The Double by José Saramago — Read

BY ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, TERTULIANO MÁXIMO Afonso had already watched three films, although none of them from beginning to end. He had risen very early, breakfasted on a couple of biscuits and a warmed-up cup of coffee, and, without wasting time on shaving, and omitting all but the most necessary ablutions, still in his pajamas and dressing gown, like someone who is expecting no visitors, he launched into the day's task. The first two films passed in vain, but the third, entitled The Parallel of Terror, brought to the scene of the crime a jolly, gum-chewing police photographer who kept saying, in Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's voice, that in life and death it's all a question of angle. At the end, the list was again brought up-to-date, a name struck through, new crosses added.

There were five actors marked five times, as many as the number of films in which the history teacher's double had appeared, and their names, in impartial alphabetical order, were Pedro Félix, Adriano Maia, Carlos Martinho, Daniel Santa-Clara, and Luís Augusto Ventura. Up until then, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso had been lost on the great sea of the more than five million inhabitants of the city, but from now on, he will only have to deal with fewer than half a dozen, possibly even fewer than that if one or more of those names is struck off for not answering the roll call, Quite an achievement, he muttered, but it immediately leaped to his notice that this new labor of Hercules had not, after all, been so very arduous, given that at least two million, five hundred thousand people belonged to the female sex and were, therefore, excluded from the field of his research.