In Sanja's dreams, Adis drove a tram through a field, sold shoes that talked, and once appeared on their balcony in a suit made of newspaper. Each time, over breakfast, she told him everything she remembered. He listened with interest, occasionally asked about an impossible detail, and laughed at his nighttime occupations. When she asked what he had dreamed, his answer was always the same. He remembered nothing.
It did not bother her for the first few months. Then a friend described how her husband often dreamed of meeting her again in the place where they first met. That evening Sanja asked Adis whether he had ever dreamed about her. He tried to think. He remembered some old dreams about school and one in which he could not find his car. He did not want to invent an answer just to please her. Nevertheless, his careful honesty disappointed her.
She placed a small notebook on his bedside table. She suggested he write as soon as he opened his eyes, before he forgot. Adis tried for several mornings. The notebook contained a date, a question mark, and a single word whose reason he later could not recall. Sanja asked every morning. Soon he looked at the notebook before greeting her, as though he had to submit homework in something he did not know how to learn.
One Saturday he said he had dreamed of them sitting together on a train. Sanja immediately brightened and began asking where they were traveling. Adis opened his mouth, then stopped. He had not dreamed it. He had imagined their journey the previous evening while checking the timetable for a trip they were planning. He wanted, he admitted, to have an answer for once that would not make it seem as though he missed her less when he was asleep.
Sanja put down her pen. She said she had not meant to ask him for a lie. He answered that he knew, but no longer liked the morning question. She looked at the two notebooks, hers full of strange stories and his almost empty. His blank paper was not a place where he could decide she should be absent. Yet she had turned it into evidence that needed correcting every day. She put the notebook in a drawer, without promising she would never again desire impossible reassurance from somebody else.
The next morning she told him she had dreamed of their kitchen table floating down a river. Adis asked whether they had at least cleared away the plates. She laughed and said she did not know. After breakfast they bought tickets for a real train. As they headed toward the station, Sanja asked what he was looking forward to. He pointed to her hand, which he held in his, and said he wanted to see whether she would let go even once while pointing out of the window.