Chapter one
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How I met myself (@NewOxfordBookworms)
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Now I'll continue my story. I lay there in the snow for a few moments, trying to understand what had just happened. My first thought was, 'Where has the man gone?' I looked along the street, and was just in time to see him turning right at the next corner. I got up immediately, brushed the snow off my clothes and ran after him. He crossed the road and went into another street. When I got to the corner I saw him going into a doorway. I walked quickly along the empty street, and found it was the entrance to a wine cellar. It was under a block of flats, and you had to go down some steps to get in. It was one of those Budapest places where working men meet to drink, talk and smoke. I looked down the steps. There was the low noise of conversation and a smell of wine and cigarettes coming up to meet me. I stood in the snow for a moment, deciding what to do and looking around me. I had a strange feeling about going down into the wine cellar. I wasn't sure who I'd find there. I looked at my footprints - the dark marks my feet had made in the new snow. My footprints... But only my footprints! Where were his? I looked back along the street. There were only my footprints. My mind was running round and round in circles trying to understand what was happening. I stepped down into the wine cellar. It was the first time I had been into that kind of bar. Inside, it was suddenly warm after the winter streets. It was dark, and my eyes took a few moments to get used to the darkness. I looked around me - there were a few men dressed in working clothes, standing in small groups, drinking their wine and talking. I looked over to the bar where I expected to see my man buying a drink. But there was just a young man with fair hair talking to the barman. The place was not very big, and I walked around and looked at everyone carefully. My man was nowhere to be seen. I walked over to the bar. 'Where did the man go?' I asked the barman. 'What man?' he asked back. 'Just before I came in,' I said, 'there was another man who came in. Where is he?' The barman looked at the blond man with a look on his face that seemed to say, 'Who's this mad man?' I realised that I sounded strange. 'I'm sorry,' I started again. 'I'm looking for a friend - I thought he had just come here. That's why I came in. Are you sure nobody came in just before me?' 'See for yourself,' said the barman, showing me the men in the room. 'But is there no other room here?' I asked. 'Only the toilet,' said the barman, looking at the corner. I went over and opened the door. It was cold and dirty. And empty. I didn't know what to do. I decided to stay and see what happened. 'A glass of dry red wine, please,' I said to the barman when I got back to the bar. He gave it to me. I paid, and then I moved over to an empty place. There were no chairs, so I stood up against a high narrow table. A television was on in the corner of the room. I watched the news and waited. Andrea didn't know where I was. Nobody came in or went out. I drank another glass of wine. After an hour, I left. I didn't understand anything, and it was not just because I had drunk too much wine on an empty stomach. 'You smell of wine and smoke!' said Andrea, as I was standing by the front door, taking off my coat and boots. 'What have you been doing?' 'Oh, I just went for a drink with Peter,' I said. 'We argued at work today, and I wanted to talk about it because there is an important meeting tomorrow.' Don't think badly of me - I usually tell my wife the truth! It was just that as I walked home, I had decided it would be better not to say anything about what had happened. When I thought about it, it all sounded so stupid. Someone ran out of a building and knocked me down into the snow. When he turned back to say sorry, I saw that he looked just like me. And then when I followed him he left no footprints. And he wasn't in the wine cellar I saw him go into. It really was all too stupid. So I told her the story about Peter and kept the truth - if it was the truth - to myself. By now, I wasn't sure if I really had seen someone who looked the same as me! But when I went into the bathroom to wash before dinner, and I looked at my face in the mirror, I knew that I was right. It wasn't just someone who looked a bit like me, it was me that I'd seen. That night, in bed, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about what had happened over and over again. Andrea knew something was not right. She moved across the bed and put her arm around me. 'What is it, love?' she asked quietly. 'Oh, nothing,' I replied. 'Just those problems at work again. Don't worry.' And I kissed her. Until I met myself, I had always thought myself to be a normal, intelligent person. I thought I understood more or less how the world around me worked, even my new world in Budapest. But what happened that night in the street had changed something inside me, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I kept seeing myself on the ground in that dark, snowy street, looking up at myself. I felt terribly afraid. |
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