When I die I want the whole family alive beside me, tasting whisky for the first time,
and a quick cigarette just to see what it’s like, by the way,
I believe in death the same way I believe in life, if I’m here and I exist for some reason then perhaps one day I’ll have to stop being for the same reason,
then I’ll get everyone together and we’ll go to the movies, the whole family all in one cinema, I’ll rent out an entire one in some shopping mall or other and we’ll all be there watching the big screen,
I want a dumb romantic comedy, one of those movies with no substance at all, just so we can laugh with one another, just so we can fool around with one another,
it could be Notting Hill, for example, but if anybody would like to suggest something worse I wouldn’t mind at all,
and João would also have to come along with one or two other friends, all the ones I’ve got, I’ve never been the type to make friends easily, and even my friends don’t know everything I am and do, may God protect them from that and protect me even more,
death will be arriving at around that time, more or less halfway through the movie, but a cheerful death, a little-girl death,
and I’ve already imagined her and everything, in a schoolgirl’s skirt, toy sunglasses, those brightly coloured ones,
they could be Hello Kitty, am I allowed to advertise in a story like this?,
a nice, happy child waiting for me in a park in the city, it might even be raining, that wouldn’t bother me,
death will be a happy child waiting for me in a park and that’s such a lovely way to die, isn’t it?,
and I’ll want my cats there too, of course, has anyone ever seen kittens in a cinema?, everybody stroking them, treating them as equals,
and the cats, since I had come there to die, would allow the people to treat them as equals, they’re very humble and they like me, they don’t mind coming here for a few moments, they’re such darlings,
when the plot of the movie is at its height, with the couple being parted, everything seeming like it has no possible resolution and everybody fed up with knowing that it’s bound to end well, I’ll already be switching off completely, I’d like to start with my eyes, to be able to devote myself entirely to feeling,
you can feel better with your eyes closed, haven’t you ever felt that?,
nothing that matters in life happens when you have your eyes open, orgasms, dreams,
death must surely be a good thing, if it mostly consists of closing your eyes for ever that can’t be bad, right?,
and I wouldn’t want to make a big speech, and definitely not to suffer,
suffering is a son of a bitch, I hope when I die that I’ll be able to explain it better, there’s got to be a reason that’s beyond me why pain exists, and it’s probably a really cool reason and I’ll laugh myself silly when I discover it, if only,
so I’ll just thank everyone, not bothering them too much since by now the movie would be nearly over, and me with it, ask them never to forget a happy ending, of course, but a happy middle even more so,
it’s the road that defines us, never the destination, everyone ends up at death, see?,
then I’ll stop hearing, and I’ll be left with the smells, the recollections, my mother’s words when she kissed me, my father’s voice when he hugged me, the car horns honking, the wonder of the breeze at the window,
you ought to know you have all this, are you happy or aren’t you?,
at these moments the highly anticipated end will be arriving, the family so moved, by the film and not by me because I won’t allow it,
because I’m only dying and that’s no sadness when I’m dying the way I want to die,
the last bit of me that I want to go is my hand, just one would be enough, the right or the left, either way,
I play table tennis equally well with both hands, I can also die equally well with one or the other, no doubt about that,
an ambidextrous death, that’s pretty fancy, isn’t it?,
we’ll be complete, you and I, inside my hand, I’ll be able to feel that very first time, on the train, Porto to Lisbon so quickly, me inside your tall boots,
you still have them, don’t you?, please tell them I love them,
and I could even end there but I won’t be able to resist running my hand over your whole body, understanding every one of your wrinkles, until finally,
the main characters in the movie are already racing towards each other and it looks like they aren’t going to make it in time, can that be right?,
your hand calming my fear,
however much death might be a happy girl playing in the park, it does make me afraid, you do understand that, don’t you?,
and at last I stop being,
they lived happily ever after,
and I love you,
and I you.
Pedro Chagas Freitas is a Portuguese writer, journalist, editor and professional public speaker who has published more than twenty works. He studied linguistics and teaches creative writing.
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with fifty-something books to his name. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish and French) include fiction and non-fiction for children and adults, from Europe, Africa and the Americas. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, among others, and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the LA Times Book Prize.
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A Oneworld Book
First published in North America, Great Britain and Australia by Oneworld Publications, 2018
This ebook published 2018
Originally published in Portuguese as Prometo Falhar by Marcador, 2014
Copyright © Marcador Editora and Pedro Chagas Freitas, 2014, 2018
English translation copyright © Daniel Hahn, 2018
The moral right of Pedro Chagas Freitas to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78607-251-1
eISBN 978-1-78607-204-7
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This publication was funded by the Direção-Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas.
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The Day I Found You Page 32