Summary

The narrator escapes to the beautiful Heybald Island, where he observes many other Christians who are fleeing the plague. There he fishes daily with the local fishermen and daydreams about Hoja who he imagines has died. Yet he passionately longs for him, he writes, “just as I do now” (89), that is, while he is writing this book. He thinks about escaping to his country, but concludes that the only way to be free was to imagine that the uncanny resemblance between them represents a false memory or an illusion.

Then one day when he is sunning himself with his eyes closed, he feels Hoja's “shadow” (89) over him. Hoja takes his slave back home to their house on the mainland where the narrator observes the absence of the mirror. Claiming the right to punish him for running away and abandoning him on his deathbed, Hoja...