The Night of the Gifts by Jorge Luis Borges

It was many years ago in the old Confitería del Águila, on Florida Street up around Piedad, that we heard this story. The problem of knowledge was being discussed. Someone invoked the platonic theory that we have already seen everything in a previous world, so that to know is to know again. My father, I believe, said that Bacon had written that if to learn is to remember, not to know is in fact to have forgotten. Another person, a man getting on in years, who was probably a bit lost in metaphysics, decided to enter in. Speaking slowly and deliberately this is what he told us:

Frankly, I don't understand all this talk of platonic archetypes. Nobody remembers the first time he saw the colour yellow or black, or the first time he tasted a certain fruit maybe because he was small then and had no way of knowing he was initiating a very long series. Of course, there are other first times that no one forgets. I can tell you what a certain night of my life gave me, one I often recall the night of the thirtieth of April, 1874.