The Double by José Saramago — Read

IT WAS FIVE MINUTES PAST SIX WHEN TERTULIANO MÁXIMO Afonso parked the car opposite the house on the other side of the road. António Claro's car was already there, by the entrance, by the wall. Their cars are a whole mechanical generation apart, Daniel Santa-Clara would never have exchanged his car for anything that looked like Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's car. The garden gate stands open, so does the front door, but the windows are closed. Inside stands a barely distinguishable figure, however the voice that emerges from within is clear and precise, as the voice of a film actor should be, Come in, make yourself at home. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso went up the four steps and paused on the threshold. Come in, come in, said the voice, don't stand on ceremony, although, judging from what I see, you are not the person I was expecting, I thought I was the actor, but I was wrong. Without a word, very carefully, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso removed his beard and went in.

That's what I call a sense of theater, it puts me in mind of those people who like to burst into a room, shouting, I'm here, as if their presence actually mattered, said António Claro, while he emerged from the shadows and stood in the bright light coming in through the open door. They stood stock-still, looking at each other. Slowly, as if painfully dragging itself up from the depths of the impossible, stupefaction wrote itself across Antonio Claro's face, not across Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's face, for he knew what he was going to find.