Something invisible is filling the street. The buses go through it without even making it tremble. Something is hiding in the air between you and the evening sunlight on the shopfronts opposite. Wait upon it. The air, the moment, has become – what? an asking? For an instant you almost have it: a word. Can you read it? A name, even. No, not a name, a feeling. Familiar as your coat, as your skin. But coming from another direction, seen from another point of view; that’s why you didn’t recognize it – a sense of yourself, your own closest awareness of your own existence – but coming from elsewhere?
Turn away from your place in the bus-queue – and it is as if everything else had turned slightly away from you. The pavement no longer meets you openly; the distance between you and the bus-stop has come adrift from you and is floating loose in the air, wavering down the alley between the camera-shop and the tobacconist’s. Follow it. The trace is clearer down here. But it’s not a scent, not in the nose or the mouth, eyes or ears. Closer than skin, but not in the head. Now you are among crowds of people again, outside a cinema, but it doesn’t lose you for a moment. Certain beyond thought, as your hands when you join them have no need to fumble for each other. Go into the pub. It persists, through the cigarette-smoke and beer smell and the air tangled with conversations. Your usual pub; it is entirely usual for you to drop in on the way home. You stand at the bar, get your half, turn to your usual corner. But someone is just sitting down there. Put your beer down on the same little table and sit down opposite him. You both immediately get up again and take off your coats; you both fold them and place them beside you in the overcautious way you have often smiled at yourself for.
Your jackets are the same colour.
For no reason you both look up and around as if someone had called your name, or as if a window had blown open and a different air had brought an elusive memory. He is left-handed like you. He smokes the same cigarettes. Even his matchbox is the same as yours lying opposite it. Suddenly you want to go. You are reaching out for your cigarettes and matches with one hand, and gulping at your beer; your eye stares straight into his eye; his other eye like yours is hidden by the beer-glass, his hand is frozen in the act of grabbing his cigarettes and matches. You are both rigid with fear.
You are identical. Clothes, face, ways of sitting, standing, looking – the visible likeness is so complete you want to beat your fists against it, smash open its hollowness. But from this man’s fingernail you could, you know it, read that his name is the same as yours; his parents, schoolteachers, friends, colleagues, wife even, are yours.
You must speak first; you dare not think why that is so essential, but you must. You put down your glass, so does he, and before you can get your throat to form a sound, he speaks. That seems so terrible to you that you miss what he says. Ask: ‘Do you know what I’m going to say?’ The answer is all-important.
‘You must answer my question first,’ he says.
‘What was it? I didn’t hear.’
He leans back in his chair. ‘So you don’t know my thoughts?’
He smiles, he appears confident, relaxed; but his hand is trembling. You seem to have lost an advantage, though. Grip the situation before it slides into chaos.
‘Listen,’ you begin, ‘we have to find an explanation. I want to prove you’re an illusion but I know already that you are trying to prove the same thing about me. So really I accept that you’re not an illusion, that I’m not mad.’
He laughs almost hysterically. ‘If you can accept that I’m not an illusion you must be mad. Two identical persons? Who would believe us? I accept that you are mad – you’re a mad illusion! Hallucinations like you should be locked up! Dodging in here, grabbing my place …’
‘But you’re in my place!’ you cry. Then you begin to laugh with him. Immediately you wonder if you can ever stop. This person opposite you is shaken by the sounds leaping in his throat; listen to your own laughter in his body, frightened, crying for mercy, so that you have to stop. He was watching you through his laughter and stops as soon as you do. He puts a knuckle up to his eye; your hand is moving up too; make it fall back on the table. Say: ‘No, you were joking. That’s my impulse too. Mental shock, it sends up the dust and makes me sneeze. No, of course, we, that is I, don’t have a “usual place” here. As often as not I sit somewhere else. “The usual place,” I say to myself, as I sit down at whichever table happens to be empty …’
‘An odd little flag put out by the idea of self, I suppose. Now that I’m calmer, I …’
‘… you see how much we learn about ourselves so soon!’
‘Ourselves, such trivialities?’
‘So the situation will have its uses …’
‘… even if it does end with one of us committed to an asylum and the other to bottomless unbeing. But the wind from that pit blows cold even here; I think our “idea of self” is going to need all the flags and rags it can clutch around itself! Explanations, can we get through this without them?’
‘A word would be steadying: Madness? Schizophrenia?
‘Not that, at any rate. A waste of labour, to bring forth oneself again.’
‘And in any case I don’t feel any loss of substance in my personality. Rather the opposite. So we rule that out; we are left with brute numerical contradiction. But wait a minute, did you accuse me of sneaking in here before you? In fact you were first, by a few seconds.’
‘Was I? If so, I’m a little reassured. I’m in the lead, if only by a moment or two. You are the shadow and I the substance. You play function to my variable, that’s it; you are a determinate being, your action is only response; mine is freely creative, unforeseeable even by myself.’
‘You think free will is perpetual improvisation? Then perhaps I’m the theme you improvise on, and where does that leave you? No, stop improvising these metaphysical escape-clauses. If the situation is unbearable let’s end it simply. There’s a girl over there I know slightly. We’ll ask her to tell us if there are in fact two of us here, and if not, which of us two is here. What about it?’
