The Readers

The annual Lisbon Book Fair is one of the big events of the publishing industry. They hold the fair near the Marquês de Pombal square near the very top of Lisbon's Avenida da Liberdade, the wide boulevard that runs down from near the Botanical Gardens to the River Tagus. There are stalls upon stalls filled with books of all kinds, and thousands upon thousands of visitors.

This photograph is not directly related to the fair. It simply makes my point that the Portuguese love to read. Here on this train, which runs on a regular schedule from the Cais do Sodré in Lisbon all along the coast to the fashionable western suburbs of Estoril and Cascais, with stops along the way, are three men, all of them fully engrossed in their reading material (okay, okay, so one of them, the bald guy, is writing and not reading).

The young woman, the back of whose head occupies the left foreground, is not reading, though you can't tell from the photo, since all you see is the back of her head, her dark hair, and a glimpse of her shoulder. She is not reading, and she is rather attractive. She is attractive in a way that most men, young or old, if they were not blind, would be looking at her every chance they got, though out of decorum they would be doing it in a nonchalant and inoffensive way.

Portuguese men, in general, are exceedingly courteous, but even so, sitting there in close proximity to a charming young woman such as this one, they would not be immune to her charms. If they were not so deeply immersed in their magazine and notebooks, it is possible that a smile or a few innocuous words about the weather might be exchanged.

But trains aren't good places for complete strangers to strike up a conversation. And the simple expedient of reading a book or a magazine would certainly discourage anyone, even an attractive and bored young woman sitting alone, from attempting any small talk.

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