TE19 Iberian Adventure

John Hartley

“What do you mean?” I wanted to ask.

“Sure, you can leave.” Her smile had turned vacant, “But can you ever really leave?

“Where is it all leading? Matilde sighed, “And how are we going to find that place if we don’t even know where we are?”

The conversation oscillated between allegory and biography, realism, and fantasy. In Matilde I glimpsed something of what they call ‘Saudade’ — memory, coupled with desire. Something consummated long ago – a faded dream, the disorientating desire for a spiritual home – a one-way street and a house to which we can never return. Loss that surfaces as loneliness and a golden thread running through Portuguese life. Oedipus mourning his Euridice, a ghost on the stair, a friend whose warmth we feels, but can never turn to and touch. “There’s a story you should read,” Matilde finally spoke, “The tale of Baltasar and Blimunda; an injured veteran and a young mystic set during the 18th-century Inquisition. They were lovers caught up with the thousands of prisoners slaving away on the gigantic Mafra convent. They dreamt of escape in a flying machine powered solely by human will. They were lost in the dream, but not necessarily prisoners, for the dream became their reality.” “Did they manage to escape,” I laughed.

“Yes and no.” Matilde flashed a smile. “They escaped, even though they never really left.”

Only the Portuguese could dream up a story of a flying machine 160