Big Dog Tsou proved a godsend. It was the Commandant’s wife who had discovered him when he had been promoted from ‘black’, through ‘grey’ to ‘white’. ‘A find, my dear!’ she had screamed down the telephone at her friends. ‘He will make up dresses in no time. He can make shirts, too! So convenient for our husbands. So cheap. I am fixing him up with a machine in my bungalow, downstairs, so that I can keep an eye on him while he works.’ Big Dog Tsou had come out of camp into semi-freedom. Of course, for the clothes he made he could not expect to charge more than half of what an ordinary tailor would ask. ‘Such a find!’ said the Commandant’s wife. Big Dog Tsou even had time to make little things for her on the side for which he charged not at all. ‘Oh dear!’ said the Commandant’s wife, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do when he’s released!’ For released Big Dog Tsou would be, for having proved himself decommunized by giving much sartorial satisfaction to the police and army wives of the town.

Big Dog Tsou grinned over the silk, pinning it to the pattern, cutting carefully with pinking scissors closely following the edge, and thought of the future and how, now that he was well in with the Police, he could get on with his real work, the Organization. It would be easy; easier than before he had been in detention camp. He had learnt so much. From here he would go to Taiping Rehabilitation Camp. Big Dog Tsou liked the idea of Taiping. He no longer had to fend for his food … three times a day the government fed him. Food, good and plentiful, far better than he could manage for himself when free. And in Taiping there was everything else: games to play, books to read … After Taiping he would come back here, and with the help of the police mems, he would rent a small shop, if possible, next to an army camp. There he would work for the mems. Soon, reluctant to go out in the heat, they would ask him to come to their houses, to try on their dresses at home. This he would do willingly, he would walk inside the wire fences ringing these forbidden places, army camps, and the eyes and ears of his heart would be open. Big Dog Tsou was an intelligent man.