The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (7 page)

THIRD WATCHER
What I once was no longer remembers who I am. Poor happy girl that I used to be! ... I lived among the shadows of branches, and everything in my soul is trembling leaves. When I walk in the sun, my shadow is cool. I spent the flight of my days amid fountains, where I dipped the calm tips of my fingers whenever I dreamed of living ... Sometimes I bent over and stared at myself in the ponds... When I smiled, my teeth looked mysterious in the water. They had their own smile, independent of mine ... I always smiled for no reason ... Talk to me about death, about the end of all things, so that I can feel there’s a reason to look back ...

FIRST WATCHER
Let’s talk about nothing, about nothing ... It’s colder now, but why is it colder? There’s no reason for it to be colder. It’s not really any colder than it is... Why must we talk? Singing, I don’t know why, is better than talking ... Singing, when we do it at night, is a bold and cheery person who bursts into the room and warms it up, comforting us... I could sing you a song we used to sing at home in my past. Don’t you want me to sing it?

THIRD WATCHER
It’s not worth the bother, sister. .. When someone sings, I can no longer be with myself. I stop being able to remember myself. My entire past becomes someone else, and I weep over a dead life that I carry inside me and never lived. It’s always too late to sing, just as it’s always too late not to sing ...

(pause)

FIRST WATCHER
Soon it will be day . .. Let’s observe silence. That’s what life urges... Near the house where I was born there was a pond. I’d go there and sit next to it, on a tree trunk that had fallen almost
into the water ... I’d sit on the end of it and dip my feet in the water, reaching down my toes as far as I could. Then I’d stare hard at the tips of my toes, but not in order to see them. I don’t know why, but my impression is that this pond never existed ... To remember it is like not being able to remember anything ... Who knows why Im saying this and whether I was the one who lived what I remember? ...

SECOND WATCHER
Dreaming at the seashore makes us sad... We can’t be what we want to be, since whatever it is, we always wish we’d been it in the past... When the wave crashes and the foam hisses, it seems like a thousand tiny voices are speaking. The foam only seems cool to those who suppose it is all one ... Each thing is many, and we know nothing ... Shall I tell you what I dreamed at the seashore?

FIRST WATCHER
You can tell it, sister, but nothing in us needs you to tell it ... If it’s beautiful, I’m already sorry I’ll have heard it. And if it’s not beautiful, wait... Tell it only after you’ve changed it...

SECOND WATCHER
I’m going to tell it. It’s not entirely false, since surely nothing is entirely false. It must have happened like this ... One day when I found myself leaning back on top of a cold cliff, having forgotten I ever had a mother and father, a childhood and other days besides that one—on that day I vaguely saw, as if I only thought I’d seen it, a sail passing by in the distance ... Then it vanished ... Returning to myself, I realized that I now had this dream ... I don’t know where it began. And I never saw another sail... None of the ships leaving from ports around here have sails that resemble that sail, not even when the moon is out and the ships pass slowly by in the distance ...

FIRST WATCHER
I see a ship in the offing through the window. Perhaps it’s the one you saw ...

SECOND WATCHER
No, sister. The one you see is no doubt bound for some port... The one I saw couldn’t have been bound for any port ...

FIRST WATCHER
Why did you respond to what I said? ... You might be right... I saw no ship through the window. I wanted to see one and told you I’d seen one so as not to feel sorry ... Now tell us what you dreamed at the seashore ...

SECOND WATCHER
I dreamed of a mariner who seemed to be lost on a faraway island. On the island there were a few tall, unbending palms among which some vague birds flew ... I didn’t notice if they ever alighted ... The mariner had lived there since surviving a shipwreck ... Since he had no way of returning to his homeland, and since remembering it made him suffer, he dreamed up a homeland he’d never had, and he made that other homeland his: another kind of country with other kinds of landscapes, and different people, who had a different way of walking down the street and leaning out their windows. Hour by hour he built that false homeland in his dreams, and he dreamed continuously—by day in the scant shade of the tall palms, whose spiky shadows stood out on the warm, sandy ground, and by night on the beach, where he lay on his back and didn’t notice the stars.

FIRST WATCHER
If only a tree had dappled my outstretched hands with the shadow of a dream like that! ...

THIRD WATCHER
Let her speak. Don’t interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her ... I’m falling asleep in order to hear her ... Go on, sister, go on ... My heart aches because I wasn’t you when you dreamed at the seashore ...

SECOND WATCHER
For years and years, day after day, the mariner built his new homeland in a never-ending dream ... Every day he placed a dreamed stone on that impossible edifice ... Soon he had a country he’d crossed and recrossed countless times. He remembered having already spent thousands of hours along its coastline. He knew the usual color of twilight on a certain northern bay, and how soothing it was to enter—late at night, with his soul basking in the murmur of the water cut by the ship’s prow—a large southern port where he had spent, perhaps happily, his imaginary youth ...

(pause)

FIRST WATCHER
Why have you quit speaking, sister?

SECOND WATCHER
It’s better not to talk too much ... Life is always watching us... Every hour is a mother to our dreams, but we mustn’t know this ... When I talk too much, I become separated from myself and start hearing myself speak. This stirs self-pity and makes me
feel my heart so intensely that I end up nearly weeping with desire to hold it in my arms and rock it like a baby ... Look: the horizon is growing lighter ... The day can’t be too far off. Must I tell you more of my dream?

