Avelino de Almeida

I saw extraordinary things which I shall tell you about later. There must have been some 40,000 people!!!

Jumping down, after a long journey, at about four in the afternoon yesterday at Chão de Maçãs station⁵, where religious people who had come from distant parts to attend the “miracle” also got off, I asked a young lad from the regular “char-à-banc”^* service point-blank whether he had seen the Lady yet. With a sardonic smile and a sidelong look, he did not hesitate to answer:

— All I ever saw there was stones, carts, motor cars, beasts of burden and people!

Through a simple misunderstanding, the carriage that was to take Judah Ruah and me to the town did not turn up, and we bravely decided to tramp some two leagues⁷, since there was no room for us in the stagecoach and the gigs waiting for passengers had long since been taken. On the way we came upon the first bands of pilgrims heading in the direction [sic] of the holy place, a good twenty kilometres and more away⁸. Men and women are almost all barefoot, the women with bags on their heads topped by their heavy shoes, the men leaning on thick staves and prudently armed with umbrellas as well. In general they seem oblivious to what is going on around them, quite uninterested in the landscape and the other travellers, as if lost in a dream, praying the rosary in a mournful chant. A woman begins the first part of the Hail Mary, the greeting; her companions continue in chorus with the second part, the petition. With a steady, measured step they tread the dusty road, between pine woods and olive groves, so as to reach the place of the apparition before nightfall; there, in the open air under the cold light of the stars, they plan to sleep, keeping the best places near the blessed holm oak, so as to see better today.

At the entrance to the town, women of the people, whom their surroundings have already infected with the virus of scepticism, comment mockingly on the affair of the day: — So you're going to see the saint tomorrow?

— Not me. Now, if she came here!

And they laugh heartily, while the devout go on, indifferent to everything except the purpose of their pilgrimage. In Ourem one finds lodging⁹ only through someone's extreme kindness. During the night the most varied vehicles gather in the town square carrying believers and the curious, among them old ladies dressed in dark clothes, already bowed under the weight of years, but with the burning fire of faith sparkling in their eyes, which spurred them to the courageous act [sic] of leaving for one day the little corner of home from which they are never parted. At daybreak new bands appear, undaunted, and cross the town without stopping for an instant, breaking its silence with the harmony of hymns sung by very tuneful female voices, in violent contrast with the roughness of the people...

The sun rises, but the look of the sky threatens a storm. Black clouds pile up precisely over Fátima. Nothing, however, holds back those who converge there by every road and by every means of transport. Luxurious motor cars glide by at dizzying speed, sounding their horns; ox carts drag slowly along one side of the road; wagons, victorias, closed calèches and carts fitted with makeshift seats are loaded to bursting. Almost all carry, along with the more or less modest provisions for Christian mouths, a ration of chaff for the dumb creatures that the "poverello"^* of Assisi called our brothers, and which valiantly do their work... A harness bell jingles here and there; a little cart decked with box sprigs can be seen; but the festive air is discreet, behaviour is restrained and order absolute... Little donkeys trot along the edge of the road, and the cyclists, very numerous, perform wonders to avoid running into the carts.

At about ten o'clock the sky becomes completely overcast, and before long it began to pour. Ropes of water, driven by a bitter wind, lash faces, soak the macadam and drench to the bone the walkers who have no hats or other protection. But nobody grows impatient or gives up, and while some take shelter under the trees, by the walls of the estates or in the scattered houses along the road, others march on with impressive endurance, among them some ladies whose dresses, clinging to their bodies under the force and persistence of the rain, show their shapes as if they had just come out of the bath!

* * *

The spot on the heath of Fátima where the Virgin was said to have appeared to the little shepherds from the hamlet of Aljustrel is overlooked for a long stretch by the road to Leiria, along which the vehicles that had brought the pilgrims and onlookers were drawn up. Someone counted more than a hundred motor cars and more than a hundred bicycles, and it would be impossible to count the various carriages that blocked the road, one of them the Torres Novas motor bus, in which people of every social class mingled as equals.

