Story-How I met Myself

Cambridge English Readers
.......................................................
Level 3
Serieseditor:Philip Prowse
How I Met Myself
David A. Hill
published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
cambridge university press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, VIC 3166, Australia
Ruiz de Alarco
Â
n 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

# Cambridge University Press 2001
First published 2001
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and
to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
Typeset in 12/15pt Adobe Garamond [CE]
ISBN 0 521 75018 0 paperback
ISBN 0 521 75019 9 cassette
Contents
Chapter 1 A strange meeting 6
Chapter 2 Getting to know me 7

Chapter 3 A search 9
Chapter 4 7 Felka utca 13
Chapter 5 I tell Andrea 17
Chapter 6 Talking to the housekeepers 20
Chapter 7 Doppelga
È
nger 23
Chapter 8 A holiday 26
Chapter 9 The date gets closer again 31
Chapter 10 18 January 35
Chapter 11 A little bit of history 38
Chapter 12 Looking for the truth 42
Chapter 13 Problems at home 47
Chapter 14 Another year goes by 49
Chapter 15 I discover some more facts 51
Chapter 16 It all happens again 54
Chapter 17 We must get them out! 57
Chapter 18 Unexpected help 61
3

1
Characters


John Taylor: an English computer programmer working for a multinational
company in Budapest, Hungary. Andrea Taylor: John's wife, and a teacher of
Hungarian.
Kati Taylor: John and Andrea's baby daughter.
Zsolt: a man who has a bar in Budapest's Thirteenth District.
Janos Szabo: John Taylor's doppelganger, a Hungarian man who died in the

1956 revolution.
Mrs Fischer: an old lady who knew Janos Szabo.
Paul Harris: an old friend of John Taylor's.


Chapter 1

A strange meeting

I was walking home from my office one January evening. It was a Monday.
The weather was very cold, and there were some low clouds around the tops
of the buildings. Once I'd left the main road, there weren't many people in
the dark, narrow streets of Budapest's Thirteenth District. Everything was
very quiet. It felt as if the city was waiting for something.
As I walked I thought about what had happened at work. I had argued with
one of the Hungarians I worked with. It was the first serious problem since
I'd arrived. I was trying to think what to do about it, and I was also hoping
that my wife, Andrea, had made one of her nice hot soups for dinner.
After about five minutes it started to snow heavily, so that the streets were
soon completely white. As I was walking along a very dark part of one street
there was the noise of a door shutting loudly inside a building. Then I heard
the sound of someone running.
Suddenly, the street door opened and a man came out of it and ran straight
into me. I fell over into the snow, shouting something like, 'Hey, watch

2
where you're going!' - my words were loud in the empty street. The man
turned to look at me for a moment. 'Sorry,' he said very quietly, in
Hungarian, before walking quickly away.
What I saw at that moment, in that dark winter street was very strange, and

I felt very afraid. Because what I saw was me. My face looking down at me.
My mouth saying sorry.


Chapter 2

Getting to know me

Perhaps I'd better tell you something about me before I go on with the rest
of this story.
My name is John Taylor, and I'm 34 years old. I'm nearly two metres tall,
with light brown hair and eyes and I have a moustache. I'm a computer
programmer. Four years ago, my company in Bristol became part of a very
large multinational computer company - you would know the name if I told
you. I was offered the chance to go and work in their Budapest office. They
needed someone to lead a young Hungarian team in an important new piece
of work. I was very pleased. It was a better job in the company, and I
thought it would be really interesting to work in another country, one I'd
never visited.
Like many British people, I thought I knew three things about Hungary: the
Danube cuts the capital into two halves, Buda and Pest; the Hungarian
football team had once beaten England 6 - 3 in London, and people eat hot
goulash all the time.
There was a lot to learn! And I learnt quickly.
The company sent me to Hungarian language classes at a special school.
Hungarian is very different from English. I had one-to-one lessons with a
pretty teacher called Andrea.
She was a lovely young woman, with dark brown hair, blue eyes and a
beautiful smile, and she seemed to understand me very well. Our lessons

