|
Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Karl Germer
Apartado 147 Lisbon
3rd. December, 1930.
Karl Germer, Esq., Lietzenseeufer 9, Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Dear Mr. Germer:
I am sorry that I should have delayed so much my reply to your letter of the 18th. November, and that, apart from that, I should have left you for so long a time without any news. The fact is that I was ill for a good (meaning a bad) part of November, and the time that I was not ill circumstances were ill around me. Then, when both I and they were better, there was the immediate pressure of work delayed owing the both ills.
As, however, it behooves everyone who can do so to make circumstances, even if adverse, the subject of a sort of alchemy or transmutation, by which delay itself may become a mode or episode of progress, I, as Gonzalo would have said, have "derived much comfort from this fellow, circumstance."
If there had been time, health and disposition to write the book as originally intended, the book would have been a wrong move. The compulsory meditation that has intervened has enabled me to think out the as (1) a coherent whole as a detective story, (2) a far more interesting story than it was originally, (3) a story with a conclusion which no future fact or facts can ever counter or rebut.
The detective in charge of the case, after very curious investigation (all backed up by witnesses, facts and careful deductions) arrives at the conclusion that A.C. neither committed suicide nor was murdered or left the country on the Sud-Express, The definite conclusion is that he was either tracked here by enemies, or enemies were already here awaiting him; that, in view of this, he sent Miss J. [Hanni Jaeger] ahead of him to get her out of danger; that as Miss J. went to Germany, so did C[rowley] mean to go to Germany; that once in Germany he would be safe, the danger being on the route; that, in view of this, he arranged with someone of whom the detective never ascertained the identity to take, if necessary, his place and passport and luggage and go off in the Sud-Express if the tracker got wind of the purchase of the ticket (otherwise C. would himself have gone in the Sud-Express); that the ticket for the Sud-Express was purchased at 10.5 to 10.10 in the morning of the 23rd. September at the agency of the Wagon-Lits by a man who gave his name as Cole and his address as Hotel de l'Europe, who was accompanied by another man who answered rather roughly, thou, not exactly, to my description, the buyer of the ticket seeming to conform fairly well C.'s description; that, however, on the showing of four witnesses, at that precise hour C. and myself were at the Café Arcada in Terreiro de Paco, there being therefore an absolute alibi (it is at this stage that the story begins to get interesting, and it is not necessary to add that what I have mentioned before as "conclusions" really comes after); that both C., pseudo-C. and pseudo-I appeared at the railway station for the Sud-Express; that the trackers were there, so pseudo-C. went off with C.'s luggage and passport, pseudo-I speaking to him in the carriage long before the train left (and in French, since he ended by crying out "Bon Voyage!" from the passage); that consequently the man who crossed the frontier with C.'s passport was not C. and bore only a general, but working, resemblance to him; that this man, as the American Consular authorities took the trouble to investigate, went, as C. would have done, right through Germany, where he was on the 27th., as Consul Armstrong affirms (though he afterwards because unsure whether it was really C. who was there in Berlin); that C. left the Railway Station and (another witness) got into a taxi which had been waiting for him a long time on the upper level of the Station (description of taxi and driver obtained, and the taxi contained only one suitcase, new); that on the 24th. C. and the pseudo-I took coffee on the "terrace" of the Café Royal (another witness) at about 3 p.m., then went off (obviously to the Tabacaria Ingleza, which is next door, and this was evidently when I saw C. and "another man" enter this place); that then they went off to the Estoril Railway station, which is just opposite, that on the 25th (witnesses at Cascaes) a man closely resembling pseudo-I was twice seen near Boca do Inferno; that presumably this meant the "planting" of the suicide letter, which [Augusto Ferreira] Gomes found that very evening; that, presuming that C. would leave the country—for Germany, as he obviously meant to do—he would leave by another route, the best being obviously the Southern Train, which runs to the very South of Spain, which is very little used by foreigners (except Southern Spaniards) and goes to a place on the frontier where vigilance is very slack and C. could therefore have easily passed with another man's passport, or, for a consideration of something like ?5, without any passport at all; that there is testimony that a man resembling C. very closely, and carrying one new suitcase left Lisbon at 5 a.m. on the 25th. On this train, buying a first-class ticket to the end of the line—Villa Real de Santo Antonio, just opposite Spain; that the "suicide letter" was