The first time Daniel met himself, he was standing in the queue at the post office.
The other Daniel was older by perhaps ten years, though the resemblance was unmistakable. He had the same narrow shoulders, the same small scar beside his left eyebrow, and the same habit of pressing his lips together when he was impatient.
He was also wearing a wedding ring.
Daniel had never married.
The older man noticed him staring.
“Good Lord,” he said. “You haven't changed at all.”
Daniel laughed uncertainly. “Do I know you?”
The man looked at him for a long moment.
“Not yet, apparently.”
Before Daniel could ask what this meant, the older man stepped out of the queue and left the building.
Daniel followed him to the pavement, but the street was crowded, and the man had vanished.
That evening, Daniel mentioned the encounter to his sister, Margaret.
She listened without interrupting.
“You're sure he was you?”
“I'm sure he looked like me.”
“Did he have the scar?”
“Yes.”
Margaret stirred her tea.
“And the ring?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, as though this confirmed something she had suspected for years.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“Nothing.”
“You're doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Where you know something and decide that not telling me is somehow more helpful.”
Margaret smiled.
“You've always said that.”
Daniel frowned.
“I've never said that.”
She looked at him with an expression he couldn't quite interpret.
“Of course you have.”
Three days later, Daniel found a photograph in his mailbox.
It showed him standing beside a woman in a garden. He was older than he was now, his hair almost entirely grey. The woman had her arm through his, and both were laughing at something outside the frame.
On the back, in his own handwriting, were the words:
Our twenty-fifth anniversary. You said you would never marry anyone. I said you would.
Daniel turned the photograph over again.
He recognised the handwriting. He recognised the scar beside his eyebrow. He even recognised the garden, though he had never been there.
The woman was a stranger.
He took the photograph to Margaret.
She stared at it for a long time.
“Who is she?” Daniel asked.
Margaret shook her head.
“I don't know.”
“But you recognise the garden?”
She looked up sharply.
“Have I been there?”
“I was going to ask you.”
Margaret placed the photograph on the table.
“Daniel, do you remember why you moved here?”
“To take the job at the university.”
“No. Before that.”
He thought for a moment.
“I was going to study architecture.”
“You were going to study music.”
Daniel laughed.
“Don't be absurd. I've never had any musical ability.”
“You played the piano for years.”
“I don't play the piano.”
Margaret stood and went to a cupboard. From a box of old papers she took a sheet of music, yellowed at the edges. At the top, in Daniel's handwriting, was a title he didn't recognise.
The Garden at the End of the Road.
He stared at the notes.
They meant nothing to him.
Yet when Margaret hummed the opening bars, he knew how the melody continued.
He knew where it turned, where it paused, and how it ended.
He knew it as one knows a childhood room in the dark.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked.
Margaret stopped humming.
“You taught it to me.”
Daniel took the sheet of music home.
That night he dreamed of a woman in a garden. He was holding her hand. She was telling him something he couldn't hear because a clock was striking the hour.
When he awoke, he remembered the dream perfectly.
He also remembered that he had been happy.
The feeling remained with him throughout the day, though he couldn't explain what it belonged to.
The second Daniel appeared in the university library.
He was younger than the first, perhaps five years younger than Daniel himself. He wore an old-fashioned jacket and carried a stack of books on architecture.
Daniel recognised him immediately.
“You,” he said.
The other man looked up.
“Yes,” he replied. “Me.”
“Who are you?”
The younger Daniel put down his books.
“I might ask you the same question.”
“I'm Daniel.”
“So am I.”
Daniel sat opposite him.
“Are you married?”
The younger man looked surprised.
“No. Why?”
“Do you play the piano?”
“No.”
“Did you study architecture?”
“Yes.”
Daniel felt a curious relief.
“Then you're the one who made the mistake.”
The younger man regarded him with growing suspicion.
“What mistake?”
“Changing your mind.”
The younger Daniel laughed.
“Changing my mind about what?”
“Architecture. You gave it up. You went to the university and studied philosophy instead.”
“I've never studied philosophy.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“You must have. I did.”
The younger man shook his head.
“I became an architect. I've been working on a house for my parents.”
Daniel felt the room tilt slightly.
“Your parents are dead.”
The younger man went very still.
“My father died when I was twelve. My mother is alive.”
Daniel opened his mouth, then closed it.
His mother had died eleven years ago.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then the younger Daniel gathered his books.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I think you're confusing me with someone else.”
He walked away.
Daniel remained at the table, staring at the empty space where the books had been.
When he looked down, there was a library card beside his hand.
It bore his name, his date of birth, and a photograph of the younger man.
The card had been issued thirty years earlier.
On the reverse, someone had written:
If you meet yourself, don't assume you're the one who got here first.
Daniel slipped the card into his pocket.
He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had read those words before.
