The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa by Fernando Pessoa Read Free Book Online

Let’s talk, if you like, about a past we may never have had.
     
THIRD WATCHER No. Perhaps we had it.
     
FIRST WATCHER You’re saying nothing but words. Talking is so sad—such a false way of forgetting! ... How about if we go for a walk?
     
THIRD WATCHER Where?
     
FIRST WATCHER Here, back and forth. Sometimes this brings dreams.
     
THIRD WATCHER Of what?
     
FIRST WATCHER I don’t know. Why should I know?
     
    (pause)
     
SECOND WATCHER This land is so sad ... It was less sad in the land where I used to live. At day’s end I spun thread by the window. Thewindow looked out onto the sea, where sometimes I could spot an island in the distance ... Sometimes I didn’t spin; I looked at the sea and forgot to live. I don’t know if I was happy. I’ll never go back to being what perhaps I never was ...
     
FIRST WATCHER I’ve never seen the sea except from here. And we see so little of it from that window, which is the only one through which we can see it at all ... Is the sea of other lands beautiful?
     
SECOND WATCHER Only the sea of other lands is beautiful. The sea we can see always makes us long for the one we’ll never see.
     
    (pause)
     
FIRST WATCHER Didn’t we say we were going to tell our past?
     
SECOND WATCHER No, we didn’t.
     
THIRD WATCHER Why is there no clock in this room?
     
SECOND WATCHER I don’t know ... But this way, with no clock, everything is more distant and mysterious. The night belongs more to itself ... Perhaps, if we knew what time it is, we couldn’t talk like this.
     
FIRST WATCHER In me, sister, everything is sad. It’s December in my soul ... I’m trying not to look at the window, through which I know hills can be seen in the distance ... I was once happy beyond some hills ... I was a little girl. Every day I picked flowers and asked, before going to sleep, that they not be taken from me ... There’s something about this that’s irreparable and that makes me feel like crying ... This happened—it could only have happened—far away from here ... When will the day dawn? ...
     
THIRD WATCHER What does it matter? It always dawns in the same way ... Always, always, always ...
     
    (pause)
     
SECOND WATCHER Let’s tell each other stories. I don’t know any stories, but there’s no harm in that ... Only life is harmful ... Better not even to brush it with the hems of our dresses ... No, don’t get up. That would be an action, and every action interrupts a dream ... I wasn’t having a dream right now, but it’s nice to imagine that I could have been ... But the past—why don’t we talk about the past?
     
FIRST WATCHER We decided not to ... Soon day will break, and we’ll regret it. Daylight puts dreams to sleep ... The past is just a dream. I can think of nothing, for that matter, that isn’t a dream ... If I look closely at the present, it seems to have already moved on ... What is anything? How does it move on from one moment to the next? How does it inwardly move on? ... Oh let’s talk, sisters, let’s talk all together in a loud voice ... Silence is beginning to take shape, to be a thing ... I feel it wrapping me like a mist ... Ah, talk, talk! ...
     
SECOND WATCHER What for? ... I stare at you both and don’t see you right away ... Chasms seem to have opened between us ... To be able to see you I have to wear out the idea that I can see you ... This warm air feels cold inside, in the part that touches my soul... Right now I should be feeling impossible hands running through my hair—that’s the image people use when talking about mermaids...
(Pauses, crossing her hands on her knees.)
Just now, when I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was thinking about my past.
     
FIRST WATCHER And I must have been thinking about mine ...
     
THIRD WATCHER I don’t know what I was thinking about... Perhaps about the past of others..., the past of wondrous people who never existed ... Not far from my mother’s house flowed a stream. Why did it flow, and why didn’t