The Double (5 page)

After lunch, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, along with most of his colleagues, took part in a meeting called by the headmaster to analyze the ministry's latest proposals for
modernizing
teaching practices, one of the many thousands of such proposals that make the lives of unfortunate teachers an arduous journey to Mars through an endless rain of threatening asteroids, some of which, all too often, hit their target. When it was his turn to speak, in a tone of voice that the other teachers found oddly indolent and monotonous, he merely repeated an idea that had long ceased to be a novelty and which always provoked a few benevolent smiles around the table as well as the ill-disguised annoyance of the headmaster, In my view, he said, the only important choice to make, the only serious decision to be taken as regards the teaching of history, is whether we should teach it from back to front or, as I believe, from front to back, everything else, while by no means insignificant, depends on that choice, and everyone knows this to be true, however much they may continue to pretend it is not. The effect of this speech was, as always, to elicit a resigned sigh from the headmaster and an exchange of glances and murmurs from the rest of the staff. The mathematics teacher smiled too, but his smile was one of friendly complicity, as if he were saying, You're quite right, none of this deserves to be taken seriously. The slight nod that Tertuliano Máximo Afonso sent back to him across the table meant that he was grateful for the message, but there was something else accompanying the gesture, something that, for lack of a better term, we will call a subgesture, telling him that the episode in the corridor had not yet been entirely forgotten. In other words, while the main gesture appeared to be openly conciliatory, saying, What's done is done, the subgesture hung back, adding, Yes, but not altogether. Meanwhile, it was the next teacher's turn to speak, and while he, unlike Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, discourses eloquently, pertinently, and proficiently, we will take the opportunity to discuss briefly,
all
too briefly given the complexity of the subject, the question of subgestures, which is, as far as we know, being raised here for the first time. People say, for example, that Tom, Dick, or Harry, in a particular situation, made this, that, or the other gesture, that's what we say, quite simply, as if the this, that, or the other, a gesture expressing doubt, solidarity, or warning, were all of a piece, doubt always prudent, support always unconditional, warning always disinterested, when the whole truth, if we're really interested, if we're not to content ourselves with only the banner headlines of communication, demands that we pay attention to the multiple scintillations of the subgestures that follow behind a gesture like the cosmic dust in the tail of a comet, because, to use a comparison that can be grasped by all ages and intelligences, these subgestures are like the small print in a contract, difficult to decipher, but nonetheless there. Putting aside the modesty that convention and good taste demand, we would not be the least bit surprised if, in the very near future, the study, identification, and classification of subgestures did not become, individually and as a whole, one of the most fertile branches of the science of semiotics in general. Stranger things have happened. The teacher who was speaking has just finished, the headmaster is about to move on to the next person, when Tertuliano Máximo Afonso shoots his right arm up in the air to indicate that he wishes to speak. The headmaster asked if he wished to comment on the points of view just expressed, adding that, if he did, according to the current rules of the meeting, as he doubtless knew, he must wait until everyone had had their say, but Tertuliano Máximo Afonso replied that, no, it wasn't a comment, nor was it to do with his colleague's very pertinent remarks, and that, yes, he knew and had always respected the rules, both those in current use and
those fallen into disuse, all he wanted was to ask permission to be excused from the meeting because he had urgent matters to deal with outside of school. This time there was no subgesture, but there was a subtone, a harmonic, shall we say, which reinforced the incipient theory set out above as to the importance we should give to the many variations in communication, both gestural and oral, not just the second variation or the third, but also the fourth and the fifth. In the present case, for example, everyone at the meeting noticed that the subtone emitted by the headmaster expressed a feeling of deep relief underlying his actual words, Yes, of course, feel free. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso said good-bye with a generous wave of the hand, a gesture for the meeting as a whole, a sub-gesture for the headmaster, and left. His car was parked near the school, he was soon inside it, looking steadily at the road ahead, in the direction that would, for the moment, be the only appropriate destination given the events that had taken place since the previous afternoon, the shop where he had rented the video
The Race Is to the Swift.
