Chap­ter 11 opens with the nar­ra­tor reflect­ing on the deaths of his par­ents, who passed away at the rel­a­tive­ly young age of six­ty. Their deaths, he spec­u­lates, may have been caused by bro­ken hearts, hav­ing lived through dif­fi­cult years, yet they did not dis­in­her­it him. Instead, they left him an estate worth forty-eight thou­sand dol­lars in 1945, a sum that has since quadru­pled in val­ue. This inher­i­tance pro­vides him with an annu­al income of sev­en thou­sand dol­lars, which, in many cas­es, would allow for a com­fort­able life. How­ev­er, despite this wind­fall, the nar­ra­tor chose to live fru­gal­ly in the bustling area of Green­wich Vil­lage, sur­viv­ing on just about four dol­lars a day. He fur­nished his home with war sur­plus items, using them for every­thing from fur­ni­ture to every­day neces­si­ties. His pos­ses­sions were all rem­nants of the war: a nar­row bed, olive-drab blan­kets, and even a portable phono­graph. His library was main­ly filled with books from sol­diers’ recre­ation­al kits, reflect­ing his reliance on items that had once been used for dis­trac­tion dur­ing the hor­rors of war. One of his more unusu­al acqui­si­tions was mor­phine from a first-aid kit, which briefly tempt­ed him, but he quick­ly real­ized he was already addict­ed to some­thing far more consuming—his unre­lent­ing love for Hel­ga. This love, which had lin­gered even after her pre­sumed death, became a form of wor­ship for him, and he devot­ed much of his life to memo­ri­al­iz­ing her with toasts and rit­u­als, keep­ing her mem­o­ry alive as he grap­pled with the empti­ness left by her absence.

In 1958, feel­ing a surge of inspi­ra­tion, the nar­ra­tor pur­chased a war-sur­plus wood-carv­ing set, which ignit­ed his long-dor­mant cre­ativ­i­ty. With this new tool, he set to work carv­ing a chess set from a broom han­dle, spend­ing count­less hours per­fect­ing the pieces. The act of carv­ing became an obses­sion, and soon after com­plet­ing the set, he felt an intense desire to share his cre­ation with some­one else. He knocked on the door of his neighbor’s apart­ment, which led to a fate­ful meet­ing with George Kraft. Kraft was a com­plex fig­ure, a man with an enig­mat­ic past, who intro­duced him­self as a Russ­ian agent under the alias Colonel Iona Potapov. This rev­e­la­tion intrigued the nar­ra­tor, adding an ele­ment of dan­ger and mys­tery to their inter­ac­tion. As their con­ver­sa­tion unfold­ed, Kraft revealed that he had been liv­ing under mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties, each with its own secrets and sto­ries. In his apart­ment, the walls were adorned with Kraft’s paint­ings, reveal­ing a hid­den pas­sion for art that con­trast­ed sharply with his back­ground in espi­onage. Kraft had earned high acclaim for his work, a stark con­trast to the shad­owy world he had once inhab­it­ed. His dual existence—the artist and the spy—added a lay­er of com­plex­i­ty to the friend­ship that was devel­op­ing between him and the nar­ra­tor.

The chess set became the cat­a­lyst for a deep­er con­nec­tion between the nar­ra­tor and Kraft. They began play­ing chess togeth­er reg­u­lar­ly, and what began as a sim­ple game quick­ly evolved into a pro­found bond between the two men. In their moments of com­pan­ion­ship, they found solace in shared expe­ri­ences, often over food and wine, the sim­ple plea­sures of life that allowed them to for­get the dark­er aspects of their pasts. Despite Kraft’s bat­tle with alco­holism and the weight of his espi­onage activ­i­ties, their friend­ship grew stronger, each meet­ing serv­ing as a small respite from the emo­tion­al bur­dens they car­ried. The con­nec­tion they shared was one of cama­raderie, root­ed in mutu­al under­stand­ing of the pains each had suf­fered. How­ev­er, despite the sim­plic­i­ty of their inter­ac­tions, both men remained unaware of the com­plex­i­ties that would soon arise in their rela­tion­ship. Their friend­ship was a tem­po­rary escape, yet beneath the sur­face, the shad­ows of their pasts, filled with decep­tion, loss, and the pain of his­to­ry, loomed large. They found com­fort in one another’s com­pa­ny, and in that com­pan­ion­ship, they could briefly set aside the tur­bu­lent real­i­ties of their indi­vid­ual lives, even as the weight of their his­to­ries began to close in on them. The chap­ter paints a pic­ture of two men nav­i­gat­ing their per­son­al strug­gles in a world that has left them both scarred, yet find­ing fleet­ing moments of peace and under­stand­ing in their shared time togeth­er.