.
Nine, he said. Then, after a bit: and a half (meio).