He had sketched out a plan in the canteen, where he had lunched alone, had polished it under the protective shield of his colleagues' soporific speeches, and was now face-to-face with the assistant at the video shop, the one who had found this customer's name, Tertuliano, so very amusing and who, after the commercial transaction that will soon take place, will have more than enough reason to reflect upon the coincidence between the strangeness of the name and the extremely peculiar behavior of the person bearing that name. At first, there was no indication that this would happen, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso entered the shop like anyone else, he said good afternoon like anyone else, and, like anyone else, he started slowly perusing the shelves, stopping here and there, putting his head on one side
to read the spines of the boxes containing the cassettes, until, finally, he went over to the counter and said, I'd like to buy the video I rented yesterday, I don't know if you remember, Yes, I remember perfectly, it was
The Race Is to the Swift,
Exactly, well, I'd like to buy it, With pleasure, but, if you don't mind my saying, and I only say this in your own interest, it would be best if you returned the video you rented and bought a new one, because, with use, you see, there's always some deterioration in both image and sound, minimal, it's true, but it does become more obvious over time, No, it's not worth it, said Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, the one I rented is fine for my purposes. The assistant heard with some perplexity the intriguing words for my purposes, it isn't a phrase generally considered necessary to apply to a video, you want a video to watch, that was what it was born for, the reason it was made, and that's all there is to it. The customer's eccentricities would not end there. In the hope of encouraging future transactions, the assistant had decided to treat Tertuliano Máximo Afonso with the most lavish display of appreciation and commercial consideration since the days of the Phoenicians, I'll deduct the rental price, he said, and as he was performing this subtraction, he heard the customer ask, Have you, by any chance, got any films by the same production company, Do you mean by the same director, asked the assistant cautiously, No, no, I mean the same production company, it's the production company I'm interested in, not the director, Forgive me, but in all my years in the business, no customer has ever asked me that, they ask for films by title, often by the name of a particular actor, and only very rarely does any one ask me about a director, but production companies, never, Let's just say I belong to a very select group of customers, So it would seem, Senhor Máximo Afonso, muttered the assistant, after a rapid glance
at
the customer's card. He felt stunned, confused, but pleased too by the sudden, happy inspiration that had prompted him to address the client by his surnames, which, since these could also be used as given names, might, from then on, manage to drive into the shadows of his memory the authentic name, the real name that had once, alas, made him feel like laughing. He had forgotten that he had neglected to reply to the customer as to whether he had in his shop other films by the same production company, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had to repeat the question, adding an explanation that he hoped would correct the reputation for eccentricity he had clearly acquired in that establishment, The reason I'm interested in seeing other films by the same production company is that I'm currently working on a fairly advanced draft of a study of the tendencies, inclinations, intentions, and messages, explicit, implicit, and subliminal, in short, the ideological signals disseminated among its consumers, step by step, yard by yard, frame by frame, by a particular film-production company, always discounting, of course, the actual degree of awareness with which the company does so. As Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had developed his discourse, the assistant had opened his eyes wider and wider in pure astonishment and pure amazement, utterly won over by a customer who not only knew what he wanted but could give credible reasons for wanting it, something very rare indeed in commerce and, more particularly, in video-rental shops. It must be said, however, that the pure astonishment and pure amazement evident on the assistant's rapt face was tainted by the unpleasant stain of base commercial interest, the simultaneous thought that, since the production company in question was one of the most active and one of the oldest in the business, this customer, whom I must remember always to address as Senhor Máximo
Afonso, will end up by depositing a fair bit of money in the cash register when he finishes that work, study, essay, or whatever it is. Of course, one had to bear in mind that not all the films were available on video, but, even so, it was a promising deal, worth pursuing, Might I suggest, said the assistant, recovered now from his initial surprise, that we ask the production company for a list of all their films, Yes, possibly, said Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, but that isn't the most urgent thing at the moment, besides, I probably won't need to see every film they've produced, so we'll begin with what you have here, and then, depending on the results and conclusions reached, I'll decide what to do next. The assistant's hopes suddenly shriveled, the balloon was still on the ground and it already seemed to be losing gas. This, though, is precisely the kind of problem that besets small businesses, but just because the donkey kicked doesn't mean he'll break his leg, and if you haven't managed to get rich in twenty-four months, perhaps you'll make it if you work for twenty-four years. With his moral armor more or less restored thanks to the curative properties of these little nuggets of patience and resignation, the assistant announced as he came out from behind the counter and walked toward the shelves, Well, I'll just go and see what we've got, to which Tertuliano Máximo Afonso replied, If you do have any, then five or six will be enough to start with, just so that I can get down to work tonight, Six videos is equivalent to about nine hours' worth of viewing, the assistant remarked, it will be a long evening. This time Tertuliano Máximo Afonso did not reply, he was looking at a poster advertising what must have been a very recent film by the same production company, called
The Goddess of the Stage.
