The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa by Fernando Pessoa Page A

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 ownpast 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