I often wonder what I would be like if, shielded from the winds of fate by the screen of wealth, I’d never been brought by the dutiful hand of my uncle to an office in Lisbon, nor risen from it to other offices, all the way up to this paltry pinnacle as a competent assistant bookkeeper, with a job that’s like a siesta and a salary that I can live on.

I realize that if I’d had this imagined past, I wouldn’t now be able to write these pages, which are at least something, and therefore better than all the pages I would only have dreamed of writing in better circumstances. For banality is a form of intelligence, and reality – especially if stupid or crude – is a natural complement of the soul.

My job as a bookkeeper is responsible for a large part of what I’m able to feel and think, since this occurs as a denial and evasion of that selfsame job.

If I had to list, in the blank space of a questionnaire, the main literary influences on my intellectual development, I would immediately jot down the name of Cesário Verde,* but I would also write in the names of Senhor Vasques my boss, of Moreira the head bookkeeper, of Vieira the local sales representative, and of António the office boy. And as the crucial address of them all I would write LISBON in big letters. The fact is that not only Cesário Verde, but also my co-workers, have served as correction coefficients for my vision of the world. I think that’s the term (whose exact meaning I obviously don’t know) for the treatment given by engineers to mathematics so that it can be applied to life. If it is the right term, then that’s what I meant. If it isn’t, then let’s imagine it could be, the intention substituting for the failed metaphor.

And if I think, with all the lucidity I can muster, about what my life has apparently been, I see it as a coloured thing – a chocolate wrapper or a cigar band – swept from the dirty tablecloth by the brisk brush of the housemaid (who’s listening overhead) and landing in the dustpan with the crumbs and the crusts of reality proper. It stands out from other things with a similar destiny by its privilege of getting to ride in the dustpan as well. And above the maid’s brushing the gods continue their conversation, indifferent to the affairs of the world’s servants.

Yes, if I’d been wealthy, shielded, spruce, ornamental, I wouldn’t even have been this brief episode of pretty paper among crumbs; I would have remained on a lucky dish – ‘Thank you but no’ – and have retreated to the sideboard to grow old. This way, rejected after my useful substance has been eaten, I go to the rubbish bin with the dust of what’s left of Christ’s body, and I can’t imagine what will follow and among what stars, but something – inevitably – will follow.