Over the next month, the encounters became more frequent.
There was a Daniel who had never left the town where they grew up. He ran a small bookshop and had two daughters. There was a Daniel who had emigrated to Canada and spoke with an accent Daniel found irritatingly familiar. There was one who had become a priest, another who had spent his life travelling, and one who had died at the age of twenty-three.
The dead Daniel was the most difficult to meet.
He appeared in a café near the railway station, sitting at a table beside the window. He looked exactly as Daniel remembered himself at twenty-three, before the scar had faded and before the small lines appeared beside his eyes.
Daniel sat opposite him.
“You're dead,” he said.
The young man looked up from his coffee.
“So I've been told.”
“Do you know how you died?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
The young man smiled.
“I don't think you'd find it useful.”
Daniel gripped the edge of the table.
“Why are you here?”
The young man looked towards the window.
“Perhaps you should ask why you're here.”
Daniel followed his gaze. Across the street stood a bookshop. In the window was a display of architecture books, arranged beneath a handwritten sign:
Daniel's Bookshop. Established 1984.
Daniel turned back.
The young man had gone.
On the table lay a newspaper, folded open to the obituary column.
Daniel's name appeared beneath a photograph of his younger self.
The date was forty years earlier.
Eventually Daniel stopped trying to establish which version of himself was genuine.
He began keeping a notebook.
Each entry recorded an encounter, a recollection, or a fact that had become uncertain. He noted the dates, the places, and the circumstances. He asked Margaret questions, consulted old records, and searched for evidence that might distinguish his life from the others.
The more he investigated, the less satisfactory his records became.
A photograph changed its date. A letter acquired a different signature. A university transcript listed subjects he had never studied, then reverted to the subjects he remembered. His passport contained a stamp from a country he had never visited.
And always, somewhere among the discrepancies, he found evidence that the alternative was not merely possible but had actually happened.
He began to suspect that his memories were not false. They were simply incomplete.
One afternoon he found a page in his notebook that he had no recollection of writing.
You are trying to establish which life is yours. But the question assumes that a life belongs to the person who remembers it.
Below this, in a different hand, was another sentence.
I remember writing the first sentence. I don't remember writing the second.
Daniel read the two lines several times.
Then he closed the notebook.
He had begun to feel that the investigation was leading him towards a conclusion he would be unable to recognise as his own.
Margaret died in the spring.
At the funeral, Daniel met a woman who introduced herself as his sister.
She was older than Margaret had been, with silver hair and a small scar beside her left eyebrow.
Daniel stared at her.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't understand.”
She took his hand.
“Neither do I.”
They stood together while the mourners filed past the grave.
Afterwards, the woman invited him to her house.
It was a house Daniel had never seen, with a garden he recognised from the photograph. In the sitting room stood a piano. On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Daniel and the woman, taken on their wedding day.
He looked at the picture for a long time.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The woman smiled sadly.
“You know who I am.”
He shook his head.
She led him to the piano and opened a book of sheet music.
The Garden at the End of the Road.
Daniel sat down.
His hands rested on the keys.
For a moment he couldn't move. Then, without deciding to, he began to play.
The melody returned in its entirety. His fingers found the notes, his hands remembered the turns, and the music unfolded as though it had been waiting for him.
When he finished, the woman was crying.
“You promised me you'd never forget,” she said.
Daniel looked at her.
“I don't know you.”
She wiped her eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “You do.”
He wanted to ask her what she meant. He wanted to tell her that he had never married, that he had never lived in this house, that he had never written the music.
But he couldn't say any of it.
For the first time, the distinctions he had relied upon seemed strangely arbitrary. He remembered the garden. He remembered the music. He remembered the feeling of happiness from the dream.
He remembered the woman, though he could not remember having met her.
He stood and embraced her.
She held him for a long time.
Neither spoke.
That evening Daniel returned to his own house.
He sat at his desk and opened the notebook.
The last page contained a single entry.
Tomorrow I will stop looking for the original.
He stared at the handwriting.
It was his own.
He turned back through the pages, searching for the date on which he had written it. The entry was dated the following day.
Daniel closed the notebook.
He went to the window. Across the street, a man was standing beneath a streetlamp. He wore a wedding ring and was looking up at Daniel's house.
Daniel recognised him as the older man from the post office.
The man raised a hand in greeting.
Daniel raised his own.
For a moment, they stood facing each other across the street, two men who knew the same gestures, the same habits, and perhaps the same memories.
Then the older man walked away.
Daniel returned to his desk.
He opened the notebook and turned to a blank page.
For a long time he sat without writing.
At last he wrote:
Today I decided to stop looking for the original.
He dated the entry.
Then he closed the notebook and placed it in the drawer.
Outside, somewhere in the street, a man began to play a piano.
Daniel listened.
He knew the melody.
He had never heard it before.
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