Adeus

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The file arrives at 11:47 PM. Standard rate. No rush. Portuguese to English, personal document, no context provided. I should be asleep, but the mortgage doesn't care about sleep. Sleep was a luxury I used to afford; the apartment was what I could keep. The translation work started as a side-hustle. Then I fell asleep in a meeting. Now this is it. But there's never enough 'it'.

My roommate's TV is bleeding through the wall—some game show, canned laughter. She doesn’t care about sleep either. She calls me ‘the translator’ like it’s a joke; I nod and do the dishes. Tampa heat clings to the cabinets, despite the moon’s best efforts.

I put my headphones on. The edges soften. I open the file. I still open emails with his name in mind, a habit that never timed out.

Não consigo mais.

I can't anymore. Or: I can't go on. Or: I can no longer. Portuguese gives you three ways to express despair and they all mean something slightly different. He liked the precision of plurals. Said sadness needed room, not a single chair.

I choose "go on." It sounds less final. Gives some hope. Hope is a translator’s superstition, a word you shade and pretend is neutral.

As paredes estão muito perto agora.

The walls are too close now. Clinical. Accurate. I type it and move forward.

Lembra quando você disse que eu era corajoso?

Remember when you said that I was—

My hands stop. I’d been there for school then—before he became the reason I stayed.

você disse.

You. Second person singular. Informal. This isn't a note to the world. This is to someone. He never wrote to groups. He packed meaning like contraband—small and meant for one.

que eu era corajoso?

—that I was brave?

I know that conversation. Seven years ago, outside St. Vincent’s, after his second attempt, I told him he was brave for getting help. He laughed—bitter, tired—fingers worrying the edge of the wristband and said I didn’t understand brave. We were something—not quite lovers, not quite friends—the kind of undefined that passes for freedom until someone moves to Portugal and you call it what it is. We had rules about birthdays and storms; everything else went unnamed. He folded receipts into small squares and left them in my coat pockets. When I opened one, a camellia petal slid out—paper-thin, browned at the edge. I learned his city by the weather reports: Porto, chuva leve, máxima dezessete. He preferred rain; said it quieted the city—and his breath. For a year I looked for him online; then I let the search go dark. It was easier to let him be someone I used to know than to learn whether he wanted to know me back.

The cursor blinks.

Você estava errada.

You were wrong.

He used você with me, never tu—affection with a seam of distance we pretended not to feel.

I scroll up to check the file name. Document #4477-B. Intake date: four days ago. Source: Porto Municipal Hospital. Hospitals were the boundaries of our relationship. St. Vincent’s then Porto Municipal then São João. Back to Porto as if a break in the routine evidenced some novelty. The circle was his; he wore the plastic until it fell away. Whatever intimacy we had knew the smell of antiseptic. I shake my head, as if to sever the line to the past. My certification requires accuracy: faithfulness to the original text. I am a conduit—nothing more. Conduits corrode. The work tells on you—first the wrists, then the voice.

I translate palavras into words, dor into pain, and none of it is supposed to be mine.

Desculpa por fazer você encontrar isto assim.

Sorry for making you find it this way.

He knew. He requested me. Somehow, he made sure it would be me, sitting here at midnight, choosing English words for his Portuguese ending.

Mas você sempre soube ler nas entrelinhas.

But you always knew how to read between the lines. He’d underline once, never twice. ‘Once is a whisper,’ he said. ‘Twice is begging. He once asked what word I’d save from a burning dictionary. I said saudade.

There are fifty-three words left. I can see them waiting below, and I know—the way you know the shape of something in the dark—that one of them is adeus. Goodbye. The permanent kind.

My finger hovers over the delete key.

In translation, there's a word: intraduzível. Untranslatable. Some things don't cross over. His pet name for me was meu bem—light as lint, heavy as evening. Some things live only in the language that made them, and die if you try to move them somewhere else.

We were intraduzível. He knew that. I didn't.

I could corrupt the file. Claim technical failure. Let someone else find the English. He hated when I softened endings. ‘Let it end,’ he’d say, ‘or let it live

The cursor blinks where it's been blinking.

Você estava errada, it says.

I was wrong about a lot of things.

My hands return to the keyboard. I translate the next word, and the next, because this is what he asked me to do. Bear witness. Choose his words carefully. Stay until the end. He never asked for help twice; the asking cost him.

When I reach adeus, I type "goodbye." I don’t soften it to ‘bye.’ He would hear the missing syllable.

Then I read it back, all of it, his voice in my syntax, his breath in my punctuation.

I lean my head all the way back. The blue light from the screen swims in the sink and glints off of the cold knob.

At 12:33 a.m., I attach the completed translation to the file and hit send. The cursor keeps blinking after ‘SENT’, as if the file still wants something. A softer ending, maybe.

I leave it as it is.

At 12:34 a.m., I realise I never checked the status, only the date.

Here the same field flips between Alta (discharge) and Óbito (death). I look again.

It’s set to Óbito.

At 12:35 a.m. , my phone rings.

I wipe my eyes and flip it face up. The glass is cold.

Unknown number. Porto code. I let it ring once, twice—

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