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heard it call to me twice, saying my name, as mothers say their children’s names. I stood up. On Inès’ balcony, though, whichever it was, there was no one.
    (1990)

gualta
    Until I was thirty years old, I lived quietly and virtuously and in accordance, as it were, with my biography, and it had never occurred to me that forgotten characters from books read during adolescence might resurface in my life, or even in other people’s lives. Of course, I had heard people speak of momentary identity crises provoked by a coincidence of names uncovered in youth (for example, my friend Rafa Zarza doubted his own existence when he was introduced to another Rafa Zarza). But I never expected to find myself transformed into a bloodless William Wilson, or a portrait of Dorian Gray minus the drama, or a Jekyll whose Hyde was merely another Jekyll.
    His name was Xavier de Gualta — a Catalan, as his name indicates—and he worked in the Barcelona office of the same company I worked for. His (highly) responsible position was similar to mine in Madrid where we met at a supper intended for the dual purpose of business and fraternisation, which is why we both arrived accompanied by our respective wives. Only our first names were interchangeable (my name is Javier Sant í n), but we coincided in absolutely everything else. I still remember the look of stupefaction on Gualta’s face (which was doubtless also on mine), when the head waiter who brought him to our table stood to one side, allowing him to see my face for the first time. Gualta and I were physically identical, like twins in the cinema, but it wasn’t just that: we even made the same gestures at the same time and used the same words (we took the words out of each other’s mouths, as the saying goes), and our hands would reach for the bottle of (Rhine) wine or the mineral water (still), or our forehead, or the sugar spoon, or the bread, or the fork beneath the fondue dish, in perfect unison, simultaneously. We narrowly missed colliding. It was as if our heads, which were identical outside, were also thinking the same thing at the same time. It was like dining opposite a mirror made flesh. Needless to say, we agreed about everything and, although I tried not to ask too many questions, such was my disgust, my sense of vertigo, our lives, both professional and personal, had run along parallel lines. This extraordinary similarity was, of course, noted and commented on by our wives and by us (’It’s extraordinary,’ they said. ‘Yes, extraordinary,’ we said), yet, after our first initial amazement, the four of us, somewhat taken aback by this entirely anomalous situation and conscious that we had to think of the good of the company that had brought us together for that supper, ignored the remarkable fact and did our best to behave naturally. We tended to concentrate more on business than on fraternisation. The only thing about us that was not the same were our wives (but they are not in fact part of us, just as we are not part of them). Mine, if I may be so vulgar, is a real stunner, whilst Gualta’s wife, though distinguished-looking, was a complete nonentity, temporarily embellished and emboldened by the success of her go-getting spouse.
    The worst thing, though, was not the resemblance itself (after all, other people have learned to live with it). Until then, I had never seen myself. I mean, a photo immobilises us, and in the mirror we always see ourselves the other way round (for example, I always part my hair on the right, like Cary Grant, but in the mirror, I am someone who parts his hair on the left, like Clark Gable); and, since I am not famous and have never been interested in movie cameras, I had never seen myself on television or on video either. In Gualta, therefore, I saw myself for the first time, talking, moving, gesticulating, pausing, laughing, in profile, wiping my mouth with my napkin, and scratching my nose. It was my first real experience of myself as