grandparents, the mother because, like so many others, she has a job to go to, either to safeguard a position of real or imagined personal independence or because the household finances cannot survive without her material contribution, for the fact is that, however quickly a supporting actor scurries from small role to small role, however often he is selected by the production company that uses him now on a more or less tacitly exclusive basis, the money he can earn will always be subordinated to the rigors of the law of supply and demand, which is never based on the objective needs of the subject but purely on the latter's real or imagined talents and abilities, those that it favors him with recognizing or those that, with unknown and usually negative intent, are attributed to him, forgetting that he might have other, less visible talents and abilities that might be worth putting to the test. This means that Daniel Santa-Clara could become a big star if fortune were to decide to have him noticed by a clever producer who didn't mind taking a risk, the sort who, while he might occasionally take it into his head to destroy a really first-rate star, has also been known, with great generosity, to polish up the shine on second-rate or even third-rate stars. Letting time do its work has always been the best option ever since the world began, Daniel Santa-Clara is still young, he has a pleasant face, a good physique, and undeniable gifts as an actor, it wouldn't be right for him to have to spend the rest of his life playing hotel receptionists or other such occupations. It is not long since we saw him playing a theater impresario in The Goddess of the Stage, at last duly acknowledged in the opening credits, and this could be a sign that he has begun to be noticed. The future, wherever it is, and although it is hardly a novelty to say so, awaits. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, on the other hand, had better not wait around very much longer, for fear that the troubling blackness of his general appearance should become etched on the photographic memory of the waiters in the cafe, we neglected, by the way, to mention that he is wearing a dark suit and that, as protection against the glare of the sun, he has now had to resort to dark glasses. He left the money on the table, so as not to have to summon the waiter, and walked quickly over to the telephone booth on the other side of the road. From his top jacket pocket he removed a piece of paper bearing Daniel Santa- Clara's telephone number, which he dialed. He didn't want to speak to anyone, just to know if anyone would answer, and who. This time no woman came running from the other end of the apartment, nor did a child tell him Mummy's not home, nor did he hear a voice identical to Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's say, Hello. She must be at work, he thought, and he's probably filming, playing a traffic cop or a public-works contractor. He emerged from the telephone booth and looked at his watch. It was nearly lunchtime, neither of them will be coming home, he said, but at that moment, a woman passed, he didn't manage to see her face, she was crossing the street in the direction of the cafe, she looked as if she was going to sit down at a table outside, but she didn't, she went on, took a few more steps, and entered the building where Daniel Santa-Clara lives. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso made a gesture of barely contained frustration, It must have been her, he muttered, for this man's worst defect, at least since we have known him, has been an excess of imagination, no one would think he was a history teacher, someone who should be interested only in facts, here we have him inventing identities after catching only a brief rear view of the woman who passed him, someone he does not know and has never seen before, either from behind or from in front. To be fair to Tertuliano Maximo Afonso though, despite this tendency to imaginative flights of fancy, 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. There is, in fact, a simple, not to say elementary, way, although, as with all things, it is necessary first to have had the idea, of finding out if the woman who went into the building was going up to Daniel Santa-Clara's apartment, he would just have to wait a few minutes, to allow time for the lift to reach the fifth floor where Antonio Claro lives, to wait for her to open the front door and go in, two more minutes for her to put her bag down on the sofa and make herself comfortable, it wouldn't be right to make her run as he had the other day, as you could tell from her breathing. The phone rang and rang, rang and rang again, but no one answered. So it wasn't her, said Tertuliano Maximo Afonso as he hung up. He has nothing more to do here, this latest preliminary act of investigation is over, many of the previous ones had been absolutely vital to the success of the operation, others had not really been worth wasting time on, but they had, at least, served to deceive his doubts, anxieties, and fears, to allow him to pretend that marking time was the same as going forward and that retreat was merely an opportunity to think things through. He had left his car on a nearby street and was setting off to find it, his work as a spy had ended, or so we thought, but Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, and heaven knows what they'll think, cannot help shooting glances of burning intensity at every woman he passes, well, not every woman, some are excluded as being too old or too young to be married to a thirty-eight-year-old man, Which is my age and, therefore, presumably his age, now it should be said at this point that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's thoughts set off along two different paths, some to question the discriminatory idea underlying his allusion to age differences in marriage and other similar unions, thus upholding the prejudices of social consensus where the fluctuating but deep-rooted concepts of what is proper and improper are generated, and others, the thoughts we mentioned, to dispute the possibility subsequently aired, which is that the history teacher and the actor, based on the fact that each is the spitting image of the other, as established earlier by videographic evidence, are exactly the same age. As regards the first branch of reflections, Tertuliano Maximo 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. As for the second line of thought, this suddenly revived in Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's mind, and for more pressing reasons now, the troubling question of who is the duplicate of whom, rejecting as improbable the hypothesis that both were born, not only on the same day, but also at the same hour, at the same minute, and same fraction of a second, for this would imply that, as well as seeing the light at the very same moment, they would, at that very same moment, both have experienced crying for the first time too. Coincidences are fine as long as they respect the minimum degree of probability demanded by common sense. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is troubled now by the possibility that he might be the younger of the two, that the other man might be the original and he nothing but a mere and, of course, devalued repetition. Obviously, his nonexistent powers of divination do not allow him to peer into the fog of the yet-to-be and see if this will have any influence on a future that we have every reason to describe as impenetrable, but the fact that he was the discoverer of the supernatural miracle we know so well had given rise in his mind, without him noticing, to a kind of sense of primogeniture that, at this moment, is rebelling against the threat, as if an ambitious bastard brother had come to turn him off his throne. Absorbed in these ponderous thoughts, harried by these insidious anxieties, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, still wearing his beard, turned into the street where he lives and where everyone knows him, running the risk that someone might suddenly start shouting that the teacher's car is being stolen and for a determined neighbor to block the way with his own car. Solidarity, however, has lost many of its former virtues, in this case it would be quite appropriate to say fortunately so, and Tertuliano Maximo Afonso proceeded on his way without impediment, and, without anyone giving any sign that they had recognized him or the car he was driving, he left the area and its environs and, now that necessity has made of him a frequent visitor to shopping centers, went into the first one he found. Ten minutes later, he emerged, cleanshaven, apart from the tiny amount of his own beard that had grown since the morning. When he got home there was a message from Maria da Paz on the answering machine, nothing important, just to ask how he was. I'm fine, he murmured, absolutely fine. He promised himself that he would phone her that night, but he probably won't if he decides to take the next step, which cannot be delayed for even a page longer, that of phoning Daniel Santa- Clara.
MAY I SPEAK TO SENHOR DANIEL SANTA-CLARA, ASKED Tertuliano Maximo Afonso when the man's wife answered, You're the same person, I presume, who phoned the other day, I recognize your voice, she said, Yes, I am, May I ask who's calling, That hardly seems necessary, your husband doesn't know me, 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, My name is Maximo Afonso, Just a moment. The receiver was placed on the table, then picked up again, the voices of both men will repeat themselves as a mirror repeats itself when placed in front of another mirror, Antonio Claro speaking, how may I help you, My name's Tertuliano Maximo Afonso and I'm a history teacher in a secondary school, My wife said your name was Maximo Afonso, That was just for brevity's sake, my full name is Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, Fine, how may I help you, You have doubtless already noticed that our voices are identical, Yes, Totally identical, So it seems, You see I have already had several occasions now to confirm this, How, By watching some of the films you've appeared in in
