The traceless existence of NN

In the empty compartment, NN put her bag on a seat across. The train ride was to take three hours. It was raining outside; stripping the featureless station of any remaining uniqueness. 

The train was scheduled to depart in three minutes. NN glimpsed at her ticket. Destination: Hechingen. That did not tell her anything. 

She received it and the booking information per post, as always. The envelope contained only printouts, no note from Sitora this time. A ticket to 'Hechingen' and two booking confirmations for hotels, one for three days and another for a week. On top of the ticket was a name, the same one she used for almost two months. 

'Monika Drews'.

Over the course of last year, the only year of her life she remembered, NN changed five names. They all appeared the same way: a plastic identity card in the white envelope, with no address on it. It would just lay on the table of the hotel room, waiting for her. 

Three of these names sounded German and two - Armenian. Was there a hint? Maybe her dark hair and olive skin marked her origin. 

The train started its movement with a five-minute delay. 

"How German", she thought. "Typical Deutsche Bahn."*

This thought was not hers, an echo of the knowledge she possessed before. She got used to ignoring it.

A gentleman in uniform checked her ticket; they exchanged appropriate smiles; he wished her a pleasant journey and went on with his life. 

She picked up her bag again, leaving nothing behind. The characterless void of an empty compartment reminded NN of her life. 

In a restaurant car, she got a black coffee in a to-go cup (no plastic lid for the environment's sake) and a sandwich. She paid with the card, as always with the short pinch of worry. The amount of money there or its source was unknown to her. 

Sitora gave her the card, one of the last times they saw each other. Before it was always cash, coming in envelopes.

'Be a dear and do not write down the pin code on some slip of paper next to the card, alrighty?' Her lips curled in a smirk. The name on the card was also 'Monika'. Did this Monika actually exist or did she just appear out of thin air; a person with no past, but with the ID card and a bank account? 

Sitora knew more about NN's life than NN herself. She was also the only person, connecting her with the past. 

When NN woke up for the first conscious time in her new life, she was alone in an empty hotel room. Her mind was empty. She knew things: bits and pieces of knowledge but did not know how they were gathered.

In the beginning, she was completely alone. There was just a short letter on a nightstand, a few simple sentences, telling that everything is, in fact, under control and that she should just wait. These were the least comforting words in her life. First days were blurry in her memory: they were just panic and loneliness. 

NN made a sip. Coffee tasted like a handful of cliches. She looked around: there were several people in the car, all immersed in their lives. Two overdressed ladies talked; they both had round concerned faces and smartphones lied screen down on the table. A lost-looking gentleman in a suit was trying feeding a baby. The baby was screaming, its face ruby read. A teenager with a ponytail was reading a book and eating a pasta dish simultaneously, moving a fork with a distant frozen look on his face. 

NN recently quitted reading. It just became too much. There was always her past, lurking between the pages. 

Last time it happened, she was reading a thriller, bought in the station's bookstore. It was naive in its genre's dedication, full of plot twists and exquisite violence. NN was almost enjoying it, until sudden realisation, that she scoffed at almost every mention of a handgun. It was prompted not by her pacifistic nature, but by the evident total obliviousness of the author. 

It made NN wonder yet again, where did this knowledge come from. 

She asked Sitora some questions, the first time they met. 

They did not have a good first encounter. Sitora just appeared in the NN's hotel room, holding an envelope; NN remembered the horror when the door to her room just opened, and a young woman confidently walked in, hands in her pockets, a tiny smirk on her face. 

'Unless I have been misinformed somehow, you have no idea who I am, right?' she asked with a twist of a smile. NN screamed then in response and threw a chair in her direction. Their first meeting was lacking cinematic fleur.

But later, after NN calmed down, and they both sat in front of each other, some vague explanation was given. ('My name is Sitora, and I know some stuff about you.')

NN asked questions, spitting them out, shaking from adrenaline: 'What happened to me?', 'What is going on?' and, the most important one, 'Who am I?'.

Sitora smiled then and said:

'Darling, what do you think should have happened, for you to be hidden alone in a small German village?' 

NN did not have an answer. It all was surreal. 

'I don't know, but I would like finding out.'

NN remembered that horrible expectant feeling, the certainty that she will find out something terrible. The taste of bad news on the tip of her tongue.

'You want to know the truth?' Sitora uttered slowly as if enjoying each syllable. She had a short haircut and a boyish face with sharp Asian features. 'Well, darling, I am afraid I can't really help you.'

'What do you mean?' 

'I can't explain it either,' Sitora kept smiling. Her smile did not reflect any kindness. She was just moving the corners of her mouth. 'I am not allowed to. But what I can say is that you will find out everything eventually. And — I will be honest with you — it will be the worst moment of your life.'

The train stopped suddenly and then there was an apologetic announcement delivered in a calm female voice. NN spoke German quite well, but she was clearly not a native speaker, neither spent too much time in the country. 

The teenager with the book looked up to the ceiling and sighed, conveying his displeasure to the train's highest powers. 

NN bit into her sandwich. 

