The Double: A Novel

by José Saramago

he has succumbed to the temporary weakness of spirit ordinarily known as depression.

As I see it, those so-called special effects are the real enemy of the imagination, that mysterious, enigmatic skill it took us human beings so much hard work to invent,

Two of the walls are lined with books, most of them dog-eared from use and wizened with age.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso got up from the chair, knelt down in front of the television, his face as close to the screen as he could get it and still be able to see, It’s me, he said, and once more he felt the hairs on his body stand on end, what he was seeing wasn’t true, it couldn’t be, any sensible person who happened to be there would say reassuringly, Come off it, Tertuliano, I mean, he’s got a mustache, and you’re clean shaven. Sensible people are like that, they tend to simplify everything, and then, but always too late, we witness their astonishment at the great diversity of life, they remember that mustaches and beards don’t have minds of their own, they grow and prosper only when allowed to do so, or, occasionally, out of sheer indolence on the part of the wearer, but, from one moment to the next, because the fashion changes or because their hirsute monotony becomes an irritating sight in the mirror, they can also vanish without trace.

With trembling hands, he opened and closed drawers, pulled out envelopes full of negatives and photographs, scattered them over his desk, and, at last, found what he was looking for, a photo of himself, five years ago. He had a mustache, a different hairstyle, and his face was thinner.

I mustn’t make this into a tragedy, we know that everything that can happen will happen,

besides, if there is another person who is a copy of you, or of whom you are the copy, as apparently there is, you’re under no obligation to go looking for him,

We all know that each day that dawns is the first for some and will be the last for others, and that for most people it will be just another day.

The best way to achieve a universal exoneration is to conclude that since everyone is to blame, no one is guilty, Perhaps there’s nothing we can do about it, perhaps they’re just the world’s problems, said Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, as if bringing the conversation to a close, but the mathematics teacher retorted, The only problems the world has are problems caused by people, and with that he stuck his nose in his paper.

The sudden shift in mood observed in Tertuliano Máximo Afonso and which had so shaken the mathematics teacher was nothing but a simple somatic manifestation of a psychopathological state known as the wrath of the meek.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, is one of the just over five million human beings who, with major differences in standards of living and other differences that defy all comparison, inhabit the vast metropolis that extends over what were, long ago, hills, valleys, and plains, and which is now a continuous labyrinthine duplication both horizontally and vertically, initially made more complicated by components we will term diagonals, but which, meanwhile, with the passing of time, have brought some measure of equilibrium to the chaotic urban mesh, for they established frontier lines that, paradoxically, instead of driving things apart, brought them closer together.

The survival instinct, for that is what one is dealing with in big cities, applies both to the animal and to the inanimal, an admittedly abstruse term that does not appear in any dictionary and that we have had to invent so that, aptly and appositely, we can render transparent, at a glance, whether via the ordinary sense of the first word, animal, or via the unusual spelling of the second, inanimal, the differences and similarities between things and non-things, between the inanimate and the animate. From now on, whenever we use the word “inanimal,” we will do so with the intention of being as clear and precise as when, in the other kingdom, where the novelty of being and all its designations has entirely worn off, we used to refer to both man and dog as animals.

after all, he is a skilled history teacher, a trained professional of proven competence, one presumes he knows what he’s talking about even when he ventures into matters outside his speciality, while she is a mere middle-ranking bank employee, without the necessary preparation to take full cognizance of any ideological signals unless they first explained who they were and what they wanted.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso’s stomach gave another lurch, this man refuses to understand that emotions are wise things, they worry about us, tomorrow they’ll say, We warned you, but by then, in all probability, it will be too late.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso made an indulgent gesture, the gesture of one who has decided to accept the apology and forgive the rest, then bent down himself to retrieve the letter.

the final proof that for God nothing is impossible, and that the science of this century is, as someone said, a fool.

he can still manage, at decisive moments, to impose upon himself a calculating coolness that would make the most hardened of stock-exchange speculators turn pale with professional envy.

Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.

People often say, Let time do its work, but what

we always forget to ask is if there will ever be enough time.