The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (22 page)

If only I could be certain that you
really
miss me. It would at least be some consolation. But you probably think less about me than about that boy who’s chasing you, not to mention D. A. F. and the bookkeeper of C. D. & C.!* Naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty ... !!!!

What you need is a good spanking.

So long: I’m going to lay my head down in a bucket, to relax my mind. That’s what all great men do, at least all great men who have: 1) a mind, 2) a head, and 3) a bucket in which to stick their head.

A kiss, just one, that lasts as long as the world, from your always very own

Fernando (Nininho)

27 April 1920

My lovely little Baby:

How adorable you looked today in the window of your sister’s apartment! You were cheerful, thank goodness, and seemed happy to see me (Álvaro de Campos).

I’ve been feeling very sad, and also very tired—sad not only because I haven’t been able to see you but because of the obstacles that other people have been putting in our path. I’m afraid that the unrelenting, insidious influence of these people—who don’t censure you or express outright opposition but who work slowly on your mind—will eventually make you stop liking me. You already seem different to me. You’re not the same girl you were in the office. Not that you’ve even noticed this, but I’ve noticed, or at least I think I have. God knows I hope I’m wrong ...

Listen, sweetie: the future all looks hazy to me. I mean, I can’t see what’s on the horizon, or what will become of us, since you’ve been yielding more and more to the influence of your family, and you disagree with me in everything. In the office you were sweeter, more gentle, more lovable.

Anyway ...

Tomorrow I’ll go by the Rossio train station* at the same time as today. Will you come to the window?

Always and forever your

Fernando

31 July 1920

Dear Ibis:*

Excuse this shoddy paper, but it’s all I could find in my briefcase, and they don’t have any stationery here at the Cafe Arcada. You don’t mind, do you?

I just received your letter with the cute postcard.

It was a funny coincidence, wasn’t it?, that I and my sister were downtown yesterday at the same time you were. What wasn’t funny is that you disappeared, in spite of the signs I made you. I was just dropping off my sister at the Avenida Palace Hotel, so she could buy some things and take a walk with the mother and sister of the Belgian fellow who’s staying there. I came back out almost immediately, and expected to find you waiting there, so that we could talk. But no, you had to rush to your sister’s place!

What’s worse is that, when I came out of the hotel, I saw your sister’s window outfitted like a theater box (with extra chairs) to enjoy the show of me walking by! Realizing this, I naturally went on my way as if no one were there. The day I decide to play the clown (which my character isn’t really suited for), I’ll offer my services directly to the circus. Just what I needed right now—to serve as comic entertainment for your family!

If you couldn’t avoid being at the window with 148 people, you should have avoided the window. Seeing as you didn’t feel like waiting for me or talking to me, you might at least have had the courtesy—since you couldn’t appear
alone
at the window—of
not appearing
.

Why should I have to explain these things? If your heart (presuming that this creature exists) or your intuition can’t instinctively teach them to you, then I can’t very well be your teacher.

When you say that your most fervent wish is for me to marry you, you shouldn’t forget to add that I would also have to marry your sister, your brother-in-law, your nephew, and who knows how many of your sister’s clients.

Always your very own

Fernando

I forgot, as I wrote this, that you’re in the habit of showing my letters to everyone. If I’d remembered, I would have toned it down, I assure you. But it’s too late, and it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

F.

15 October 1920

Little Baby,

You have thousands, even millions, of good reasons for being irked, offended, and angry with me. But I’m not the one to blame. It’s Fate that has condemned my brain—if not definitively, then at least to a condition calling for serious treatment, which I’m not so sure I can get.

I plan (without yet resorting to the celebrated May 11th decree)* to enter a clinic next month, where I’m hoping for a treatment that will help me fend off the black wave that’s falling over my mind. I don’t know what the result of all this will be—I mean, I can’t imagine what it could be.

Don’t wait for me. If I come to see you, it will be in the morning, when you’re on your way to the office in PoçO Novo.

