Requiem for a beautiful girl

I remember seeing her in high school when I was in 9th grade, and thinking she was so cool - always smiling, her long dark hair floating in the breeze, always hanging with cool looking kids - and wishing to meet her and become her friend. Then, when I started 10th grade, she was in my class, which was really a piece of luck. We quickly became good friends, as one does at 15, and it was even better than I expected. She was indeed a wonderful girl - not conventionally pretty, but with such a contagious smile and bright eyes, long dark hair often braided Bo Derek style, funny and good-humored, and extremely clever, witty and intelligent, one of the brightest people I had met in school so far. She didn't care much about grades and being a successful student, and I remember several teachers wondering how come I, always the top of the class, was such a close friend with her. Little did they know that I was the one who had more to learn.

And we talked and talked, outside and inside the classroom, we were at the same desk in most classes, and kept on talking, about everything, but mostly music - we exchanged song lyrics and sang together Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Doors, Queen... Our favorite duo was Wish You Were Here, where we also sang the guitar and bass parts - usually at the Philosophy class. Many people thought we were going steady and we had fun sometimes pretending we did, but we were just good friends. Actually, later, I developed a crush on her, but I was too shy to make advances - I was such a nerdish kid - and then we got separated by circumstances.

Intense as teenage friendships are, they're also very fragile. I changed schools and we stopped seeing each other - we both thought too prosaic to plan and left to chance our meeting again, silly immature kids that we were. And so it was a kind of opposite of serendipity, we let things to chance and I lost her. Later, I knew through a common friend that she had gotten into serious problems with drugs, and I was very upset about it; I looked for her then but couldn't find her (it was before cell phones and the internet!).

And life went on. A couple of years ago, I was browsing my facebook wall and thought about looking for her. I typed her name, and suddenly there it was - her name, and a picture of a woman much older than the girl I used to know but with a unique and recognizable smile. I contacted her, and we talked again. More than 30 years had passed since we had last seen each other, but we felt as close as if we had just chatted last week. We told each other our lives' stories, so different, and I was so happy to hear about her children and her unorthodox but rich life - as it had to be, because a brilliant mind always makes things happen. We didn't meet, because we were living in different cities; after a time of much talk to get up to date we communicated from time to time. She didn't use facebook much, so I wasn't surprised for not seeing any posts or comments for a while.

Then last week, they told me she had died, that it was on her facebook page. I checked, and it was true. I can't quite express how I felt - shocked, upset, sad, mad at myself that I didn't meet her again... But mostly I felt sadness and a sense of loss. Yes, I know that we hadn't met for years, that we seldom talked. But whenever we did it was always easy, friendly and warm, we always felt connected, our friendship had never died - real friendships are like that, you can be years apart but you pick it up as if those years were but a moment. Above all, I knew she was there, somewhere, smiling and brilliant as always, a joy to the world. And now she isn't. And I wish she was here, or somewhere.

A Journey to the End of the Millennium, by A. B. Yehoshua

An extremely interesting book. I read Mr. Mani a few months ago, and liked it very much, so when I saw this one at a bookstore during my last trip to Israel, I was curious and bought it (I love historical novels). And I was duly rewarded. This is a dense novel, historical because it's set in 999, but actually it could be anytime, since it deal with conscience and timeless moral issues. I think it is, in a way, a very Jewish book, as Mr. Mani was, which is good, since one can learn about other cultures from books - like I learned about Islamic culture from Naguib Mahfouz or Orhan Pamuk's books, for instance. And I like Yehoshua's writing, very elegant and intelligent.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

A very interesting book. At first I didn't like it much, maybe because I read it in a Portuguese translation, and I'm growing to dislike translations, they seem so faulty, I sometimes wonder if translations were better when I was young or if it's just I'm more aware of the faults since I got used to read in English. But then it grew on me as the plot unfold, and I came to like it very much. I like History and historical novels, and the Tudor period is very interesting. I particularly liked the way the Author conveyed great historical changes in a progressive, almost imperceptible way, like things do happen in reality - in this case, the ascension of Cromwell to power and the separation from Rome. I still find it a little hard to understand the long time it took for Henry VIII to have Anne Boleyn - how did he wait years to take her to bed? Historical mysteries, I guess. I'm looking forward to read Bring Up the Bodies, and I think I'll read it in English, then I'll have a notion of how Mantel's writing is really like.