FIRST WATCHER
Keep telling it, sister, keep on telling it. Don’t stop telling it, and pay no attention to the fact that days dawn. .. The day never dawns for those who lay their head in the lap of dreamed hours... Don’t wring your hands. It makes a sound as of a stealthy snake ... Tell us much, much more about your dream. It’s so true that it makes no sense. The mere thought of hearing you is music to my soul...

SECOND WATCHER
Yes, I’ll tell you more about it. I myself feel the need to tell it. As I tell it to you, I’m also telling it to myself... Three of us are listening ...
(Suddenly looks at the coffin and shudders.)
Three of us, no ... I don’t know ... I don’t know how many ...

THIRD WATCHER
Don’t talk like that. Just tell your dream, start telling it again ... Don’t talk about how many can hear ... We never know how many things really live and see and hear ... Go back to your dream ... The mariner. What did the mariner dream of? ...

SECOND WATCHER
(in a softer voice, very slowly)
He began by creating landscapes; then he created cities; then he created streets and cross streets, one by one, sculpting them out of the substance of his soul—street by street, neighborhood after neighborhood, out to the sea walls of the wharfs, where he then created the ports... Street by street, and the people who walked them or gazed down at them from their windows ... He began to know some of the people, at first just barely recognizing them, but then becoming familiar with their past lives and their conversations, and he dreamed all this as if it were mere scenery to delight the eyes. .. Then he traveled, with his memory, through the country he’d created ... And thus he created his past... Soon he had another previous life ... In this new homeland he already had a birthplace, places where he’d grown up, and ports from where he’d set sail ... He began to acquire childhood playmates, and then friends and enemies from his youth ... It was all different from what he’d actually lived. Neither the country, nor its people, nor even his own
past were like the ones that had really existed ... Must I continue? It’s so painful to tell it!... Now, because I’m telling it, I’d rather be telling you about other dreams...

THIRD WATCHER
Continue, even if you don’t know why ... The more I hear you, the more I stop belonging to myself...

FIRST WATCHER
But is it really a good idea for you to continue? Should every story have an end? But keep talking anyway ... It matters so little what we say or don’t say ... We keep watch over the passing hours... Our task is as useless as Life ...

SECOND WATCHER
One day, after a heavy rain that blurred the horizon, the mariner got tired of dreaming ... He felt like remembering his true homeland ..., but he couldn’t remember anything, and he realized it no longer existed for him ... The only childhood he could recall belonged to the homeland of his dream; the only adolescence he remembered was the one he’d created ... His entire life was the life he’d dreamed ... And he realized he could never have had any other life ... For he could remember none of its streets, none of its people, and not one motherly caress ... Whereas in the life he thought he’d merely dreamed, everything was real and had existed ... He couldn’t even dream, couldn’t even conceive, of having had any other past the way everyone else, for a moment, is able to imagine ... O sisters, sisters... There’s something, I don’t know what, that I haven’t told you ... something that would explain all this... My soul makes me shiver... I’m hardly aware of having spoken ... Talk to me, shout at me, so that I’ll wake up and know that I’m here with you and that certain things really are just dreams ...

FIRST WATCHER
(in a very soft voice)
I don’t know what to tell you ... I’m afraid to look at things ... How does your dream continue? ...

SECOND WATCHER
I don’t know the rest of it... It’s all fuzzy ... Why should there be any more? ...

FIRST WATCHER
What happened after all that?

SECOND WATCHER
After all what? What is after? Is after anything? ... One day a boat arrived ... One day a boat arrived ... Yes, yes ... that has to be what happened ... One day a boat arrived, and passed by that island, and the mariner wasn’t there ...

THIRD WATCHER
Perhaps he’d returned to his homeland ... But which one?

FIRST WATCHER
Yes, which one? And then what became of the mariner? Does anyone know?

SECOND WATCHER
Why do you ask me? Does anything have an answer?

(pause)

THIRD WATCHER IS
it absolutely necessary, even within your dream, that this mariner and this island existed?

SECOND WATCHER
No, sister. Nothing is absolutely necessary.

FIRST WATCHER
Tell us, at least, how the dream ended.

SECOND WATCHER
It didn’t end ... I don’t know... No dream ends... How can I be sure that I’m not still dreaming it, that I’m not dreaming it without knowing it, and that my dreaming isn’t this hazy thing I call my life? ... Say no more ... I’m beginning to be sure of I don’t know what... The footsteps of some unknown horror are approaching me in a night that’s not this night... Whom might I have awakened with the dream I told you? ... I’m deathly afraid that God has forbidden my dream, which is undoubtedly more real than He allows ... Say something, sisters. Tell me at least that the night is ending, even though I know it... Look, it’s beginning to be day ... Look: the real day is almost here ... Let’s stop. Let’s think no more ... Let’s quit pursuing this inward adventure ... Who knows where it might lead us? ... All of this, sisters, happened during the night... Let’s say no more about it, even to ourselves... It’s human and fitting that we each adopt our own air of sadness.

THIRD WATCHER
Listening to you was so beautiful. Don’t say it wasn’t... I know it wasn’t worth the bother. That’s why I found it beautiful... That’s not why, but let me say it was... What’s more, the music of your voice, which I listened to even more than your words, leaves me dissatisfied, perhaps because it’s music ...

SECOND WATCHER
Everything leaves us dissatisfied, sister ... For people who think, everything wearies, because everything changes. People who come and go prove it, for they change with everything... Only dreams last forever and are beautiful. Why are we still talking? ...