It’s so strange. Feeling myself in several places at once. It’s like floating and drowning at the same time. Every moment equals a little death, waiting for something to happen, for some force to pull me to the bottom, but there is no end to it, and I continue to swim. I keep swimming.
The darkness of the pointed streets, stone bags leading upward, as if they were lifting me away from the ground so that I wouldn’t drown, probably. At least that’s how I see it, and that’s how I feel it.
It’s strange to be an eternity in a city where the Great Father of the nation, the custodian of the Portuguese land, rests strewn with endless legends and where at the same time, the other six kings were born and nurtured. It is strange to remember all that was and even stranger to foresee what will be. It is strange to live in general.
Today. The shabby walls, bleeding with cracked paint, noisy students occupying concrete boxes, shutting off from the outside world with thick faded glass and dirty carpets. Beggars and out-of-towners. Surrounding the main square and so obviously standing out against the facade of a medieval monastery. It has very little in common with my native Aiminium, full of the warm light of the night torches. Not yet a city, but already an important starting point in the history of the future great Kingdom.
These streets. Filled with viscous air, you close your eyes, and you cannot tell the difference; you cannot understand which century you are in; you only hear the chaotic noise, the voices of men and women, of children and adults merged. The voices rush through me in a turbulent, foaming river of intonations. I speed up to get out, to dive out for fear of drowning. I jump out onto the long, Roman-like square and watch the houses around me, in a semicircle, disappearing from view. I freeze. The opposite is a Romanesque church, perfect in its proportions and harmonious in its incarnation. Its giant 20 steps invite me inside, but I do not dare. I do not dare because it is not the time.
Majestically and in some ways even menacingly hovering antique organ over the heads of parishioners, covering with its shadow all the well-known stories immortalized in blue paint on burnt tiles. Who so swiftly carves these sonorous notes, who, tell me, gives praise to the Great by such an indescribably beautiful method?
I will listen to every shudder of the air masses, and I will listen so that I can fully immerse myself in the masterful talent of Francisco from Coimbra. The same Portuguese who will give to the world the great Carlos Seixes, who already, at the age of 14, will raise the human spirit to the divine heights in the Sé Cathedral, which is already immensely great in every way and every sense.
Loud. The bells that have replaced the sistrum are ringing—the beautiful and ancient instrument of the cult of Isis. The sounding of this divine device was lost to mankind without conscience or regret in the darkness of centuries, and today the real sistrum can be found only in a museum where it will be just a part of the general exposition. The sistrum was superseded by Buddhist bells which, along with Siddhartha’s ideology, spread their influence around the world so rapidly that it is impossible to trace the moment of the break with the past. Over time, handbells evolved into huge temple bells.
The sound of this external musical instrument makes my being shudder, disturbs my inner peace and strangely strips me of my balance. I wouldn’t say that it gets to my bones, but it touches something that used to be very stable inside. Something that I would prefer not to be disturbed. Rarely have I found a bell that makes me feel good. Extremely rare.
It is in Coimbra that the seeker of historical authenticity has the opportunity to observe the true state of affairs. It is enough to climb up to the Sé Cathedral to find myself in the miniature Largo de Se Velha. This is where I am now. My soul and this body, which I carefully hide from the incessant rain under the vaults of the cathedral’s main portal. Coimbra’s majestic sandstone citadel reflects the very essence of the Middle Ages. The indivisibility of space at a time when there were no large areas around religious buildings and the cathedrals were surrounded by a dense ring of residential areas. Here, time stands still and gives us a chance to explore the past.
Christmas is a symbol. A symbol of life, the victory of Light over Darkness, because if the Savior had not come in human form, we would never have known what a true sacrifice is. A sacrifice for good, not for evil, a sacrifice that gives faith in freedom, faith in life, faith in ourselves and thus in our resurrection, faith in the good in the end. Christmas is the starting point, the starting point of the avatar’s arrival in our material world, and as we know, the avatar always comes down to us for the sole purpose of maintaining Dharma, or the immutable law of the universe, the law that even the Creator Himself is capable of observing, indeed, the Creator is this law, or rather Dharma is one of His manifestations.