The Last Letter Home, by Vilhelm Moberg

A beautiful ending to the Emigrants saga. Bittersweet, with some very sad scenes, always convincing and real. A true hymn to life, endurance, resourcefulness and change - and a kind of permanence too.

April Witch, by Majgull Axelsson

Another very good Swedish book, about family relationships and the welfare state in Sweden. The characters are extremely believable, and the dreamlike writing intertwines the fantastic in the prosaic in a smooth way that makes the fantasy stuff blend perfectly in the narrative.

A Secret Country, by John Pilger

This book was suggested to me by an Australian friend; he said “This a good book to help you understand this country.” And I did find it extremely interesting, especially after having been there. In a way, it’s a grim reading, and, having spent such a pleasant time sightseeing in Australia, I couldn’t help but having the recurrent thought “so much darkness in Paradise!”. But I think it helps to understand the country, in particular the first chapter in what regards the Australian character and the fourth about its history. The appalling account of the Aborigines’ treatment wasn’t new to me, but it’s always chillingly shocking. The chapters about politics are less interesting, because unfortunately the situation is not much different in the rest of the Western world – what the author mentions in the preface,"What is happening today in Australia is no more than a warning that liberal societies are being returned to passivity, obedience and secrecy and that the subjugation of people's minds and pockets has a new set of managers and a new vocabulary.", can be said of all the Western democracies since the early ‘90s. And I think he lingers too long on the details there, sounding a little obsessed with CIA conspiracies – that are perfectly credible, but the tone comes out a little paranoid.



In short, I think it’s a very interesting reading, especially if one wants to know more about Australia, which is mostly an unknown country to us Europeans.

Titans of History, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

A disappointing book, after having read the excellent Jerusalem biography. It's very superficial, and not only the selection of historical "titans" is sometimes odd (Montefiore seems particularly to revel in the lives of dictators, the more barbarous the better), as the historical appraisal of some of them is extremely questionable, especially the modern ones (like Gandhi, John Paul II or Thatcher, for instance). It's a pleasant reading, but these faults make it often annoying. I think it's more suitable for children, as an introduction to history, like we used to read in the 70s collections of texts in the series "15".

And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini

A nice book, about a family in Afghanistan from the late 40s to the present. Well written, it depicts family emotions fairly well, and the sense of loss and lost opportunities and time, but also the resilience and hope in human nature. Some interesting characters and engaging plot, but I would have liked to know more about the relatives who stayed in Afghanistan, and whose experience is just hinted at, instead of the long passage about the Greek doctor, that seems a bit superfluous. But all in all a nice read.

The Settlers, by Vilhelm Moberg

The Settlers is the third book in Moberg's series about a group of Swedish emigrants to America in the 19th century. As the others, it's a beautifully written book, that makes us feel the trials and tribulations of the emigrants in a plentiful but hard and often dangerous land, their courage and tenacity. Karl Oskar, Kristina, Robert, Ulrika, are vivid and believable characters that we feel we come to know and love. I would still like to be able to read it in Swedish... There is still one fourth part, that I hope to read soon.

Missing an old patient

When I met this patient, more than 20 years ago, she was in her middle-forties - a thin, wide-eyed, anxious looking short woman (as any young doctor, eager to make clever diagnoses, I was disappointed to find she didn’t suffer from hyperthyroidism). I came to know her very well and cherish her as one of my best patients: curious and inquisitive, but sensible and capable of understanding – a rare bless to a physician – and extremely responsible and aware of the importance of her behavior to her well-being.

She had several serious problems over the years, and faced them all with tenacity and optimism: always inquiring and trying to understand what was happening, braving her chronic anxiety and doing what it took to get better. And, being unusually careful and compliant with treatments, she kept a fully functioning and active life. Short and thin, with systolic blood pressure seldom above 100, she was actually very resilient.

I got to know her quite well over the years; I liked her cunning of a poorly educated but very clever woman, the way she engaged in patient support groups, her witty and insightful critiques of the medical flaws she shrewdly learned to detect (and over more than 20 years as a renal patient, she had multiple opportunities to come across all kinds of doctors and nurses – and patients, of whom she was equally critical when they were unreasonable, tedious or aggressive), the way she used to spend the long hours on dialysis reading to be better informed and instructed. I witnessed her worries about her daughter’s first boyfriends, later, the joys of becoming a grandmother.

