THE DIMMER DOPPELGANGER

Domingo Sabatinos

I often wonder what it must be like to see the world through the eyes of Domingo Sabatinos.

Here is a writer like no other.

At home in exile, dissolute yet devout, Sabatinos has charmed close readers of experimental fiction for years. Heir to Borges and Cortázar, he resembles them only in his ferocious originality and his deep commitment to Turgenev.

He often writes about love but never from the point of view of advocacy. To Sabatinos, love is an unfortunate affliction, something of a handicap like a stutter or a limp. He's won nearly every conceivable literary prize save for the Nobel, though he's been a front running candidate for years.

I met him in Cannes where a film adaptation of his short story Berel the Clown was screened. He was accompanied by an impressive bevy of young Eastern European starlets including Anca Papanasi and Maldina Amandine. 

There's something suspicious about his demeanor. Whenever he's approached by a journalist or a fan he reaches for his coat pocket with a nervous, jolting gesture as if he were a bouncer or a poorly trained policeman. It's said that he carries a 247 Beretta though I know of no one who has actually seen it. This uncertainty only adds to the mystique but I hear that militant gun advocates are quickly losing patience with what they see as a childish hoax. 
 
He's never been married though he's been linked to several young American poets. The fact that he allows himself to be photographed while in the company of beautiful actresses but is never seen in public with a woman of letters is supposed to somehow attest to his seriousness.

I'd love to get to know him better but with his uncanny resemblance to the Los Angeles artist David Schoffman, I feel that there's almost no need to. 

Strong physical resemblances between unrelated people are an occult reflection in an unsettling physiognomic lottery. At this point, to pursue a relationship with the real Sabatinos might seem like an unnecessary defection. 

I suppose I'm stuck with the dimmer doppelgänger.