The Double: A Novel

by José Saramago

Mars, in astronomical terms, is just around the corner, would take at least nine months, then you’d have to hang around there for another six months until the planet was in the right position to make the return journey, before traveling for another nine months back to Earth, that’s two whole years of utter tedium, a film about a trip to Mars that respected the facts would be the dullest thing ever seen,

he hears the door of the castle dungeon creak open. True, he felt all the hairs on his body prickle, but that even happens to wolves when faced by danger,

Destiny, always assuming it does exist and does govern our lives, set down, at the very beginning of time, the date on which the first hair would fall from our head and the last smile die on our lips.

This was how he knew that the world would not end today, for it would be an unforgivable waste to make the sun rise in vain,

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.

When he had reached the end of his morning shaving ritual, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso dispassionately examined the face before him and thought that, all in all, he looked better. Indeed, any impartial observer, whether male or female, would not shrink from describing his features, taken as a whole, as harmonious, and would definitely not neglect to give due importance to certain slight asymmetries and certain subtle volumetric variations that, if we may put it like this, constituted the salt that enlivened what would otherwise be an entirely savorless delicacy, so often the curse of faces endowed with an overly regular physiognomy.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is made of sterner stuff,

one should never put off till tomorrow what one can do today,

Meanwhile, though, between the lashes, as the above-mentioned country people used to say, meaning that in the briefest of brief intervals between one lash and the next the back had time to rest,

answer, then the letter will

that piece of redundancy par excellence, Am I interrupting, to which there was only one socially acceptable reply, Of course not, come and join us. Saying to the newcomer, for example, however politely, Yes, you are interrupting actually, go and sit somewhere else, would cause such a commotion that the intra-relational network of the group would be seriously shaken and placed in jeopardy.

keeping God waiting is the very worst of sins.

to have a face as long as Monday,

the role of common sense in the history of your species has never gone beyond advising caution and chicken soup, especially in those cases where stupidity has already taken the floor and looks set to take the reins too,

pathetic little beard of the kind generally known as a flea trap,

A little while ago, I spoke of fear, panic, but I realize now that it’s something else I’m feeling, What, Well, I’m not sure, a presentiment perhaps, Good or bad, It’s just a presentiment, like a closed door behind another closed door,

We must even be grateful to absurd reasoning if, in the midst of the bitter night, it restores to us a little serenity, however illusory, and gives us the key with which we can finally, hesitantly, open the door to sleep.

As the wise old proverb almost says, Keep a thing five years and you’ll always find a use for it.

atrophied

bucolic

broom

He will return to Tertuliano Máximo Afonso’s bedroom at first light to check that nothing has moved on this side of the earth either, for what dogs most want in life is for no one to go away.

She had said the other day that her bed was her castle, she could equally well have said that the kitchen was her fortress.