Don’t worry.

What happened, you ask? I got switched with Álvaro de Campos!

Always your

Fernando

29 November 1920

Dear Ophelia:

Thank you for your letter. It made me feel both sad and relieved. Sad, because these things always bring sadness. Relieved, because this really is the only solution—to stop prolonging a situation that’s no longer justified by love, whether on your side or mine. For my own part there remains an abiding esteem and a steadfast friendship. You won’t deny me as much, will you?

Neither you nor I are to blame for what has happened. Only Fate might be blamed, were Fate a person to whom blame could be imputed.

Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly. Most people, because they’re stupid, don’t even notice this, and they imagine they still love because they got used to being in love. If this weren’t so, there would be no happy people in the world. Superior creatures cannot enjoy this illusion, however, because they can’t believe love will endure, and when they see it’s over, they don’t kid themselves by taking what it left—esteem, or gratitude—for love itself.

These things cause suffering, but the suffering passes. If life, which is everything, finally passes, then won’t love and sorrow also pass, along with all the other things that are only parts of life?

You’re unfair to me in your letter, but I understand and forgive. You no doubt wrote it with anger and perhaps even bitterness, but most people in your case—men or women—would write things that are even less fair, and in a harsher tone. But you have a wonderful disposition, Ophelia, and not even your anger is capable of malice. If, when you marry, you’re not as happy as you deserve, it will be through no fault of your own.

As for me ...

My love has passed. But I still feel a steadfast affection for you, and you can be sure that I’ll never, never forget your delightful figure, your girlish ways, your tenderness, your goodness, and your lovable nature. It’s possible that I fooled myself and that these qualities I attribute to you were my own illusion, but I don’t think so, and even if they were, it did no harm to have seen them in you.

I don’t know what you might like to have back—whether your letters or other things. I’d prefer not to give back anything, and to keep your letters as the living memory of a past that died (the way all pasts do), as something poignant in a life like mine which, as it advances in years, advances in disillusion and unhappiness.

Please don’t be like ordinary people, who always act petty and mean. Don’t turn your head when I pass by, and don’t harbor a grudge in your remembrance of me. Let us be like lifelong friends who loved each other a bit when they were children, only to pursue other affections and other paths as adults, but who nevertheless retain, in some corner of the heart, the vivid memory of their old and useless love.

These “other affections” and “other paths” concern you, Ophelia, and not me. My destiny belongs to another Law, whose existence you’re not even aware of, and it is ever more the slave of Masters who do not relent and do not forgive.

You don’t need to understand this. It’s enough that you hold me in your memory with affection, as I will steadfastly hold you in mine.

Fernando

This letter and the unusually sarcastic reply written four days later by Ophelia Queiroz were followed by almost nine years of silence. In September of 1929, Pessoa chanced to give a photograph of himself to a poet and friend, Carlos Queiroz, who was Ophelia’s nephew. When Ophelia saw the photo, which showed Pessoa drinking wine at Abel’s, his favorite bar, she asked her nephew to request another copy. Pessoa supplied one, and Ophelia wrote a letter of thanks, stating at the end that she would be happy to hear from him, if he cared to write. Thus ensued phase two of the relationship. Pessoa, however, very soon felt ill at ease and gave the appearance of being mentally disturbed
.

11 September 1929

Dear Ophelia,

The heart I felt in your letter touched me, though I don’t know why you should thank me for the photograph of a scoundrel, even if the scoundrel is the twin brother I don’t have. Does a drunken shadow hold a place, after all, in your memories?

Your letter reached my exile—which is I myself—like joy from the homeland, and so it’s I who should thank you, dear girl.

And let me take this opportunity to apologize for three things, which are the same thing and which weren’t my fault. Three times I ran across you without greeting you, because I couldn’t tell it was you, or rather, I realized it too late. The first time was one night on the Rua do Ouro, a long time ago. You were with a young man I assumed was your fiance, or boyfriend, though I don’t know if he really was what he had every right to be. The other two times were recent, when we were both riding the streetcar that goes to Estrela. One of those times I only saw you from out of the corner of my eye, which for someone condemned to wearing glasses is almost like not seeing.

