Porto
I went back to my bar on the Rio Douro, where I discovered the clamour described in José Saramago's Blindness.
A woman of about 30 sat herself down at my table: "My mother wanted to abort me because I jeopardised her professional career. I survived. After my birth my parents got divorced. Nobody wanted me. From the day of my birth I have been the black sheep. Nowadays I prefer to be a black sheep than a white one. Because at night the wolf sees only the white sheep."
Then a youngish man sat down at the table: "I have never gone to school in my life, only lived life." He laughed loudly.
A married couple with a small child joined us. The husband said: "For ten years we had no children. My wife was disappointed. She left me. After three months she found a lover and became pregnant. The lover was not interested in having children. My wife came back to me and asked me whether I would accept the child and agree to be the father. After a few days of mulling it over I said yes, and now we are all happy." The small child was crying.
"Oh my God!" shouted an older woman to a younger. "You don't understand anything, you don't hear anything, you don't see anything. You only see yourself. You're a prisoner of yourself." The younger woman left the bar.
A pair of lovers came in. I invited them to sit down at our table. I noticed that they wore different wedding rings and I asked them the reason. Both were astonished by my power of observation. It was she who recovered herself and explained: "We were friends when we were twenty. Since then we have both got married. But every year, on the day we slept together for the first time, we celebrate."
These people's life stories opened my eyes to moments of life and of fate of which I had hitherto remained unaware. I was very much moved.
