The Double by José Saramago — Read

WHEN TERTULIANO MÁXIMO AFONSO WOKE UP THE NEXT day, he knew why he had told common sense, as soon as it got into the car, that that would be the last time it would see him wearing the false beard and that, from then on, he would go about barefaced, for everyone to see. Let other people disguise themselves if they want to, had been his categorical words. What at the time might have seemed to the unwary little more than an emotional statement of intent provoked by the justifiable impatience of someone who has been through a series of very tough trials, was, in fact, unbeknownst to us, the seed of an action pregnant with future consequences, like sending off a letter of challenge to the enemy, in the knowledge that things could not possibly stay as they were.

Before we go on, however, it would be beneficial to the harmony of the story if we were to devote a few lines to the analysis of any inadvertent contradiction there might be between the action we will describe shortly and the resolutions announced by Tertuliano Máximo Afonso during his brief car journey with common sense. A rapid perusal of the final pages of the previous chapter will immediately reveal the existence of a basic contradiction made manifest in a variety of different ex pressions, such as those spoken by Tertuliano Máximo Afonso and received with prudent scepticism by common sense, firstly, that he had drawn a line under the matter of the two identical men, secondly, that he and António Claro had agreed they would never meet again, and, thirdly, employing the ingenuous rhetoric of a dramatic final scene, that he had got up from the table, had left the room, was no longer there. That is the contradiction.