The Road

It darkens. I make my way up the road bordered by wooden fishermen huts, rotten boards, riding stables and salting sheds. Women, children, pigs. I continue climbing between old huts, some with their feet under water, others, further above, shabby and tired, defend themselves from the sand by ways of pine palisades. Shadows, confusion of stinky and dark alleyways, chattering in taverns. Remains of fish everywhere and old wicker baskets that rot, amongst teeming life and the sea breeze that comes from the wide and that everything sweeps and purifies. As night approaches the confusion redoubles: land seems larger and darker. I continue to climb and finally encounter the sea, and more wooden huts scattered amongst the splendid sandy stretch and some strange, archaic boats, which lift their unmeasured bows and sterns up to heaven” – Raúl Brandão, in Os Pescadores, 1923.