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Alcobaça: Tombs, a Wedding, and One Amazing Woman

Sunday, July 16th, 2006

Yesterday I went to Alcobaça, Portugal´s largest church, built over a long period of years starting in 1178. It´s the home of the famous tombs of Don Pedro and Ines de Castro, whose romance has been the subject of many plays, including one written by Catharine Trotter, which was in my first anthology and which had its first modern production at Smith when Karena Rahall, Angelique von Halle, and a powerful group of young women decided to do a revival. I wish I had their email addresses. They would love to know I have come here at last. In the Trotter version, written in 1695, Ines was in love with Costanza, and Pedro was in love with Ines, but Pedro´s father was outraged by the trio and had Ines murdered. The production was so successful that the actors were asked to perform it at the WOW Cafe in NYC. In the Portuguese version that meets the tourist´s eye here, Don Pedro was in love with Ines but was forced to marry Costanza; Pedro´s father, fearing Ines´s influence, had Ines murdered. Then, continuing the Portuguese version, when Pedro´s father died, Pedro personally tore the hearts out of two of her murderers, had her body disinterred and crowned, and then made all the people at court kiss her mostly-decomposed hand. Then he had two astonishing tombs made, one for her and one for himself, and decreed that the tombs face each other across the nave of the Cathedral. They are still there. Whichever version of the story you prefer, the tombs are incredible: intricately carved, Gothic in their elaboration and lines, with carved angels holding the bodies of each of the two, she with a little Italian Greyhound at her feet, and he with a mastiff at his. (I didn´t know the bit about the dogs till I saw the tombs myself.) But here´s the wild part: yesterday there was a wedding taking place smack in the center of the main aisle, between the two tombs. And that´s not all. [read on]

Lisbon, Leiria, God, and a Shower Knob

Friday, July 14th, 2006

I´m here. Yesterday was jet lag, heat, and Lisbon. I was disoriented, but I took refuge at the end of the day in a sweet little attic room with a bath, where I lay in a tub of cool water for about an hour, pouring water over my head. It took half an hour to bring down the temperature of my hair. Sign on the back of the door: “All values left in the room, are the entire responsability of the costumer.” Wonderful. A Portuguese person could look at the sign on the back of the door in any American hotel and wait a long time to get a message in Portuguese. I brought the Texas heat with me. It was 41C (around 104 F) today as I was stumbling around a castle in the blazing sun here in Leiria (pronounced lay-REE-uh). The pilgrimage actually began at five minutes after 1 p.m. when I staggered into the Cathedral to get out of the sun. It was cool, and the light was muted. I sat down in a pew, noted there were only two other people in the whole place, both women, praying. I took a couple of deep breaths and suddenly a great wave of sound, followed by more and more, filled the vast darkness. It must have been the organist´s practice time. The echoes bounced off the stone walls and resonated in my veins. I have never heard such pure waves of sound. I could feel the sound as if it were water, washing through my bones. The pilgrimage had begun. [read on]