I think about all this in an almost academic way while simultaneously dissolving into the sluggish stream of people on the main street of Coimbra. This year, Christmas is like the rays of the first springtime and a truly warm sun breaking through the incessant rain. People are slippery as they carry their bodies up to the Largo De Se Velha, some even managing to go down. Is our fall destined to happen, or is it our own choice? I remember a similar question being raised in a work I’d forgotten. And probably in every human mind, at some point in life, there was an assumption about the inevitability of our actions. I look at the man rising from the floor and convince myself that we have a choice, but it rests on a foundation of desires, and our desires are destined. This is done to raise us strong in spirit, because there is nothing more difficult than overcoming your desire because it means gaining control over your feelings, and the ancients said that the key to knowing God is available only to those who have mastered their mind and feelings. By learning to control our urges and desires, we can gain power over destiny as Divine Law. We can gain power over the great Karma.
The Rapture
First to the river. To pay tribute to the giant, rightly so named by me, because the Mondego is the largest truly Portuguese river, a river without the impurities of foreign lands, born high on the northern slopes of the Serra da Estrella and merging into one with the father of the seas, the Atlanta Ocean. I approach the surface of the water; I have the chance to be above the river; I stare and remember the words of the second Portuguese after the King, the one whose birth makes people not ashamed to call themselves a Portuguese.
Doces águas e claras do Mondego,
doce repouso de minha lembrança,
onde a comprida e pérfida esperança
longo tempo após si me trouxe cego.
Not sweet are these dark waters carrying streams past the abandoned convent of St. Clara. I’m sure they remember the faces of three. Three. I stop in the middle of the emptiness inside myself to make sense of it. Why do I remember them, and who are those three that my consciousness cries out about, screams, practically yells into my soul. I close my eyes, so I don’t see the matter, and I keep my head down. Through the darkness of ages, through the blur of my eyes, tired of earthly absurdity, I see three figures bent over the water surface like questioning signs. They stand on the other side, and from here, it is hard to make out what I see: living beings or only shadows born by my imagination in the night. Squinting again, I hear the words carried by the wind:
“Let’s kill her and leave nobody.”
“But the King asked for her head.”
“Then we’ll bury the body and give the King her head back.”
Spaniards, this speech I know, treacherously and sneaky through the ages, from Leon and Castile invading liars, without apology encroaching on these holy lands always.
Moss. Cold to the touch, wet and viscous smelling moss. It covers the stone slabs, partly the bottom of the vaults, and the steps of the small staircase. It is also covered by this time. On the 7th of January of the XIV century, the one already forgotten by the modern Portuguese. Beauty is ruined by anger, envy and fear; fear is the driving force behind all the evil deeds of the human race. The silence was broken by muffled voices, by the meek cry, by the venous blood of the beautiful Inês spilling onto the wooden planking. This is something that will never be forgotten, something that will form the basis of many love stories, from the pages of books, novels, films, images, and the frosted glasses of people’s fates. A true love story that is neither here nor now.
These words put together in thoughts and memories are only part of the associative series associated with the beautiful and majestic in its historical meaning of Coimbra.
The students of the oldest university in Europe, pompous in their importance and frightened by the possibility of not being needed by society, dressed in black robes. The streets of Coimbra are a continuous string of steps leading up to the student pantheon. The romance of the past is so closely linked to the romance of everyday life of today. This is Coimbra for most of those who live, visit, or hear about it.
For me, it is a shrine. A huge casket, inside which a great Portuguese man breathes eternal peace. Master of the Order, creator of Portugal, defender and Warrior. One the likes of which there is none in Portugal and never will be. Coimbra is Afonso. And, of course, his son, listening to the King’s breath in the tomb across the chapel.
This is my Coimbra.