Avelino de Almeida

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

On jumping down, after a long journey, at about sixteen hours yesterday, at the station of Chão de Maçãs⁵, where religious people who had come from distant parts to attend the “miracle” also alighted, I asked point-blank a young lad from the regular “char-à-banc” service whether he had already seen the Lady. With his sardonic smile and sidelong look, he did not hesitate to answer me:

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

Owing to an easy misunderstanding, the carriage that was to take us, Judah Ruah and me, to the town did not appear, and we decided bravely to tramp some two leagues⁷, since there was no room for us in the stagecoach and the hired gigs awaiting passengers had long since been taken. On the way we came upon the first bands of people heading in the direction [sic] of the holy place, more than twenty good kilometres 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 cautiously provided with umbrellas too. One would say they were, in general, oblivious to what is going on around them, in great indifference to the landscape and to the other wayfarers, as if immersed in a dream, praying the rosary in a sad chant. A woman starts the first part of the Hail Mary, the salutation; her companions, in chorus, continue with the second part, the supplication. With a sure and measured step they tread the dusty road, between pine woods and olive groves, so as to reach the place of the apparition before night closes in, where, in the open air and under the cold light of the stars, they plan to sleep, keeping the first places next to 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?

— Me, no. If she came here, now!

And they laugh heartily, while the devout go on indifferent to everything but the aim of their pilgrimage. In Ourem lodging⁹ is to be found only through extreme kindness. During the night the most varied vehicles gather in the town square carrying believers and the curious, not lacking 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 abandoning for one day the inseparable little corner of their home. At the break of dawn new bands appear intrepidly and cross, without stopping an instant, the township, whose silence they break with the harmony of the hymns that female voices, very much in tune, intone in violent contrast with the roughness of their types...

The sun rises, but the look of the sky threatens a storm. Black clouds pile up precisely over the Fátima side. Nothing, however, holds back those who converge there by every road, using every means of locomotion. Luxurious motor cars glide by at dizzying speed, sounding their horns; ox carts drag themselves slowly along one side of the road; the wagons, the victorias, the closed calèches, the carts in which seats have been improvised, are loaded to bursting. Almost all carry, along with the more or less modest provisions for Christian mouths, a ration of chaff for the irrational creatures that the "poverello" of Assisi called our brothers and who valiantly do their task... A harness bell jingles here and there, a little cart decked with box can be seen; nevertheless the festive air is discreet, manners are composed and order absolute... Little donkeys jog along the edge of the road, and the cyclists, very numerous, perform prodigies so as not to crash into the carts.

At about ten o'clock the sky becomes completely overcast and before long it began to rain in earnest. The ropes of water, driven by a harsh wind, lash the faces, soaking the macadam and drenching to the bone the walkers who have no hats or any other protection. But nobody grows impatient or gives up going on, and if some take shelter under the crowns of the trees, by the walls of the farms or in the scattered houses that lean out along the road, others continue the march with impressive endurance, among them some ladies whose dresses, clinging to their bodies under the force and persistence of the rain, outline their forms as if they had just come out of the bath!

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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 over a great stretch by the road that runs to Leiria, along which were drawn up the vehicles that had brought the pilgrims and onlookers there. 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 motor omnibus from Torres Novas, inside which people of all social conditions mingled as brothers.

But the bulk of the pilgrims, thousands of creatures who had come from many leagues around and who were 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 rim other spectators and other devotees settle themselves. Seen from the road, the whole is simply fantastic. The prudent country folk, sheltering under their enormous umbrellas, many of them accompany the whittling-down of their meagre provisions with the spiritual fare of sacred hymns and decades of the rosary. There is nobody who fears sinking his feet into the sodden clay for the joy of seeing close up the holm oak over which they have raised a rough portico on which two lanterns sway... The groups singing the praises of the Virgin take turns, and a terrified hare, bolting out through the brush, diverts the attention of only half a dozen young shepherd lads, who catch it and lay it low with their cudgels...