But the bulk of the pilgrims, thousands of souls who had come from many leagues around, joined by faithful from various provinces (people from the Alentejo and the Algarve, from the Minho and the Beiras), gather around the little holm oak which, according to the little shepherds, the vision had chosen as its pedestal, and which could be regarded as the centre of a wide circle on whose edge other spectators and devotees settle themselves. Seen from the road, the whole scene is simply fantastic. Many of the prudent country folk, sheltering under their enormous umbrellas, accompany the whittling-down of their meagre provisions with the spiritual fare of sacred hymns and decades of the rosary^*. No one is afraid of sinking their feet in the sodden clay for the joy of seeing close up the holm oak, over which they have put up a rough arch from which two lanterns sway... The groups singing the praises of the Virgin take turns, and a terrified hare bolting off through the brush distracts only half a dozen shepherd lads, who catch it and club it to death...

And the little shepherds? Lucia, aged 10, the seer, and her little companions, Francisco, aged 9, and Jacinta, aged 7, have not yet arrived. They make their appearance perhaps half an hour before the time given for the apparition. The little girls, crowned with garlands of flowers, are led to the spot where the arch stands. The rain falls incessantly, but nobody loses heart. Carriages with latecomers arrive on the road. Groups of the faithful kneel in the mud, and Lucia asks them, orders them, to close their umbrellas. The order is passed on and obeyed at once, without the least reluctance. There are people, many people, as if in ecstasy; people deeply moved, on whose dry lips prayer has frozen; people dumbstruck, hands joined and eyes brimming; people who seem to feel, to touch the supernatural... The child asserts that the Lady spoke to her once more, and the sky, still murky, suddenly begins to clear overhead; the rain stops, and one senses that the sun is about to flood with light the landscape that the wintry morning had made even gloomier...

It is the old time^* that this crowd goes by: a crowd that dispassionate estimates by educated people, wholly free of mystical influences, put at thirty or forty thousand souls... The miraculous manifestation, the visible sign that was announced, is about to happen, many pilgrims assure us... And then one witnesses a spectacle unique and unbelievable to anyone who did not see it. From the top of the road, where the carriages are crowded together and where many hundreds of people have stayed, lacking the courage to venture onto the muddy ground, one sees the whole immense crowd turn towards the sun, which appears free of clouds, at its zenith. The sun looks like a plate of dull silver, and it is possible to look at its disc without the least effort. It does not burn, it does not blind. One would say an eclipse was taking place. But then a tremendous clamour goes up, and the spectators nearest by can be heard shouting:

— Miracle, miracle! A marvel, a marvel!

Before the dazzled eyes of those people, whose attitude takes us back to biblical times and who, pale with astonishment and bareheaded, gaze up at the blue, the sun trembled; the sun made sudden movements never seen before, outside all cosmic laws; the sun “danced”, in the peasants' typical expression.. Perched on the step of the Torres Novas motor bus, an old man whose stature and features, at once gentle and energetic, recall those of Paul Déroulède¹⁰, faces the sun and recites the Creed^* from beginning to end in a ringing voice. I ask who he is and am told he is Mr

João Maria Amado de Melo Ramalho da Cunha Vasconcelos¹². I then see him turn to those around him who had kept their hats on, vehemently begging them to bare their heads before so extraordinary a demonstration of the existence of God. Similar scenes are repeated elsewhere, and a lady cries out, bathed in tears of distress and almost choking:

— What a shame! There are still men who will not bare their heads before so stupendous a miracle!¹³

And then they ask one another whether they saw anything, and what. Most admit to having seen the trembling, the dancing of the sun; others, however, declare that they saw the smiling face of the Virgin herself, and swear that the sun spun round on itself like a Catherine wheel, and that it came down almost close enough to burn the earth with its rays... Some say they saw it change colour, one colour after another...

* * *

It is nearly three in the afternoon.

The sky is swept clear of clouds and the sun follows its course with its usual splendour, which no one dares to look at directly. And the little shepherds? Lucia, the one who speaks with the Virgin, announces with theatrical gestures, from the arms of a man¹⁴ who carries her from group to group, that the war had ended¹⁵ and that our soldiers^* were going to come home... Such news, however, does not add to the joy of those who hear it. The heavenly sign was everything. There is intense curiosity to see the two little girls with their garlands of roses; some try to kiss the hands of the "little saints", one of whom, Jacinta, is closer to fainting than to dancing; but what everyone longed for, the sign from heaven, was enough to satisfy them and to root them in their simple, unquestioning faith^*. Street vendors offer the children's portraits on postcards, and other cards showing a soldier of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps "thinking of the help of his protectress for the salvation of the Fatherland", and even a picture of the Virgin as the figure of the vision... That was good business, and certainly more centavos^* went into the vendors' pockets and into the alms box for the little shepherds than into the outstretched hands of the lepers and the blind who, jostling among the pilgrims, filled the air with their piercing cries...