3
soon became lessons outside class hours, and slowly we fell in love.
Eighteen months later we got married.
Each day of the week I walk to work and back from our flat in the Thirteenth
District. I work in a new office on Vaci urca, and it takes me about thirty
minutes to get there. My usual working day is half past eight in the morning
to six in the evening. I generally enjoy my work. The offices are light and
modern, and I like the people I work with.
Andrea works at different times during the day, teaching Hungarian to
foreigners in a number of schools and companies. She also teaches some
students at home.
We live on the Pest side of the city, not far from the Danube. The old part of
the Thirteenth District where we live is an area of narrow streets full of small
shops, bars and restaurants. It still feels like an old city. And it was in one of
these streets that I met myself.


Chapter 3

A search

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.

4
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.

5
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

6
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.


Chapter 4

7 Felka utca

As I walked to work the next day - Tuesday - I planned my evening. I had
decided that last night the man had come out of the building at about five to
seven. I had just been in time to see the start of the seven o'clock news on

television in the wine bar, and only a few minutes had passed between him
knocking me over and the news. I wanted to go back there that evening at
the same time.
The day seemed to take a long time to pass. At work, I had the meeting with
Peter to talk about the difficulty of the day before. We talked about our
problems and came to a friendly agreement. I had lunch in the office
restaurant as usual, but didn't say more than a few words to anyone. In
fact, during the day, two or three people asked me if I was feeling ill. I said
that I was fine, just thinking about a difficult work problem. That evening I
left the office at six o’clock. I walked quickly to the street where I had first
seen the man. Soon I found the door; it was number 7 Felka utca. While I
waited, I looked at the street carefully. It was short and dark, and there was
still a lot of snow around from yesterday. On either side of the street were
blocks of flats which had been built in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Most of them were dirty and in bad condition. On many
of them you could still see the holes the gunshots had made during the
fighting in World War II or the 1956 revolution. The blocks were all five
floors high with big front doors. At this time on a winter evening only one or
two kitchen windows were lit as people made their evening meals.

7
I waited, walking slowly up and down. It was cold. I felt a bit like a private
detective in an American film. A few people walked along the street, but
mainly it was as quiet as it had been the night before. As the time got near,
I stood opposite the entrance to number 7 with the wall behind my back.
Nothing happened. At seven o'clock, a woman with a small dog came along
the street and went in through the door, but then there was nothing to see.
And there was certainly nobody like myself there.
I went over to the door of number 7, and looked at the names beside the
bells for each flat. I don't know what I expected to find. But there were just

the usual Hungarian family names, and a couple of small companies that had
offices on the ground floor of the building.
Then I walked to the bar where I'd gone the night before. I walked along
Felka utca, crossed the road and went into Gergely utca. I found the bar,
and went down the steps and into the smoky room. I ordered a red wine.
The barman looked at me.
'Did you find your friend, then?' he asked
I was surprised. 'I'm sorry?' I replied, coughing into my wine.
'The man you were looking for last night,' he said. 'Did you find him?'
'No, I'm afraid I didn't,' I answered. 'That's why I'm here, really. I was
hoping I might see him tonight.'
'What's he like then, this friend of yours?' asked the barman.
'Well, he's. . . er. . . he's. . . ' I stopped. The barman looked at me, waiting.
'He looks very much like me, actually. '
'I can't say that I've seen anyone like you here,' he said. 'But then I only
bought the place six weeks ago, so I don't really know everyone who comes
in here yet. Just the usual people who are in here now.'
A man came up to the bar, and I moved away, watching the end of the news
on the television and drinking my wine. I looked at the people in the room -
they all looked just like those I'd seen the night before. But there was no-
one like me. I decided to leave.
When I got home I was pleased to find a note from Andrea on the kitchen
table. It said that she was out teaching a new student - so I didn't have to
make up any more stories about where I'd been.