And the little shepherds? Lucia, aged 10, the seer, and her little companions, Francisco, aged 9, and Jacinta, aged 7, have not yet arrived. Their presence is noticed perhaps half an hour before the hour given as that of the apparition. The little girls, crowned with garlands of flowers, are led to the place where the portico stands. The rain falls incessantly, but nobody despairs. 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 is 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 astounded, with 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 made even sadder...

The old time is the one that governs for this crowd, which dispassionate estimates by educated people, wholly free of mystical influences, put at thirty or forty thousand creatures... The miraculous manifestation, the visible sign announced, is about to take place — many pilgrims assure us... And then one witnesses a spectacle unique and unbelievable to anyone who was not a witness of it. From the top of the road, where the carriages are crowded together and where many hundreds of people remain who lacked the courage to venture onto the muddy ground, one sees the whole immense crowd turn towards the sun, which appears free of clouds, at the zenith. The orb looks like a plate of dull silver, and it is possible to gaze at its disc without the least effort. It does not burn, it does not blind. One would say an eclipse was taking place. But behold, a colossal clamour arises, and from the specta-tors who are nearest one hears the cry:

— Miracle, miracle! A marvel, a marvel!

Before the dazzled eyes of that people, whose attitude trans-ports us to biblical times and who, pale with astonishment, bareheaded, gaze at the blue, the sun trembled, the sun made sudden movements never seen before, outside all cosmic laws — the sun “dan-ced”, in the typical expression of the peasants.. Perched on the step of the Torres Novas motor omnibus, an old man whose stature and whose features, at once gentle and energetic, recall those of Paul Déroulède¹⁰, recites, facing the sun, in a ringing voice, the Creed from beginning to end. I ask who he is and I 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 uncover their heads before so extraordinary a demonstration of the existence of God. Identical scenes are repeated at other points, and a lady cries out, bathed in anguished tears and almost choking:

— What a pity! There are still men who do not uncover their heads before so stupendous a miracle!¹³

And afterwards they ask one another whether they saw and what they saw. The greater number confess that they saw the trembling, the dancing of the sun; others, however, declare they saw the smiling face of the Virgin herself, swear that the sun spun round on itself like a firework wheel, that it came down almost to the point of burning the earth with its rays... There are those who say they saw it change colour successively...

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It is nearly fifteen hours.

The sky is swept clear of clouds and the sun follows its course with its usual splendour, which nobody dares to face directly. And the little shepherds? Lucia, the one who speaks with the Virgin, announces with theatrical gestures, in the arms of a man¹⁴ who carries her from group to group, that the war had ended and that our soldiers were going to come home... Such news, however, does not increase the jubilation of those who hear it. The heavenly sign was everything. There is an intense curiosity to see the two little girls with their garlands of roses; there are those who 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, to root them in their simple charcoal-burner's faith. Street vendors offer portraits of the children 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 an image of the Virgin as being 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 open hands of the lepers and the blind who, elbowing among the pilgrims, flung their piercing cries into the air...

The dispersal takes place quickly, without difficulty, without a shadow of disorder, without any need for a patrol of the guard to regulate it. The pilgrims who leave most quickly, hurrying off along 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 adoration, to carry the good news to the hamlets that had not been entirely emptied. And the priests? Some turned up at the spot, smiling, ranking themselves more with the curious spectators than with the pilgrims eager for heavenly favours. Perhaps one or two could not manage to hide the satisfaction that so often shows on the faces of the triumphant... It remains for the competent to have their say on the macabre dance of the sun which today, in Fátima, made hosannas burst from the breasts of the faithful and naturally left impressed — so trustworthy persons assured me — the freethinkers and other people without concerns of a religious nature 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 most recent and 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 today 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 (5 decades), 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 dominates and which the most picturesque and heterogeneous 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, at the foretold hour, stops falling; the dense mass of clouds break apart, and the king of stars — a disc of dull silver — appear at full zenith 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 scholars say? I am not concerned now to know, but only to assure you of what I saw...