Saudade

I saw my grandmother again today. 

So much has happened here, and I feel small and vulnerable! I discover threads of a story almost by chance and I realize how easy it would have been not to have seen the signs, not to have felt the impulses that brought me to this land. My role as observer betrays me and leaves me thirsty. I would like to take action, but I am a tourist without the right to touch, and although I feel it so strongly in my chest, this story does not belong to me. Today I have felt it more than ever and none of its protagonists is alive to give me any explanation.

We arrived at Lota Macedo de Soares' house early. Today it is a place of pilgrimage for students and lovers of architecture, hikers, landscapers, nature scholars and other traveling souls who have appeared in Samambaia. There is a Portuguese guide, a British guide, and some kids who take turns reading Bishop's poems surrounded by the environment that saw them sprout. The groups thin out in the beautiful garden and the rooms while I stay alone on the porch of the main house, untouched since then; modern, clean and diaphanous. 

To describe Lota's house, it is not only necessary to dwell on images and sounds, but also on aromas. You can breathe jungle, nature and peace. A lot of peace. From the dense vegetation emerges a wide floor plan, where stone, metal and wood merge and create a unique space, which never breaks with its surroundings and accentuates it. The songs of macaws and those of a distant stream greet me on a stone-floored porch. Neat flowers surround hammocks and benches, witnesses to the endless meetings that Lota and Elizabeth must have had.

I enter through one of the large glass windows, admiring the metal beams that support the structure. Was this the guinea pig that inspired so many other architects later or even Lota herself to come up with Flamingo Park? Ferns hang from some of the rafters and I smile at a long row of framed photos. They are all there: Calder and his family at the swimming pool, Aldous Huxley, Portinari... 

...and there she is.

It confirms what I already knew. I came to look for her and there she is. In spite of that, I am paralyzed by her image. My grandmother smiles happily from a photograph surrounded by people I don't know and will never meet. What are you laughing at, Grandma? I study her face, her clothes, the people around her, I try to interpret something, even if it's just a piece of an uncertain whole. But I'm missing too many pieces. I only see her, smiling. I walk away. I turn away. I'm in pain and dazed by so many holes to fill. I walk and try to control my breathing.

Without realizing it, my feet have brought me to Elizabeth's studio, specially built by Lota in an act of love. The floating structure is simply marvelous, the nature that surrounds it makes it unique. I understand that this whole construction has been an inspiration for so many architects, how much talent is breathed in this environment! I think of her again, and wonder what part of all this she experienced firsthand: did she see it written? Did she witness the construction of this floating studio? Was she aware of the effervescence of the moment? I smile, finally. I imagine what that smiling young woman in the photo would have thought if she had known that her granddaughter would be engaged in such a strong quest from the future.

I begin to understand the difficult meaning of the word saudade, the difficulty of that nostalgia, that melancholy, that loneliness, that anguish, that anxiety for what will not return, for what did not come, for what will not change. A word without literal translation, but that scratches accurately in several nooks and crannies of the soul. And of the body. Everything hurts.

Bishop's verses reach my ears and the saudade in me acquires another dimension. A girl from the group of students reads them. I imagine Bishop writing them, with this view from her studio, inspired by every breath of air. 

But it surely would have been a pity

not having seen the trees pass by on the street

so exaggerated in their beauty.

And so it is. The pain can be immense and the longing unbearable, but getting lost in the monotony of not feeling would have been far worse than not experiencing it at all. 

This is how adversity makes us grow and become stronger. This is how the pain of a loss finds us and will always find us dancing, ready for the next beat. This is how saudade is lived.

And at that moment I see her again. I see my dear grandmother coming out of the kitchen with a tray of delicious scones just out of the oven and an apron of blue and white flowers. I hold my breath and hold back tears. I don't want to stop seeing her. She deftly removes her apron, loosens her bow tie, shucks her feet in the grass and delicately places the tray on a tree-trunk cut from a tree. From a pocket in her skirt she takes a notebook and pencil and writes. She writes a lot. And the smile never leaves her lips.

A hand on my shoulder brings me back to the here and now.

- Mrs. Manuela, we are leaving.

When I look back she is gone.

In the car that takes me back to the hotel I find myself strange. I have her in my mind's eye and I don't want to lose her. Instinctively, and just as she did, I take a notebook from the pocket of my skirt and start writing.