2. Déambulations: First Nina Interlude

The sky erupts in thunder and I find refuge next to a stranger under the awning of an apartment building. The space is tight but if we stay still, only the tips of our toes will get wet. I look up to smile and commiserate, but she is lost in her book. It’s in Russian! She reads. Nina Berberova Kursiv moi, The Italics are Mine.

I peek.

“I loved and love life and love the meaning of life almost as much. (...) With no deliberate effort on my part, the meaning of life will unfold, the meaning of my life or indeed of every life. The meaning will never be put before life itself to obstruct it. It will creep into the tale and coexist with time and space and other things which are on the same level for me as the air (...) I breathe. I will speak of things that were essential to me, “knowledge of oneself”, liberation of oneself, revelation of oneself, maturity that grants the right to this revelation, and solitude in an anthill.”

She flips the page.

“Moments of ecstasy and ‘overflowing of the soul’ always occurred in solitude. Life bared its essence gradually to me: at first a picture, then its meaning - a landscape as though on the run, and then its significance, It taught me to read books and see behind the entertaining story; to find a net of questions and answers behind a play, and the fabric of problems behind people’s conversations. Nothing hung in mid-air without contact with what surrounded it, all was bound by threads, every part with the whole - or to use a simile, everything was like a great cobweb of the firmament.”

My brain lights up, my heart is pounding. Should I say something? Privet, no, Zdravstvuyte? Who is this Nina Berberova? I want so much to discuss it with her. Ten years of Russian classes and now all my words evade me. She shuts the book, tucks it under her arm, and leaves. Disappears behind a curtain of rain.