—

Kosmos was asleep on my bed, eyebrows up. In Paris I had often found him waiting for me like this in my room. His body, at rest, vulnerable.

He stirred, said, Come to bed?

His touch was careful, fingers turning the pages of an old and brittle photo album. Was this what he remembered? Was this? What had happened since we had held each other, untroubled strangers, in Paris? I think we were trying to figure out if we loved each other. Our bodies did. With touch we asked each other, What happened to you? A baby. What happened to you? A war. Who are you now? How long is love? How short?

Love out of time. Eleven years apart. We told each other what had happened since the day he disappeared. He wanted to know everything about Biddy. He wanted to know how I lived, about my writing, about why I had to come to Sarajevo. He told me about his job managing a small theatre. There was little work in his city and less for artists. I asked if he had had girlfriends, perhaps a wife. He laughed and said marriage was not in his destiny, and I felt his mask slipping and I wanted to be alone with him for a thousand days so we could tell each other everything. I thought, We cannot tell eleven years in a single day.

We fell asleep again and when my alarm went off after only a few hours he said, You are going to her meeting. She told me she would ask you.

Does she tell you everything?

Mostly, he said.

He reached for my hand, pretending to pull me back to bed, and he said, I like you here.

I said, So do I. But I won’t stay long. I need to get back to our daughter.

He got up and pulled on his pants and T-shirt and drove me through the awakening streets to Edina’s office and I saw a small group of well-dressed women carrying bags and briefcases.

Kosmos said, There they are. I’ll see you later.

I said, Thanks for the ride.

Paris

I met Kosmos in a bookshop called Shakespeare and Company at 37 rue de la Bûcherie. I was twenty years old. The bookshop’s small rooms were piled to the ceilings with books, and above an inner doorway I read the hand-painted words BE NOT INHOSPITABLE TO STRANGERS LEST THEY BE ANGELS IN DISGUISE. George Whitman, owner of the shop, wore a paisley jacket. He was slender of face with piercing eyes and white hair. He sat reading and smoking.

I asked George, Can I stay here?

He reached under the counter and handed me a long metal file and pointed to a bicycle locked with a rusty chain to a post outside. The day was hot, sun bouncing off the yellow buildings. I filed and looked across the river at the great medieval church with its carved mandalas and gargoyles. George left and hours later returned with more books wrapped in a newspaper. At twilight I finally heard the exquisite click of a rusted chain. I unwrapped it from around the bicycle, gathered it over my arm and took it back into the shop where George sat on his perch surveying the world like a wandering falcon. I handed him his file and the old chain, and he looked at me as if he were trying to know something.