Read "All the Names" by José Saramago online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Determined to catch up on his lost sleep, Senhor José got into bed as soon as he arrived home, but only two hours later, he was awake again. He had had a strange, enigmatic dream in which he saw himself in the middle of the cemetery, amid a multitude of sheep so numerous that he could barely see the mounds of the graves, and each sheep had a number on its head that kept changing continually, but, because the sheep were all the same, you couldn't tell if it was the sheep that were changing numbers or if the numbers were changing sheep.
He heard a voice shouting, I'm here, I'm here, it couldn't come from the sheep because they stopped talking a long time ago, nor could it be the graves because there is no record of a grave ever having spoken, and yet the voice kept calling insistently, I'm here, I'm here, Senhor José looked in that direction and saw only the raised snouts of the animals, then the same words rang out behind him, or to the right, or to the left, I'm here, I'm here, and he would turn swiftly, but he couldn't tell where it was coming from.