From Northeast to Northwest: The Douro and The Duero
The Fiery Waters of the River de Onor

«Sometimes it appears we set out from the furthest point. The most normal course to follow, having got to Braganza, is to take a look around what the city has to offer, then cast an eye over its surroundings, a stone here, a landscape there, respecting their natural order. But the traveller has an obsession: to get to Rio de Onor. It's not that he expects worlds and wonders of the visit, since Rio de Onor is no more than a little village: it cannot proffer relics of either Goths or Moors. Yet once you start reading up on the subject, certain names always stick in your memory, along with facts and associations, all growing increasingly elaborate and complicated until it reaches the point we've reached, where the myth becomes idealised. The traveller hasn't come in the guise of an ethnologist or a sociologist, nobody counts on him to make ultimate discoveries, or even lesser ones. He is possessed only of the human and legitimate desire to see what others see, set his feet in the footprints of others. Rio de Onor is a place of pilgrimage to the traveller: through it, he came by a book which, as a work of science, is among the most moving ever to have been written in Portugal. It is about a land the traveller wants to see with his own eyes. Nothing less and nothing more than that.

Still another thirty kilometres down the main road. There ahead, on the way out of Braganza, lies the darkly silent village of Sacoias. Entering it is to enter a different world. Seeing the first houses appear around a bend in the road he feels devoured by the desire to stop and shout: “Is anyone here? Can I come in?” Certainly, even today, the traveller remains uncertain whether or not Sacoias is inhabited. The persistent memory of it is of a wilderness or, more specifically, of an absence. The impression doesn't fade even when he superimposes a fresh one, now on his return journey, of three women theatrically displayed on a flight of steps, listening to what someone inaudible to the traveller was saying, as she draped her hand over a flowerpot. The vision so closely resembled a dream that finally the traveller is left with the suspicion he never went to Sacoias.

(...)

And so to Rio de Onor. Going around a curve, and a watery light appears between the trees, you can hear the water itself rippling past the brambles under the stone bridge. The river, in fulfilment of its duty, is called Onor. Nearly all the house roofs are of slate, and in the damp climate they shine and look darker than their natural leaden hue. It's not raining, it hasn't rained all day, but the whole landscape is as drenched as if it were at the bottom of a submarine valley. The traveller regarded it calmly, then continued in the other direction. He was not particularly contented. He had finally arrived at the Rio de Onor he'd so wanted to reach, and now he doesn't feel happy. There are those things we desperately desire, yet when we obtain them they leave us cold. (...)

The Story of the Soldier José Jorge

(...) The traveller climbs to the castle, up narrow streets cobbled with ancient stones, taking note of the pillory with its cross on top and its swine beneath, and circles the Domus Municipalis, which is supposed to be open but isn't. Anyone who looks at a photograph of it sees it as rectangular, and is surprised to find it actually composed of five asymmetrical sides, such as no child would deign to draw. What reasoning brought about such a design remains unknown, at least to the traveller. Even harder does he find it to establish whether the construction is Roman, or dates from Greek rule, or is merely medieval - the traveller yearns for his curiosity to be satisfied regarding this twisted pentagon, but there seems to be no explanation.

The traveller has only to see the doorway to the church of Santa María do Castelo before, not being all that keen on Baroque exuberances, he determines to pay more attention to the grain of its granite than to the branches and leaves entwined around its supporting columns. Later on he would be bound to swallow his words and recognise the grandeur of Baroque architecture, but there were still many roads to travel before he would be prepared to admit as much. In the other churches of Braganza there remains little of interest, unless it be the church of St Vincent, for reasons of its brief history whereby, according to tradition, Dom Pedro and Inês de Castro were wed. Perhaps so, but of its walls and stones nothing remains, and there is nothing about the place to suggest such a great and political union.

Was Braganza looked at? It was not. But don't ask the traveller about it, for he has other places to see, ones just as capable of retaining a man for the rest of his life, not because of their particular qualities but because such is the temptation of those lands. And when phrases like “the rest of his life” are used, you're talking about time in its infinity, as instanced by the case of the soldier José Jorge, a case we are about to relate.

(...) The day was propitious for reflections of this kind, and chance permitted the traveller's vagabond steps to lead him to the site where they could best be justified. He walked through sweeping alleys that smelled fresh among the tombstones, deciphering inscriptions coated with lichen and eroded by time, and, having made his way all around, he approached a shallow grave, isolated from the pomp and circumstance of the congregation of the fallen, on whose headstone, surrounded by a low verge, there was an inscription which read: HERE LIES JOSÉ JORGE SENTENCED TO DEATH ON 3 APRIL 1843. The case was an intriguing one. Which celebrated dear departed could this be, buried here at the foot of the wall, in a place marked and occupied for nearly 140 years, but hardly abandoned, as the traveller could surmise from the condition of the recently repainted lettering, neatly picked out in white on recently refurbished black? Someone must know. And after all, here beside him was the gravedigger's hut and inside it the gravedigger himself. The traveller hailed him with a: “Good afternoon. Can you please tell me something?” The gravedigger, deep in conversation with a young woman in his soft Tramontan accent, rises from his bench and puts himself at the traveller's service: “Certainly sir, if it's something I know.” He must know, surely, it's a question about his job, not something he could keep quiet about. “This José Jorge here, who was he?” The gravedigger shrugs his shoulders and smiles: “Ah, that's an old tale.” This is hardly news to the traveller, who's already seen the date marked on the tombstone. The keeper of the vineyard continues: “They say he was a soldier who lived here then. One day a friend came and asked to borrow his uniform, without offering any reason, but since they were friends the soldier didn't see fit to ask, and later on there was the incident of the body of a dead maiden and everyone began muttering that she'd been killed by a soldier, and that the soldier was José Jorge. It turned out that his uniform had become stained with blood, something José Jorge was unable or didn't wish to explain, since it was he who had lent out his uniform.”

“But if he'd said that he'd lent it, that would have been enough to save his life,” said the traveller, proud of his sense of logic. The gravedigger replied: “That I can't tell you. All I know is what I was told. It's a story that came down to me from my grandfather, and to him from his grandfather. José Jorge kept quiet, his friend acted dumb, useless friend that he was, say I, and José Jorge was hanged and then buried here. And here, some years ago, they decided to build a mausoleum to him, but when they discovered his corpse in perfect condition, they sealed up his coffin once more and never came back to try again.” The traveller was curious: “And who's responsible for retouching those neatly-painted letters?” “I am,” acknowledged the gravedigger.»