I myself would be inclined to say they do.

Nicholas knew a few things about lacquer. Years ago, he told me what he knew.

Lacquer comes from toxic sap. The sap comes from a tree that is called by different names around the world. Actually, there are different species of the tree. In Japan, for example, there is the Rhus verniciflua; in Thailand, in Burma, there is the Melanorrhoea laccifera. The trees are somewhat different, but their sap, I understand, is more or less the same. When raw, if touched, the sap will burn through skin. The sap must take in oxygen to lose the poison and is slow to do so at high altitudes, though lacquer trees will grow high up. Lacquer trees will grow on mountains.

Sometimes the sap is mixed with ash, a vehicle for air. You will not often find lacquer that is pure.

The process that can force the black base through was invented by monks, by accident. It made their temple rich, their discovery of how to simulate the aging. They learned how to hasten nature and make layers wear away as though time had done it.

They learned to make it happen on command.

I expect, though, that my brother’s table is the real item, lacquer aged the valued way, before the monks learned to coax the base, by artifice, to come up through the many sheer layers of red.

This lacquer table was a present from a man. For a number of years in his life, Nicholas attracted many presents.

I must make a note to have it appraised.

I must make a note to inquire what can be done about the water rings.

There must be a gentle technique.

I will make my notes in a minute.

There are objects on the lacquer and also objects in it. On it are two glasses, a half-empty bottle of tequila, and a glass ashtray filled up to the top with cigarettes smoked down to the filters—different filters, one kind cork, one kind white—and many snapped nitrites mixed in among them.

The yellow box with the warning on it remains here by the bed.

I have not seen this kind, the old, snapping kind, for years. One sees the liquid now, in vials, if one sees anything. These are the kind that one can hardly buy now, hard to get, and there are more of them in this ashtray than I remember coming to a box.

I wonder—did Nicholas go through them, as it were, in one sitting, or did they, as things will, if allowed, accumulate?

I wonder if on nights he was alone, my brother looked at them, to remember nights that he had not been.