Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

making for the borders of Italian-occupied Libya. A list of the Portuguese who have died in Brazil during the first half of December. These names are unknown to me, I don't need to express my sympathy or go into mourning, but clearly lots of Portuguese immigrants die down there. Charity fetes with free dinners for the poor throughout the country, the quality of food has been improved in the hospices for the poor, the elderly are so well treated in Portugal, not to mention abandoned children, little flowers left on the streets. Then this item of news, the president of the city council in Oporto sent a telegram to the Minister of the Interior, At today's session the council over which I preside resolved, after discussion of the decree which will provide assistance for the poor throughout the winter, to congratulate Your Excellency on this admirable enterprise. Other news, polluted drinking troughs full of cattle dung, smallpox is spreading in Lebucao and Fatela, an outbreak of flu in Portalegre and typhoid fever in Valbom, a sixteen-year-old girl has died of smallpox, a pastoral flower of bucolic innocence, a lily cruelly severed from its stem and so prematurely. I have a foxhound bitch, not a purebred, who has already had two litters and on both occasions she was found eating her young, not one escaped, tell me, dear editor, what should I do. In reply to your question, dear reader, the cannibalism of bitches is generally due to malnutrition during the period of gestation. The dog must be well fed with meat as her staple diet and supplemented with milk, bread, and vegetables, in brief, a well- balanced diet. If this does not change her habits, there's no remedy, either destroy the dog or do not allow her to mate, let her put up with being in heat or you can have her spayed. Now let us try to imagine what would happen if women suffering from malnutrition during pregnancy, starved of meat, bread, and green vegetables, which is fairly common, were also to begin eating their infants. After trying to imagine it and having confirmed that such crimes do not occur, it becomes easy to see the difference between people and animals. The editor did not add these comments, nor did Ricardo Reis, who is thinking about something else, a suitable name for the bitch. He will not call her Diana or Lembrada, but a name to throw light on her crime or motives, and will the wicked creature die from eating poisoned food or from a rifle shot fired by her own master. Ricardo Reis persists and finally finds the right name, one which comes from Ugolino della Gherardesca, that most savage, lusty nobleman who ate his children and grandchildren, there are testimonies to this in the History of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, also in the Divine Comedy, chapter thirty-three of the Inferno. Therefore let the bitch who eats her young be called Ugolina, so unnatural that her heart suffers no compassion as she tears the warm and tender skin of her defenseless brood with her jaws, slaughtering them, causing their delicate bones to snap, and the poor little pups, whining, perish without realizing who is devouring them, the mother who gave them birth. Ugolina, do not kill me, I am your offspring.

The page which calmly narrates these horrors falls onto the lap of Ricardo Reis. He is fast asleep. A sudden gust of wind rattles the windowpanes, the rain pours down like a deluge. Through the deserted streets of Lisbon prowls the bitch Ugolina slavering blood, sniffing in doorways, howling in squares and parks, furiously biting at her own womb, where the next litter is about to be conceived.

...

After a night of severe winter, of violent storm, the latter two words, violent storm, have been linked together since their inception, the first pair not quite as much, but both phrases are so pertinent to the circumstance that they spare one the effort of having to invent new words, the morning might well have dawned with bright sunshine, blue skies, and joyful flutterings of pigeons in flight. But there was no change in the elements. The swallows continue to fly over the city, the river is not to be trusted, the pigeons scarcely venture there. It is raining, but tolerably for anyone going out with a raincoat and umbrella, and in comparison with the gales earlier this morning, the wind is a mere caress on one's cheek. Ricardo Reis left the hotel early, he went to the Banco Comercial to change some of his English money into escudos, and for every pound sterling he received one hundred and ten thousand reis. A pity those pounds were not gold, otherwise he could have changed them for almost double that amount. Even so, the returning traveler has no real cause for complaint, seeing as he leaves the bank with five thousand escudos in his wallet, a small fortune in Portugal. From the Rua do Comercio, where he finds himself, the Terreiro do Paco is only a few meters away, but Ricardo Reis will not risk crossing the square. He looks into the distance under the protection of the colonnades, the river dark and choppy, the tide high. When the waves rise offshore, one imagines they are about to inundate and submerge the square, but that is an optical illusion, they disperse against the wall, their impact broken by the sloping steps of the wharf. He recalls having sat there in days gone by, days so remote he doubts whether he really experienced them. It may have been someone on my behalf, perhaps with the same face and name, but some other person. His feet are cold and wet, he also feels a shadow of gloom pass over his body, not over his soul, I repeat, not over his soul. The impression is physical, he could touch it with his hands were they not both gripping the handle of his umbrella, which is needlessly open. This is how a man alienates himself from the world, how he exposes himself to the jesting of some passerby who quips, Hey mister, it's not raining under there. But the man's smile is spontaneous, without a hint of malice, and Ricardo Reis smiles at his own distraction. Without knowing why, he murmurs two lines from a poem by Joao de Deus, well known to every child in nursery school. Under this colonnade one could comfortably spend the night.

