The Piano Is Always There: A Story of Lisbon

The Piano Is Always There:A Story of Lisbon Laurence de Looze (bio) For the past several months I have been living with my partner, Aara, in the old Alfama neighborhood of Lisbon, Portugal. A maze of tiny alleyways that turn into stairways as the streets climb up the steep hills from the Tejo river, the Alfama was once a Moorish quarter. Tucked behind the Sé, the city’s squat cathedral, the neighborhood survived the 1755 earthquake pretty much intact, and today it is one of the oldest areas of Lisbon. It is a very humble neighborhood—there are pensioners here whose already meager checks are being reduced by the government on an almost regular basis—though I wouldn’t call it “poor” outright. The people who live in the dark little dwellings that crowd these streets love the Alfama. They cannot afford to live elsewhere, but they don’t want to. Most of them were born in the apartments they live in now. Some of them have probably never even been outside the city limits. Because the cobblestone streets are so narrow and can become escadinhas (steps) at any turn, it is impossible for a vehicle with wheels to get through. Everything is done on foot, and everything is carried in and out, up and down the hill, by hand. At first I thought that this would be inconvenient, even impossible. But I soon adapted to what feels like a nineteenth-century pace of life, and it has become endearing to me, even when I’m carrying provisions and trudging up the hill under a hot sun. But then, the Portuguese never seem to be in a hurry, except when they are behind the wheel of a car. On foot, they move at a steady, slow pace—perhaps because they have learned from long experience that this is the only way to get up the steep hills. Also, they are for the most part friendly and patient. They don’t mind repeating what they’ve said, which is a good thing for me, because the Portuguese accent is difficult for foreigners to understand and often I only catch what someone has said the second time around. I’ve never known a city that has as many old people as Lisbon. One of the most common sights in this city is an aged person limping up a steep incline or slowly mounting a long beco, a thin alleyway that leads up from the river between the buildings. The hills and stairs are challenging enough for young people—one often sees tourists huffing and puffing—and yet the old people of Lisbon simply take it as part of their lot, making their way up and down every day, carrying bags of groceries. I’ve never seen another city with so many people [End Page 185] with canes and crutches, limps, and bent or swollen legs. And yet the people keep trudging forward. Because the streets are so narrow in the Alfama, the neighbor women shout from their balconies across to each other, holding their conversations from the second or third floor. You hear them in the morning, discussing the weather or the prices in the supermarkets. The sounds of the street filter into the dwellings. Some of the sounds leave you perplexed, and you only slowly come to guess at their origin. In the middle of the night you might hear someone dragging some heavy object along the cobblestones. What could it be—a dead body? a cart of some kind? precious belongings? At one point, every night at about ten thirty I would hear the long, mournful cry of a man shouting, “Catarina! Catarrrrinnna!” At first, I thought he was crying out for the woman he loved. But it happened with such regularity that after a couple weeks I figured he must be calling his dog home, since the dogs run loose in the Alfama streets like young children. The dark streets of the Alfama are full of tiny, cavernous shops, which back in the Middle Ages were undoubtedly little more than caves in the hillside. Inside the dark lojas the shelves are stocked with wares from floor to...

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