8

***

That night I had a strange dream. In my dream, I heard the noise of a door

shutting loudly. I was running out of a building and I ran into someone. A
man. He fell down. I turned to say sorry. I saw that it was me lying on the
ground. I woke up feeling afraid and cold in the dark, although the bedroom
was nice and warm. The strange thing was that it was as if the dream had
changed everything round: because in the dream it was me who ran out of
the building, not the man, and when I looked at the man on the ground it
was myself.
Suddenly, Andrea woke up.
'What's the matter, love?' she asked sleepily, turning on the light.
I couldn't speak at first. She sat up and looked at me. 'You look bad,' she
said. She sounded worried. 'Do you feel ill?'
'No,' I started. 'No. It was. . . just. . . just a dream.' 'Poor darling,' she said,
holding my head and kissing me on the cheek. 'Come on, let's try and get
some sleep.'
I lay down again. She turned off the light and soon went back to sleep. But I
lay there in bed, looking at the four walls in the dark, watching the dream
over and over again in the cinema inside my head.
I felt afraid, but I didn't really understand what it was that I was afraid of.


Chapter 5

I tell Andrea

And so my new life began. Every day that week I went to work, every night I
waited outside the house at number 7 Felka utca, and then I spent time in
the bar. And every night I had the same dream and woke up feeling afraid in
the dark. And if I went back to sleep, I had the dream again. And if I didn't
go back to sleep, I lay in bed in the dark trying to understand what was

9
happening to me. Apd every morning I was more and more tired, and I
wasn't nice to Andrea. I felt terrible because of the dreams and because I
was so tired. And I felt worse because Andrea didn't know why I was
arriving late every evening, and I didn't tell her the truth.
Things at work became difficult. I couldn't think about the important things I
had to do. And even worse, the next day I argued with Andrea. She couldn't
understand why I had to go to the Gergely utca bar every night, and of
course I felt I couldn't tell her. And then because I didn't feel good, I started
drinking more than the two glasses of wine I had had the first two nights.
I started staying in the bar much longer because I was afraid to go home
and try to sleep. I was afraid to dream the same dream. On Thursday, when
I came home very late after drinking too much, Andrea had already gone to
bed.
On Friday, I was late home again, but when I got in Andrea was waiting up
for me. She looked very unhappy. Her face was white and her pretty blue
eyes were red. She had been crying.
'John,' she said, as I got some bread and cheese to eat, 'what is the matter?'
I said nothing as I ate.
'John,' she tried again, 'you must tell me what happened. You've changed
completely. Please …talk to me.’
I looked up at her, this wonderful woman I loved so much, and saw how
much I was hurting her. I felt so terrible that I started crying.
She put her arms around me and talked to me quietly, as if I were a little
child. Then she took my face between her hands.
'Tell me, darling,' she said quietly. 'I want to help you.'
And so I told her everything. The words came out quickly, and when I'd
finished she suddenly laughed and laughed.
'It's not funny,' I said angrily.
'No, darling,' she answered. 'It's not funny at all, but I feel so happy.' She

stopped laughing, and continued in a serious voice. 'You see, I thought you'd
found somebody else. Another woman.'
After that we held each other and kissed for a very long time. Then she
made me tell her the story again, very slowly. She kept asking questions,

10
trying to get all the information about every part of it.
'Right,' she said. 'Tomorrow is Saturday, and neither of us is working. We'll
go round to number 7 Felka utca and start asking some questions. I'm sure
there's a very easy answer to this story.'
I felt so happy. She was so sweet and good and I was sure that everything
was going to be all right.

