I NEVER TAKE LONG to make my play. Fritzsch, on the other hand, surveys the board as if he’s forgotten all the rules and must review them with every turn. He must know how annoyed I get when he takes his time during our chess matches, which is probably why he does it.

At last one hand hovers over a knight, then he seems to change his mind, and he adjusts the cigarette between his lips. I chew on the inside of my cheek and clasp my hands together to keep from fidgeting.

“Do you remember when you first came here?”

His question stirs the part of me I’m determined to keep suppressed, the part I have no control over. A response would risk awakening it, so to settle myself, I release a small sigh and wipe the rainwater from my eyes.

Chuckling, he toys with the black pawn he captured on his last turn. “You were a little runt of a creature, weren’t you?”

Words, that’s all they are. Just words.

“Your move.” My voice is taut, charged with a current as strong as the one that once ran through these barbed-wire fences.

“It’s been four years, so you would have been—how old? Fourteen, perhaps fifteen?” Fritzsch tosses his cigarette butt onto the gravel. “Tell me, 16671, what is it like?”

“What is what like?”

He sits up straighter and rests his forearms on the table. “Returning to Auschwitz.”

The slightest provocation is all it takes to unleash the current inside me.

How can I put into words what it’s like to return to a place like this?

Fritzsch waits, lips parted in anticipation, but I’ll be damned if I give him what he wants. The current surges through me, but, before it can manifest into shaking hands or a snap of rage, I imagine the rush slowing, calming, receding into the depths. As I lean over the Deutsche Bundesform chess set and lower my voice, the pistol in my pocket feels as heavy and crushing as my memories of this place.

“Unless you intend to resign, it’s your move.”

For a moment, Fritzsch doesn’t react. At last he relents, draws back, and moves his knight after all, but he holds the black pawn by the neck and twists it between his fingers, back and forth, back and forth. I bite the inside of my cheek harder. Though the current is buried again, its tingles of energy remain.

“It’s as if we never left, isn’t it?”