For many years, her deepest frustration was not getting a kidney transplant. She was in fairly good general health and a very compliant patient; apparently the ideal candidate. But she also had a very reactive immune system – allergic rhinitis, several drug allergies, allergic dermatitis – and soon became hypersensitized, which prevented her from receiving a transplant – the cross-match with every donor was positive. She witnessed many of her contemporary patients being transplanted, many more dying, and after a number of years she was one of the few remaining patients of the early nineties. Sensible as always, she eventually resigned herself to a life on dialysis, and philosophically concluded that maybe it was for the better, since after all she didn’t do that bad (she was one of the few patients that never forgot how hemodialysis got better over the years). She kept going to the pre-transplant appointments out of habit, though.

Then, shortly after the pre-transplant appointment that we agreed would be the last – she had turned 69 and, although doing still relatively well, the risks of transplantation were becoming greater than the potential benefits – she unexpectedly got a call: there was a compatible donor. And she took the no longer expected opportunity; I heard the news a few days later and was sincerely happy for her – if anyone deserved a successful transplant, it certainly was her.

The first week went rather smoothly – the kidney worked, she was finally off-dialysis. But then, the heavy immune suppression used in hypersensitized patients took its toll, and she caught pneumonia. As it often happens, the combination of a hospital germ and the effects of age, chronic illness and immune suppression soon led to a downward spiral: worsening clinical condition, ICU, mechanical ventilation, acute kidney injury, multiorgan failure and ultimately death.

It made me feel so sad. What if that call had never come? What if we had given up on transplant 1 year earlier? Maybe she could have enjoyed another 5 or 10 years, who knows. Then, maybe things could have turned out well with the transplant (I actually had another patient with a very similar case that has been living with her transplant for more than 5 years now and doing well), and she had never quite given up the dream of leaving dialysis. Yes, I know we can never know for sure. But it is sad anyway, and today, doing the round in the dialysis room at the time when she used to be here, I missed her.

Brothers, by Yu Hua

An interesting book about the social transformations in China during the last decades. Implacably cruel, often funny, a bit too much on the escathological humor. I guess it gives one an idea of how life under the Chinese "miracle" is.

Unto a Good Land, by Vilhelm Moberg

Another very good Swedish book, the second part of the story of a group of Swedish peasants that emigrate to the USA in 1850. I had enjoyed very much the first part - The Emigrants - and this one is just as good. I'm still sorry I cannot read it in Swedish, but maybe sometime I will have the necessary language skills. Over the years, I have been reading more untranslated books, and it has been really enjoyable and enriching.

Correspondance, de Marcel Proust

I love the writings of Proust, and reading this collection of his letters left me a bittersweet taste. Bitter, because most of the content of the letters is not very interesting - a few details about his work, some good depictions of his relationships with friends, a lot of details about his routine and his illness, but mostly nothing that adds significantly to his books, articles and essays. Sweet, because it's always an immense pleasure to read his elegant prose and to be reminded of his masterpiece, that was really a milestone in my life, and that I plan to reread soon, this time in French - what better way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Du Côté de Chez Swann?

Weekend in Toulouse

I spent recently an extended weekend in Toulouse. I really enjoyed it, there was a lot to enjoy - great sightseeing, excellent monuments and museums, the always fine French food. It's a 2 hour flight away from Lisbon, so it seemed like a nice place to go for a short getaway, and so it was.

Toulouse is a beautiful city, with an ancient history that goes all the way to the Romans. I stayed between the railway station - Gare de Matabiau, a name reminiscent of the Toulouse saint bishop Saturnin, killed by a bull - and the Place du Capitole where is the City Hall. It's a pleasant city to walk, being flat and well paved.

And so I walked, through beautiful squares like Place du Capitole, Place Saint-Georges, Place Wilson, Place de l'Esquirol, prosperous 19th century boulevards and narrow medieval streets. Toulouse is called la Ville Rose on account of the numerous buildings of local brick. There is a beautiful Romanesque cathedral, the Basilique de Saint-Sernin, and impressive Gothic churches, especially the church of the Couvent des Jacobins - also built with bricks, it's a peculiar kind of Gothic, more austere than usually, and with beautifully faded frescoes on the walls. I guess it's what they call the Languedocian Gothic.

