João De Vivre

After checking in following the short ride from the airport, João retreated to his room, a clean, small suite adorned with the basic amenities, and showered.  He then climbed into bed and slept a few hours before his alarm rang.  He didn’t want to entirely succumb to travel-induced exhaustion, lest it disrupt his sleep pattern.  Consequently, in the early evening, he roused himself, washed up, and walked down the beachside road to a seafood restaurant located not far from the hotel.

The Jardim do Marisco was jumping.  A group of Americans were seated near the entrance, yapping in their voluble manner.  One didn’t need to speak English to identify Yanks abroad.  These human megaphones always advertised their presence.  A Portuguese columnist once posited half-seriously that a country’s relative global heft was discernable by the boorishness of its inhabitants when abroad.  By this standard, American hegemony wasn’t in doubt.

The rest of the dining room was filled with Europeans, some of whom were chatting up the local Mozambican women hovering shamelessly around their prosperous companions.  João was seated at a table on the edge of the dining room abutting the beach.  The plastic table was covered in a white tablecloth dotted with grease stains.

A charmless waiter took his drink order and returned minutes later with a cold beer and listlessly placed it in front of João.  He took João’s dinner order while two children holding up a mass-produced print of a herd of zebra slowly shuffled by on the far side of the barrier separating the dining room from the beach.  Their deliberate gait gave onlookers time to examine the artwork.  When they reached the end of the barrier, they pivoted and shuffled slowly back in the other direction, giving each of the restaurant’s patrons a second opportunity to view the print.

Ten minutes later, the stoic waiter returned with a plate teeming with giant prawns, crabs, and fried fish, and another with rice, French fries, and lemon slices.  Famished, João wolfed down the meal, ordering another beer to wash it down.  Satiated and content, he leaned back in his chair and watched the surf.

João, mindlessly rubbing rosary beads in one hand while clutching a beer in the other, was lost in thought when a wizened-looking Caucasian man in starched khakis and a striped oxford approached.  “Você é Português?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” João replied with surprise, affirming that he was from Portugal.

“Of course you are.  You’re practically the personification of the country,” the stranger said with delight, “The motherland embodied.  Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Never,” João replied dryly.

“I’m sorry.  I hope I didn’t offend.  I’ve had a few too many.  “I’m Fabião,” he added, holding out his hand.  “Mind if I join you?”

João was slightly annoyed with the stranger’s impudence, but he smiled and shook his hand.  “Not at all.  Please, sit,” he replied, motioning toward the vacant chair opposite him.

Fabião had a heavy brow, sunken, sallow cheeks, and thinning white hair.  Salt-and-pepper stubble covered his ruddy cheeks and recessed chin.  His eyes were small and dark yet conveyed sincerity and warmth.  He looked like the charmingly roguish uncle whose mischievousness was easily forgiven on account of his kind countenance.

“So, my friend, where are you from and what brings you to this wonderful wasteland?” he asked while sitting down.

“Lisbon,” replied João.  “I’m here on vacation.  And you?”

“Ah, beautiful Lisbon, birthplace of Fernando Pessoa,” Fabião said with a flourish, referencing the Portuguese poet.  And, of course, home to Benfica.  I trust you’re a Benfiquista.”

“I trust you’re right.”

“Yes, of course.”  Fabião then broke into song: “I’m from Benfica / It fills me with pride / I have in me the spirit / That allows common greatness / I’m from a brave club / That in the hardest of the battles / A rival has never met / In this Portugal of ours / Being from Benfica / Is having in your soul / The mighty flame / That conquers / It lifts you to the immense light / From the sun, that high in the sky / Smiling gently kisses / Full of pride / The very bright shirts / Vibrating through the fields / Like jumping poppies.”

“Bravo,” João said of the rendition of Ser Benfiquista, the club’s anthem.

“Very obliged,” Fabião replied, placing his hand to his heart.  “My father was a dyed-in-the-wool Benfiquista.  He was from Lisbon and never lost his devotion to the club, even after living in Faro for decades.  He used to sing that song every match day.  It didn’t even matter if Benfica was playing.  He’d sing it anyway!”

“Clearly, he was a great man,” João said.

“He was.”

“Do you live in Faro?”

“No, Braga,” Fabião replied, citing Portugal’s third largest city.  “But I was born and bred in Faro and that’s where my heart is.  Can’t make a living there, though.  The market crashed six months ago.  All construction ceased.  Half-completed beach bungalows, luxury hotels, trendy duplexes—been a contractor for 37 years and I’ve never seen anything like it.  The Scandinavians building vacation homes vanished.  Gone.  Sayonara.  But I can’t complain.  I make ends meet on smaller projects—installing windows, fixing pipes, that sort of stuff.  It’s a life.  Can’t be that bad, I’m still able to vacation here.  You, what do you do?”

“I’m an accountant.  I work for a furniture distributor.  Been doing it for decades.  It’s steady and secure.  I can’t complain, either.”

“What brings you down here?” asked Fabião.  “Beaches, bitches, or both?”

João chuckled.  “I’ve been visiting Mozambique for years.  I came on a lark at first.  I had never been to Africa, aside from a brief trip to Morocco, but that hardly counts.  I fell in love with the place. ”

“It’s easy to do,” Fabião said, taking a swig of beer.  “It’s strikingly beautiful.  The food is delicious, as are the women!  Here’s to Mozambican ladies,” he roared, prompting him to take another slug.

“And to think such a rich place is so poor.  The poverty and penury, deprivation and dinginess—so sad.  The Mozambicans blame us for it.  ‘Oh, the terrible things the Portuguese did to us.  The barbarity.  The injustice.’  Please!  He who cannot remember the past may be condemned to repeat it, but he who obsesses over it won’t surmount it, either.  The country won its independence decades ago.  What has it done since?  Were there a Fourth World this Third World rat hole would’ve plummeted down a notch!  It’s the same everywhere in Africa: Zimbabwe, Angola, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan.  The Negro has squandered his inheritance.”

João shifted in his seat nervously and scanned the restaurant to see if anyone overheard his garrulous companion.  None appeared to have.

“The thing is, the Negro can’t accept it.  He can’t accept that he’s made a hash of things, which is why he’s so fixated on the white man.  That’s the real white man’s burden: to be forever responsible for his forefathers’ sins.  There’s a perverse logic to all; the victim, after all, has no responsibility.  He’s free—free to complain.  There’s power in that.”