In the day’s limpid perfection, the sun-filled air nevertheless stagnates. It’s not the present pressure of the future storm, not a malaise in our involuntary bodies, not a vague haziness in the truly blue sky. It’s the torpor that the thought of not working makes us feel, a feather tickling our dozing face. It’s sultry but it’s summer. The countryside appeals even to those who don’t like it.

If I were someone else, this would no doubt be a happy day for me, because I’d feel it without thinking about it. I would look forward to finishing my normal day’s work – which to me is monotonously abnormal day after day – and then take the tram to Benfica* with some friends. We would eat dinner right as the sun was setting, in one of the garden restaurants. Our happiness in that moment would be part of the landscape, and recognized as such by all who saw us.

But since I am me, I merely take a little pleasure in the little that it is to imagine myself as that someone else. Yes, soon he-I, under a tree or bower, will eat twice what I can eat, drink twice what I dare drink, and laugh twice what I can conceive of laughing. Soon he, now I. Yes, for a moment I was someone else: in someone else I saw and lived this human and humble joy of existing as an animal in shirtsleeves. Great day that made me dream all this! The sky is sublimely blue, like my fleeting dream of being a hale and hearty sales representative on a sort of holiday when the day’s work is over.