Why I Travel
“Strangers are just friends waiting to happen.”
It’s been 106 years since the Virgin Mary appeared to three young shepherds in Fatima, a few towns over, but she’s passing through the region again tonight and I’m in hot pursuit of a sighting. She won’t stay long in the tiny town of Picão (population ~100), near the wolf sanctuary where I’m staying, for she’s destined for greater things (or at least a larger population center), but she’ll make an appearance and that’s got everyone in a lather. Picão is hardly recognizable. Where once the town was Kansas now she’s Oz: yesterday primly attired in black and white then today *POOF* she’s exploded into a colorful 3-D spectacle of plastic flowers tied to every solid surface, twinkle lights crisscrossing streets overhead, and pine boughs macheted off tree trunks and laid atop cobblestones so holy toes need never touch turf.
Welcome to the Círio da Prata Grande de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré.
It all began with the Legend of Nazareth (or Nazaré in Portuguese), which holds that the knight and reputed templar Dom Fuas Roupinho was hunting on horseback in a deep fog on September 14, 1182, when the deer ahead of him suddenly plunged off a cliff and, in frenzied pursuit, he realized he couldn’t slow his steed fast enough to avoid the same. As luck would have it, however, he was just outside the town of Nazaré, Portugal, not too far from Picão, beside a small cave where, since 711, a tiny statue of the Virgin Mary (considered the world’s oldest image venerated by Christians) had been in repose. According to oral tradition subsequently inscribed and discovered on a tombstone, the statue – carved in black wood and standing a mere one inch tall, representing the Virgin breastfeeding the baby Jesus – was carved in the Holy Land by the carpenter Saint Joseph of Nazareth. A few decades later Saint Luke, the evangelist, is said to have painted her hands and face. The statue changed hands multiple times in the early years, conveyed from one saint to another fleeing persecution and warfare, often in disguise, often unto death, until it landed in the cave beside the quick-thinking knight who called out to Mary to save him from certain death four centuries later. In that moment, the horse’s hind feet miraculously stuck in the rocky ledge over the sea and the animal reared, saving the knight from the abyss. (It is said that if you look closely, you can still see the impression of the horse’s hoofprints in the rock at the edge of the drop-off.) Filled with awe and gratitude, the knight immediately built a chapel on the site to guard Mary’s statue and it is still housed nearby, in a more impressive church built by a Portuguese king in the 14th century to better accommodate all her visitors. A taller doppelganger of the Virgin, standing now and no longer breastfeeding, moves annually and with much fanfare from one to another of the regional churches who share her, in an endless loop initiated in 1377 and continuing with a mid-September transfer to commemorate the knight’s salvation every year since. For the towns located between the 17 host churches – each of which houses the Virgin for a year at a time – the Círio da Prata Grande de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré only passes by once every 17 years.
The Virgin is borne in a carriage fit for a king, red and gilded and lit from within, drawn by four white horses and attended by liveried footmen who lift her off her velvet pillow and ceremoniously hand her to a priest in holiday regalia who carries her on high to bless every chapel in every tiny town she passes on her journey.
While the Virgin may be the object of worship, the horses are the stars of the show; a clear tribute to the horse who saved the life of the inattentive knight nine centuries ago. A brass band heralds the arrival of the procession with tubas and trumpets and a full drum set perched high up on horseback, held aloft in the hands of notably good riders who gallop past so quickly we more or less miss the music. Like a train whistle, we got one blast and then just a slow fade as the musicians disappeared around the far bend in the road. After the band come the open-air carriages of yeomen and holy men and school-age choir boys in finery befitting Roman magistrates who disembark and regale us with song from the church steps, solo after endless solo, each one worse than the last. I found myself wishing they’d gone galloping past with the band and then … the choirboys loaded back into their carriage and their horses lurched and galloped off before the driver got the reins in his hands and the power of it spun the assemblage sideways toward the crowd and the boys screamed while people dove for cover in recessed doorways and once it all got sorted out everyone laughed because no one died and it lent an exciting air of drama to the evening. (Note to self: be careful what you wish for in the presence of Mary the munificent.)
Close on the heels of the carriages come dozens upon dozens of high-stepping dressage horses with riders bedecked in tuxes and historical costumery, magnificent equestrians all, for as their horses leapt and skipped and struck fancy poses every rider stayed well-mounted despite the fact that easily three-quarters of them were deeply engrossed in gaming on their cell phones. I missed the priest’s allocution for all the *blips* and *beeps* and casino-jackpot-tinkling drowning out his words, but on the bright side the benediction morphed into a gloriously blinkered spectacle when all those riders performed the sign of the cross with their devices fast in hand, dappling their foreheads, hearts, and shoulders with flecks of fast-changing colored lights. Amen.
Meanwhile, I got a good petting. Shortly after the band blew past but before the Virgin got taken out for a stroll, an elderly woman behind me started petting my hair. When the carriage full of boys took its sideways spin she reached for my hand and clutched it to her heart and I thought maybe she was frightened but then she never let go. Throughout the parade she kept up a steady stream of words I couldn’t understand until finally she dispatched someone to get her 13-year-old great-granddaughter who spoke enough English that we could introduce ourselves and establish that I was to join their family for a 10pm dinner. The old woman and I walked arm-in-arm under the stars to her daughter’s house, picking up extra friends and family members as we went, linking them arm-in-arm too, until we reached the doorstep as a united front of familiars that stretched from one side of the street to the other.
Inside, the home reminded me of my Italian grandmother’s house. There were so many people gathered around the dining table that end tables and boxes got enlisted as stools, and folks climbed over and across each other on their way in and out of the front door that never quite closed in an endless effort to roust up some extra glasses, another pack of cigarettes, more booze, a diaper for the baby in the corner, and some old family photos to help construct for me their family tree. (Theirs is a matrilineal line presently four generations strong.) When I slipped into the kitchen the women slipped an apron over my head and we stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the stove plucking antennae and pereopods off the shrimp. But leave the heads! they explained via sign language, our only reliable form of communication once my 13-year-old translator absconded with friends. There came a moment, however, when I recognized a Portuguese word that’s the same in Spanish and responded instinctively with a Spanish phrase. Hearing me, one of the husbands realized we could broach our language barrier. “You speak Spanish!” he said. “And I speak Spanish! Switch to Spanish!” And that is how we made dinner table conversation for the next few hours about Brexit and Trump and wolves and volunteerism and tourism, him translating everyone’s questions to me in Spanish and then translating my Spanish responses back into Portuguese for them. We ate and talked and ate and talked until 1am, when everyone in the building kissed me twice, once on each cheek, before walking me to the garden gate and waving goodbye as I set off on foot to return to the wolf sanctuary.
Just before I departed, however, the 13-year-old great-granddaughter showed back up and in her faltering English said to me tearfully, “This is the last of these festivals my great-grandmother will have.” She is too old to make it another 17 years; she will not live to see the next procession pass in 2040. Then the girl squeezed my hand and said, “I’m so glad she got to spend her last one with you.”
This is why I travel.
The Virgin’s carriage pulling away from the Picão chapel.