The crowd disperses quickly, without difficulty, without a shadow of disorder, and without any need for a patrol of the guard to control it. The pilgrims who leave fastest, hurrying off down the road, are those who arrived first, on foot and barefoot, with their shoes on their heads or hanging from their staves. They go, their souls in perpetual praise, to carry the good news to the hamlets that had not been entirely emptied. And the priests? Some turned up at the spot, smiling, siding more with the curious spectators than with the pilgrims hungry for heavenly favours. Perhaps one or two could not quite hide the satisfaction that so often shows on the faces of the triumphant... It remains for those competent to judge to pronounce on the macabre dance of the sun, which today at Fátima made hosannas burst from the breasts of the faithful and naturally impressed, so reliable persons assured me, the freethinkers^* and other people with no religious concerns who flocked to the now celebrated heath.

Thus it was that, on the famous and long-awaited day, thousands upon thousands of people flocked to Fátima from near and far, braving all the obstacles and hardships of travel, some trudging leagues in sun and rain, others conveyed in the most varied vehicles, from the almost prehistoric to the latest marvellous models of motor car, and many more who endured the discomforts of the third-class carriages of the trains, in which, to cover what are nowadays relatively short distances, long hours and even days and nights are lost! I saw groups of men and women, patiently, as if rapt in a dream, making their way on the eve towards the famous spot, singing sacred hymns and walking barefoot to their rhythm and to the cadenced recitation of the rosary, without being troubled, deterred or driven to despair by the almost sudden change in the weather, when the downpours turned the dusty roads into deep mires and the mildness of autumn gave way, for a day, to the harshest rigours of winter... I saw the crowd, now pressed around the little tree of the miracle and stripping it of its branches to keep them as relics, now spread out over the vast heath which the Leiria road crosses and overlooks and which the most picturesque and motley throng of carriages and people cluttered on that memorable day, awaiting the supernatural manifestations in the best of order, without fearing that the wintry weather would spoil them, diminishing their splendour and majesty... I saw that discouragement did not invade souls, that confidence remained alive and ardent despite the unexpected setbacks, that the composure of the crowd, in which country folk were in great abundance, was perfect, and that the children, privileged in their own estimation, were received with demonstrations of the most intense affection by that people, who knelt, uncovered their heads and prayed at their bidding as the hour of the "miracle" approached, the hour of the "perceptible sign", the mystic and longed-for hour of contact between heaven and earth...

And, when I no longer imagined that I would see anything more impressive than that noisy but peaceful crowd, animated by the same obsessive idea and moved by the same powerful yearning, what did I still see that was truly strange on the heath of Fátima? The rain stops falling at the foretold hour; the dense mass of clouds breaks apart, and the king of stars — a disc of dull silver — appears at the very zenith and begins to dance a violent and convulsive dance, which a great number of people imagined to be a serpentine dance^*, so beautiful and glittering were the colours that successively covered the surface of the sun...

A miracle, as the people cried; a natural phenomenon, as the learned say? I do not care to know that now, only to tell you what I saw...

"And when I no longer imagined that I would see anything more impressive than that noisy but peaceful crowd animated by the same obsessive idea and moved by the same powerful longing, what did I see that was truly strange on the heath of Fátima? The rain, at the hour foretold, stop falling; the dense mass of clouds break up and the king of stars, a disc of dull silver, at its full zenith, appear and begin dancing in a violent and convulsive dance, which a great number of people imagined to be a serpentine dance^*, so beautiful and glittering were the colours that successively covered the surface of the sun. A miracle, as the people cried; a natural phenomenon, as learned men say? I am not concerned now to know, but only to tell you what I saw... The rest is a matter for Science and for the Church".