I visited two excellent small museums: the Musée Saint-Raymond and the Musée des Augustins. The first has a fine collection of Roman artifacts, especially remarkable are the numerous busts, I love the perfection of the portraits, really individualistic and expressive. The second, in the ancient convent of the Augustins, has a wonderful collection of Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, I was particularly struck by the beauty of the Romanesque capitals and some Gothic faces. There are also some good paintings - Delacroix, Reni, Lautrec - and sculptures by Rodin.

From Toulouse, I took a day trip to Carcassonne, a small town with a fortified medieval city which was important at the time of ta Cathars and then extensively restored in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc. The place is outrageously touristic now, with cafés alternating with souvenir shops, but it manages to retain a magic fairy tale atmosphere, especially the castle. And of course I tasted the famous local cassoulet.

And so it was another very nice trip, not the less for the company - I took my mother with me, and she was a fine travel companion, valiantly walking a lot and always cheerful! Looking forward to do it again.

The Emigrants, by Vilhelm Moberg

Another suggestion from a Swedish friend, he told me Vilhelm Moberg's saga about emigration was good to understand Sweden. Anyway, it's an excellent book; I'd like to be able to read it in Swedish, somehow there is a tone that sounds very characteristic, the same kind of singsong one hears in Swedish films and that I also felt when I read a book by Knut Hamsun. And if these peasants are representative of the Swedish character, what stands out it's its seriousness, honesty and resilience, and also a certain gloom.

I already ordered the other three books of the saga.

The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

A very book, that a new friend recently suggested me. It's mostly about friendship, fathers and sons and coming of age, universal themes in this case set in the Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn and in the time from the D-day until shortly after the independence of Israel. The friendship between the boys is beautifully depicted, as is the relationships with the fathers and the conflict between parents' expectations and sons' willingness to please them and the youngsters' desires and hopes. And the Jewish conflicts between the religious conservatives and the less religious and more realistic ones is interesting, depicted at the crucial moment of the Holocaust discovery and the foundation of the State of Israel. Once more, I find it hard to understand how some people can spend their lives and waste their intelligence fussing over lines of the Talmud - it seems really Byzantine. All in all, a very good book.

Journal 1822-1863, de Eugène Delacroix

I loved reading the Journal de Delacroix. He was an intelligent and sensitive man, an extremely keen observer of the world around him, its beauty and its flaws, and always questioning everything. His dedication to and seriousness about his art is touching, and if sometimes the technical details can be a little boring to the non-artists like me, it's always interesting to "watch" a great artist at work, it makes us see so much better and understand his vision. But he thinks and comments about much more than painting, he was a curious mind aware of all that surrounded him and a very cultivated and intelligent man. And he writes in an extremely elegant French, which is a real pleasure to read.

I leave some of the passages I liked the most.

L'homme ne place presque jamais son bonheur dans les biens réels; il le met presque toujours dans la vanité, dans le sot plaisir d'attirer sur soi les regards et par conséquent l'envie. Mais, dans cette vaine carrièrre, il n'en atteint point ordinairement l'objet; au moment où il se réjouit de se voir sur un théâtre où il attire les regards, il regarde encore plus haut; ses désirs montent à mesure qu'il s'élève, il envie lui-même autant qu'il est envié; quant aux vrais biens, il s'en éloigne toujours davantage: la tranquillité d'esprit, l'indépendance fondée sur des désirs modestes et facilement satisfaits, lui sont interdites.

L'homme est si bizarre qu'il trouve dans le malheur même des sujets de consolation et presque du plaisir, comme celui, par exemple, de se sentir injustement persécuté et d'avoir en soi la conscience d'un mérite supérieur à sa fortune présente; mais il lui arrive bien plus souvent de s'ennuyer dans la prospérité et même de s'y trouver très malheureux.

