You are trying to remember how
it happened You are trying to
remember these events in a sensible
order The narrator you think met
the old woman on a train
She had been to war or
at least you think you recall
reading that she said she had
The story started on the train
The narrator in this case was
mostly incidental The narrator in this
case was made to listen patiently
and account for The woman’s tale
you recall was too strange to
be told straight You needed to
hear it from a distance From
another mouth or source The narrator
met the woman on a train
She had been to war The
story was about the woman and
her experiences at war or more
precisely in it as a victim
and a corpse and someone who
was marched straight to and through
the brink of death—who gazed
deep into death’s vile and wintry
irises—before saving the crowd
of innocent people she had been
marching with They were on the
side of the road You remember
this detail They were on a
dusty black road being marched to
death and you know this because
the narrator is delivering this information
within a story via another story—
a story told by the old
woman who may or may not
have existed whom he may or
may not have met on a
train who may or may not
but most likely was a part
of the war She was not
a hero She must have been
a hero you think for having
protected all of those people for
sacrificing her own soul her own
hands her own fragile sense of
self and yet there are no
heroes here Not the patient
narrator Not you for trying to
remember Not even the woman who
told the story for war knows
no heroes and makes a fool
of every witness which—right now—
through memory—is both you and
this incidental narrator and whomever you
are telling the story to You
are trying to remember how it
happened There was a woman on
a train This woman told a
story not to you but you
read the story that she told
from the narrator’s point of view
and now you know it How
she abandoned her own consciousness to
swap bodies with the officer She
parted with her own old heart
She left her mind behind She
became a monster and a master
and through this brave and magical
transformation was able to save a
small population of souls or so
she said that day to the
one you know as her train mate