Read Online The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa by Fernando Pessoa - Free Book Online

presences here besides our souls ... The day should have broken, and they should have woken up by now ... Something’s late ... Everything’s late ... What’s happening in things to make us feel this horror? ... Ah, don’t desert me ... Talk to me, talk to me ... Talk at the same time as me so that my voice won’t be alone ... My voice scares me less than the idea of my voice, should I happen to notice that I’m speaking ...
     
THIRD WATCHER What voice are you speaking with? ... It’s someone else’s ... It comes from some sort of distance ...
     
FIRST WATCHER I don’t know ... Don’t remind me of that... I should be speaking with the shrill and tremulous voice of fear ... But I no longer know how to speak. A chasm has opened between me and my voice ... All our talking and this night and this fear—all this should have ended, abruptly ended, after the horror of your words ... I thinkI’ve finally started forgetting the story that you told and that made me feel like I should scream in a new way to express such a horror ...
     
THIRD WATCHER (
to the
SECOND WATCHER ) You shouldn’t have told us that story, sister. Now I marvel at being alive with even greater horror. Your story so engrossed me that I heard the meaning of your words and their sound separately. And it seemed to me that you, your voice and the meaning of what you said were three different beings, like three creatures that walk and talk.
     
SECOND WATCHER They really are three different beings, each with its own life. Perhaps God knows why ... Ah, but why are we talking? Who makes us keep talking? Why do I talk when I don’t want to? Why don’t we notice that it’s day? ...
     
FIRST WATCHER If only someone could scream to wake us up! I hear myself screaming on the inside, but I no longer know the path from my will to my throat. I feel a burning need to be afraid that someone will knock at that door. Why doesn’t someone knock at the door? It would be impossible, and I need to be afraid of that, I need to know what it is I’m afraid of... How strange I feel! ... It seems I’ve stopped speaking with my voice ... Part of me fell asleep and just watches... My dread has grown, but I’m no longer able to feel it... I no longer know where in my soul things are felt... A leaden shroud has been placed over my awareness of my body ... Why did you tell us your story?
     
SECOND WATCHER I don’t remember ... I hardly even remember that I told it... It already seems so long ago! ... What a deep sleepiness has fallen over my way of looking at things! ... What is it we want to do? What were we thinking of doing? I can’t remember if it was to talk or not to talk ...
     
FIRST WATCHER Let’s stop talking. The effort you make to talk tires me out... The gap between what you think and what you say grieves me ... I can feel in my skin my consciousness floating on the surface of my sensations’ terrified stupor. I don’t know what that means, but it’s what I feel ... I need to say longish, confusing sentences that are hard to say ... Doesn’t all of this feel to you like a huge spider that between us is weaving, from soul to soul, a black web we can’t escape?
     
SECOND WATCHER I feel nothing ... My sensations feel like a tangible thing ... Who am I being in this moment? Who is speaking with my voice? ... Ah, listen ...
     
FIRST and THIRD WATCHERS Who was it?
     
SECOND WATCHER Nothing. I heard nothing ... I tried to pretend to hear something so that you might think you’d heard it and I could believe there was something to hear ... Oh, what horror, what secret horror separates voice from soul, sensations from thoughts, and makes us talk and feel and think, when everything in us begs for silence and the new day and the unconsciousness of life ... Who is the fifth person in this room who extends a forbidding hand to stop us every time we’re about to feel?
     
FIRST WATCHER Why try to frighten me? I’m already bursting with more fear than I can