“Of course he didn’t. It was China that drove him insane. He hated everything about the invasion. But he understood it was necessary to document what happened there. The only way he could do that without having his records confiscated and destroyed was to describe it all favorably. He was convinced nobody would believe the events of Nanjing. He once wrote in our notebook conversations: The best way to disguise a sin is to redecorate it as a blessing. I didn’t know what he meant until I read his diary. Everything he wrote pointed to exact locations and gave detailed statistics all presented with hurrahs and hoorays. His superiors would see nothing but a patriot in his writings. It was a work of genius. And I thought it was lost.”

“Wait, when was the last time you saw it?” Daeng asked.

“I didn’t check it religiously,” said Satsai, “but I’m certain it hadn’t been removed from the wooden chest I kept it in under the floor. I had it wrapped in tinfoil to keep the mice out of it. I’m sure it was in my house the day of the raid.”

“And the village was burned down,” said Daeng.

“To the ground.”

“Nothing survived?”

“Not a thing.”

“Then somebody on that raid must have found the diary,” said Daeng.

“This is why I married her,” said Siri.

“What we don’t know is whether they picked it up incidentally along with other paperwork . . .” she continued.

“. . . or whether it was the diary they were looking for,” said Siri.

“Which means we might have to take another look at that diary with fresh eyes,” said Daeng.

They were all walking together to the jetty. Daeng and Siri were drunk with information and they needed to sit down and organize their thoughts. Garu, the perennial boatman, was stretched out under a palm tree.

“How do you know it was Americans who destroyed your village?” Daeng asked.

“You mean apart from the helicopters?” said Satsai. “We all saw those.”

“Yes, I’m sure you did. But you were fleeing to the caves. You didn’t really have time to listen to their accents.”

“There was an eyewitness who survived without hiding in the caves,” said Satsai.

“Can we talk to him before we go?” said Daeng.

“Her,” said Satsai and turned around and pointed to the fat lady at the loom.

“I was in a tree,” said the fat woman. “Of course I didn’t have these pigs back then weighing me down.” She hoisted one breast in each hand to demonstrate their weight.

The visitors were sitting on her veranda eating homemade khao lam sticky rice in bamboo that was chewy and tasted like pure sugar.