The Double: A Novel

by José Saramago

Well, I have my moments, today you found me in a good mood, or perhaps it’s because I felt as if I were a character in a book, What book, what character, Oh, it doesn’t matter, let’s get back to real life, and leave aside fantasies and fictions, tomorrow I’ll make you a photocopy of the letter and post it to you at home,

What’s the name of the clerk who helped me, Maria, why, Oh, no reason really, that doesn’t tell me any more than I knew before, And what did you know before, Nothing.

Alas, the letter is signed by a woman, Maria da Paz is her name, and António Claro, who, in his professional life, has never been cast as the elegant seducer, or even as a lowlier class of cad, does his best to find some balancing compensations in real life, although not always with very auspicious results,

Since, however, human actions, generally speaking, are determined by a concurrence of impulses flowing from all the cardinal and collateral points of the instinctive being, we still are, along, of course, with a few rational factors that, against all the odds, we still manage to slip into the motivational web,

Two obvious hypotheses cry out for consideration, in ascending order of gravity, either they are simply friends or they are simply lovers. António Claro inclines to the latter hypothesis, firstly, because it fits in with the sentimental plots to which he is a mere witness in the films he usually appears in, and secondly and consequently, because he finds himself then in familiar territory and with a prepared script.

However, the privilege we enjoy of knowing everything that is going to happen up until the very last page of this story, apart from those things that might still need to be invented, allows us to say that tomorrow, the actor Daniel Santa-Clara will make a phone call to Maria da Paz’s apartment, purely to find out if anyone is there,

Also in times past, there lived a king considered to be very wise and who, in a moment of easy philosophical inspiration, stated, one assumes with all the solemnity due to his position, that there was nothing new under the sun. We should never take these phrases too seriously, just in case we should still be saying them when everything around us has changed and the sun itself is not what it once was.

Perhaps they don’t want to, perhaps they can’t, all fate’s reasons are human, purely human, and anyone who, basing themselves on the lessons of the past, says otherwise, be it in prose or in verse, doesn’t know what he or she is talking about, if you’ll forgive such a bold opinion.

Unfortunately, common sense does not always appear when it is needed, and its brief absences have often resulted in some major dramas and in some of the most terrifying of catastrophes.

The proof that the universe was not as well-thought-out as it should have been lies in the fact that the Creator ordered the star that illumines us to be called the sun. Had the king of the stars borne the name Common Sense, imagine how enlightened the human spirit would be now, both by day and by night, because, as everyone knows, the light we call moonlight comes not from the moon but always and solely from the sun.

Good heavens, how ridiculous, where will it all end, cry those happy people who have never come face-to-face with a copy of themselves, who have never suffered the terrible affront of receiving in the post a false beard in a box without even a pleasant, good-humored note to soften the blow.

What António Claro has just thought, incredible though it may seem, is that taking Tertuliano Máximo Afonso’s lover to bed under false pretenses would, as well as being a way of returning the slap in the face with a still more resounding one, be the most extreme way, now can you imagine anything more absurd, of avenging his wife Helena’s wounded dignity.

However hard we pleaded, António Claro would be unable to explain what extraordinary offenses these were that could, theoretically, be avenged only by a new and no less shocking offense. This has now become in him an idée fixe, and there is nothing to be done.

Someone educated in the esoteric doctrines would choose to add the soul to the list of things that a beard does not cover, but on this point we will remain silent, we would not want to add fuel to a debate that has been going on pretty much since time began and which will go on for a long time yet.

Cassandra was right, the Greeks will burn Troy.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he pulled on the underpants worn by the other man, but there was no alternative, he was driven by necessity, which is one of the names adopted by fate when it suits it to go in disguise.

Well, I had no idea you were capable of such a diabolical plan, Human, my friend, just human, the devil doesn’t make plans, anyway, if men were good, he wouldn’t even exist,

Life has its ironies, they say, when the truth is that life is the most obtuse of all known things,

Do you think so, someone once said that if you give a person roses, then you can never again give them anything else but roses,

They say you can hate someone only if you hate yourself, but the worst of all hatreds must be the hatred that cannot bear another person to be the same, worse still if that sameness should ever become total.

In order for Carolina Máximo Afonso to be absolutely sure that the child of her heart is there before her, there will be no need for that marvelous maternal instinct of hers or for any scientific, confirmatory DNA tests, the name of the dog will be enough.

This woman, however, is not the easily pleased type, for whom a hug is enough to make her forget an offense, an offense, in this case, not against her, but against reason, respect, and common sense too, lest it be said that we have forgotten how much the latter had tried to do to prevent the story of the duplicate men from ending in tragedy.

Then, dabbing at her eyes with a damp handkerchief, his mother murmured, Old Cassandra was right, you should never have let the wooden horse in,