He came here because the square was so near and in order to verify in passing if his memory of the place, clear as an engraving, bore any resemblance to the reality. A quadrangle surrounded by buildings on three sides, a regal equestrian statue in the middle, a triumphal arch which he cannot see from where he is standing. But everything is diffuse and hazy, the architecture nothing but blurred lines. It must be the weather, the hour of day, his failing eyesight. Only the eyes of remembrance remain, as sharp as those of a hawk. It is almost eleven o'clock, and there is much activity under the colonnades, but activity is not the same thing as haste. This dignified lot move at a steady pace, all the men in soft hats, their umbrellas dripping, few women are in sight at this hour, the civil servants are arriving at their offices. Ricardo Reis walks on in the direction of the Rua do Crucifixo, resisting the insistent pleas of a lottery-ticket vendor who tries to sell him a ticket for the next draw. It is number one thousand three hundred and forty-nine, the wheel will spin tomorrow. That is not the number and the wheel will not be spinning tomorrow, but this is how the soothsayer's chant goes, a licensed prophet with a badge on his cap. Do buy a ticket, sir, if you refuse to buy, you will live to regret it, believe me, it's a winner. There is menace in this imposition. Ricardo Reis enters the Rua Garrett, goes up the Chiado, where four porters lean against the plinth of the statue, paying no heed to the drizzle. This is the island of the Galicians. Farther ahead it has actually stopped raining. There is a white patch of light behind Luis de Camoes, a nimbus. That is the trouble with words, nimbus signifies rain as well as cloud as well as halo, and since the poet is neither God nor saint, the rain stopping was merely the clouds thinning out as they passed. Let us not imagine that these are miracles like the ones at Ourique or Fatima, not even the simple miracle of the sky turning blue.

Ricardo Reis goes to the newspaper archives. Yesterday he made a note of the directions before going to bed. There is no reason to believe he slept badly, that he found the bed or country strange. When one awaits sleep in the silence of a room that is still unfamiliar, listening to the rain outside, things assume their real dimension, they all become great, solemn, heavy. What is deceptive is the light of day, transforming life into a shadow that is barely perceptible. Night alone is lucid, sleep, however, overcomes it, perhaps for our tranquillity and repose, the peace of our souls. Ricardo Reis goes to the newspaper archives, where everyone must go who wishes to know what has taken place, for here in the Bairro Alto the entire world passes, leaving footprints, broken twigs, trampled leaves, spoken words. What remains is this necessary invention, so that of the aforesaid world a face may be preserved, a look, a smile, a mortal agony. The unexpected death of Fernando Pessoa caused much sadness in intellectual circles. The poet of Orfeu, an admirable spirit who not only composed poetry in original forms but also wrote cogent critical essays, died the day before yesterday, in silence, just as he had always lived. Since no one can earn a living in Portugal by writing literature, Fernando Pessoa found employment as a clerk in a commercial firm. Some lines further on, his friends left wreaths of remembrance beside his tomb. This newspaper gives no more information. Another reports the same facts with different words, Fernando Pessoa, the extraordinary poet of Mensagem, an ode of patriotic fervor and one of the most beautiful ever written, was buried yesterday, taken unawares by death in a Christian bed at the Hospital of Sao Luis during the late hours of Saturday night. In his poetry he was not only Fernando Pessoa but also Alvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro, and Ricardo Reis. There you are, an error caused by not paying attention, by writing what one misheard, because we know very well that Ricardo Reis is this man who is reading the newspaper with his own open and living eyes, a doctor forty-eight years of age, one year older than Fernando Pessoa when his eyes were closed, eyes that were