of the dishes, the children already in bed, the men yawning in front of their newspaper or trying, despite the bad reception due to atmospheric disturbances, to tune in Radio Seville, for no particular reason, perhaps simply because they never had the opportunity of going there. Ricardo Reis proceeds along the Rua de Saraiva de Carvalho in the direction of the cemetery. As he gets closer, he meets fewer and fewer people, and with some way to go, the road is already deserted. He disappears into the dark stretch between two lampposts, emerges once more into the amber light. Ahead in the shadows he can hear the sound of the keys of the local night watchman, who is starting his rounds. Ricardo Reis crosses the square toward the main gate, which is locked. The watchman looks at him from afar, then continues walking, Someone, he thinks, about to unburden his sorrow by weeping in the night, perhaps he has lost a wife or child, poor man, or his mother, probably his mother, mothers are always dying, a frail little woman and exceedingly old, who closed her eyes without seeing her son, I wonder where he is, she mused, then passed away, that is how people part. Perhaps it is because he is responsible for the tranquillity of these streets that the night watchman is given to such tender thoughts. He has no memories of his own mother. How often this happens, that we feel sorry for others, never for ourselves. Ricardo Reis goes up to the grating, touches the bars with his hands. From within, almost inaudible, comes a whispering, the breeze circling the branches of the cypress trees, poor trees, stripped bare of leaves. But the senses are deceived, the noise we hear is only the snoring of those who are asleep in those tall buildings, and in those low houses beyond the walls, strains of music, the hum of words, the woman who murmurs, I feel so tired, I'm going to lie down. That is what Ricardo Reis is saying to himself, I feel so tired. He puts his hand through the grating, but no other hand comes to shake his. Reduced to corpses, these people cannot even lift an arm.
...
Fernando Pessoa appeared two nights later. Ricardo Reis was returning after dining on soup, a plate of fish, bread, fruit, coffee. There are two glasses on the table. He finishes every meal, as we know, with a glass of wine, yet there is not a single waiter who can say of this customer, He was in the habit of drinking too much, he would rise from the table, almost fall over. Language owes its fascination to contradictions such as these, no one can rise and fall at the same time, yet we have seen it happen often or possibly even experienced it ourselves. But whenever Fernando Pessoa has appeared, Ricardo Reis has always been clearheaded, and he is clearheaded now as he watches the poet, whose back is turned to him, seated on the bench closest to Adamastor. That long, slender neck is unmistakable, and the sparse hair on the crown of the head. Besides, there are not many people who go around without a hat or raincoat. The weather has certainly been milder, but it still turns chilly at night. Ricardo Reis sat down beside Fernando Pessoa. In the darkness the pallor of the poet's skin, the whiteness of his shirt, is accentuated, the rest is dim, his black suit barely distinguishable from the shadow thrown by the statue. There is no one else in the park. Over on the other bank of the river, a row of flickering lights can be seen on the water, but they look like stars, they sparkle, quiver as if about to go out, but persist. I thought you would never come back, said Ricardo Reis. I came a few days ago to visit you, but at your door I saw that you were occupied with Lydia, so I left, I was never fond of tableaux vivants, Fernando Pessoa replied, and one could make out his wan smile. His hands were clasped on his knee, his expression that of someone patiently awaiting his turn to be summoned or dismissed and who speaks in the meantime because silence would be more insufferable. I never expected that you would show such enterprise as a lover, that the fickle poet who sang the praises of the three muses, Neaera, Chloe, and Lydia, should settle for one of the three in the flesh is quite an achievement, tell me, have the other two never appeared. No, nor is that surprising, they are names one rarely hears nowadays. And what about that attractive girl, so refined, the one with the paralyzed arm, did you ever get around to telling me her name. Her name is Marcenda. A pretty name, tell me, have you seen her lately. I saw her the last time she was in Lisbon, about a month ago. Are you in love with her, I don't know, And what about Lydia, do you love her, That's different, But do you love her or not. She does not deny me her body. And what does that prove. Nothing, at least not as far as love is concerned, but do stop questioning me about my private affairs, I am much more interested in knowing why you didn't come back. To put it bluntly, because I was annoyed, With me, Yes, with you as well, not because you are what you are but because you are on that side, What