"The Beach Used to Give Back Whole Sandals," Says Beatriz Montalvão
On a strip of Lisbon sand, a sculptor has watched eleven years of plastic wear down from objects into confetti. She melts this week's find at low tide.
The shed has no clock, so the tide does the job. At ten past four Beatriz Montalvão looks at the sand bar, sees it showing, and lights the burner.
On the table is this week's walk. A handful of orange chips. A blue the exact shade of a swimming pool tile. A pink that was once something with a handle. They are all about the size of a thumbnail.
"The beach used to give back whole sandals," she says. "Now it gives back only colours."
She started eleven years ago. Back then the sea was careless and the finds were still finished things. A left jelly sandal, a bucket with its rim, half a comb. She kept the sandals on a shelf above the door, the way other people keep shells. There are forty-one now. None of them makes a pair.
The sea has had more time since. Sun and salt and sand take a thing apart slowly, and by the time it reaches her it has no name. She holds up a white shard and guesses. A garden chair, maybe. "Chairs all go the same white. It is the saddest white there is."
The shed is tin and sits at the back of the beach, behind a row of upturned fishing boats. She sorts the chips by colour into baking trays and slides them onto the burner one tray at a time. The smell is warm and sweet and not entirely friendly. She keeps the door open and the radio low. A gull watches from the roof.
The plastic slumps first at the edges. Then it shines, and for about a minute it looks like something you could eat. She presses it flat with a plank, leaves it to cool overnight, and in the morning there is a slab with the week in it. Her sculptures are these slabs stacked to hip height, banded like a cut through a cliff. Each is named for the weekday she found the colours. They all come out looking a bit like Tuesday.
Some weeks she is bothered by how pretty they are. The orange is very good this year. She says it as a complaint.
At twenty to six the water starts coming back over the bar and she turns off the burner. The tray is still glowing a little at the corners. She tips it onto the board, and the blue and the pink and the orange run into each other and settle into a brown she has seen a hundred times.
"The sea's average," she says, and almost laughs.
Then she goes to the shelf and checks the gap at the end of the row. A green left sandal sits there alone, waiting for its right. There is room for exactly one more. She has measured.
