ON THE MORNING OF HIS WEDDING, KARAK DREAMED OF MANILA. HE WAS strolling through the Intramuros near the entrance of the grand cathedral, as he used to. His father was with him. His father did not say or do anything; they walked together side by side; although at that time in Karak’s life, his father was already dead. They stopped on a bridge spanning the Pasig River and gazed upstream. Karak was wearing his old uniform as a security guard at the bank.

It was not untrue to say he despised his father. He did not know why, on this day of all days, his father would appear to him. He did not know why, after all these years, the city should haunt him. While there, he heard about the Bengalis who had passed through a hundred years before, enslaved, to new shores in Acapulco. He learned these stories from the sailors drinking in the saloons. Manila had always had that Spanish tie with Mexico. Perhaps that was why he thought of it. Now he would have that tie too.

He woke at dawn. Lying on his back in the dim light, he thought of Rosa, sleeping in the small house in the barrio. Tonight she would be next to him. He surprised himself. It had been a long time since he had experienced a slow building of desire. There had been Teresa, the woman he knew in Manila who worked in the brothel. He had been a soldier; he had been with his share of women, but it was Teresa who stood out in his mind against the fog of years. Now it would be Rosa.

She was pretty, yes. But he knew some men would think her face too round, or her arms a bit too plump. No, it was something else—something else that made his thirty-three years feel more like her eighteen. A future lay before him, and he liked it. He could be wealthy; he could be respected. He could surpass who he had been: the second son of a man who had failed in every way there was to fail. He, Karak Singh, would not fail. He would do everything he could to not fail. He would make a name for himself, make his wife grateful, become a success, put humiliation behind him.