The names of the principal actors were written in different-sized fonts and were arranged on the poster in accordance
with the greater or lesser importance of their place in the national cinematic firmament. The name of the actor who played the role of the hotel receptionist in
The Race Is to the Swift
would clearly not be there. The assistant returned from his explorations, bringing a pile of six videos, which he placed on the counter, We've got more, but you did say you only wanted five or six, That's fine, I'll come by tomorrow or the day after to pick up any others you find, Should I order those we don't already have, asked the assistant, in an attempt to rekindle dying hopes, Let's start with what we have here and then see. There was no point insisting, the customer really did know what he wanted. In his head, the assistant multiplied by six the individual prices of the videos, he belonged to the old school, to the age before pocket calculators, when these did not even exist in people's dreams, and said a number. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso corrected him, That's the sale price of the videos not the rental price, Oh, since you bought the other one, I assumed you'd want to buy these too, said the assistant by way of explanation, Yes, I might buy some or even all of them eventually, but first I have to see them, to view them, I think that's the right word, to find out if they have what I'm looking for. Overwhelmed by the customer's irrefutable logic, the assistant made a rapid recalculation and slipped the videos into a plastic bag. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso paid, said good afternoon, see you tomorrow, and left. Whoever named you Tertuliano knew what he was doing, muttered the frustrated vendor.

Given that preference is likely to be given to a device blessed with the seal of academic approval, the easiest thing for the relater or narrator, having reached this point, would be to say that nothing happened during the history teacher's homeward journey across the city. Like a time machine, especially
when
professional scruples will not permit the invention of a public fracas or a traffic accident just to fill in any gaps in the plot, those words, Nothing Happened, are used when there is an urgent need to move on to the next incident or when, for example, one does not know quite what to do with the character's own thoughts, especially if these bear no relation to the existential milieu in which the character is supposed to live and work. The teacher and fledgling lover of videos, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, is in precisely this situation as he is driving his car. He was in fact thinking, a lot and very intensely, but his thoughts bore so little relevance to the last twenty-four hours he had just lived through that if we were to take them into account and include them in this novel, the story we had decided to tell would inevitably have to be replaced by another. True, it might be worthwhile, or rather, since we know everything about Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's thoughts, we know that it would be worthwhile, but this would mean declaring all our hard work, these forty or so dense, difficult pages, null and void, and going back to the beginning, to the ironic, insolent first page, throwing away all that honest toil to take a chance on an adventure, not just new and different, but also highly dangerous, for, of this we are sure, that is precisely where Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's thoughts would lead us. Let us remain therefore with this bird in the hand, rather than suffer the disappointment of seeing two fly away. Besides, we haven't got time for anything else. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has just parked his car and is walking the short distance to his apartment, in one hand he has his teacher's briefcase, in the other the plastic bag, what will he be thinking about now apart from calculating how many videos he will manage to view, to use the more formal term, before going to bed, that's what comes of taking an interest in bit-part players, if he were a star, he'd be there in the very first scenes. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso has already opened the front door, gone in, and closed the door behind him, he puts the briefcase down on the desk and, beside it, the bag containing the videos. The air is free of any presences, or perhaps they are simply not apparent, as if what came into the apartment last night had meanwhile become an inseparable part of it. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso went to his room to change his clothes, opened the fridge in the kitchen to see if there was anything in it he fancied eating, closed it again, and went back into the living room with a can of beer and a glass. He took the videos out of the bag and arranged them in order of date of production, from the oldest,
The Accursed Code,
made two years before
The Race Is to the Swift,
which he has already seen, to the most recent,
The Goddess of the Stage,
from last year. The other four, in the same order, are
Passenger without a Ticket, Death Strikes at Dawn, The Alarm Rang Twice,
and
Phone Me Another Day.
