The ice cream was everything I didn’t know I needed at that point, a refreshing hit of sweetness that also brought back childhood memories of going out for ice cream with my mom.
Joel read the information I found as we walked toward the garden. There were some people around, probably a mix of visitors and locals. We found a free bench and sat down to read the journal entry of when our moms had come to Évora.
I laughed when I looked at Joel and saw he had a bit of ice cream on his face.
“What’s funny?” he asked.
“You have ice cream on your face.”
“Where?”
“Um, everywhere?” I said, pointing to his whole face in a circular movement. He didn’t really, but it was fun to tease him.
“Haha. Funny. Where is it?” He licked around his mouth, and suddenly the joke was on me because I knew what he was capable of with that tongue.
It wasn’t until Joel coughed to get my attention that I realized my eyes had zeroed in on his mouth and hadn't moved. I reluctantly looked up and saw he wasn’t entirely unaffected by the sudden shift in mood. His pupils were dilated, and I didn’t need to look down to know he was probably finding his shorts as uncomfortable as I was finding mine.
“Fuck, David, not here,” he said, his voice low.
“Not my fault. Next time you decide to eat ice cream with your whole face think about how you go about cleaning it up. Here,” I said, giving him the journal. “I bookmarked the entry we want to read again.”
12 May 1981 - School trip to Évora
Dear Journal,
We went to Évora today.
We visited the Temple of Diana. Diana kept saying it was named after her, but our teacher said it was actually called the Roman Temple of Évora. It looked really old like it was there before all the houses around it. We wondered what it would have looked like before it was destroyed.
After the temple, we had lunch in the garden. It was really hot, so we had ice cream after we ate our sandwiches.
We also visited the Chapel of Bones. It was quite eerie seeing all the skeletons. They were real people, not fake bones. Pedro tried scaring us with a spooky story about the skeletons coming out of the walls at night, but we’re not kids anymore. We don’t believe in that stuff.
We almost forgot to say; we have two new neighbors. Mário and Vítor. Mário is in Teresa’s class, and Vítor is in our class. They seem nice, but we haven’t played with them yet. Vítor was on our visit to Évora, but he didn’t speak to anyone. We did ask if he wanted to get ice cream with us, but he didn’t want to.
Walking the cobbled streets of Évora with Joel was like seeing everything with a new pair of eyes. I was used to houses with whitewashed walls and burnt-yellow frames around the doors and windows or those houses covered in blue and white tiles.
For Joel, this was all new. Having left Portugal as a child, he’d never really noticed it before, but now as an adult, I could see his appreciation for the unique and utterly charming architecture.
“Look at those arches,” he said, pointing at the structure in front of the row of shops we passed on the way to the chapel. “It looks, well, I don’t know what it looks like. Everything has an old feel to it like it’s been here since forever, but at the same time, it still stands with the same strength and grace.”
I couldn’t help staring at him in awe. He was describing an architectural feature that could also explain much of the Portuguese culture. When I applied the same thinking to my trade, I could relate to the passing of recipes from generation to generation without change.
“Come on, Mr. Teacher, let’s get to the chapel before it closes,” I said, putting a hand on his back and pulling him in the direction of the Church of St. Francis.
The small chapel was next to the entrance of the church, and above the door, there was a warning sign that read, “We bones here are, awaiting yours.”
“Creepy, right?” Joel said while I bought our entrance tickets.
I grabbed a small information leaflet, and we walked in. The chapel was small. In fact, from the entrance, we could see all of it. Skulls lined the walls on all sides, including the columns that supported the roof.
“Look,” I said, pointing at the skeleton of what looked like a small child.
“Wow, how old do you think the kid was?”
“Don’t know. According to the leaflet, the bones come from other church cemeteries, and they’re all from the monks. Around five thousand of them.”
“Jesus.”
