There are bushes that can grow as tall as a tree and there are rows that appear to grow like bushes. On Wednesday, exactly thirteen minutes before nine at night, Sandra and Mário crossed the road, walked up the sidewalk, bypassing the final obstacle — a man in a suit and tie focused on his cell phone — and straightened up almost with their backs to the door through which they wanted to enter. They were the last in the long line that left the door of the Jerónimos Church, turning left to stretch along the sidewalk until the intersection with Rua dos Jerónimos. Five minutes later, without having taken a step, they were already ahead of ten people on the long path to the last tribute to Francisco Pinto Balsemãowho died on October 21, aged 88.
The rules of journalism say – and Balsemão was always a journalist – that queues are measured in meters, perhaps in steps, but tonight the unit is the minute. There are 120 to the door, two hours, step by step, which can fit an entire country. Ten steps and there is João Soares, former mayor of Lisbon, son of Mário Soares, President of the Republic and friend of Pinto Balsemão, whose funeral ceremonies took place in this same place in 2017. A little further on, Rui Tavares, deputy of Livre, speaks on the phone and in front of him is Henrique Raposo, columnist for Expresso, who waits with his arms crossed. Here is also Luís Marques Mendes, presidential candidate, motionless, where the line turns towards the door of the Church. Adelino Gomes, journalist, is in the same place where Pedro Passos Coelho remained, irreducible, when he arrived at 6:45 pm. José Manuel Júdice has already come and gone. Ângelo Correia is still waiting. Francisco Louçã gives an interview. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Luís Montenegro arrived together in the same car and left in the same car together.
During the two hours spent on the tour, there are people from the left and the right, footballers, artists, businesspeople and jurists, friends, people we know and others who don’t. Just now, Clara Ferreira Alves, columnist for Expresso, passed by, and from a dark, shiny car, José Pedro Aguiar Branco, president of the Assembly of the Republic, came out. “A gentleman of democracy, a figure who knew how to get along with everyone”, says Pedro Santana Lopes, former prime minister and president of the Chamber of Figueira da Foz. Each in their own way, with older stories or memories of recent meetings, from former president Ramalho Eanes to presidential candidate António José Seguro, the words are of praise. “Unanimity” is the word chosen by Santana Lopes at the time of the wake. More ministers arrive, more ministers leave. Flowers arrive, flowers leave – monastery rules do not allow there to be more than three wreaths inside. There are six soldiers, two from each branch of the Armed Forces, in honor guard next to the coffin. Outside, the flags are at half-mast.
The sound of a ship’s horn comes from the Tagus. There is a heavy fog, which does not allow us to see Christ the King beyond the Tagus.
Sandra and Mário advanced ten steps. They have their backs to the Belém Palace – perhaps they can see the tops of the tallest trees in the garden – and almost facing the other Garden, Praça do Império, full of flowers, which now, in a dark night with a sky full of clouds, can barely be distinguished from each other. But there are many, as many as the facets of the life of Francisco Pinto Balsemão, who is said to have been a lawyer, politician, businessman, journalist, founder of Expresso and SIC. Who could be said to have been an opponent of the regime that led the Empire to its end. Who was prime minister, after the death of Sá Carneiro, and committed, centuries after the caravels left here, from Belém, in the process of turning the country towards Europe, a path that would culminate in Jerónimos, in 1986, with Mário Soares signing Portugal’s accession to the EEC. Yes, he played a decisive role in the 1982 constitutional review, founded the PSD, was a deputy, created a prize called Pessoa and enjoyed listening to music at Gulbenkian and having dinner with friends. For Sandra and Mário it may have been all that, but it was the doctor. And the doctor liked plants.
The word is written with “e” and “er” at the end cotoneasterone of those shrubs that, left free, can grow as large as a tree. Mário is Francisco Pinto Balsemão’s gardener and says that around this time, at the beginning of autumn, the bush is filled with red berries. In spring, the flowers are white. “He liked this bush. He liked the animals, the birds”, says Mário, who has now taken another step. “You know, my father is the same age as the doctor. He lives in Viseu. One day he came to help me and they both talked about an old book.” Sandra smiles and says to her husband: “Your father was always a politician too…” He smiles back. But not much. “It’s a very sad day for us. I found out yesterday, on television. Then, my father called me. The doctor passed away.”
Hours before, half past five in the afternoon, a woman explained in Spanish to the excursion group coming from Guadalajara why they were standing at the door of the Church looking at Santa Maria de Belém, who from above looks back at them, with the boy in her arms. “It’s as if Felipe González had died”, perhaps without knowing the friendship that united Francisco Pinto Balsemão with the former Spanish prime minister. Whatever the word – inconvenience, disappointment, frustration – it would be repeated over and over again in Spanish, French, Korean, Chinese, English… No, today it is not possible to visit the church, said, over and over again, the Jerónimos employee, defeated and unable to fight the frenzy of reality happening in front of him. Buses, trams, cars, tuk-tuks, bicycles, cell phones, groups behind a flag raised to the sky and families with pastel de nata in hand, selfies and photographs. The grand monastery that took a century to build was uploaded in less than a second to the memory of cell phones from all over the planet.
Inside the Church, where the line ends, there is a piano. You hear Bach, Mozart, Schubert.
After the death of Francisco Pinto Balsemão, many of those who knew him said that we were facing the end of an era, of an unrepeatable world made by figures greater than time. Sandra and Mário, who know trees and plants, know that some cedars can live for centuries, imposing, while everything changes around them. Others get sick, become frail and die. There was one like that in Pinto Balsemão’s garden. “The doctor really liked that cedar and was worried about the birds that had their nests there, the owls, but there was no other way”, says Mário. When they reach twenty years old, sometimes a little more, cedars begin to produce pine cones. And every two years, when the cold sets in, the pine cones open and the seeds fly away. They are winged seeds. But this winter won’t be like that anymore. The red speckled bush will be there. But the big tree died before the man who loved it.