The Following Story

What happened to Herman Mussert? He went to bed last night in Amsterdam, thinking of outer space and its lifeless planets, and now he wakes in Lisbon, with Portuguese money in his wallet. If he is himself, he is a bachelor, a former teacher of Latin and Greek who looks like Socrates and who spends all his time reading. But is he himself? Or is he dead? If he is dead, what is he doing in a Lisbon hotel, in a room where he slept with another man's wife more than twenty years ago?" "He goes out into the city, walks along the Tagus, passes the statue of Pessoa and the absurd little building with the huge clock whose numbers are reversed. What sort of time can this be in which time stands still? He thinks, he remembers, and in a pale mist boards a ship with five male companions and a mysterious woman.