Explore "The Double" by José Saramago on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
WHAT TERTULIANO MÁXIMO 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,