THE THREE OF US were sitting side by side, Olga, me, Helena. They had their names and their boundaries, mother and daughter. I had nothing. I was a stranger. I remained a stranger. I would vanish as strangers do. I had already begun to vanish.

I returned to the square at night. I returned to the image of the three of us, sitting the way we did now, beneath the arches, in the dark sultry evening some distance from the stage, on the outskirts of the crowd. It was cold on the ferry, but I was back in the warm night. My fingers were stiff. I was back, looking at the palm tree, which was level with my eyes, I was huge. I was a giant. I saw everything from the outside and from above. I saw the teens on the square, saw them like ants. I saw their lives stretch before them and trail them like tails, childhood memories, summer memories, memories that appeared as one body but were in fact many events that had folded together, piled up. The impulses and the recollections of particular flavors and feelings. To bite into an ice cube. To be held by the sea.

In reality there was a beginning and an end. In memory there was only this square and this night, infinite, constant. I saw Olga turn around and look at me, by the sea. By Helena’s side. And I saw my own face, hiding nothing. I saw what she saw. I saw myself following her, pursuing her, through life.

I was no longer in my own body. I was in the story I was telling myself. I was preparing a memory for later.

For three days on the square they’d been showing the world championships in harpoon fishing on a screen in front of the city hall. And there was a thunderstorm, a couple of nights later there was a thunderstorm.

That’s how it happened.