“Surgeon’s intuition,” said Siri. “Was his wound connected to his inclination?”

A look on the teacher’s face suggested he’d given up a lot already, but that the honesty was doing him good.

“Beer thought he might enlarge his experience of the world by serving the Japanese as he had the French,” said Satsai. “But he ran into the wrong officer at the wrong end of a bottle of shochu, a last-minute attack of shame while holding a samurai sword. Beer was lucky his head was still attached to his shoulders the next morning.”

“But meanwhile, back at Hiro’s return from Lang Son,” said Siri.

“I read his diary entry and we laughed and there was no pretense. It was as if we’d always been lovers. My black-and-white existence took on all the colors of the rainbow. Everyone in the village knew what we had together and nobody criticized us. In fact they were happy for us. I wish I’d shared my secret sooner. Hiro was my constant companion. We shared everything from then on. I’ve never known such a love.”

The teacher leaned back against his chair and breathed heavily. One more burden had been off-loaded.

“And what did he bring back from Vietnam?” asked Daeng.

“The treasure?” said Satsai. “He never did say. I assumed he’d returned with money and had used it all to pay for the medicine.”

Siri and Daeng exchanged a glance. They’d heard Satsai’s first lie.

“Do you have any photographs from those days?” Daeng asked.

“There were a lot,” said the teacher. “We didn’t have a camera of our own but some of our graduates did well, traveled, and came home to visit relatives. They had cameras. They sent us copies but everything was destroyed in the raid.”

“Every photograph?” said Siri.

Satsai pondered for a while, weighing up his next move.