Requiem

Paul, the narrator, has an appointment on a hot Sunday in summer with a guest who is none other than the ghost of the great Portuguese writer, Fernando Pessoa. He comes to Lisbon at noon, but then realizes that ghosts usually make their appointments at midnight. Between noon and midnight, through a series of chance happenings and while retracing his past, Paul meets a whole series of characters, a curious mixture of people from present-day Lisbon and ghosts from the past, the living and the dead crossing paths at the same moment in time, a decompartmentalized time. Until his final meeting with Pessoa, Paul crosses paths with restaurants owners, the madam of a brothel, a tramp, a cemetery caretaker, a taxi driver, an old gypsy woman, etc… all of whom are firmly anchored in a segment of Lisbon culture that is slowly fading away. Among all these people, and with no apparent difference from them, parade another group of people, dead souls who return after many years, such as Paul’s friend Pierre, his long dead-father, and Isabel, who had been both Paul’s and Pierre’s mistress. Running through the story like a thread is the spirit of Pessoa and a powerful feeling of melancholy and remorse.