Le vulgaire croit que le talent doit toujours être égal à lui-même et qu'il se lève tous les matins comme le soleil, reposé et rafraîchi, prêt à tirer du même magasin, toujours ouvert, toujours plein, toujours abondant, des trésors nouveaux à verser sur ceux de la veille; il ignore que, semblable à toutes les choses mortelles, il a un cours d'accroissement et de dépérissement, qu'indépendamment de cette carrière qu'il fournit, comme tout ce qui respire (à savoir: de commencer faiblement, de s'accroître, de paraître dans toute sa force et de s'éteindre par degrés), il subit toutes les intermittences de la santé, de la maladie, de la disposition de l'âme, de sa gaieté ou de sa tristesse. En outre, il est sujet à s'égarer dans le plein exercice de sa force; il s'engage souvent dans des routes trompeuses; il lui faut alors beaucoup de temps pour en revenir au point d'où il était parti, et souvent il ne s'y retrouve plus le même. Semblable à la chair périssable, à la vie faible et attaquable par tous les côtés de toutes les créatures, laquelle est obligé de résister à mille influences destructives, et qui demande ou un continuel exercice ou des soins incessants, pour n'être pas dévorée par cet univers qui pèse sur nous, le talent est obligé de veiller constamment sur lui-même, de combattre, de se tenir perpétuellement en haleine, en présence des obstacles au milieu desquels s'exerce sa singulière puissance. L'adversité et la prospérité sont des écueils également à craindre. Le trop grand succès tend à l'énerver, comme l'insuccès le décourage. Plusieurs hommes de talent n'ont eu qu'une lueur, qui s'est éteinte aussitôt que montrée. Cette lueur éclate quelquefois dès leur apparition et disparaît ensuite pour toujours. D'autres, faibles et chancelants, ou diffus, ou monotones en commençant, ont jeté, après une longue carrière presque obscure, un éclat incomparable, tels que Cervantès; il en est qui n'ont pas subi d'éclipse.

Travailler n'est pas seulement pour produire des ouvrages, c'est pour donner du prix au temps: on est plus content de soi et de sa journée quand on a remué des idées, bien commencé ou achevé quelque chose.

Ma passion pour les voyages se refroidit quand je considère qu'ils se composent uniquement de départs et d'arrivées: mais que de plaisirs et d'avantages on achète par cette peine! N'y trouvâ-t-on que la facilité de s'instruire sans étude, on ferait très bien de feuilleter les divers pays de la terre en guise de lecture: d'autant qu'on est toujours forcé d'en joindre quelqu'autre à celle-là. Quand je me sens près de me décourager au milieu de mes pèlerinages, je me dis: si je veux le but, il faut vouloir le moyen, et je continue Je fais plus, à peine revenu chez moi, je pense à recommencer. Le voyage perpétuel serait une douce manière de passer sa vie, surtout pour un homme qui n'est pas d'accord avec les idées qui dominent le monde dans le temps où il vit. Changer de pays équivaut à changer de siècle, etc.

And the last of his paintings I saw, in the Musée des Augustins, in Toulouse:

Mr.Mani, by A.B. Yehoshua

A very interesting book I found in Jerusalem. It's about the story of a Sephardic family, from 1848 until 1982, narrated backwards through a series of dialogues. It's an original method, and very accomplished, because it's simultaneously intriguing and fetching, extremely well written. Through every episode, Jerusalem's presence and magic lingers, as one of the main characters of the book. One gets a sense of Jewish history and the strong connection to Jerusalem, the characters seem alive and real; I'm not sure what the author means with the recurrent theme of a certain fascination with / attraction to death and doom. A very good read, I really enjoy finding new good books by different writers, it's another of travel's joys.

Vies des Dames Galantes, de Brantôme

A picaresquely funny book, in a lovely ancient French. One can see how the joys and pains of sex are eternal - I remember also Ovid's Art of Loving, always up to date - and how little human nature has changed on that regard over the centuries.

What's Left?, by Nick Cohen

There are some things I didn't like much about What's Left?, but it certainly is an important book. The tone is too much of political journalism pamphleteering, his opinions often too simplistic and some comparisons a little far-fetched (regarding Virginia Woolf, for instance; well, one can dislike the working classes but still contribute to make their condition better, which she did). But, some details aside, he's mostly right about the decline of the Left and its causes. And that's very depressing. I consider myself a man of the Left, and that's why I'm so disappointed with the way so many left-wingers lost their way and became embroiled in petty hates and byzantine discussions while letting such important conquers as the welfare state being destroyed by the Right. I hate the silly sense of post-colonial guilt and loss after the collapse of the socialist illusion of the 20th century that led to so many despicable double standards regarding Western policy and the wrong notion of "multiculturalism" that has been so catastrophic to Western societies. And the primal mistrust of Western democracies (embodied in the fierce hate for the US and everything American) is ridiculous and should be laughable, were it not dangerous and disgusting.

I think there's still hope though, and maybe the only good thing out of the present economic crisis will be to remind people the worthiness of the true leftist values that were so hardly fought for and gave us so much prosperity and well-being - unfortunately, they're not guaranteed anymore, and that's what the Left should be worried about.