An involuntary reflex movement, doubtless provoked by the last of these titles, made him turn and look at his own phone. The light on the machine was blinking, informing him that there were messages for him. He hesitated for a few seconds but ended up pressing the button to hear them. The first was a female voice that did not announce its identity, knowing presumably that it would be instantly recognized, it said only, It's me, then went on, I don't know what's wrong, but you haven't phoned me for a week now, if you want to end the relationship, then it would be better to tell me so to my face, surely this silence isn't to do with the fact that we quarreled the other day, well, only you know that, anyway, just to say that I still care about you, lots of love, bye. The second message was the same voice, Please phone me. There was a third message, but this was from the
mathematics teacher, Listen, my friend, I got the impression that I did something today to annoy you, but, to be perfectly honest, I can't imagine what it was I did or said, I think we should talk and clear up any possible misunderstanding between us, if I owe you an apology, then please take this call as at least the beginning of one, all the best, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you that you have a friend in me. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso frowned, he vaguely remembered that something irritating or unpleasant had happened at school involving the mathematics teacher, but he couldn't remember what it was. He rewound the tape and listened again to the first two messages, this time with a half smile and a look on his face that is usually described as dreamy. He got up to remove the tape of
The Race Is to the Swift
from the VCR and to replace it with
The Accursed Code,
but at the last moment, his finger already on the play button, he realized that, if he went on, he would be committing a grave infraction, omitting one of the sequential points in the plan of action he had drawn up, that is, copying down from the end of
The Race Is to the Swift
the names of the lowest-ranking bit-part actors, the ones who, even though they occupy time and space in the story, even though they say a few words and serve as satellites, tiny ones, of course, at the service of the interconnections and crossed orbits of the stars, do not even have the right to one of those temporary names, as necessary in life as in fiction, although we should not perhaps say so. He could, of course, do it afterward, at another time, but order, as people also say of the dog, is man's best friend, although, like the dog, it does occasionally bite. Everything in its place and a place for everything has always been the golden rule in prosperous families, just as, time and again, do what you have to do in
good order has been shown to be the most solid insurance policy against the phantoms of chaos. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso quickly wound on the now familiar tape of
The Race Is to the Swift,
paused it at the relevant place, copied onto a sheet of paper the names of the men, only the men, because this time, most unusually, the object of the search is not a woman. We assume this provides an adequate explanation of the plan Tertuliano Máximo Afonso drew up during his long deliberations, that is, to try and identify the hotel receptionist, the one who was the spitting image of himself in the days when he had a mustache, and who doubtless continues to be so today without the mustache, and, who knows, tomorrow too, when the receding hairline of one begins to move in the direction of the baldness of the other. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's plan was, like Columbus's discovery of the Indies, obvious once one had thought of it, to note down all the names of the supporting actors, both in the films in which the receptionist appeared and those in which he did not. For example, if his human copy does not appear in the film,
The Accursed Code,
that he has just slotted in the VCR, he can strike from the first list all those actors who also appeared in
The Race Is to the Swift.
As we know, a Neanderthal's brain would be no use at all in a situation like this, but for a history teacher accustomed to grappling with people from the most various places and times, why, only yesterday he was reading a chapter on the Amorites in that erudite tome about ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, this poor man's version of a treasure hunt is pure child's play and probably did not merit, on our part, such a detailed and comprehensive explanation. In the end, contrary to all our expectations, the hotel receptionist did appear in
The Accursed Code,
this time in the
guise of a bank clerk being threatened by a gunman and, doubtless to appear more convincing in the dissatisfied eyes of the director, exaggerating his fearful tremblings as he was forced to transfer the contents of the safe into a bag that the attacker hurled across the counter at him, at the same time snarling out of the corner of his mouth, a gesture so characteristic of the gangster genre, Either fill this up or I'll fill you full of lead. He had a certain taste for alliteration, this bandit. The bank clerk reappeared on two other occasions, the first time to answer police questions, the second when the bank manager decided to take him off counter duty because, traumatized by the incident, he had started to view all customers as potential thieves. Needless to say, the bank clerk sported the same fine, lustrous mustache as the hotel receptionist. This time, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso did not feel cold rivulets of sweat running down his back, this time his hands did not shake, he paused the image for a few seconds, studied it with cold curiosity, then moved on. Since this was a film in which the identical man, the look-alike, the unattached Siamese twin, the prisoner of Zenda, or some other thing still awaiting classification, had taken part, the method to be followed in the search for his real identity would clearly have to be different, marking any names that had appeared on the first list and were repeated on the second. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso marked two, only two, with a cross. It was still some time until supper, his appetite showed no signs of impatience, he could therefore see the film that was next in chronological order,
