Each of the tapes or written documents bore a code and a log number that designated its classification and who it was intended for. When I had completed any form of translation work I was obliged to take the finished transcripts into Greenberg’s office and he would wordlessly gesture me to sit while he pretended to peruse them, never responding in any way to what was in them but keen rather to explore nuances of language and I supposed to display his greater knowledge. It felt like getting my homework marked and in fact he did always have a red pen in his hand. Whether it was because my work passed muster or whether it was because he approved of me, or rather my pleasure in literature, I don’t know, but whichever, the red pen seemed more of a prop than a necessity. On one such engagement at the end of my first week he asked me my favourite French novel and when I told him it was Le Grand Meaulnes he put his pen down and, with that slightly breathless voice that sometimes made it sound as if speech wearied him, said, ‘Ah Michael, the innocence of youth.’ He was smiling at me and I didn’t know if he found my choice foolish. But he said nothing further and, as he dismissed me, began to sort the papers I had given him into the hard-backed files that sat on the shelves behind him and which were distinguishable from each other only by the codes on their spines.

During those first few weeks I was mentored by the two Vietnamese who occupied the desks closest to mine. Probably in their mid-twenties, they – in my eyes at least – just looked like work colleagues. But they were a couple in the full sense of the word, although I didn’t realise this at first until one night I saw them strolling hand in hand along Nguyen Hue Boulevard. She called herself Corrine in what I guessed was a conscious decision to Westernise her identity and he was called Danh – it was only the first time I saw his name written down that I understood he hadn’t done the same. They smiled a lot and at intervals shared green tea with me from the large flasks they kept under their desks. Sometimes at lunch they would invite me to sit with them in the garden at the back of the building. There were some rattan chairs and plastic tables and someone had strung an awning from a couple of the mostly leafless trees so that it was possible to find refuge from the sun. Softening the back wall’s coping of barbed wire were jasmine and hibiscus plants from where cicadas accompanied our conversation. At my insistence they taught me enough Vietnamese to master the basic courtesies.

‘Where do you live in America?’ Danh enquired that first day but, when I told him, I knew it was a geographical blank.

‘You find things strange here?’ he asked and then seemed pleased when I said that I didn’t, that I liked it. That I liked everything.