The optimistic Ira
I have not yet been able to respond to Ira's email. I tried, but the options are few as long as I don't know who I am speaking to. "Who are you?" seems a rather rude opening to an email to somwone who has just left the love of her life, and retreated to a Russian village (does she even speak Russian?). I think I am waiting to remember who she is - as if I really know Ira, Andrew and Philip. As if I have just forgotten.
Near the river Volga, in a village, lies a damsel in distress, hopefully sleeping by this point in a B&B. She doesn't know anyone here, and further; she has written to just one person, a person she really trusts, the first person to think of in a crisis, to say she is alive and well. This person is me, and as yet I do not remember anything, not a facial expression, not any of the features of a good friend: how they eat ice cream (head tilted; mouth open, yet a touch withdrawn; eyes concentrating on the melting scoops, nearly popping out and into the ice like glazed cherries), common word-isms they always use ("but" at the end of a sentence, ad nauseam rhyming, lines from The Young Ones).
Meanwhile, I try to understand how she ended up near the Volga, so far away from Stolby and the rocks. There are several rivers much closer to Krasnoyarsk than the Volga; Yensei (certainly very close), Ob, even Lena in the China-way direction. I don't know how Andrew and Philip ended up in St. Petersburg either, writing nothing about their travels. I have this feeling they went on the Trans-Siberian railway, and that something happened on board that train. Andrew, what did you do to her?
As Krasnoyarsk is a stop on the main route of the Trans-Siberian, the group must first have gone to Moscow. Browsing the Trans-Siberian online site, I find that this has been the final stop of the railway since the Revolution. So they must have changed trains to get to St. Petersburg. Is it possible that Ira left the expedition already at this point? (Or did they travel in the years prior to the Revolution - between 1904 and 1917?) And went on another train south? Why, then, did the other two not try to find her, but leave for St. Petersburg on their own?
Or did she perhaps come to St. Petersburg with them, only to leave them there? Are they perhaps waiting for her to come back? A sudden feeling overwhelms me; how is Andrew really taking it? Does he really know that she is ok? What will he do now? All of a sudden, I know what to write.
Near the river Volga, in a village, lies a damsel in distress, hopefully sleeping by this point in a B&B. She doesn't know anyone here, and further; she has written to just one person, a person she really trusts, the first person to think of in a crisis, to say she is alive and well. This person is me, and as yet I do not remember anything, not a facial expression, not any of the features of a good friend: how they eat ice cream (head tilted; mouth open, yet a touch withdrawn; eyes concentrating on the melting scoops, nearly popping out and into the ice like glazed cherries), common word-isms they always use ("but" at the end of a sentence, ad nauseam rhyming, lines from The Young Ones).
Meanwhile, I try to understand how she ended up near the Volga, so far away from Stolby and the rocks. There are several rivers much closer to Krasnoyarsk than the Volga; Yensei (certainly very close), Ob, even Lena in the China-way direction. I don't know how Andrew and Philip ended up in St. Petersburg either, writing nothing about their travels. I have this feeling they went on the Trans-Siberian railway, and that something happened on board that train. Andrew, what did you do to her?
As Krasnoyarsk is a stop on the main route of the Trans-Siberian, the group must first have gone to Moscow. Browsing the Trans-Siberian online site, I find that this has been the final stop of the railway since the Revolution. So they must have changed trains to get to St. Petersburg. Is it possible that Ira left the expedition already at this point? (Or did they travel in the years prior to the Revolution - between 1904 and 1917?) And went on another train south? Why, then, did the other two not try to find her, but leave for St. Petersburg on their own?
Or did she perhaps come to St. Petersburg with them, only to leave them there? Are they perhaps waiting for her to come back? A sudden feeling overwhelms me; how is Andrew really taking it? Does he really know that she is ok? What will he do now? All of a sudden, I know what to write.
posted by singingwhale at 11:29 PM
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