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September 2023

- The Old House

An old house once stood on the beach of Odeceixe on the north side of the river Seixe. When exactly it was built has been lost to time. But the last inhabitants were Maria Rosa and José, with whom I was very good friends.

I like to think back to those days. The memories are closely linked to the house, which is now dilapidated and overgrown with thorn hedges. Apart from broken down walls, two massive pillars and the stone bench where people liked to sit together, there is not much left of the building. I would like to record for posterity what it once looked like: When you walked in, you were immediately in the main room, the living room with framed family photos in black and white on the walls and the portrait of Che Guevara – right next to one of Jesus Christ. Stepping out the front door, one looked east across the Seixe River valley to the distant Monchique Mountains.

Stamped, sealed clay formed the floor of the house, the interior walls were white and were freshly whitewashed every year. The roof consisted of a flat wooden truss triangle and tiles that had been replaced in some places by bottles of white glass. They provided another source of light, as there was no connection to the electricity supply at that time and daylight could only enter the room through the front door. This consisted of two parts: the upper one was usually open, but the lower one tended to remain locked so that strangers or chickens could not simply walk in.

In the right-hand corner vis-à-vis the door was a massive, rather low wooden table, which could easily seat ten people, and a long wooden bench. Chairs with short legs, high backs and woven seats were placed at the ends of the table, others against the walls next to the wooden chests and the sewing machine. From the main room, doors led into three other rooms: to the right into the kitchen, to the left into the bedroom and straight ahead into a room that had to remain unused at the time I got to know the house, because the roof had been leaking here for some time. The kitchen had only one window and was very dark. There was a large open fireplace and an oven. Food was cooked in the fireplace. The tripod stood on the ashes of earlier fires, pots and pans of various sizes hung on the fireplace wall, and the blowpipe leaned against the side. It was used to light the fire and keep it going. The pine cones collected and piled up next to the fireplace were also used to heat the oven, which had its place in the corner opposite the door. It was semi-circular in shape and consisted of a brick plinth and a curved clay corpus offset with stones.

The small bedroom with a window view over the river was opposite the kitchen. Here, to the left and right of the door, were two beds with white ornate metal frames and colourful crocheted bedspreads. For centuries, people slept, loved, died and had children in this room. The last one was my eldest son.

Old farmhouses in particular have an exceptionally long lifespan. But when they are abandoned, a rapid decay soon begins. When I painted the picture in 1998, the house was already uninhabited, but still a house. Now it is in ruins – and yet in the memory of some people it will remain what it was for a long time: the old house on the beach of Odeceixe with its vegetable garden, flowers, washing waving in the wind, a watching dog, pond, stables and fields, where Maria Rosa and José once lived very simply but happily with their six children.

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