Sitora words were dissatisfying, and NN felt desperate, 'You said you knew something about me!' 

'I do,' Sitora kept smiling. 'But it is not my goal here to tell you some touching origin story. I am just here to assure you that your safety is my main concern. You will not see me much, but I will always be somewhere around, protecting you.'

She stood up, opened a minibar and took out a little plastic bottle of orange juice.

'You will be travelling around a lot too,' she continued, her fingers slowly unscrewing the cap. 'Think about it as a vacation.'

'I have no idea who are you,' NN said, feeling anger taking control of her being. Her hands were shaking now.

'I am a friend', Sitora winked.

The rain was getting stronger. They were still standing in the middle of nowhere: watching grey hills outside and waiting for the technical difficulties to be resolved. 

A group of young people walked into the car. They all were loud and were wearing big backpacks. Their strong voices were impossible to ignore, so NN listened disinterestedly.

There was some money talk, who gives money to whom; 'It's always you with your fifty euro notes, it is ridiculous', some exchange has been made; a girl in the oversized jacket kept repeating the prices from the list with the nervous bewilderment, 'four euros for a coffee, Jonas, do you see it too?'.

NN closed her eyes for a second, not allowing herself to wonder what kind of a person she was when she was younger. No. Her only security is in the obliviousness.

In the beginning, there was only anger. Her whole empty existence was dedicated to learning, finding the truth. 

She spent hours in front of the computer, trying to find herself, anything about herself. There was nothing.

She studied her own body in the hope of finding clues; small scars on her thigh, constant pain in her wrist, slight weakness of her left ear, did it all mean something? 

She was writing her dreams down, hoping they will be the keys. 

'Who am I?' That was the main question. And then another one: 'What has happened to me?'

At first, she did not need moving around too often. She almost always stayed in small, family-run hotels in German towns or villages. It gave her time to get used to the room and learn the local names of baking goods. 

But the pace increased, and after a while, NN was moving almost every two weeks. 

And then she got a new name for the first time. As she looked at the plastic card with her face and someone else's name on it (or was it hers?), NN suddenly felt terror, falling on her knees, shivering, struggling to breathe in. 

Next time she saw Sitora, she asked her what her real name was. They were in Tuebingen, small university village, and NN's hotel room had a bath with a bathtub and a balcony. Sitora shrugged.

'I do not know, darling. How about NN?'

'What?'

'Nomen nescio. It's Latin,' she stressed the word 'Latin'. 'Means 'I do not know your damn name''. 

Nothing made sense. That was the worst. Her non-existent life was built on senseless mysteries. Whoever was orchestrating her life, clearly had enough money for the documents and her long hotel stays. 

But if she was in hiding, why not send her to some village far away and make her stay there, far from anything, just waiting for her memory to come back? 

The alternative idea was: this mysterious person wanted to trigger her memory somehow. But if that was true, why didn't they tell her anything about her past?

The train started moving again. 

Young people got their coffees, sandwiches and pasta dishes and got around a table. The concerned girl was still complaining about prices. 

NN finished her food and stood up. She needed to kill some time, and usually, sudoku or something seemingly mindless like that assisted her perfectly.

One of the girls with the big backpack looked up, and her face changed a bit, her eyes directed at NN. Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something.

The body moved on reflex. She picked up her bag and jumped out of the restaurant car, running towards her compartment. In her car, she burst into the toilet and locked the door behind her. Her heart was racing. 

Once, in the middle of the night, she awoke to a vague nightmare that she would be unable to retell. In the midst of the murky dread was a question. What if whoever was now in control of her non-life wanted her memories? 

That simultaneously made many sense and none at all and quickly became an obsession.

Every new town was approached with suspicion. Why was she here? Was she some sort of compass, pointing to something or someone? What could every new memory bring her?

NN crawled on the metallic floor of the train's toilet. Fear was overwhelming and affected every part of her body. She couldn't think. Did that girl actually recognize her, or was it just an illusion?

There was a knock on the door.

NN tried to breath quieter, not getting up from the floor. The sound of her heart was so loud now; like it crawled from her chest up to her throat. Was her past right there, behind this metallic door? Were all the answers waiting for her now? (Her name, her age, her family, maybe?)

It all got so much worse after that dream. NN wasn't sure of anything, and all she had left were crazy theories of her origin. Perhaps she saw something, and they (Who are "they"? Who would need something like that?) want to make her remember everything. 

She tried on a variety of roles. The whole thing had turned into a strange game of Cluedo, "where, with what weapons and who"?

And one day it just became too much. NN could not care anymore. 

She was in the middle of a confusing mystery she could not unravel. And the solution that seemed to be there, apart from the one with the suicidal undertones, was to give up. 

No more looking for memories or her true self. NN will be safest if she will play along. And the game seemed to be connected to the fact that she knew nothing of her past.

NN sat on the floor for a long time, staring into nowhere. 

The train stopped, a female in the ceiling announced the station. 

NN stood up and opened the door.

There was no one behind it.

_____

*Deutsche Bahn - a railway company, a frequent object of jokes in Germany