Cathy Caruth argues that trauma is essentially a "missed encounter" and

belatedness and incomprehensibility always plague survivors because of a "temporal

delay that carries [them] beyond the shock of the first encounter."228 Herman and

Masha's curious ritual of lovemaking is related to the nature of trauma as a missed

encounter and the mystery of survival. Through their intense love affair, Herman and

Masha face and reprocess their trauma in order to fully claim their survival. For both

characters, their survival is an inexplicable miracle comparable to that of the Exodus. In

both miracles, the shackling force of the past and the crippling desubjectification are so

powerful, and the duration of excruciating agony so long, that survivors have a hard time

accepting and claiming their renewed life even after they finally become free. To borrow

Caruth's expression, they have difficulty "awakening to life" after "surviving their

trauma without knowing it."229

 An interesting point about the role of narratives in Herman and Masha's

relationship is that through their narratives they engage simultaneously in remembering

and forgetting. Basing his research on trauma and mourning on Freud's "Mourning and

Melancholia," Dominick LaCapra ponders the issues of acting out and working through.

Unlike melancholia, which statically implicates and fixates the bereaved in the perpetual

endless circuit of grief, mourning involves both ceremonial remembering and letting go.

LaCapra especially emphasizes how the latter requires "controlled symbolic doses of

absence and renunciation."23

 LaCapra's theory illuminates the significance of Herman and Masha's narrative re-

enactment of their pain and losses. By repeatedly staging and playing out their traumatic

losses in a highly controlled environment with a sympathetic other, they attempt to