The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

He spent the night in a fever, slept badly. Before stretching out on the bed, exhausted, he took two aspirins and put the thermometer under his armpit. His temperature was over a hundred, it was to be expected, influenza, he thought to himself. He fell asleep, woke up, dreamed of vast plains bathed in sunlight, flowing rivers meandering among trees, ships that solemnly drifted with the current, remote, alien, himself sailing in all of them, multiplied, divided, waving to himself like someone saying farewell or eager for an encounter. The ships entered a lagoon or estuary, tranquil, still water, they did not stir, there could have been ten of them, or twenty, or more, without sail or oar, within calling distance, but the sailors were all speaking at the same time. Since they were saying the same words they could not hear one another, and finally the ships began to sink, the chorus of voices died away.

Dreaming, Ricardo Reis tried to capture those final words, thought that he had succeeded, but as the last ship went to the bottom, the syllables, disconnected, gurgling in the water, came to the surface. Sonorous yet meaningless, the drowned words carried no farewell, pledge, or testament, and even if they had, there was no longer anyone to hear them. Asleep or awake, he debated, had the masquerader really been Fernando Pessoa. First he decided yes, then rejected what was obvious for the sake of what was profound. The next time they met, he would ask. But would he receive a truthful answer.