(a memory of Porto before the revolution)
Jorge Saavedra, with his sister Maria Emília (on the right), his friend João Póvoas, his nephew Paulo, and his friend Maria José Figueirinhas (on the left). In the background a young waiter who served the dinner, offered to the friends and customers by João Bastos, the owner of Arcádia.
Uncle Jorge arranged to meet me at Arcádia at six in the evening. It was a habit that had grown stronger with my newly turned 18 years and the 1973 oil crisis. Uncle Jorge would hand me his Audi coupé in the morning, I would take it to the bank, wander around the city looking for a gas station with a queue for petrol and, after hours of waiting, studying a little and reading Tintins, I earned my freedom. At the end of the afternoon, I would stop in front of Arcádia to hand over the keys. If I was going to stay, I would go a little further up the Square and leave the car in the Comércio do Porto garage.
Uncle Jorge worked at Banco Borges & Irmão, in the powerful Credit Commission, where, between analyzing the merit of requests, friendships, and some gifts in between, many futures of Porto entrepreneurship were decided. After finishing the workday, he left behind the austere building on Rua de Sá da Bandeira and gladly walked down the disorderly Rua de Sampaio Bruno, savoring its red glow of dream sellers. Oil paintings with loud colors displayed on the pavement mixed with cries of newspapers and lottery tickets from Casa da Sorte and Deus Dá A Sorte. And, in the early 70s, the street had turned into a walking stock exchange, adding to the lottery tickets shares of cement factories, banks, and insurance companies, distributed to the people by public subscription.
He replenished his Portuguese Suave cigarettes, now with a filter because of a more chronic cough, bought the day’s sports newspaper, preferably O Norte because it was the only one that defended Porto, crossed the Square, and entered with familiar ease into his city living room. If no one had arrived yet, Mr. Bastos would assign the table. But most of the time the conversation was already flowing, between teas and feminine toast, ham triangles and a Super Bock for the more restrained, coffee and Croft, in a balloon glass filled several times, for those who were not afraid to die.
That day he wore a special tie because the program was extended. Mr. Bastos would close the door as always at eight o’clock and offer a private dinner to Uncle Jorge’s friends, Mr. Saavedra, who were also his friends. A gesture of complicity between two men whom time had brought together in a friendship, always respectful, but which the sharing of habits and the passing of years had made truly sincere.
Mr. Saavedra was a single man, reputed to be from an old family with many properties. Behind the discreet bank clerk, people talked about estates in the Douro, old wine warehouses in the city, and especially about an estate in Gaia that had housed Wellington during the French invasions. But none of this was part of his social life. He left everything in the care of his married sister, his brother-in-law, and now little by little to his older nephew who accompanied him everywhere.
Mr. Bastos respected Mr. Saavedra for his simplicity. He mixed as well with high society as he could appear with the bank’s doorman, introduced as a friend. For someone without social gilding in Porto at the time, entering Arcádia was only possible this way. The fate of caste ended with a glass of fine beer with lupins at the popular Sá Reis. Or, at most, a romantic snack at the Ateneia, if he managed to find a decent girlfriend to marry. Sá Reis, Ateneia, and Arcádia, followed in this order, displayed from left to right in the main block of Liberty Square, were the strict reading of each Porto citizen’s social standing.
– Who would Mr. Saavedra like to invite to dinner? Both knew it had to be a restricted selection; Mr. Bastos did not close Arcádia for worldly dinners, only for his family parties and close friends. Conceição would of course go, girlfriend and wealthy heiress of Transportes dos Carvalhos. The friend Maria José Figueirinhas, from one of the best families in the city. João Póvoas, companion of every day, and his sister Margarida, single and aristocrats. Truly married only the Macedo couple. And the family, sister Maria Emília with brother-in-law José Paulo. The nephew Paulo, who came to bring the car, could also stay.
It was a dinner that remained in the family’s memory. First the appetizers in the bar room. Then the set table in the large basement room. Mr. Bastos took the chairmanship and directed the seating of the guests, the photographer’s gaze, the choice of wines, the arrival of fish and meat dishes. At the end, the Arcádia tarts. With the Port wine, father José Paulo made a toast of thanks. Being a little older, he remembered well the founding father Manuel Bastos at the head of the young art déco confectionery in his student days. He remembered the matchmaking girls arranging meetings at Arcádia with suitors, for the mothers’ relief. The legend of the accomplice waiter who served white wine in a teacup to one of those girls. Boys like him, very hungry and with a small weekly allowance, making quick escapes to the taverns behind the Palácio das Cardosas to eat a slice of liver with onions and barrel wine. And reappearing satisfied to continue the romantic tea.
Paulo de Lencastre
Porto, December 13, 2020
