Here Is Where We Meet Read Free Page A

wrapped and tied with their ribbons knotted in bows.
    On the corner of the Rua da Conceição a crowd waited on the pavement, peering towards the Madalena church. I decided to wait too. There was no traffic. Even the trams had been stopped.
    I heard people cheering further down the street. Then 150 runners appeared, coming from the direction of the Madalena. They were running steadily, keeping together in a bunch, encouraging one another, with no bravura or overt competitiveness. Men and women, teenagers and seventy-year-olds, all with their heads held high, some snorting like horses when they breathed out. Their long strides beat out a slow regular rhythm on the cobbles between the tram lines.
    A child, who wanted to see better, pushed me in the back and I stepped a little to one side. Certain runners clenched their fists, others let them hang loose. The women seemed to keep their hands more or less at the same level as their hips, whereas with the men the hands were often higher up, level with their chests. The child who had pushed me in the back turned out to be her. She quickly took my hand. All her life she had cold hands.
    Nobody in this half-marathon, she whispered, knows whether they’ll make it to the end. And that’s part of the secret, not to try! The magic number is seventeen. What they’re all telling themselves now is: Make it to the seventeenth lap!
    How many laps have they done?
    Ten. This is the tenth. Seven more to go to seventeen. After the seventeenth, the last four laps – that’s when the lower stomach is in danger of cramps – the last four look after themselves! You needn’t worry about them, they’re beyond you. See that man’s face, see how his face is stretched by the effort he’s making.
    It’s stretched into a kind of smile.
    And the smile is acknowledging his own name!
    What’s his name?
    Costa. Bravo, Costa!
    And her?
    Madalena!
    You know all their names?
    Madalena’s face is stretched too. Madalena is smiling! Bravo, Madalena!
    One man had Luiz written on his T-shirt. Luiz! I shouted, not to be out-done.
    José and Dominique! she screamed.
    Smiling every one! I said.
    This is not a city, my boy, which fucks itself up. That’s why I’m here.
    I glanced at her. She too was smiling and there were so many creases around her eyes that her old woman’s face looked like crumpled paper. Then she repeated: Not a city that fucks itself up, that’s something I know.
    Her voice had changed. It had become the voice of a seventeen-year-old. It had the somatic assurance, the impudence, of being that age. Such impudence begins with the tongue, quite apart from what it says or doesn’t say, quite apart from being shy or brazen. The impudence of the tongue running with its tip along its own white teeth while saying nothing. Or, at a given unforeseeable moment, the impudence of its sudden proposal to enter and probe somebody else’s mouth – boy’s or girl’s.
    I glanced at her. It was a century ago since she was seventeen.
    We walked in the direction of the Chiado and, suddenly, on the spur of the moment, I found myself entering a baker’s to ask whether they had a dessert, a kind of custard flan with almonds called Bacon from Heaven. It’s sweet, tastes like marzipan and has nothing to do with bacon. Toicino do Céu. My mother stayed outside. Yes, they do. I bought two portions and the baker’s wife made a gift package with a ribbon, the colour of the Sea of Straw. I stepped out into the street.
    It’s what I like best. How on earth did you know? she asks me in her seventeen-year-old voice. Every afternoon I have a Toicino do Céu, she added.
    We found a café near the Praça de Luiz de Camões, decorated with blue and white azulejos.
    The blue on these tiles, she said, is the same as Reckitt’s Blue. Every little square packet was wrapped in this blue.
    I remember turning the wringer to wring the water out of the sheets for you.
    After doing the wringing there was water