One more thing ... No, nothing, sweet lips ...

Fernando

ABEL’s, 18 September 1929

Petition in 30 lines*

Fernando Pessoa, single, of legal age, abbreviated, residing where it please God he reside, in the company of various and sundry spiders, flies, mosquitoes and other things useful for promoting a homey environment and good sleep, having been informed—even if only by telephone—that he may be treated
(10 lines)
like a human being beginning on a date yet to be established and that said treatment of him as a human will be constituted not by a kiss but by the mere promise of one, to be postponed until such time as he, Fernando Pessoa, prove that he (1) is 8 months old, (2) is handsome, (3) exists, (4) is pleasing to the entity responsible for dispensing
(20 lines)
the merchandise, and (5) will not in the meantime commit suicide as he naturally should, does hereby petition—in order to reassure the person responsible for dispensing the merchandise—a certificate testifying that he (1) is not 8 months old, (2) looks grotesque, (3) doesn’t even exist, (4) is despised (30
lines)
by the dispensing entity, and (5) has killed himself.

End of the 30 lines.

Here one should write “In hope that this request be favorably considered,” but there is no hope for

Fernando

24 September 1929

So tell me, my little Wasp (who’s not really mine, though you are a wasp), what words you want to hear from a creature whose mind took a spill somewhere on the Rua do Ouro, whose wits—along with the rest of him—got run over by a truck as it turned the corner onto the Rua de São Nicolau.

Does my (my?) little Wasp really like me? Why this odd taste for older people? You complain in your letter about having to put up with some aunts who are eighty-odd and fifty-odd years old and aren’t really aunts,* but then how do you expect to put up with a creature who’s almost the same age and can never be an aunt, since this profession, to the best of my knowledge, is only open to women? An aunt, of course, needs to be two women or more. So far I’ve only managed to be an uncle, and just of my niece, who, funnily enough, calls me “Uncle Fenando,” due to (1) the aforementioned fact that I’m her uncle, (2) the fact I’m called (remember?) Fernando, and (3) the fact she can’t say the letter R.

Since you say that you don’t want to see me and that it’s hard for you to want not to want to see me, so that you’d rather I phone you, because phoning means not being present, and write you, because writing is to be at a distance, I’ve already phoned you, Wasp that’s not mine, and now I am writing you, or rather, have written you, because I’ll stop here.

I’m going out and will take the letter in my black briefcase—do you hear?

I’d like to go, simultaneously, to India and Pombal.* Strange combination, isn’t it? But it’s just one leg of the journey.

Do you remember this geography, you waspy Wasp?

Fernando

ABEL’s, 25 September 1929

Dear Miss Ophelia Queiroz:

An abject and sorry individual named Fernando Pessoa, my dear and special friend, has asked me to communicate to you—since his mental state prevents him from communicating anything, even to a split pea (a notable example of obedience and discipline)—that you are hereby prohibited from:

(1) losing weight,*

(2) eating too little,

(3) not sleeping,

(4) having a fever,

(5) thinking of the individual in question.

As the sincere and close friend of the good-for-nothing whose message I have (reluctantly) undertaken to communicate, my own advice to you is to take whatever mental image you may have formed of the individual whose mention is sullying this reasonably white paper and to throw it down the toilet, since it is materially impossible for such a Fate to befall the pseudohuman entity who would justly deserve it, if there were justice in the world.

Respectfully yours,

Álvaro de Campos
Naval Engineer

26 September 1929

Dear little Ophelia:

I’m not sure you like me, and that’s why I’m writing you.

Since you said you’d avoid seeing me tomorrow until between quarter after five and five thirty at the streetcar stop that’s not that one there, I’ll be there waiting.