The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

by Fernando Pessoa

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 it flow farther away, or nearer? ... Is there any reason for anything being what it is? Is there any reason that’s true and real like my hands? ...

  SECOND WATCHER Our hands are not true or real. They’re mysteries that inhabit our life ... Sometimes, staring at my hands, I fear God ... No wind makes the candles flutter, but look: they flutter. Toward what? ... What a pity if someone could answer! ... I feel like listening to exotic melodies which at this very moment are surely playing in palaces on other continents ... In my heart everything is always far away ... Perhaps because I chased the waves at the seashore when I was a child. I led life by the hand among the rocks at low tide, when the ocean seems to have crossed its hands on its chest and fallen asleep, like the statue of an angel, so that no one will ever look at it again ...

  THIRD WATCHER Your words remind me of my soul ...

  SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they’re not true ... I hardly realize. Im saying them. I repeat what a voice I don’t hear tells me ... But I must have really lived by the seashore ... I love things that wave this way or that. There are waves in my soul. I seem to rock when I walk ... I feel like walking right now. I don’t do it, because nothing’s worth doing, especially when it’s something we feel like doing ... The hills are what I fear... They can’t possibly be so large and still. They must have a stony secret they refuse to tell ... If I could lean out that window without seeing hills, then someone in whom I feel happy would, for a moment, lean out of my soul ...

  FIRST WATCHER I myself love the hills ... On this side of all hills life is always ugly ... On the other side, where my mother lives, we used to sit in the shade of tamarind trees and talk about going to other lands . .. There everything was long and happy like the song of two birds, one on either side of the path ... Our thoughts were the only clearings in the forest. And our dreams were that the trees would cast some other calm besides their shadows on the ground ... Surely that was how we lived—I and I don’t know if anyone else ... Tell me this was true so that I won’t have to cry ...

  SECOND WATCHER I lived among rocks in plain view of the sea ... The hem of my skirt whipped cool and salty against my bare legs... I was small and wild ... Today I’m afraid of having been ... I seem to sleep through the present... Speak to me of fairies. I’ve never heard anyone speak of them . .. The ocean was too big to ever make me think of them ... It’s cozier in life to be small... Were you happy, sister?

  FIRST WATCHER I’m beginning, in this moment, to have been so ... Then too, it all happened in the shade ... The trees lived it more than I did ... It never arrived, and I hardly expected it to ... And you, sister, why don’t you speak?

  THIRD WATCHER It horrifies me that I’ll soon have said what I’m going to say. My words, spoken in the present, will belong immediately to the past, they’ll be somewhere outside me, irrevocable and fatal ... When speaking, I think about what’s going on in my throat, and my words seem like people ... My fear is larger than me. I can feel in my hand, I don’t know how, the key to an unknown door. And I’m suddenly, all of me, a talisman or tabernacle conscious of itself. That’s why it so scares me, like a dark forest, to pass through the mystery of speaking ... But who knows if this is really how I am and what I feel? ...

  FIRST WATCHER It’s so hard to know what we feel when we look at ourselves! Even living seems hard when we stop to think about it ... Speak, therefore, without thinking about the fact you exist. Weren’t you going to tell us who you once were?

  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 ord
er 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 af
ter? 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)