The Master of Escape

During one of my frequent visits to the Casa Fernando Pessoa in Lisbon, where the autumn light filters through tall windows and dust motes dance in the air like Pessoa's own scattered thoughts, I made a peculiar discovery.

I had been examining a particularly weathered edition of The Book of Disquiet, one whose margins bore annotations in what appeared to be several different hands, perhaps Pessoa's heteronyms speaking to one another across time. As I carefully turned its brittle pages, a manuscr...