“How could you be sure Beer wouldn’t shoot you when you handed him back his gun?” Satsai asked.

“Faith in human nature,” said Siri. “Plus the fact I’d taken out the bullets before I returned it.”

“You can’t leave everything to fate,” said Daeng. “Now, what about the torn pages?”

“What about them?” said Satsai.

“It was you that ripped them out of the diary.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because the things Toshi saw in those last few days, the things he felt, they would have been too much for you to read over and over.”

Satsai took a long suck of the straw and nodded.

“You’d been there at the beginning,” said Siri. “You knew his insanity before you knew him. You’d coaxed him back, not cured but content in a way. He’d found a dimension for the demons where they couldn’t get at you. Even though he shared his diary with you, the yokai were disguised. You weren’t in any danger. But when the Japanese declared their coup de force in Indochina he knew he wouldn’t be able to subdue the devils. They were back in the souls of the men committing atrocities. He knew that evil would reign again. And that too had to materialize through the pages of the diary.”

“You tore those pages out because you didn’t want to remember the man you loved haunted as he was when you first met him,” said Daeng. “His demons would become yours.”

“I tried to burn them,” said Satsai.

“But it wasn’t possible,” said Siri.

“It seemed like I was being unfaithful to his . . . his process of dealing with life. I felt like I was changing the end of a story that wasn’t mine to edit.”

“Do you still have those pages?” Siri asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I see them?”

“I’ll give them to you, Doctor. Happily, I’ll be rid of them. But you should decide carefully whether you want to read them. They’re very disturbing.”

“Where do you imagine Toshi to be now?” asked Daeng. “What do you wish for him?”

“Today?”

She nodded.

“Oh, Daeng,” he said with a smile. “I imagine him to be here at this fire, drinking fine local brew and . . . and talking, telling stories about our insane days as if they were someone else’s. I imagine him happy and fulfilled and cured.”

“Then let us drink to Toshi’s imagined life,” said Daeng. “The delightful life of a grounded pilot.”

Siri left the revelers around the fire and went to the compound where the enemy slept, defeated once more. The old men smiled as their dreams crumbled into dust. Only Beer sat awake, glaring up at the moon, contemplating another bad decision. The doctor sat beside him and handed him a glass of rice whisky.

“Thank you,” said Beer. He sipped politely before handing the drink back to Siri.