Ricardo Reis returned to his domestic chores, put away his suits, shirts, handkerchiefs, socks, item by item, as if composing a Sapphic ode, laboriously working with an awkward rhyme scheme. The color of the tie he has just hung up requires a matching suit, which he must buy. Over the mattress that belonged to Dona Luísa, certainly not the one on which she lost her virginity many years ago but the mattress where she bled giving birth to her last child, and where her dear husband, a high court judge, suffered and died, over this mattress Ricardo Reis spread sheets still smelling of newness, two fleecy blankets, a pale bedspread. He slipped the pillow and woolen bolster into their cases, doing the best he could, clumsy as any male. Eventually Lydia will appear, perhaps tomorrow, with those magical hands of hers, magical because they are the hands of a woman, to tidy up this chaos, this resigned sorrow of things badly arranged. Ricardo Reis carried the suitcases into the kitchen, hung up the towels in the ice-cold bathroom, stored his toiletries in the little wall cabinet, which had a definite mildew smell. As we have already seen, he is a man fastidious about his appearance, it is a question of personal pride. All that remains to be done now is arrange his books on those warped black bookshelves in the study and put his papers in the drawers of the wobbly black bureau. Now he feels at home, he has found his bearings, the compass rose, north, south, east, west, unless some magnetic storm comes to send this compass into a frenzy.
At half past seven the rain has not stopped. Ricardo Reis sits on the edge of the high bed and examines the cheerless room. The window is bare of any curtains or netting. It occurs to him that the neighbors across the way might be spying, whispering among themselves, You can see everything that's going on in there. Eagerly they look forward to sights even more provocative than this one of a man sitting alone on the edge of an old-fashioned bed, his face hidden in a cloud. Ricardo Reis gets up and closes the inner shutters. Now the room is a cell, four blind walls, the door, should he open it, would lead to another door, or to a dark yawning cave, we have already used that image, it does not bear repeating. Shortly, in the Hotel Brangança, the maître d', Afonso, will strike the three blows of Vatel on that ludicrous gong, and the Portuguese and Spanish guests,
nuestros hermanos, los hermanos suyos, will descend to the dining room. Salvador will smile at each in turn, Senhor Fonseca, Doctor Pascal, Madame, Don Camilo, Don Lorenzo, and the new arrival in room two hundred and one, surely the Duke of Alba or of Medinaceli, dragging his mighty sword, pressing a ducat into Lydia's outstretched hand. She curtsies, as befits a servant, and smilingly accepts a pinch in the flesh of her arm. Ramón will be bringing in the soup, today there is something special and he is not joking, from the deep tureen comes the fragrant smell of chicken, from the platters intoxicating aromas. We need not be surprised that Ricardo Reis feels his stomach rumble, it is, indeed, time for dinner. But even with the shutters closed you can hear the water from the eaves spattering on the sidewalk. Who would be so bold as to venture forth in weather like this, except for some pressing obligation, to save one's father from the gallows, for example, if one's father is still alive. The dining room of the Hotel Brangança is a lost paradise, and like any lost paradise it is sorely missed by Ricardo Reis, who would like to return but not to remain. He goes to get his parcels, the pastries and crystallized fruit, to satisfy his hunger. For drinking there is only tap water, which tastes of carbolic acid. Adam and Eve must have felt just as deprived that first night after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, clearly it was raining buckets then too. As they stood in the doorway and Eve asked Adam, Would you like a biscuit, having only one, she broke it in half and gave him the larger piece. Adam munched slowly, watching Eve peck at her tiny portion, tilting her head like an inquisitive little bird. On the other side of the door now closed to them forever, without any evil intent or any prompting on the part of the serpent, she had offered him an apple. It is said that Adam only became aware of her nakedness when he bit into the apple, and that Eve, who did not have time to get dressed, remained like the lilies of the field who neither spin nor weave. Not far from the threshold of Eden they both spent the night comfortably, having eaten a biscuit for their supper, while on the other side God listened and felt sad, barred from a feast He had neither provided for nor foreseen. One day another maxim will be invented, Where man and woman join, God is, because paradise is not at all where it was said to be, it is here on earth and God will be obliged to come every time He wishes to enjoy it. But certainly not in this house. Ricardo Reis is alone. The cloying sweetness of a crystallized pear has made him feel sick, a pear, not an apple, it is indeed true that temptations are no longer what they were. He went into the bathroom to clean his sticky hands, his mouth, his teeth, he cannot bear this dolceia, a word that is neither Portuguese nor Spanish but an adaptation of the Italian, it is the only word that seems appropriate at the moment. Solitude weighs on him like night, and the night devours him like bait. Through the long narrow corridor under the greenish light that descends from the ceiling he is a marine animal with sluggish movements, a defenseless tortoise without its shell. He rummages at the desk, through the manuscripts of his poems, he called them odes and so they have remained, because everything must have a name. He reads at random and asks himself if he is their author, for he does not recognize himself in what is written, in this detached, calm, resigned person, almost godlike, for that is how gods are, composed as they assist the dead. Vaguely he muses, he must organize his life, his time, decide how he will spend his mornings, afternoons, and evenings, get to bed early and rise early, find one or two restaurants that serve simple, wholesome meals, and he must reread and revise his poems for the anthology he plans to publish at some future date, and he must find suitable premises for his practice, get to know people, travel to other parts of the country, visit Oporto, Coimbra, call on Doctor Sampaio, run into Marcenda unexpectedly in the city's Poplar Grove. He no longer thinks about his plans and objectives, he feels compassion for the invalid, then for himself, and his compassion turns to self-pity. As he sits there, he begins a poem, then suddenly remembers that he once wrote, I stand firmly upon the foundation of the poems I fashioned. Anyone who has drawn up a testament such as this cannot now say the opposite.