“Lin. This is your father. Don’t mind him. He’s shy. This must be a shock,” Ruth says.

“Here, sit down.” Ruth pulls a kitchen chair out for Lin. “I’ll make some tea.” Ruth strikes a match and lights the black stove. As the water is heating she goes outside to leave them alone.

Lin speaks to her father. Softly. “I brought you this.” She reaches out to offer him the bowl with the goldfish, dark red, swimming in a glass bowl. “Do you remember?” He does. It is so bright a color it reflects on the inner walls of the bowl. She doesn’t know it will make him remember the war, and the death of the whale and the red water. His son. She thought it would remind him of the same gift he had given her so long ago, one of her first memories. The American. Papa, she called him, with dark skin and black hair, had once brought her a goldfish. She didn’t know he was a deserter. He was present and kind and sometimes he cried. At those times her mother would take him in her arms and tell him how good a man he was, how he had saved her life and that of her mother and aunt, even the old grandfather of the village. So Lin thinks of him in that way. When she sees him, she is surprised. He does not look kind. He does not look like he saved a soul in the world, not even his own. He looks weary. He even looks old and nearly American. He sits down at the table across from her, speechless but full of words. He only nods.

When Ruth comes back in, the breeze blows Lin’s hair in her eyes. Thomas can’t touch anyone, but he wants to push her hair back. He does say, “Thank you,” for the fish, even if he hasn’t really looked at it except from the far past, and from that past he smells the lotus blossom the day he carried gifts to his wife and daughter up the narrow pathway.

“I am proud of you. My grandmother said you were a hero,” Lin says. She looks around old Witka’s place. She has lived in huts, in pieces of wood put hurriedly together, in bamboo forests, grasses, on streets, in trees. “This is a beautiful place.”

He is silent, but his eyes are moist looking at her, wondering how she survived, thinking of all the ways she might have lived, how she may live now. But he says nothing. He looks old and tired and sad.

She and Ruth exchange glances. They drink tea. Then Ruth stands and says to Thomas, “I’m sorry. We should have let you know we were coming. Anyway, feed it every day, your fish. It’ll keep you company and we’ll come back.”

As they leave, she says to Lin, “It must be quite a shock. We should have let him know ahead of time.” Lin and Ruth walk back to the car. Ruth leads her by the hand. The tenderness makes Lin want to cry.