Chapter 6

Talking to the housekeepers

The next day was very sunny, though still very cold. The strong sunshine
made me feel more hopeful about the future, now that I had told Andrea
about what had happened. I finally felt good after an excellent night's sleep
- it was the first time I hadn't dreamt about meeting myself for nearly a
week.
At ten o'clock we walked round to Felka utca. I was really pleased that
Andrea was with me; although my Hungarian was good, she would be able
to talk to people much more easily than me.
The first person we spoke to was the housekeeper - the lady who had the
small ground-floor flat near the door in return for doing jobs in the building,
such as cleaning the stairs and checking the lift and the lights.
We asked her a lot of questions. When we asked if there was anybody who
looked like me living in the flats she looked at me for a long time, and then

said there wasn't. Andrea next asked her how long she'd worked there; the
answer was twenty-one years. And did she know everybody? She did. And
were there any new families? There weren't. And were there any men
looking like me who'd lived here and then moved away lately? There
weren't. We thanked her, and left.
Out in the street, we looked at each other. I was starting to think I must be
imagining everything. 'Perhaps it was a visitor,' said Andrea, realising how
bad I felt.
'Or perhaps,' I said, 'perhaps he lives in the other building, where the bar is,

11
and I didn't see where he went.'
'Maybe,' said Andrea. 'Let's go and try.'
We walked round to Gergely utca and stopped outside the bar.
'So,' she said, looking down the steps to the cellar, 'this is where you've
been spending your evenings!'
My face went red. 'Sorry,' I said.
'I'm joking, love!' she said laughing. 'Look - the main entrance to the block
of flats is next door. It would have been easy for you to mistake which one
he went into in the dark and snow.'
'Yes, you're right,' I answered.
But I kept thinking about the fact that there had been no footprints in the
snow.
Inside the building we met another housekeeper. This time it was a man in
his fifties who'd worked there for twelve years. We asked the same
questions as we had asked before, and got the same answers. He'd never
seen anyone there who looked like me.
I felt very bad after these second answers. I thought that Andrea would
think there was something wrong with me. Andrea took my hand.
'Come on,' she said, laughing. 'Let's go and have a drink in your famous

bar!'
I was so surprised that I didn't have time to say anything as I followed her
down the steps.
The barman welcomed me with a friendly smile and a joke about good
friends bringing more friends. I introduced him to Andrea, then we took our
wine and stood in a corner and talked about what had happened.
'There is one important thing about all of this, Andrea,' I said when we
seemed to have talked about it all. 'And I know it sounds very strange, but I
don't think this person just looked like me. I think it was me.'
I'd said this to her before when I'd told her the first time, and she'd laughed
and said it was impossible. But I had a feeling deep inside me that I was
right.
'But, John,' she asked, 'how could that be?'
'I don't know, love,' I replied. 'I just feel it. So perhaps we shouldn't be

12
looking for someone who, lives in these buildings now. Perhaps we should be
looking for someone who, well. . . er. . . someone who's dead. And who I
am, now.
Andrea looked at me very hard.
'John,' she said, 'I've never heard you say anything like this before. What do
you mean?'
'I wish I knew what I meant,' I said with difficulty. 'All I know is that I have
a strange idea inside my head that tells me these things are possible.'
We finished our drink without speaking and left.
'Andrea,' I said as we walked home, 'you must believe me. I need your help
to try and understand what's happened to me.'
'I'm trying to believe you, love,' she answered, turning to look at me. 'It's
just that it's very difficult to understand.'
'It's difficult for me, too,' I said.

Chapter 7

Doppelganger

After that Saturday my life returned to what it had been, in one way. I went
back to work on Monday and I was my old self, and things went well. I didn't
have the dreams at night any more. And I didn't visit Felka utca and the bar
every night either, although I still went in once or twice a week.
But there were also big changes. The next Wednesday Andrea came home
from a visit to the doctor's with big news: she was expecting a baby! We
were extremely happy. We had often talked about starting a family, but
hadn't thought it would happen quite so soon. And then the day after that
she lost her biggest teaching job - fifteen hours a week with an international
bank. They didn't want to pay for Hungarian lessons for the people who
worked there any more. The ups and downs of life!
A week or so later I told Zsolt - the wine cellar barman - that Andrea had
lost her most important job. He said he was looking for someone to help him
in the bar. He said it wasn't a job for an 'intelligent lady' like my wife, but he