Anna and the Archbishop

My brother was over for a couple of days and, by some grievous oversight, he had never visited Braga on any of his previous visits. To remedy this, we set off one fine morning, arriving first at A Brasileira for a coffee and to meet up with Anna. That's when she offered to show us around.

A little later, as we were walking down Rua do Souto, she pointed to a building which bore a prominent sign which said PALACE.

“This is the Palace,” she said. We murmured our appreciation and asked her how old it was. There was a brief pause.

“Very old,” said Anna. We muttered our thanks again for her insight and we walked on to the cathedral. We could tell it was the cathedral because it said CATHEDRAL on a sign outside.

“This,” said Anna with evident pride, “is the cathedral.” It was our turn to pause as we struggled to form the next question.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Anna quickly, before we had the chance. We once again nodded our appreciation of her candour and wisdom and we trooped inside the cloister.

“You have to pay to go into the cathedral,” said Anna defensively, as if searching for reasons to stop us from going into the main building and asking questions that she didn’t know the answer to.

Real skill

“They are very expensive to maintain,” said my brother. I think he was championing Anna’s cause – that of leaving someone’s ignorance unchallenged. Both of us were suitably impressed that anyone could live in a city for so long and know so little about it. That takes real skill.

We didn’t have to pay to go into the little chapels around the courtyard, so we popped into a couple of them. Actually, ‘pop’ might be the wrong verb here because one of them was so dark that Anna didn’t see the Archbishop lying on the floor, and she snagged her foot on the old fellow. Anna teetered and Anna tottered, but she just managed to save herself from falling face-first into the arms of the supine alabaster archbishop. Above the old boy’s tomb, random boxes of saintly bones jostled and murmured in alarm. It had been a close call. We had obviously displayed too much levity at the narrowly avoided intertwining of limbs and studious schoolchildren reading a Latin inscription scolded us oldies with severe looks.

Outside the cathedral, we walked past the town hall and turned up towards the Santa Bárbara gardens. We stood aside as a delegation of a few hundred farmers bearing banners marched in protest about the scandalously low prices farmers were paid for their produce. Anna recognised some politically active acquaintances in amongst their ranks and her back straightened in pride and solidarity with the farmers. Her moment of teetering in the presence of the Archbishop was forgotten; this was a woman who could stand on her own two feet. We read through one of the leaflets handed out by the protesters and bemoaned the wicked ways of all-powerful supermarket chains and noted the universality of the problem.

Gardens

The gardens of Santa Bárbara were pretty in their spring clothes and Anna, determined that we didn’t ask her any questions about the gardens or the ancient arch standing at its southern end, decided that she needed to take photographs of us against the scenic backdrop. We posed suitably, slightly tight-lipped, perhaps, due to the fact that our collective store of knowledge was now no greater than it had been an hour earlier.

Anna did what photographers usually do and took a step back to get the full scene of the brothers, the garden and the bishop's palace. Call it the Archbishop’s revenge if you like (I know that I will) but in the next moment Anna’s heel caught on the surround of the flower bed and before we had time to turn our cameras on her, she had tripped backwards. This time, there was nothing to stop her falling. To the accompaniment of hoots of laughter from a couple of old women passing nearby, she toppled quite gracelessly into a bed of pansies. She later claimed that she had fallen with style and decorum but all I can say as an observer of the event is that it was, without doubt, a most inelegant collapse, with legs and arms flailing among the crushed leaves and crimson petals. I was sure I could hear the echo down the ages of an episcopal laugh. Needless to say, when she finally got to click the button our smiles – broad grins even – were quite genuine and heartfelt.

Soon afterwards, we took our leave. We didn’t want to burden Anna with any more questions that she couldn’t answer and she, I felt, wanted us to leave while she was still standing upright.

Fitch is a retired teacher trainer and academic writer who has lived in northern Portugal for over 30 years. Author of 'Rice & Chips', irreverent glimpses into Portugal, and other books.

Fitch O'Connell