Panic attacks come on late at night: slow, constricting things in which Zeno cannot breathe for terrifying intervals and from which he worries he will never recover. In the mornings intelligence officers give speeches in broken English about the perils of fighting on behalf of warmongering capitalists. You are imperialist pawns, they say, your system is a failure, don’t you know that half the people in New York are starving?

They pass around drawings of Uncle Sam with vampire teeth and dollar signs for eyes. Anybody want a hot shower and a T-bone steak? All you have to do is pose for some photos, sign a petition or two, sit in front of a microphone, and read some sentences condemning America. When they ask Zeno how many B-29s the U.S. Army keeps at Okinawa, he says, “Ninety thousand,” probably more airplanes than there have ever been in the history of the world. When he explains to an interrogator that he lives near water, the interrogator makes Zeno draw the marina at Lakeport. Two days later he tells Zeno that they lost the map and makes him draw it again to see if he draws it the same way twice.

One day a guard summons Zeno and Blewitt from their barracks and leads them behind the camp headquarters to the rim of a ravine the prisoners call Rock Gully. With the barrel of his carbine he points at one of the four isolation boxes there, then walks away. The box looks like a big coffin made from mud, pebbles, and cornstalks, with a wooden lid latched over the top. Seven feet long and maybe four high, it’s big enough that a man could lie down inside, and possibly kneel, but not stand up.

Loathsome, abhorrent, repugnant: the smell as they approach surpasses adjectives. Zeno holds his breath as he undoes the latches. Waves of flies rise out.

“Holy Christ,” breathes Blewitt.

Inside, tucked against the far wall, is a corpse: small, anemic, pale blond. His uniform, or what’s left of it, is the British battle-dress blouse with two huge chest pockets. One of the lenses of his eyeglasses is cracked and when he raises one hand to thumb them higher on his nose, Zeno and Blewitt jump.

“Easy,” says Blewitt, and the man peers up as though encountering beings from another galaxy.

His fingernails are black and cracked and, beneath the seething flies, his face and throat are veined with filth. It’s only when Zeno turns over the lid to set it down that he sees that, scratched into every available inch of its underside, are words. Half in English, half in something else.

ἔνθα δὲ δένδρεα μακρὰ πεφύκασι τηλεθόωντα, reads one line, the strange printing sagging to one side.

Therein grow trees, tall and luxuriant.

ὄγχναι καὶ ῥοιαὶ καὶ μηλέαι ἀγλαόκαρποι.

Pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit.

A throbbing starts in his chest. He knows this verse.

ἐν δὲ δύω κρῆναι ἡ μέν τ᾽ ἀνὰ κῆπον ἅπαντα.

And therein are two springs, one of which sends its water throughout all the garden.