And Aristide? Would survive. Had been surviving. Had decided Cyril was dead years ago. Even if he had come looking, he had also—wisely—given up.

The fact that he had looked at all … that fed some part of Cyril he would rather starve. The stubborn part. The animal bit of him that had dragged him back to Gedda, to his family, with Aristide. The part of him that didn’t want to die.

In his drafty room, he emptied out his pockets. Crusts of bread, Jinadh’s lighter, a melted piece of hard candy gone sticky in its wrapper. A penknife. A pocketknife. A knife from the table, still marked with a sheen of grease.

He wasn’t that man anymore: the one who slunk through the jungle and put scraps in his pockets. He didn’t need to carry knives. It made him feel naked to do it, but there was something luxurious in the feeling, too. A kind of horrible freedom.

Last of all he dug out a handful of cigarette butts. Shreds of charred tobacco stuck in the creases of his palm, clung to the lining of the pocket. With a turn of his wrist, he cast them into the grate to burn.

Aristide had been expecting the call, half dreading it, since he woke up to the story on the wireless. When it finally came it was a relief.

“He won’t go.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “He won’t leave. He said he’s staying.”

Aristide looked down at the papers on his hotel desk, though he didn’t register anything that was written on them. Just a mess of black hatch marks, numbers and letters jumbled, the rustle of his elbows in their midst. “What?”

“I told him it would be easiest to get out of the country the sooner he went and he just stared at me. I said I’d pay for him to go, find someplace for him to stay.”

“To be clear.” Aristide put the pads of his fingers against the blotter and pressed as if he could push the situation into order. “Did he say nothing, or did he say the word ‘no’?”

“Nothing at first. But … well, I may have … once things deteriorated from polite conversation, he did actually refuse. Vehemently.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“He just kept saying no, and finally when I couldn’t stand it anymore and started shouting he … Mother and sons, he got this look in his eyes and asked where else he deserved to be.”

Aristide breathed deep to quell a surge of anger. Anger at Cyril: undeniably a traitor, an Ospie collaborator. Also, an idiot. Anger that he refused to flee. Anger that he had to.

When that subsided, he asked, “How did it get out?”

Breath turned the line to static: a fast exhalation, either laughter or a choked-off sob. Knowing Lillian, the latter shoved into the former’s clothes. “Stones, I’m an idiot.”