‘You would trust a third person to make that judgment? It seems a desperate step to take. But as you say, the situation is unbearable, so go on, tip it over into farce; go and ask her to have a drink with us.’
‘Why then, you admit I know her better than you do?’
‘Not at all, but I do think your readiness to involve a third person isn’t as characteristic of me as my reluctance.’
‘You’re right. The argument did occur to me, just a second too late.’
‘So you’re the one who’s running slow now! But I shan’t capitalize on it; a clock’s a clock for a’ that. And neither will I try to abolish you with the fact of your having uncharacteristic impulses, that you are not a clock in fact, fast or slow. No, this isn’t the terrain for easy victories. We have to accept that our story is true, we can’t reason each other away; there are two of us, in the most material sense. And on second thoughts
‘Yes, the acid test of external reality can be applied any time we feel equal to it or feel it’s relevant. Your second thoughts are that we shouldn’t run away from this extraordinary situation. We should explore it as far as we dare. So let me buy you a drink – since I’ve got just as much money in my pocket as you. Or are you afraid?’
‘Of course I’m afraid. But anyway we can’t both go home and present Mary with two husbands, so I’ll have to stay till you wear off, or vice-versa. You know how she hates unexpected guests.’
‘And you’ve forgotten the chops she asked you to get on the way home. I’ll have to get ham or something from the shop on the corner.’
‘Look, we’re a long way from home, from anywhere we recognize, even. We’re at an extremity, or beyond one, of what is conceivable. So why
‘Why cling to my shopping list, you’re going to say? I should throw away the inessentials, stop worrying about being home for dinner, stop this defensive joking, face the dangers of the uncanny region I find myself in? But that would be to falsify the strangeness of the situation. If I had made some epic journey outwards or inwards from the commonplace, to wherever it is that parallel lines are said to meet, and had there met you, then perhaps I would be strengthened by the march to the point of being able to take this confrontation as a fulfillment, an achievement even. But in fact you are an interruption, an irruption, into the everyday itself.’
‘The “midst of life” in fact. Yes, you are right. And equally you shouldn’t make me forget where I am or why; all I have towards an answer for the question you “interrupt” with is my hidden assumptions. So this desperate grasping at the threads that lead back into yesterday and forward into tomorrow – that’s not just a panicking away from the crevasse that has opened up in today; it’s our only hope of locating that crevasse in relation to our everyday selves. We have to remain ourselves; we have to recognize our everyday voices again, a little heightened by the occasion perhaps, and understand their trembling.’
‘Right, but that “everyday” needn’t be the common day we share with everyone else. In these circumstances it can be the most inward of our “everydays”. But doesn’t it strike you as odd that we do recognize each other’s voices? I didn’t recognize a recording of my own voice, once, because it came to my hearing by a different route. One would expect it to be the same with any sort of awareness of oneself.’
‘You think the fact we so readily admit we are identical really proves we are not? For my own tape-recorded voice might conceivably sound to me less like my true voice than does someone else’s recorded voice; is that your argument?’
‘That was going to be it. But I would counter it by admitting that I do listen to my voice as it comes back to me from things; it’s part of my way of life. I would define myself as being, in my better moments, or at least my more defined moments, my own experiment; as using my life as a tool of my understanding of life.’
‘You might define yourself to me like that, not to anyone else. You would be afraid of life’s revenge! But it’s true enough. And that “voice”, my attempts at exhorting things to clarify themselves, which I listen to so intently as it rings back, cracked and cloudy, off the world – now it is turned back on its source; I hear all its hesitations and evasions. And so, that question you interrupt with?’
‘Wait a minute; let’s just trace back one of those threads first, back to the material world, part of it we know or thought we knew, simply charting our courses as physical entities. Now, you said that I arrived first …’
‘No, you said it. Or did we both? If someone were recording this conversation we could count back the alternations of the dialogue, odd, even, odd, to find out if “the present speaker” or “his interlocutor” said it. But the “somebody recording the dialogue” – reality’s legal representative – in this case doesn’t appear.’
‘… which makes it tempting to override the rights of reality now the pressure is on. Nevertheless we’ll try to honour our commitments. So, one or other of us came through that door first, bought half a pint of bitter first, paid, turned and sat down first. Then we saw each other. At that moment we were quite separate, but identical, persons, and have been all the time since. Now when did this twinning take place? Only one of us left home this morning; we were alone, that is I was alone, in the office all day. Same in the bus queue. What then?’
‘You know what then. That welling-up of uncertainty, that strange averted face on everything – as if one impossibly saw how things look when one isn’t looking at them. That emptying feeling that all the radii along which my world flows in to me were suddenly converging elsewhere; as if my centre of gravity had been stolen away, and I was falling out of myself towards it. Of course it often happens that I suddenly decide to have a drink before going home and I dodge down here; but never before, that turning-inside-out of space; it pulled me down like a whirlpool.’
