We parked in front of Friends
Market, which Nobel Prize laureate Jose Saramago
described as being the kind of shop they used to have in
Portugal 60 years ago, intending to go to Acme Video for
a Katherine Hepburn movie or some other suitable rental.
Then we noticed carnival lights across Wickenden Street.
We had to check out what was happening first, being
spontaneous and all that. It's a Portguese feast (festa)!
That means malassadas and games of chance among other
things.
The games look deceptively easy.
Knock over these two Coke bottles and win a big stuffie.
I had my eye on a huge Kermit the frog. Three tries for
$5. I can roll a baseball a foot and a half down a wooden
alley and knock over two Coke bottles easily! Hah! It is
impossible! There's no way to get enough momentum on the
ball. There's not enough room to wind up and get some
force behind it. $20 later I walked off with a smaller
Kermit as a consolation prize. In the food court, I met a
woman pushing her son in a stroller and carrying a small
Kermit like mine. My Kermit greeted her Kermit and made
the kid laugh. She asked me how much I spent to win my
Kermit: $20 says I with embarrassment, $40 says she with
equal embarrassment. Somehow I felt a whole lot better
about my $20 Kermit after that.
We failed to score malassadas as
they were being made in a different building behind the
church. Having just eaten crispy yellow noodles and tofu
at Gourmet House and not being at all interested in
linguica - if you are trying to tempt me away from
vegetarianism do not use any form of sausage to do so as
it will drive me further into veggie-dom - we left the
food court for the street in front of the church to
listen to the brass band concert. There's a whole little
subculture of really good Portuguese brass bands that
play in religious festivals all over Rhode Island and
southeastern Massachusetts. These guys were from
Pawtucket and sounded terriffic. The carnival lights
reflected in the bells of the tubas and horns made it
look like the instruments themselves were dancing.
After the band concert came the
auction. I am so glad we stayed for the auction. I have
never seen anything like it before in my life. The
auctioneer announced each item in Portuguese, most of
them plants. No matter what kind of scraggly potted plant
it was he simply called planta. The bidding for
the plants was fiercely competetive. All the bidders were
men, mostly older, and they seemed to want to keep the
other guy from getting the planta at least as much
as they actually wanted to possess it themselves. There
were also several bottles of Portuguese brandy and
stuffed toy St. Bernard dogs with casks around their
necks. Sometimes he combined a planta with a
stuffed St. Bernard, though I think they were supposed to
go with the brandy, or he added another planta to
the lot so the bidders were going for a planta
package deal. Then he really started adding things in,
with one lot of two plants, a St. Bernard stuffie, and a
framed picture (called something that sounded like
"quadra" to me). The most competetive bidding was for two
live budgies in a cage. An older guy was bidding against
a younger guy and the younger guy finally got the birds
for $120!
We walked the short block by the
church back to Wickenden Street and it was like
reentering reality after a dream. I knew the festa was
real because I was still clutching my expensive Kermit.
Somebody sitting outside at the Coffee Exchange commented
"It's not easy being green!" as I passed by. I answered:
"It's not easy winning a frog at the festa either!" A car
passed by with the biggest planta from the auction
sticking out the passenger side window. Festa-world and
mundane-world intersect for a brief moment.
This morning, knowing that we
didn't dream the festa 'cause I've still got Kermit,
Nancy wanted to go back. I insisted that they wouldn't be
doing any festa activities until after Mass so we headed
for breakfast at Cafe Zog. We savored our omelets and
French roast coffee in the courtyard under the bamboo,
which has had an exponential growth spurt this summer,
and as the last Mass ended we began to smell the charcoal
lighter fluid as they fired up the grills for the
sausages and pork sandwiches. Then we heard brass bands
tuning up and assembling for the procession. We headed to
the food court in search of malassadas. We got directions
to the garage next to the green house where they were
making them. Sure enough a sign proclaimed (in
Portuguese) "Malassadas today after the
Masses."
Inside the garage, women fried
dough in vats the size of trash cans. We bought ours and
settled down at a picnic table on the sidewalk to eat
them and wait for the procession to start. We met a woman
from the parish who said these malassadas are widely
known to be the best of all the Portuguese feasts in
Rhode Island. I can believe it. They are sublime. The
procession assembles slowly with each statue-carrying
group fetching its charge out of the church into the
street. A group of men put the finishing touches on the
intricate mandala (is there a Catholic word for mandala?)
made of colored wood shavings and surrounded by yew
branches. In the Azores, this would be made of flower
petals, but the wood shavings look great. There are
crosses and hearts and chalices and Holy Spirit doves and
abstract patterns. The guys keep watering it to keep it
from blowing away in the wind before the procession winds
its way back here to the street outside the church where
the statue-bearers and the priest carrying the Blessed
Sacrament will walk on it like a carpet.
The procession is a long time
coming. Nancy fetches another batch of malassadas while I
save our spot at the picnic table. They are delicious.
All kinds of people have assembled and they watch eagerly
for the procession to arrive. Finally we hear the brass
band and see the police horse. The procession passes by
slowly, with great dignity. Children dressed as various
saints and angels escort each statue. Altar boys with
censers precede the Blessed Sacrament down the beautiful
wood shaving path. The priest holds the monstrance high
and blesses the crowd. People drop to their knees. Since
I'm off my arthritis meds until after the rotator cuff
surgery, I don't dare genuflect so I cross myself and
hope that's respectful enough. I notice some old folks
have to be helped up off their knees after the Blessed
Sacrament passes by.
I'm sunburned and dehydrated. The
mundane world is only a block away. What a beautiful
weekend.