obviously planted to confuse the trackers, who would by then have discovered that the Sud-Express passenger was not C. and leave them sufficiently confused to enable C. to get out of the country; that (Cascaes witnesses) a "rough-looking man" was seen looking about the Boca do Inferno on the 26th. (which means that information leaked out from Diário de Notícias of from the Censorship, since the news-item was held up for a day and only appeared on the 27th., showing thus the net of connections that C.'s enemies had); that it was never possible to identify pseudo-C, or pseudo-myself; that the case is thus carried to a triumphant close, as far as can be; that it would have been possible, perhaps, to carry it further if it had been possible to interview the driver of the taxi which carried C. from the Central Railway Station just after the Sud-Express of the 23rd. left; that the investigator very rightly ascertained that this taxi must have been taken by C. in Terreiro do Paco, just after he left Café Arcada at 10.25 a.m. (time exact) on that day, identification of the taxi being thus easy from (a) porter's description of the taxi, (b) porter's description of the driver, (c) the fact that it was a taxi likely to be known at Terreiro do Paco, which is a taxi-stand but a small one; that the taxi was very easily identified form this data as the one belonging to Ernesto Martins; that is was impossible, however, to obtain any information from E.M. because he was shot in his taxi, in highly mysterious circumstances, in the early hours of the 26th. September, outside an estate called Quinta da Terrugem, which is on the line between Lisbon and Cascaes; that the murderer of E.M. was never caught, all that is known of him being that he was a "rough-looking man", whom the Police let slip through their hands.
This, very quickly and badly told, is the whole story. As you may presume, when put the right way and in the right setting and development, it makes a very good detective story, even to the presence of an unexpected alibi and murder, and also "powerful enemies", who go to the extent of murdering a poor chauffeur when they cannot get their man—a stupid thing (most times) in fiction, but a highly interesting one in real life, and duly shrouded in mystery. Apart from this, the story follows a strictly logical development, there are many curious points about it, one being that the investigation is put on the right track by the apparently minor circumstance that I (Pessoa) look younger by almost ten years if I put my hat on, this being one of the definite proofs of the advantage of psychologically directed minuteness in observation. And, as you see, no facts can emerge to counter this, so no one's movements are hindered by the story or by any delay it may still undergo. The whole circumstances and non-circumstances have been built up by intellectual alchemy into a coherent whole, each fact dovetailing into another, the whole story moving by a process of observation tempered by reasoning, in a series of readjustments and readaptations to reality.
Of course, it would be of great advantage if the appearance of the central figure of the story were not to take place before the book appears, but, as I have said, the story has been so devised as to be not only a whole in itself, but also so as to adapt itself to reality—both in the sense that no facts can possibly emerge to counter it, and in the sense that nobody's movements are really hindered by its delay or non-delay. This treble adaptation to reality has given more trouble than a philosophical treatise would give, but . . . Mons agitat . . .
The story is written in parts, but it is only now, that it has been thought out as a coherent whole, that it can be really written out. The poor author still lies under the curse of deferred work for commercial elementals, but the curse lapses on Sunday, when the final redaction will begin. It should move swiftly thereafter, but there is no saying it will not take till the end of the month. As promised you, the chapters will be sent you as they are written.
After all, the ubiquitous 3-month sign in my Hoary Question was right! I tried to read the present circumstances into the end-October aspect, but that absolutely covers the Détective article, so clearly a good aspect in its publication and a bad aspect in the wholesale bungling of names, not to speak of the slovenly redaction of the amiable criminal who wrote it.
The question of the capitalization has, so it happens, undergone—for very different reasons—a parallel delay. It is not till the end of the present month that my friend can consider with due attention the proposition, which interested him in the abstract. He, however, does not like to go deeply into a proposition till he has the ready money to put into it at once, should he accept it. Now this ready money will not befall him till the end of this year, when he gets clear of a business in which the money was bound up.
As I also received a letter from Mr. I.R. [Israel Regardie] asking for news, I am sending him a copy of this letter, as I sent you some time ago a copy of one to him, and for the same reasons of simplicity and quickness.
With best wishes, I am
Yours very sincerely,
Fernando Pessoa
|