She said, I sleep in a net of nightmares. I cannot be silent but I do not want to speak.

Then she got up and went downstairs alone.

—

A few hours later, Karla and Sue and Lise stood when we came back to the office. The files were open on the table and the coffee was gone. I waited by the door looking at paper on every surface. The women’s expressions were grave, lips pulled tight, arms close to their bodies.

Karla asked, How many?

Edina lifted her right palm to the walls of file cabinets in her office. She pointed out the open door to the bank of cabinets along the hall, colour-coded to match the flags on the map of the region.

Karla asked, Do people know?

Edina said, People do not want to know.

—

With our chess pieces we tricked and taunted, challenged and blocked, joked and teased. Through our strategies and missteps, we got to know each other. Edina liked to play and smoke cigarettes and talk at the same time. She did not have to concentrate as much as I did because she was very good. She had learned in a girls’ chess club at school under an unusual teacher who was enthusiastic for both boys and girls to play. She played with three girls in three neighbouring villages by mail until her father complained that her chess postage would soon be more expensive than their groceries. A few times her girls’ club demanded to play the boys and she liked to beat the boys. She told me her parents did not play well—only knew the moves—but they came to her tournaments in the same way they came to her school concerts, and afterwards they met her grandparents for coffee at the Ribarski restaurant. The childhood she described was wrapped in comfortable love. When the war was over, she had no one to play chess with and so she set up a board alone and analyzed games out of old books to pass long, sleepless nights.

I said, Let’s play by telephone when I go back.

Seven hours apart. Late evening for me and the middle of the night for her. Edina liked to play on Saturday nights. She sometimes teased me about not having anything better to do, and I said, I have a child, I like to be home, and sometimes she asked me about Kosmos, why could I not get him to move to Toronto, and did I not miss him?

I always said the same thing: He loves you.

But he likes to sleep with you, she said.

Maybe he would be a terrible husband.

She laughed, Of course he would. But he is the father of your child.

Between us was a thing that could not be resolved. What was it exactly? Kosmos? Her war suffering? My warless life? We were drawn to each other, and we talked about our work and our daughters and mothers and mint gardens and writing and reading and chess.