A reflection

“And so I said it. I doubt my own perception, and I am out of my mind. But still: At the street of the village, in the middle of the crowd, I suddenly felt dizzy(...) And I see him, that Norwegian friend of Andrew's. (...) His stare was like this: I know you have seen me, but it doesn't really matter.”

Ira, who is this man? Yet another character for me to puzzle? Or someone I know? Someone I actually know?

It hit me today, as I was re-reading this email: there is something in here that hints to something else — the paragraph about Andrew’s Norwegian friend gives me a feeling of...I can only describe it as memory. The sudden feeling of something very distinct, a body memory, something it’s been part of. I am trying to recall, a Norwegian man seen in a crowd in a Russian village, far from anywhere I’ve ever been. I read it again, and then I look up from the computer screen and into the window in front of me. And here it is, with this paragraph, this flashing memory, as if at the same time Ira is watching her reflection in the mirror, a greasy train window on the way home from the town market near the Volga, and as we both look up, we see not our own reflections, but each other’s. Her mouth, her squinted right eye, coming out of a giggle and into that distinct contemplation that comes with watching one’s own face move over dark trees and barley fields, or as in this case, someone else’s, a Norwegian writer, with the Eastern hills in the distance. A double exposure, twice doubled.

That is a vague attempt of trying to describe the feeling that comes over me, like a flash of body memory, when I read about Ira seeing the Norwegian man.

Ira. “I know you have seen me, but it doesn’t matter.”