PORTUGAL

Te Ao Hou, September 1960, Page 41

PORTUGAL Once we reached Portugal we felt the presence of Europe. We walked on cobbled pavements along the shop fronts and I knew that Queen Street with its verandahs was thousands of miles away. I was excited at the prospect of seeing Portugal as I have a strong link with these people; many of my relations have Portuguese blood flowing in their veins. It is again like magic to think that a hundred years ago some of these people landed in New Zealand as sealers, whalers and traders and that they married Maoris. From these marriages are descended some of the most handsome of the Maori people. My own little village boasts of quite a few. We hired a taxi—destination “Chez Maxim”, the famous night-club of Lisbon. We were ushered into a room by red liveried boys of charming appearance. Nothing was too much trouble there. No wonder, for a bottle of wine wrapped in a white napkin the fee was three pounds. If you looked at the jewellery, and then retured to your table, a little red waiter appeared at your elbow: “Madame,” he would say in in enticing whisper, “the bracelet for Madame is fifty dollars” … or …“For you, Madame, the skirt in the window is thirty dollars”. Huge concierges stood around to keep law and order in this dimly lit, crowded night club. It was a fantastic nightmare of hot-beat music, masked women, drunk men, and the pressing attentions of these liveried waiters. It was my first glimpse of a flash night-club and it was far from what I had imagined. There were two stages for the bands who between them kept up a non-stop dance beat—rock-and-roll and South American rhythm. The masked women were intriguing me. I thought they were there to entice the men to drink, but apparently they were celebrating fashing. Later in the night we saw a floor show. A troupe of illclad dancers appeared on to the floor, one after the other till they stood side by side in a row. By that time we'd seen how they looked from a side view, a back view and now a front view. Each dancer carried an ostrich feather which modestly covered her naked thighs. None of them could sing, none of them could dance. Their faces were like painted grinning masks. Once you'd seen the back view, the side view and the front view of each dancer's body the act was completed. I should have appreciated their modestly-clad bodies if they had been well proportioned. But the sight of those huge, naked thighs, just there for the purpose of vulgar display, made me ill. Never was I made more aware of the difference between nakedness and nudity—between vulgarity and beauty. When drinks are thrust upon you and entertainment fails to satisfy you, where do you go? Back to the boat. I walked those cobbled streets in my silly high heels and I felt very cold.