‘Yes, that was it. But I was still alone all that time – or maybe I felt that too was inside-out, and everyone else was collectively “alone from me”, if that makes sense.’
‘And things only came to rest in some precarious equilibrium when we saw each other …’
‘… as if that stabilized the falling apart.’
‘It all rests on the knife-edge of our seeing each other?’
‘And if we turn away from each other again?’
‘Dare you try the experiment? Of course we are no longer so naïve as to think that one of us would disappear, and that it could be me, flung into the dustbin of nothingness. No, but we – I speak for myself – we would feel a sense of loss, and now I want to delay it.’
‘We get on well then, you and I, at least under the liberating drug of impossibility. We have a lot in common; everything, in fact. All our friends are mutual friends. A pity the condition of us seeing each other is that we don’t see anyone else or let anyone see us.’
‘Clearly it’s doomed to be the most secret of friendships. We meet in a ruin; I mean the ruin of our everyday logic – though it is amazing how much of the system stands even after the foundation-stone, the concept of identity, has been wrenched out. Or does that just show that the whole structure is as flimsy as theatrical canvas anyway, and we had never noticed? So we meet in a ruin of some sort; it stands, but a glance from an outsider would bring it down.’
‘And it halves us in its fall.’
‘… which means, at present we are doubled? By taking thought a man can double his stature?’
‘But we took no thought! If I had done it by taking thought, by taking a terrified walk on the waters of consciousness
‘… each step supported on the upturned sole of your reflection’s foot, as if we were tempting each other further and further out from shore, on waters so still as to give a perfect image
‘… so still neither of us knows if what we see below is endless depths of clarity or a reflected emptiness
‘What a vertiginous conception! But as you were going to say, we are both for instance left-handed; neither of us is the product of reflection. No, in fact nothing is imaged in tranquillity; rather the waters are thrown into restlessness and confusion by an inexplicable event. I am not “facing myself”, I am facing an impossibility – I would say “my impossibility”, if I could attach any sense to the phrase.’
‘If you could attach a sense to the phrase you would be halfway to explaining this episode (but why do we assume it’s only an episode?); you want to reduce it to an allegory, to situate it – that is, me – in some literary or philosophical dimension, and so lose me. I insist: I am not an image; I belong in the same space as yourself. Which is where we have to face the impossible.’
‘One way of facing it is by assuming it’s an episode. We dare not doubt that.’
‘No, the alternative is a relationship inconceivably closer than any marriage, one that could be ended only by murder or suicide. There’s no divorce of self from self on the grounds of mutual weariness, even if it mounts to loathing over the years. Could I ever keep a secret from you? Could I ever surprise you, I wonder?’
‘It’s my deepest faith in myself that I can and will again surprise myself. If you killed that, I should kill you. And I can’t face that death.’
‘No, not that death.’
‘But if my inseparable companion were to double my solitariness …’
‘And if you were perpetually there, not just “interrupting” but with your question, whatever it is, dinning out all other concerns
‘Weariness; you used the word.’
‘So quickly our moment of intoxication fades!’
‘Yes. Yes, I want you not to be. I want you not to be, now. And you could as well not be – is that your question, in truth?’
‘The improbabilities we have no choice but to make ourselves out of? It seems they came up twice rather than once, rather than never at all. Or is it that, since we believe the Universe keeps no accounts, if subtraction had happened today instead of addition, no mistake would have been made? No, I don’t come with a question. And it would be delusion, even a comfort, for me to think that you came with a question, however deep and troubling. What can I say? You came, and I can make nothing of it.’
‘And now, if not self-delusion, we would welcome a sleep from such awareness.’
‘Well, we have only to close our eyes. At least we hope that’s so. As usual we put our trust in the omnipotence of thoughtlessness!’
‘We fall back on the pillows of the “as usual”. But should we expect to be called out of sleep again some day?’
‘To call out of our sleep, maybe. We can’t ask such questions any more, I think; we are in waiting upon the event. So, are you ready?’
‘Strange that we haven’t actually touched each other. The thought doesn’t even cross our minds until the moment of leave-taking, as if the impossibility of it were self-evident.’
‘To touch each other! Mutual annihilation, if we are self and anti-self; total destruction of our world. But look, I can reach out my hand like this, you can reach out yours towards mine
‘No nearer!’
‘You feel it? The tension, the turbulent field of force plucking at your hand?’
‘Hatred would be less frightening, even love. But this totally unfamiliar storm in the fingertips, I can’t even name it. My hand’s trembling.’
‘Another little movement, a couple of inches, and we would touch. Flashpoint! A sensation, maybe beyond pain or pleasure. But we won’t, not this time, at least. We draw back, each into himself.’
‘Leaving something unconsummated, so it feels to me. But leaving ourselves unconsumed, at any rate!’
‘Two doubting Thomases, unconsumed by doubt. So, now we will close our eyes. I don’t know if there will be that hunting and that falling again?’
‘From second to second we abandon ourselves to the tides of the impossible. This coming second is no different. So close your eyes.’
‘You never bought me that drink.’
Close your eyes.
You are alone.