all his carefully laid plans good-bye until the next time. What Antonio Claro does not know is that Maria da Paz doesn't own a car, she is calmly going to wait for the bus that will drop her close to the bank where she works, so the detectives' handbook, completely up-to-date as regards the latest technology, had forgotten that, of the five million people in this city, some of them would have lagged behind in acquiring their own means of transport. The queue had not grown much, Maria da Paz joined it, and Antonio Claro, so as not to stand too close, allowed three people to go ahead of him, the false beard covers his face but not his eyes, his nose, his eyebrows, head, hair, or ears. 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. The bus arrived, Maria da Paz managed to find a free seat, Antonio Claro will stand in the aisle, at the back. It's worked out well, he thought, this way we can travel together.
...
WHAT TERTULIANO MAXIMO AFONSO TOLD HIS MOTHER was that he had met someone, a man, who was so like him that anybody who did not know them intimately would be bound to confuse them, that he had had a meeting with this man and regretted having done so, because it was one thing to see yourself repeated, with a few tiny differences, in one or two genuine twin brothers, since it's all in the family, but to come face to face with a stranger you've never seen before and for a moment to find yourself doubting who's one and who's the other, I'm sure, at least at first sight, that even you wouldn't be able to tell which of the two was your son, and if you got it right, it would be pure chance, Even if they brought me ten men identical to you, all dressed the same, and you were stuck in the middle of them, I would point straight to my son, maternal instinct never fails, There's nothing in the world that can properly be called maternal instinct, I mean, say we'd been separated when I was born and didn't meet until twenty years later, are you sure you'd still be able to recognize me, Well, I don't know about recognize, because the little wrinkled face of a newborn baby is not the same as the face of a young man of twenty, but I bet you anything you like that something inside me would make me look at you twice, And the third time, perhaps, you might look the other way, Yes, possibly, but from that moment on, I might feel a kind of ache in my heart, And what about me, would I look at you twice, asked Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, Probably not, said his mother, but that's because children are all such ungrateful creatures. They both laughed, and she asked, And is this why you've been so worried, Yes, it was such a shock, it's hard to believe that anything like it can ever have happened before, even genetics itself, I imagine, would deny it, to start with I had nightmares about it, it was like an obsession, And how are things now, Fortunately, common sense stepped in to lend a hand and made us realize that, having lived this long in ignorance of each other's existence, that was all the more reason to remain apart now that we had met, you see we couldn't even bear to be together, we could never be friends, Enemies more like, There was a point when I thought that might happen, but the days passed, things returned to normal, and now, all that's left is like the vague recollection of a bad dream that time will gradually erase from my memory, Let's hope so. Tomarctus was lying at Dona Carolina's feet, his neck outstretched so that his head was resting on his folded paws, as if he were asleep. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso looked at him for a few moments and said, I wonder what the dog would do if he was confronted by me and by that man, which of us he would see as his master, He'd know you by your smell, That's assuming we don't both smell the same, and I can't be sure of that, There must be some differences, Possibly, People's faces might look very similar, but not their bodies, I mean, I don't suppose you both stood naked in front of a mirror, comparing everything, down to your toenails, No, of course not, Mama, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso said quickly, and it wasn't really a lie, because he and Antonio Claro hadn't actually stood in front of a mirror together. The dog opened his eyes, closed them, then opened them again, he must have thought it was time he got up and went out into the yard to see if the geraniums and the rosemary had grown since last he looked. He stretched, first his front legs and then his back legs, extending his spine as much as he could, then he walked over to the door. Where are you off to, Tomarctus, asked the master who only appeared from time to time. The dog paused on the threshold, turned his head in expectation of some intelligible order, and when this was not forthcoming, went out. And what about Maria da Paz, have you told her what's been going on, asked Dona Carolina, No, I didn't want to burden her with worries that even I have found hard to bear, Well, I can understand that, but I would equally well have understood if you had told her, It seemed best not to, And will you tell her now, now that it's all over, It's not worth it, one day when she could see how worried I was, I did promise to tell her what was going on, I said I couldn't tell her then but that one day I would, And now it looks like that day will never come, It's best to leave things as they are, In some situations, the worst thing you can do is leave things as they are, it just makes them stronger, It can also serve to let them rest and make them leave us in peace, If you cared about Maria da Paz, you'd tell her, But I do care about her, Not enough, though, if you sleep in the same bed as a woman who loves you but you're not open with her, what business have you to be there, You defend her as if you knew her, Even though I've never seen her, I do know her, You only know what I've told you, and that can't be much, The two letters in which you mentioned her, a few remarks you've made over the phone, that's all I needed, To know that she's the right woman for me, Well, I could have put it like that if I could also say that you were the right man for her, And you don't think I was, or that I am, Possibly not, The best solution, then, the simplest, would be to end the relationship, You said it, I didn't, Let's be logical, Mama, if she's right for me but I'm not right for her, why would you be so keen for us to get married, So that she's still there when you wake up, But I'm not asleep, I'm not a sleepwalker, I have my life, my work, There's a part of you that has been asleep ever since you were born, and my fear is that one day you'll be in for a nasty awakening, You've got the makings of a Cassandra, Mama, What's that, The question isn't what, but who, Teach me then because, as I understand it, teaching someone who doesn't know something is an act of charity, All right then, Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, the king of Troy, and when the Greeks placed a wooden horse outside the gates of the city, she began crying out that the city would be destroyed if the horse was brought inside, it's explained in detail in Homer's
After all the doubts as to the most prudent way to tell his mother about the thorny problem of his absolute twin, or to use a more popular and somewhat vulgar expression, his spitting image, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso was now reasonably convinced that he had managed to get around the difficulty without leaving behind him too many anxieties. He had been unable to prevent the subject of Maria da Paz from resurfacing, but he was surprised when he remembered something that had happened during the conversation, at the point where he had said that it would be best to finish the relationship once and for all, for, precisely at that moment, when he had uttered that apparently irremissible sentence, he had felt a kind of inner lassitude, a half-conscious longing for abdication, as if a voice in his head were trying to make him see that his obstinacy was nothing but the last redoubt behind which he was still struggling with a repressed desire to raise the white flag of unconditional surrender. If that's true, he thought, I'm under a strict obligation to reflect seriously on the matter, to analyze this fear and indecision that is probably just left over from my first marriage, and to resolve once and for all, for my own sake, what it means to care about a person so much that you want to live with her, because the truth is I didn't even think about it when I got married, and the same truth requires me to confess that, deep down, what frightens me is the possibility of failing again. These praiseworthy resolutions occupied Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's journey, alternating with fleeting images of Antonio Claro, whom his thoughts, oddly enough, refused to represent as being as identical as he actually
