The steel bannister’s silent testimony.
by Delfim Correlo
There was a sense of solitude in those figures emerging silently from the winding staircase of that old building.
Romantic paintings made from soft tones of greens, browns and greys, now frozen in a strange and distant past.
Melancholy is often beautiful.
The Bolhão Market was built during the first world war, on a commercial square where fresh goods were sold, in a place where there was a slough and a stream passed by, forming a bubble of water (Bolhão).
Considered at the time an avant-garde building that combined granite and wood with the use of steel, glass and concrete, the historic building of neoclassical architecture has undergone a renovation process in the last four and a half years due to its advanced state of deterioration. Near fifty million euros have been spent in order to restore its original architecture and splendour. And its doors were finally opened last September, keeping the original function of a traditional market in the city of Porto.
It will no longer be possible to find that woman who, looking for the camouflage provided by the old staircase, made confidences on her cell phone... or the single man seeking the company of the doves that sheltered there.
Doves were banished from the modern building as soon as it freed itself from the shoring that had prevented its ruin for decades. Just like the cats, once sleeping on the covers of the Bolhão vendors' tents oblivious to the unbearable squawking of the seagulls.
The vendors' tent covers are now made of steel and glass gleaming immaculate. The windows glass in the old building was replaced and now the old staircase is filled with light. And its steel bannister, freed from the rust of time, has a new light grey tone.
Now, laughter is heard echoing on the stairs of that old building and young lovers are seen looking for its windows' light.
It is now winter and, by the time I leave my job, the sky has become dark.
The old building of the Bolhão appears on my way home among the flashing lights of the traffic. The market is still open and I decide to cross it.
That's when I see them, almost unnoticeable to those who pass by there at the end of the day, their figures appear in a tangle of steel drawings on the old bannister - which they tirelessly watch over - going up and down the old staircase, sweeping each of its steps...
It’s the image of those women that remains etched in my mind as I leave the old building. Black and white paintings of the end of a journey. The guardians of the memories of a past which I recall with nostalgia and are now engraved on the old steel bannister.
