If he was open,

For a moment, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso thought what an infinite relief it would be to tell the whole story from the beginning, about this extraordinary, singular, astonishing, and never-seen-before case of the duplicate man, the unimaginable became reality, the absurd reconciled with reason, the final proof that for God nothing is impossible, and that the science of this century is, as someone said, a fool. If he did so, if he was open, then all his previous troubling actions would be explained, including those that had been, as far as Maria da Paz was concerned, aggressive, rude, or disloyal, or that had, in short, offended against the most elementary common sense, that is to say almost all his actions. Then harmony would be restored, all errors and mistakes would be unconditionally and unreservedly forgiven. (omission) Tertuliano Máximo Afonso's well-intensioned thought vanished as quickly as it came. It's been said thousands of times before that there's no point crying over spilt milk, the problem in this case is what has happened to the jug, which lay shattered on the floor.

José Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costa, The Double (Harvest Books, 2004), pp. 167-168