In Atlanta, there is a man who so resembles me, people who know me are startled when they see him. I have never met him, but I know of him and he knows of me. He likes art and often attends exhibits sponsored by galleries. Many of the owners of the galleries tell me they have mistaken him for me, and are stunned when they learn he is only a look-alike. They say he takes it all in good stride, vowing that, some day, he is going to call me for a meeting. If I had his name, I would call him.

Fern Weisel was a woman who had looked remarkably like Amelita Galli-Curci. Avrum had pictures of both women, and one day, sitting on his bench with a photo album that covered his life in a tale of austere but stiffly smiling faces—staring as unmoving for the camera as they might have for an executioner’s gun—he had put the pictures of the two women side by side and asked if I could pick out the real Amelita. I couldn’t. I thought they were of the same person and that it was another of Avrum’s tricks.

“So, you see,” Avrum proclaimed triumphantly, “the eye is a liar.” He tapped his chest with his forefinger. “Only this knows.”

And then he told me of Fern Weisel.

He had met her while working as an interpreter at Ellis Island. It was a stunning thing, seeing her across a crowd of people, believing that she was Amelita Galli-Curci. When he learned that he was wrong, that he was merely seeing a look-alike, he made his way to her and introduced himself.

She became his lover.

It was, after so many years, a laughable matter to Avrum, but he confessed that he had tried to fashion Fern into Amelita. He purchased dresses for her that resembled costumes Amelita Galli-Curci wore in her performances. He forced her to listen to his records of Amelita Galli-Curci. He encouraged her to sing. She was tone-deaf. Avrum’s effort was a failure. “She was like my wife,” he lamented. “She did not love the music. She loved only the gifts and the bed.” He smiled merrily when he spoke of the bed. “Ja. Her music was in the bed.”

The liaison lasted only a year, Avrum admitted. He could not abide an imitator, even if it was he who had created the imitation, and even if the imitator was a lover worth bragging about.

“Only this knows,” he said again, again tapping his chest with his forefinger.