I’ll tell you the strangest thing that happened to me.

Let me adopt a suitable tense. An appropriate voice. Nothing too dramatic, or self-serious. No Latinisms or flashes of pedantry. Because all of this happened exactly as I’m writing it down.

I usually take a walk before breakfast. As soon as the sun rises, I get this neurotic, clock-ticking impatience in me, as I feel the day’s only hour of true sublimity is already evaporating into the banality of morning. It happens again around an hour before dusk (I hope I don’t sound like a madman).

I live on an island that takes about an hour to walk around. You usually meet very few people on the road at dawn. Sometimes there is a storekeeper or two, getting ready to walk down the hill to open up for the day’s visitors. Sometimes there’s a policeman just starting his day (not that anything very dramatic ever happens on this island).

That morning I started out later than usual, which is why I was so ready to believe what I saw. The first boat drops by at six, the second one at seven, so it’s perfectly feasible to bump into people you know. If I sound eccentric you must understand I’m not trying to justify myself, I’m just explaining all the mechanisms of what happened. If I don’t explain them correctly, there’s a chance you might miss something.

The bakery is always the last shop I pass before I set out on the island road proper. Then there’s nothing ...