side, The side of the living, it is difficult for one who is alive to understand the dead. I suspect that it is just as difficult for a dead man to understand the living. The dead man has the advantage of having been alive, he is familiar with the things of this world and of the other world, too, whereas the living are incapable of learning the one fundamental truth and profiting from it. What truth is that, That one must die. Those of us who are alive know that we will die. You don't know it, no one knows it, just as I didn't when I was alive, what we do know without a shadow of a doubt is that others die. As a philosophy, that strikes me as rather trivial. Of course it's trivial, you have no idea just how trivial everything becomes when seen from this side of death. But I am on the side of life. Then you ought to know what things on that side are significant, To be alive is significant. My dear Reis, choose your words carefully, your Lydia is alive, your Marcenda is alive, yet you know nothing about them, nor could you learn, even if they attempted to tell you, the wall that separates the living from one another is no less opaque than the wall that separates the living from the dead. For anyone who believes this, death must be a consolation after all. Not really, because death is a kind of conscience, a judge who passes judgment on everything, on both himself and life. My dear Fernando, choose your words carefully, you put yourself at great risk of being absurd. If we do not say all words, however absurd, we will never say the essential words. And you, do you now know them. I have only started to become absurd. Yet once you wrote,
Ricardo Reis looked across the river. Some lights had gone out, others, barely visible, grew even dimmer as a soft mist began to gather over the water. You said the reason you didn't come back was that you were annoyed, It's true, Annoyed with me, Not so much with you, what has annoyed me and left me feeling weary is all this going back and forth, this tug of war between memory that pulls and oblivion that pushes, a useless contest, for oblivion and forgetting always win in the end. I haven't forgotten you. Let me tell you something, on this scale you do not weigh much. Then what is this memory that continues to summon you, The memory I retain of the world, I thought you were summoned by the memory the world retains of you, What a foolish idea, my dear Reis, the world forgets, as I've already told you, the world forgets everything. Do you think you've been forgotten. The world is so forgetful that it even fails to notice the absence of what has been forgotten. There is much vanity in these words. Of course, no poet is vainer than a minor one. In that case, I must be vainer than you. Allow me to say, without wishing to flatter you, that you are not a bad poet, But not as good as you, I believe you are. After we are both dead, if by then we are still remembered, or for as long as we are still remembered, it will be interesting to see on whose side the pointer of the scale leans. We will not care in the least about weights and weighers then. Neophyte, does death exist, It does. Ricardo Reis drew his raincoat tightly around him, It's getting chilly, if you wish to accompany me home, we can converse a while longer. Aren't you expecting any visitors today. No, and you are welcome to stay, as you did the last time. Are you feeling lonely tonight. Not to the extent of being desperate for company, but only because it occurs to me that a dead man might occasionally like to sit on a chair, under a roof, in comfort. I don't remember your being so facetious, Ricardo. I'm not trying to be facetious. He got to his feet and asked, Well, are you coming. Fernando Pessoa followed him, caught up with him at the first lamppost. At the entrance they encountered a man with his nose in the air. From the way he tilted his body, as if he were about to lose his balance, he appeared to be examining the windows, he looked as if he had paused for a moment after a hard climb up that steep road. Anyone seeing him would have said to himself, Here is one of the many night birds you come across in this city of Lisbon, not everyone goes to bed with the lamb. But when Ricardo Reis drew closer, he was overcome by a strong whiff of onion. He recognized the police informer immediately. There are smells, each worth a hundred words, smells both good and bad, smells as revealing as full-length portraits, what brings this fellow prowling here. Perhaps because he did not wish to disgrace himself in the presence of Fernando Pessoa, he took the initiative and spoke first, What brings you here at this hour of night, Senhor Victor. The other replied as best he could, having no explanation prepared at this early stage of the surveillance, A coincidence, dear Doctor, a pure coincidence, I have just been visiting a relative who lives in the Rua do Conde Barao, poor woman, she has caught pneumonia. Victor did not entirely lose face, And so, Doctor, you are no longer staying at the hotel, with this clumsy question he
