I don’t remember when the second person appeared.
That is the first thing that worries me.
Not because they are identical.
Because I have the feeling that I corrected the difference before I ever saw it.
The chalk room remains the same.
The chair is still against the wall.
The mark in the plaster is still at shoulder height.
Nothing new.
And yet something has been added.
I look at one.
Then the other.
I cannot find the exact moment when I stop comparing them.
As if the comparison ended before it began.
For a few seconds I try to locate a difference.
A scar.
A tension in the jaw.
A different rhythm of breathing.
Something.
I find nothing.
The strange thing is not the similarity.
The strange thing is that I clearly remember a difference that I can no longer identify.
As if it disappeared while I was looking for it.
There is a cup on the table.
I am sure there was only one a moment ago.
Now there are two.
They do not seem new.
They seem as though they have always been there.
That feeling returns.
Not the feeling of discovering something.
The feeling of arriving late to a correction.
I try to remember which cup appeared second.
I can’t.
Memory behaves as if the question itself is wrong.
There is a rule I do not remember learning:
when something repeats itself too perfectly, it stops feeling like a copy and begins to feel like the original.
I do not know when I entered that rule.
But I am already inside it.
One of the two people turns their head slightly.
The other follows a fraction of a second later.
Or perhaps it happened the other way around.
I am not sure.
The worst part is that my attention does not react at the same time either.
First it follows one.
Then it remembers following the other.
There is a small delay.
Almost invisible.
But enough.
For the first time the mechanism does not seem to arrive before me.
It feels as though I arrive after it.
I look at the wall.
The mark is still there.
Or I think it is.
Because now I have a very precise memory of having seen two marks.
I cannot see them.
But I remember seeing them.
The feeling lasts only a moment.
Then it disappears.
As if someone removed a piece of the scene before I could point to it.
I think about asking a question.
I don’t know which one.
Maybe who arrived first.
Maybe which one is the copy.
But the question dissolves before it is finished.
The door remains open.
That should reassure me.
It doesn’t.
Because for the first time I am not sure leaving would reduce the number of people in the room.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
