Free Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig

something had changed during the time he had spent with his neighbours. Some things were missing and some things hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t say what belonged to him and what didn’t, nor did he have the slightest idea how he could possibly work that out. The more he looked around the room, the less he could tell.
    He stepped outside the front door again and again, but the name on it remained the same.
    He rang the neighbours’ doorbell and woke them up with the excuse that he had forgotten something. What he had left behind could not be found, but they did find the pictures they had spoken about earlier. The ones they had wanted to show him. He looked through them now. They were old photographs, and the year printed on the back showed they had been taken at a time when he could not have known his two neighbours. And yet, one of the faces in the pictures exactly matched the face staring back at him from the mirror.
    He gave up and lay down on the bed. A phone call interrupted his thoughts. A stranger who claimed to be his friend absolutely had to see him that night. That very moment, in fact.
    When he walked into the bar, he had no idea whom he was supposed to meet. Nor did he know how he was meant to recognize this so-called friend. Yet the friend was there, waiting, and beckoned him over to his table.
    From the first sentence, it was clear that this man also took him for the person his neighbours believed him to be. After a while the stranger was as familiar to him as if they had been childhood friends. This friend even knew his past though they hadn’t spoken about it.
    Back at his flat, the earlier disarray had now become a familiar order. Everything was in its place, at least so it seemed. He got his bearings and closed his eyes, confident that when he reopened them, everything would be as it should.
    The next morning, he set off for the office in an area he had never been in before. Or maybe he had, it was hard to tell. He entered the office, greeted his colleagues and was greeted in return. He sat at a desk he sensed was his desk, but he was far from certain. He asked questions and was asked questions and gave answers. He made some calls, drafted letters and signed documents as if he had never done anything else.
    Hours later his neighbour greeted him as if for the first time and said that she and her husband were looking forward to getting to know him and to becoming good neighbours.
    The name on his door was not the same one he had signed on letters in the office. He went into the flat. What he discovered was new, different from what he remembered had been there that morning. Once again he looked through the wardrobes and cupboards for documents and compared his face to the picture on the identity card, which looked exactly like him.
    The doorbell rang and a woman was standing in the room. She had come to pick him up. She knew that otherwise he would have kept her waiting again or not shown up at all. She had been trying to reach him all day. They needed to talk, now. He didn’t know the woman, but they talked things out. Just when he thought she had calmed down and they were back on track, she announced that it was all over. He agreed and so they split up. He took her home and returned to his flat.
    This happened often now. The names on his door kept changing. Each morning he left his flat and was recognized, even if not as the person he thought he was at the time. People knew who he was meant to be, or at least seemed to know. He was whoever they wanted to see in him. Without any effort or subterfuge , and no matter how he behaved, he always seemed to meet their expectations.
    For a while he responded to people only hesitantly, since they always had the better of him, but he soon overcame what seemed like memory lapses or absentmindedness . With each encounter he found it easier to adapt to every new situation. People took him to be the one they perceived, and he became the one they expected him to