After that the police changed tack and started to ask me about what I had observed on board the plane. I really had no idea what to say. This was the very first time in my life that I had been on a plane, and my observations had been so many and various, so complex and confused that I did not know where to start. When I asked them what kind of thing they meant, the two policemen started interrogating me with a particular aim in mind; in fact the whole thing boiled down to a single question: What had I heard of the private conversation between the two men from my home town? Just at that moment I realized that the two men I had sat next to were no ordinary passengers and my current predicament had come about because I had overheard – or rather could understand – their discussion. They thought if they jabbered away in their thick regional dialect no one would understand a word they said, and so they had been discussing something secret as if there were no other people around them – in fact walls have ears and everything they said could have been noted down.

No wonder they were so worried.

No wonder this stray sheep had been rounded up.

To tell you the truth, I hadn’t heard them say anything special. To begin with they had not been speaking in my regional dialect and I am not the kind of person who is driven to chat to passing strangers, besides which this was the first time I had ever been on a plane and I was really excited until I discovered that there was nothing special about it. Once the plane had actually taken off, I felt that there was nothing to it and just sat there, watching the television with the earphones on. It was only when I took the earphones off that I noticed they had switched to speaking in my regional dialect and once I had heard that, I felt like I had been joined by my family and immediately started chatting to them. I had absolutely no idea what they had been talking about before. I dare say this all sounded as though I was making it up, but I swear that I am telling the truth.