No light came from any of the rooms. Ricardo Reis went quietly down the corridor for fear of disturbing the sleeping guests. For three seconds he paused outside the door of Marcenda's room. In his room the air was cold and damp, not much better than out by the river. He shivered, as if still gazing at those livid ships and listening to the policeman's footsteps. What would have happened had he replied, Yes, there is something wrong, although he would not have been able to elaborate. Approaching the bed, he noticed a bulge in the eiderdown, something had been placed between the sheets, a hot-water bottle, he was sure, but to make certain he put his hand on top. It was warm. She was a good sort, Lydia, just like her to remember to warm his bed, these were little comforts for the chosen few. She probably won't come tonight. He lay down, opened the book at his bedside, the one about Herbert Quain, glanced at a couple of pages without taking in the sense. Three motives had been suggested for the crime, each in itself sufficient to incriminate the suspect, on whom all three converged, but the aforesaid suspect, availing himself of the law, argued that the real motive, were it to be proven that he was in fact the criminal, might be a fourth or fifth or sixth motive, each motive equally feasible, and so the full explanation of the crime could be reached only in the interrelation between all these motives, in the effect of each on each in every combination until finally the effects all canceled out, the result being death. Moreover, one had to consider to what extent the victim himself was responsible, which possibility could provide, both morally and legally, a seventh and even definitive motive. Ricardo Reis felt restored, the hot-water bottle was warming his feet, his brain worked without any interference from the outside world, the tediousness of the book made his eyelids heavy. He shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, Fernando Pessoa was sitting at the foot of the bed as if he had come to visit the sick. That same estranged look had been captured for posterity in several portraits, the hands crossed over the right thigh, the head slightly forward, deathly pale. Ricardo Reis put his book aside between the two pillows. I didn't expect you at this late hour, he said, and smiled amiably lest his visitor catch the note of impatience in his voice, the ambiguity of his words which amounted to saying, I could have done without your visit today. And he had good reason, two to be precise, the first being that he felt like talking, but not to Fernando Pessoa, about his evening at the theater, the second being that Lydia might enter the room at any moment. Not that there was any danger of her crying out, Help, a ghost, but Fernando Pessoa, though it was not in his nature, might wish to stay and witness these intimacies of flesh and spirit, the possibility could not be ruled out. God, who is God, frequently does this, nor can He avoid it, since He is everywhere, but that is something we accept. Ricardo Reis appealed to masculine complicity, We cannot chat for long, I am expecting a visitor, you must agree that it could be embarrassing. You don't waste time, you've been here less than three weeks and already you're involved in amorous intrigues, at least I presume they are amorous. It depends what you mean by amorous, she's a chambermaid in the hotel. My dear Reis, you, an aesthete, intimate with all the goddesses of Olympus, sharing your bed with a cham bermaid, with a servant, and I used to listen to you speak incessantly and with the utmost constancy of your Lydia, Neaera, and Chloe, and now you tell me you are infatuated with a chambermaid, you deeply disappoint me. The chambermaid's name is Lydia and I am not infatuated, I am not one for infatuation. Ah, so this much-praised poetic justice exists after all, what an amusing situation, you clamored for Lydia at such length that Lydia finally came, you have been more fortunate than Camoes who, in order to win his Natércia, was obliged to invent the name but got no further, so the name Lydia came but not the woman, don't be ungrateful, how do you know what the Lydia of your odes is like, supposing such a phenomenon exists, an intolerable embodiment of passivity, thoughtful silence, and pure spirit, indeed, it is doubtful, as doubtful in fact as the existence of the poet who wrote your odes. But I did write them. Allow me to be skeptical, my dear Reis, I see you there reading a detective story with a hot-water bottle at your feet and waiting for a chambermaid to come and warm the rest of you, if you'll pardon the expression, and you expect me to believe that you are the same man who wrote,
Serene and watching life from a distance, I must ask you where you were when you watched life from a distance. You yourself wrote that a poet is someone who pretends. We utter such intuitions without knowing how we arrive at them, unfortunately I died without discovering whether it is the poet who pretends to be a man or the man who pretends to be a poet. To pretend and to deceive oneself are not the same thing. Is that a statement or a question. It is a question. Of course they're not the same, I only invented, but you invented yourself, if you want to see the difference, read my poems and go back and read your own. This conversation is certain to keep me up all night. Perhaps your Lydia will come and cradle you in her arms, from what they tell me chambermaids who worship their masters can be extremely affectionate. You sound vexed. Perhaps I am. Tell me something, is my pretense that of a poet or a man. Your situation, Reis my friend, is hopeless, you have invented yourself, you are your own invention, and this has nothing to do with either man or poet. Hopeless. Is that another question, It is, Yes, hopeless, first of all because you do not know who you are, And what about you, did you ever discover who you were, I no longer count, I'm dead, but don't worry, there will be lots of people ready to explain everything about me. Perhaps I came back to Portugal to learn who I am. Nonsense, my dear fellow, childish nonsense, revelations of this kind are only to be found in works of mysticism and on roads leading to Damascus, don't forget that we're in Lisbon and no roads lead from here. I can scarcely keep my eyes open. I'll leave you now to get some sleep, sleep is really the only thing I envy you, only fools believe that sleep is the cousin of death, cousin or brother, I can't remember, I think it's cousin, after so few words of sympathy, do you really want me to return. Please do, I don't have many people to confide in. That is certainly a valid reason. Listen, do me a favor, leave the door ajar, it will save me getting out of bed and catching cold. Are you still expecting company. One never knows, Fernando, one never knows.