The Double: A Novel

by José Saramago

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.

There are times in our lives when we think that we might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and when all we want is to find out as quickly as possible the true dimensions of the disaster, and then, if possible, never to think about the matter again.

The deep disquiet caused by the news that an unknown man was also looking for Daniel Santa-Clara left him with a troubling sense of bewilderment as if he had been handed a quadratic equation to solve when he had already forgotten how to do simple ones.

Being a man should never be an impediment to behaving like a gentleman.

We know about your reasons, my friend, they’re known as the presumptuousness of the male, the vanity of the seducer, and the arrogance of the conqueror,

Well, I am male, that’s my sex, but I’ve never seen the seducer you describe reflected in the mirror, and as for me being a conqueror of women, please, if my life is a book, then that’s one chapter that’s missing,

Life, my dear Máximo, has taught me that nothing is simple, it just seems simple sometimes, and it’s always when it looks simplest that we should most doubt it,

If the action exists, then the word should exist too,

All the dictionaries put together don’t contain half the terms we would need in order for us to understand each other,

Although, on second thought, it would perhaps be best if we just leave it for now, there’s obviously too much tension between us, sparks fly off every remark that leaves our mouths,

But he realized too that if he didn’t try to phone again, he would remain tethered thereafter to the obsessive idea that he had behaved in a cowardly fashion in a fight to which no one had challenged him and into which he had entered of his own free will, having himself provoked it.

Searching for a man called Daniel Santa-Clara who did not even know he was the object of a search, this was the absurd situation Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had created, more suited to the plot of a detective novel with no known criminal, and quite unjustifiable in the hitherto uneventful life of a history teacher.

Sundays tend to be dull, gloomy days, but there are some when one feels glad to have been born.

not that she lacks education, not that she didn’t study history herself as a child, but what she has always found bewildering is that history can be taught at all.

Máximo Afonso’s mother, whose name, Carolina, surname Máximo, finally appears here, is a fervent and assiduous reader of novels. As such, she knows all about telephones that ring unexpectedly and of others that ring when you are desperately hoping they will.

People don’t tend to get married so much these days, you must have gleaned that from your novels,

As far as she’s concerned, a relationship that’s lasted six months is like a promise, you don’t know women,

He put the letter addressed to the production company in one of his jacket pockets and went out. He will forget to post it, have lunch in a restaurant somewhere, and come back home to drain to the bitter dregs this Sunday afternoon and evening.

As far as is known, ectoplasm does not perspire.

Look, I’ve never said outright that I don’t like it, all I said and say again now is that cinema is not one of my cultural interests, I prefer books,

To get aerated, said the mathematics teacher, means to get angry, to bridle, or, more precisely, to take the hump,

In a person who claims to have spent the last two days serenely reading a history book, remarked the mathematics teacher, I would expect anything but that tormented expression,

There isn’t a great deal of difference, Our colleague in literature would say that, on the contrary, the difference is enormous, and she knows about these things, when it comes to subtleties and nuances, literature is almost like mathematics,

he is carrying the letter not in his briefcase but in an inside pocket in his jacket, for fear it might be snatched from him by some small urchin, as boys brought up in the freedom of the streets were once called, then angels with dirty faces, then rebels without a cause, now delinquents who are denied the benefits of either euphemism or metaphor.

Well, this time you’re wrong, what you’re about to do isn’t just imprudent, it’s stupid, Stupid, Yes, sir, stupid, utterly stupid,

So what should I do, That I don’t know, that’s not part of my job, 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,

Because it’s not healthy for the mind to live cheek by jowl with common sense, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed, taking it along to work, and asking its approval or permission before making a move, you’ve got to take a few risks of your own,

The more you disguise yourself, the more you’ll look like you.

Honest housewives used to put blankets and overcoats in hock as soon as the warm spring days arrived, and their lives were considered no less deserving of the respect of society, which must, surely, know all about need.

Oh, I can promise you I won’t ask you any questions, but I’m free to make all the suppositions I want, however absurd you may think them,

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso started the engine, waited until she had gone into the building, and then, with a weary gesture, set the car in motion and drove home, where, patient and confident of its power, loneliness was waiting for him.

Real life has always seemed to us more frugal in coincidences than the novel or other forms of fiction, unless we were to allow that the principle of coincidence is the one true ruler of the world, in which case, we should give as much value to the coincidence one actually experiences as to that which is written about, and vice versa.

Letting time do its work has always been the best option ever since the world began,

As regards the first branch of reflections, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had no option but to recognize that every human being, insuperable and private moral impediments apart, has the right to be bound to whomever they like, where and how they like, as long as the other interested party wants this too.

You don’t know him either, but you know his name, That’s only natural, he’s an actor, and therefore a public figure, So are we all, we are all more or less public figures, it’s only the number of spectators that varies,

Nevertheless, however strange to sensitive eyes and ears the following syntactical construction might appear, it is legitimate to say that what will be has been, and all that’s lacking now is for it to be written down.

and she said, No, I’d like to see you, and he agreed and said, Yes, it would be good to see each other, as if she were his beloved, and we know that she is not, or perhaps she is and he doesn’t know it, or perhaps, he stopped at this word because he didn’t know how to complete the sentence honestly, what lie or what pretend truth he would say to himself, it’s true that his eyes had grown misty with emotion,

As the ancients taught, never say, Of this water I will not drink, especially, we would add, if you have no other water.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso might not perhaps mind becoming a tree, but he will never be one, his life, like that of all humans who have lived and will live, will never know the supreme experience of the vegetal.

It might turn out well, we don’t know precisely what awaits us beyond each action we take,

Come on, Mama, stop imagining things, please, too much imagination is not the best way to gain peace of mind,

Words can be the very devil, there we are thinking we allow out of our mouths only the words that suit us, and suddenly another word slips out, where it came from we don’t know, we didn’t ask for it to appear, and because of that word, which we often have difficulty remembering afterward, the whole conversation abruptly changes direction, and we find ourselves affirming what we denied before, or vice versa,

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.

But I am a man, Yes, I’m not saying you’re not, but in the past your weaknesses have always tended to get the better of your strengths, So a man is anyone who isn’t subject to weaknesses, A man is also someone who isn’t dominated by them,

I would say that it is precisely in history that one is most aware of inertia, Don’t give opinions about things you know nothing about, a game of chess can be interrupted at any moment, But I was talking about history, And I’m talking about chess,

You have rather too much imagination for common sense, Remember what I said to you a few weeks ago, that only a common sense with the imagination of a poet could have invented the wheel,

You would be better company if you didn’t always want to be right,

António Claro will not waste his breath by replying that it’s impossible not to have enemies, that enemies are born not out of our will to have them but out of their irresistible desire to have us.

If you invite your enemy into the house, don’t come complaining to me about it afterward, you were warned and you took no notice.

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.