Ericeira, Portugal

A fishing village on the Portuguese coast, 40 km north of Lisbon. High cliffs overlook a sea the earnest blue of youthful ardor; orange-tiled houses cluster together, their walls an aching white in the bright sun, the brightness relieved by splashes of purple and red and blue. In 1987, when I spent a year there, Ericeira boasted roughly 2000 inhabitants. In the '80s, the picturesque fishing village attracted a large number of Western tourists, people like me who were looking for a taste of “Old Portugal,” but who wanted to avoid the slightly more affected high-culture town of Sintra, where Byron had lived, or the Algarve, Portugal’s expensive southern coast. There were a number of colorful characters already living in Ericeira when I moved there, the wonderfully sly and knowing locals, as well as a cast of Internationals. The latter included a Norwegian Family (the father had squirreled away money while working as a prison guard, then moved the whole family south, to a place in the sun); a pair of young Scottish Entrepreneurs, who wanted to open a disco (there were already three!); as well as a quartet of Australian Surfers. (Just north of Ericeira was a very good surfing beach.) I was the American Whore, though I didn’t start out my time in Ericeira as a whore, nor did I mean to be one. During my first weeks of moving there, older women invited me over to dinner. I was breathless and delighted to be sitting with them at their dinner tables, and the conversation hobbled along hopefully, usually until the women asked me (tsking), why my father let me come to live in Europe by myself. (I was 23.) After a few weeks there, I had established my routines: writing in the mornings; taking long walks by the sea (shocking! by yourself?); sitting in cafes in the evenings; sometimes going out for a friendly drink at night. Ericeira was a small town. It wasn’t long before I was befriended by a young fisherman named Paulo. He was an orphan who had an extraordinary gift for languages – he could converse casually in English, French, German, Spanish (and of course Portuguese), and could make himself understood in a number of others, among them, Arabic, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch. But he was also an outsider in that rather conservative Portuguese small town, because he had no family. In addition to lacking family connections, he was illiterate. He was lonely in a number of different ways. So we used to meet for coffee in the evenings, after he’d helped his captain mend nets and get everything ship-shape for the next day of fishing. He helped me practice my Portuguese, and I tried to help him with his writing and reading skills. Paulo liked me. Yes, he wanted to sleep with me, but he was okay with the fact that I didn’t want to sleep with him. As I said: he was lonely. It was unlikely that he would marry (my Portuguese friend, Manuela, explained this to me), and certainly he couldn’t marry into a good family. But I think some of the townspeople resented him for not being weighed down by his outsider status. He had a wonderfully sunny disposition. Add to that his gift with languages, his good-humor, his sensitivity to other people’s loneliness. Indeed, Paulo had the heart of a traveler, though he’d never gone anywhere. He fed this love by talking with people from far-away places, people like me. And because we became friends, he started bringing me fresh fish several times a week. Delicious crabs and squid, and tender fillets of a fish whose English name I never did "pesce"; he would say to me again and again, as he tried to help me learn Portuguese, "Nao pesce nada?" (In Portugal, "to fish" is slang for "to understand"). But though I couldn't understand much of his Portuguese, he cleaned the fish he brought for me. In the meantime, I helped him learn to write some of the formal Portuguese words I knew. (Paulo was illiterate.) And so we exchanged the gifts of friendship. But of course, these gifts ruined my reputation. And the crazy thing was, at first I didn’t understand what had happened. I did notice a strange new reserve in the demeanor of people I met at the market, a different qualityin  the looks I got from the townspeople as I walked down the cobbled streets. But I didn’t know what any of it meant. Manuela, who lived 40 km away in Lisboa, knew that my reputation was ruined before I did. That’s how small-town the whole country of Portugal was, back in the '80s. Manuela had to explain the situation to me. Her mother had called her up, exclaiming, “Annie is sleeping with Paulo!” Manuela told her mother that I was not in fact sleeping with Paulo, that I was just helping him learn to read and write. Manuela told me her mother had said in response: “I have been spending summers in Ericeira for 35 years. No one ever brought me fresh fish for free.” And that was the end of it. The end of my good-girl American identity. After that, only other members of the town’s riff-raff would talk with me; only its night-life people would allow themselves to be seen interacting with me. (And often many of these supposed “night-life people” would only speak to me at night, when the Good Citizens were home tucked into bed, or at least pretending to be so tucked. In actual fact, some of those “night-life people” posed as Good Citizens in the daytime. It was 22. It took me a while to understand.) But even if the townspeople weren’t trying to pose as Good, I still couldn’t expect them to talk to me. If, in the light of day, I saw someone I had had a drink with the night before, chances were that person wouldn't meet my eyes. The market, where sharp eyes watched your every move, was not the place to be seen talking with the American Whore. I lived in Ericeira for ten months after becoming the American Whore. I got to know a lot of people. I didn’t sleep with any of them, though I did kiss a few. I may go back to Lisboa to visit Manuela one summer if I ever have money again. She and I will take a trip to Ericeira. I know that the people who snubbed me, all those years ago (the ones who are still alive at any rate), will hug me. Some will weep. This is the country of Fado. They will hug me with real joy, and won't wait until I’m out of earshot to start whispering.