Double

He awoke an hour later. He had not been dreaming, no horrible nightmare had disordered his brain, he had not been flailing around, trying to defend himself against a gelatinous monster that was stuck to his face, he merely opened his eyes and thought, There's someone in the apartment. Slowly, unhurriedly, he sat up in bed and listened. His bedroom has no windows, even during the day any outside noises are inaudible, and at this time of night, What time is it, the silence is usually complete. And it was complete. Whoever the intruder was, he was staying put. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso reached out to the bedside table and turned on the light. The clock said a quarter past four. Like most ordinary people, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a mixture of courage and cowardice, he isn't one of those invincible cinema heroes, but neither is he a wimp, the kind who pees his pants when, at midnight, 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, and no one in their right mind would describe wolves as pathetic cowards. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is about to prove that he certainly isn't either. He slid quietly out of bed, picked up a shoe for lack of any sturdier weapon, and, very cautiously, peered out into the corridor. He looked right and left. The sense of another presence that had woken him up grew slightly stronger. Turning on lights as he went, aware of his heart pounding in his chest like a galloping horse, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso went first into the bathroom and then into the kitchen. No one. And oddly enough, the presence seemed less intense there. He went back into the corridor and, as he approached the living room, he felt the invisible presence growing denser with each step, as if the atmosphere had been set vibrating by reverberations from some hidden incandescence, as if Tertuliano, in his nervousness, were walking over radioactive ground carrying in his hand a Geiger counter that, instead of sending out warning signals, was pumping out ectoplasm. There was no one in the room. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso looked around him, there they were, solid and impassive, the two tall, crowded bookshelves, the framed engravings on the walls, to which no reference has been made until now, but which are nonetheless there, and there, and there, and there, the desk with the typewriter on it, the chair, the coffee table in the middle with a small sculpture placed in its exact geometric center, and the two-seater sofa and the television set. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso muttered fearfully to himself, So that's what it was, and then, just as he uttered that last word, the presence, like a soap bubble bursting, silently disappeared. Yes, that's what it was, the television set, the VCR, the comedy called The Race Is to the Swift,

an image from inside that had now returned to its place after going to rouse Tertuliano Máximo Afonso from his bed. He couldn't imagine what it could be, but he was sure he would recognize it as soon as it appeared. He went into the bedroom, put a dressing gown on over his pajamas, so as not to catch cold, and came back. He sat down in the armchair, pressed the play button on the remote control, and leaning forward, all eyes, his elbows on his knees, no laughter or smiles this time, he replayed the story of that pretty, young woman who wanted to be a success in life. After twenty minutes, he saw her go into a hotel and walk over to the reception desk, he heard her say her name, My name's Inés de Castro, he had noticed this interesting historical coincidence earlier, then he heard her go on, I have a room reserved, the clerk looked straight at her, at the camera, not at her, or, rather, at her standing where the camera stood, but this time, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso barely understood what the clerk said, the thumb of the hand holding the remote control immediately pressed the pause button, but the image had gone, obviously they weren't going to waste film on an actor who was little more than an extra, who only appeared twenty minutes into the plot, the tape rewound, past the receptionist's face, the pretty, young woman went into the hotel again, said again that her name was Inés de Castro and that she had reserved a room, and now, there it was, the frozen image of the clerk at the reception desk looking straight at the person looking at him. 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. Since, of course, anything can happen in the world of actors and the dramatic arts, there was also a strong probability that the clerk's fine, well-groomed mustache was, quite simply, false. It has been known. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso himself could have come up with these considerations, which, precisely because they were so obvious, would be bound to occur to anyone, had he not been so intent on finding other scenes involving this same extra or, to be more accurate, this supporting actor with a small speaking part. The man with the mustache appeared another five times in the film and on each occasion had very little to do, although in the last scene he was given a couple of supposedly saucy remarks to exchange with the mighty Inés de Castro and then, as she walked off, swaying her hips, he had to gaze after her with a grotesque leer on his face, which the director must have thought the audience would find irresistibly funny. Needless to say, if Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had failed to find this funny the first time, he found it still less so the second. He had gone back to the first image, the one in which the clerk at the reception desk, in close-up, is looking directly at Inés de Castro, and he was minutely analyzing the image, line by line, feature by feature, Apart from a few slight differences, he thought, especially the mustache, the different hairstyle, the thinner face, he's just like me. He felt calmer now, the resemblance was, to say the least, astonishing, but that was all it was, and there's no shortage of resemblances in the world, twins for example, the really amazing thing would be that out of the six thousand million people on the planet there weren't two people exactly alike. Obviously, they couldn't be exactly alike, the same in every detail, he said, as if he were talking to his almost—alter ego staring out at him from inside the television set. Seated once more in the armchair, thus occupying the position of the actress playing the part of Inés de Castro, he too pretended to be a customer at the hotel, My name's Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, he announced, then with a smile, What's yours, it was the rational thing to ask, if two identical people meet, it's only natural that they should want to know everything about each other, and the name is always the first thing we ask, because we imagine that this is the door through which one enters. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso fast-forwarded the tape to the end, there was the list of the supporting cast, he wondered if the roles they played would be mentioned too, but the names, and there were a lot of them, were simply listed alphabetically. He absentmindedly picked up the box, glanced again at what was on it, the smiling faces of the leading actors, a brief plot summary, and underneath, in small print, among the technical details, the date of the film. It's five years old, he muttered, and remembered that his colleague, the mathematics teacher, had told him this as well. Five years, he said again, and suddenly, the world gave another almighty shudder, it was not the effect of another impalpable, mysterious presence such as the one that had woken him, but of something concrete, not just concrete, but something that could be documented. 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.