Passenger without a Ticket
was the title, but it might just as well have been called A Complete Waste of Time, for the man in the iron mask had not been hired to appear in it. A Complete Waste of Time, we say, but not so complete, because thanks
to
the film a few more names could be crossed out on the first list and the second, By a process of elimination I'll get there in the end, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso said out loud, as if he had suddenly felt a need for company. The telephone rang. The least probable of all the possibilities was that it was his colleague the mathematics teacher, the most possible of all the probabilities that it was the same woman who had phoned twice before. It could also be his mother calling from far away, inquiring after the health of her beloved son. After a few rings, the telephone fell silent, a sign that the recording mechanism was about to start, from then on the recorded words will have to wait for the time when someone wants to listen to them, the mother asking, How have you been, my dear, the friend insisting, I don't think I said or did anything wrong, the lover despairing, I don't deserve to be treated like this by you. Whatever is now inside the machine, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso does not feel like listening to it. To distract himself, rather than because his stomach was demanding food, he went into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich and open another can of beer. He sat down on a stool, munched without pleasure on this frugal meal while his thoughts, set free, abandoned themselves to daydreaming. Realizing that conscious vigilance had faded away into a kind of swoon, common sense, which, after its first energetic intervention, had simply wandered off somewhere, insinuated itself in between two inconclusive fragments of that vague meditation and asked Tertuliano Máximo Afonso if he was happy with the situation he had created. Brought abruptly back to the bitter taste of a beer that had soon lost its coldness and to the soft, clammy consistency of a piece of low-quality ham squeezed between two slices of phony bread, the history
teacher
replied that happiness had nothing to do with what was going on here, and, as for the situation, he would just like to say that he had not created it. I agree you didn't create it, replied common sense, but most situations in which we find ourselves would never have got where they are if we hadn't helped them along, and you're not going to deny that you helped this one along, It was just curiosity, that's all, We've already discussed this, Have you got anything against curiosity, All I'm saying is that life hasn't yet taught you to understand that our finest gift, and by ours I mean common sense's, has always been curiosity, In my view, common sense and curiosity are incompatible, How wrong you are, sighed common sense, Prove it to me then, Who do you think invented the wheel, Nobody knows, Oh yes we do, the wheel was invented by common sense, only an enormous amount of common sense would have been capable of inventing it, And what about the atomic bomb, did common sense invent that too, asked Tertuliano Máximo Afonso in the triumphant tone of one who has just caught his opponent off guard, Oh, no, the atomic bomb was obviously invented by a sense, but there was nothing common about it, Forgive me saying so, but common sense is naturally conservative, I would go further and say reactionary, Ah, those accusing letters, sooner or later everyone writes them and everyone receives them, If all those people were sufficiently of one mind to write them, even those who had no alternative but to receive them, apart, that is, from writing them themselves, then it must be true, You know perfectly well that being of one mind doesn't always mean being in the right, what tends to happen is that people gather together under an opinion as if it were an umbrella. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso opened his mouth to speak, if the expression "opened his mouth" is allowable in a description of an entirely silent dialogue, taking place entirely in the mind as this one was, but common sense was no longer there, it had noiselessly withdrawn, not defeated exactly, but annoyed with itself for having allowed the conversation to be diverted from the matter that had provoked its reappearance. Always assuming, of course, that it hadn't been entirely common sense's fault that this had happened. Indeed, common sense has often been mistaken about consequences, badly so when it invented the wheel, disastrously so when it invented the atomic bomb. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso looked at his watch, calculated how long it would take to watch another film, for he was starting to feel the effects of that sleepless night, his eyelids, with the help of the beer he had drunk, were heavy as lead, and this was probably what lay behind the abstracted state into which he had fallen earlier. If I go to bed now, he said, I'll probably just wake up again in two or three hours' time, and then I'll feel even worse. He decided to see a bit of
Death Strikes at Dawn,
the guy might not even be in it, which would simplify everything, he could fast-forward to the end, make a note of the names, and then go to bed. He was quite wrong. There he was, playing the part of a hospital auxiliary, without a mustache this time. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's hair stood on end again, this time only on his arms, the sweat left his back alone, and a normal sweat, not a cold one, contented itself with slightly dampening his forehead. He watched the whole film, put a cross next to another name that had appeared on other lists, and went to bed. He even read a couple of pages from the chapter on the Amorites before turning out the light. His last conscious thought was about his colleague the mathematics teacher. He really didn't know how to explain
his sudden coldness toward him in the corridor at school. Was it because he put his hand on my shoulder, he asked, and immediately replied, I'll look like a complete fool if I tell him that and he turns his back on me, which is what I would do in his place. He used the final second before sleep to murmur, perhaps addressing himself, perhaps his colleague, There are some things you just can't explain in words.