“S. reminds himself to be vigilant, to observe anything about his past self, but his thoughts keep drifting to Sola, to where she might be, to whether he’ll ever come close to finding her again.”

S. tries to discover more about Vévoda, but despite the importance of the questions being addressed S. finds that the conversation lacks intensity and his thoughts drift back to Sola. S. observes the behavior of the other members of the group and tries to pick up on any clues that would tell him anything about his past, but his thoughts keep drifting to Sola.

I think it’s safe to say that at this point Sola, or the idea of Sola, is definitely another aspect of S.’s past life. It seems as though finding her again is the best way to reconnect with his past self.

Eric makes a connection between Ostrero’s behavior and Garcia Ferrara, one of the possible identities of V.M. Straka:

Garcia Ferrara notoriously moody/melancholy. Picasso did a blue-period portrait of him but destroyed it b/c it made him too sad to look at it. (See: The Many Faces of Tiago Garcia Ferrara By J. Llorens.)

G.F. must’ve been a complete mess in those last years, when he had so many good reasons to be despressed.

In a later note Eric replies to Jen’s note with:

Not the reasons we thought.

But still: Very good reasons.

This is not the first time that Jen and Eric have likened Ostrero to Ferrara (see p. 124), and Eric gives another identifies another clue that reinforces their claim. If the characters in S.’s travel group really are representations of various Straka candidates, that could be an indication of a link between them. Maybe they were all members of the group S? Jen and Eric may have discovered this based on their response to Jen’s initial note.