Much we feel can only be understood in terms of the more diffuse consequences of the class structure: poverty, work conditions (and what we termed the social division of labour), and deprivation in its various forms.
The Black Report, 1980 

The door to the building is metal – a green-painted perforated plate – in order to combat vandalism. On the stained stairways and landings, graffiti is mixed with plants and Our Ladies of Fatima, cardboard boxes and abandoned planks. These are four floors of stairs and the last one is the destination. The stained skylight lets in the grey light of the winter afternoon.

It’s what I’ve said, Doctor. That girl is a hopeless case. A black guy got her pregnant in Spain at the age of fourteen, then she was put in a home in the Algarve because she got into fights in shops. And now it looks like she did drugs and caught AIDS. And as she is twenty years old the police are after her. She ran away from the home, turned up here and started stealing straight away. She’s a hopeless case, I’m telling you. Her aunt is trying to straighten her out, but all she has managed to do is to get her to a dentist after the doctor treated her for an abscess. The child has been given for adoption, but it seems that she still wants to keep it. I don’t know how she can. She can’t. If she had a family to help her, but her father is in prison, no one knows anything about her mother, and her aunt, the poor woman, barely has enough to look after the four kids she has at home, particularly with my son-in-law being unemployed.

The inside of the house is clean and tidy, thanks to the careful help of the Santa Casa charity organisation. Glasses given away free, coffee cups and glasses in an old-fashioned style are piled up in the little china cabinet. On the sideboard, a white and yellow doily, with a line of photographs of weddings, children and adults.

And I’m here on my own. I haven’t been lucky, not at all. My husband being gone is such a loss! You were his doctor until the end; you remember him don’t you, doctor? He passed on twenty years ago and he is such a loss to me! My daughter still comes round occasionally, but my granddaughters don’t care about me at all. What they want is to go to the café with boys and smoke. Only the third one of them seems to have any sense and is doing well at school, but the older two don’t want to study. One of them is working now, in a supermarket, but the other one spends the whole day at home sending messages on her mobile phone. That’s what my daughter tells me. It’s a disgrace. They need a father to bring them into line, that’s what I say. They ought to have a father like the gipsy here in the next building – all off to work in the market and all well behaved, and I’m saying that even though I don’t like gipsies. His mother, the gipsy’s mother, has got breathing problems and is always going to the doctor’s. She says its asthma, but it’s really nerves, since her husband died, like my dear husband. Do you remember my husband, doctor?

The blackened chimney in the kitchen bears witness to the latest “accident”, from a year ago. Fortunately no one got hurt. In the fridge there are loads of meals from the Day Centre, forgotten, and yoghourts, lots of yoghourts. 

I’ve got these bumps on my head, doctor. Put your hand here. Can you feel that? That was when I fell over last week. It was at night and I fell when I went to the bathroom. I always go two or three times at night, and I didn’t see the door and I fell over and banged my head. In my husband’s time these things didn’t happen to me. The bumps hurt me most at night, and when they do I take another pill to go to sleep. He used to keep me company and was always around. Now if it wasn’t for that lady from the charity I wouldn’t see anyone, except my daughter who sometimes comes her, because my granddaughters don’t care about me. Have I told you that one of them is working in a supermarket? The diabetes also goes up to my head, but I do some analysis with that little ribbon and I feel better. I need my husband so much! You were his doctor and you know he was good company for me.

In the tidy, bright bedroom, with bare walls, lots of medication boxes kept in an opaque Tupperware container. A pill separator, with the days of the week on it, is on the bedside table, multicoloured capsules and tablets out of sync with the day and time. The yellowed photo of her late husband next to the little lamp.

Some time ago an old lady from the first floor and I used to go to the benches in the park over there opposite, but she had a stroke last year and now she is paralysed, and I find it hard to go up the stairs now. I can’t because of my varicose veins, and my knees are all damaged. I only go out to collect my pension with this lady, and without her I don’t know what I would do. I’ve got no appetite. I know that you are going to shout at me, doctor, but I don’t feel like eating. I’m not hungry. That’s me, who was a cook and cooked sometimes for as many as eighty people, now I’ve got no appetite. Food doesn’t taste of anything. I just have a little banana or a yoghourt because of the pills, so I don’t take them on an empty stomach. But I don’t feel like food. The lady insists, but I just feel distaste. When my husband was still alive I used to make him lunch and I would eat with him. Now I don’t feel like anything. You knew my husband, didn’t you, doctor? You remember him, don’t you? How I miss him! You are going to take my blood pressure, aren’t you? Take my blood pressure, doctor, because these bumps on my head must be because of the high blood pressure that makes them hurt at night.

Outside the building, men sitting on the wall or leaning against it. There are young men, old men and middle-aged men. None of them has a job. They share cigarettes and beers in the bar on the corner. The road to the world of the bright lights of the city is not very long.

The text above condenses information from many places and encounters, with slight modifications in order to preserve the people’s identities. The facts are all real.

 

Professor Armando Brito de Sá
Invited Professor
abritosa@fm.ul.pt