“Because we charge twenty cents for a bowl of noodles and I’ll have to work another fifty years to earn enough to get there. And you know you really want to go to Thakhek.”

“It is a pleasant spot for a holiday, I admit,” he said.

“And you’ll be able to walk around to all the sites Toshi mentions in his diary.”

“All right. You’ve talked me into it.”

“Which brings me back to my original question. How do we get there?”

“We could always go through Thailand. We could play the deaf and dumb Thai couple again. That worked once. But I have to see Phosy tomorrow. Perhaps we can go officially as special constables.”

“You’ll never talk him into doing anything illegal.”

“We’ll see.”

“But Siri.”

“Yes, my love?”

“Read faster.”

7/23/1941

This is such a fascinating place with three distinct groups: Lao, French, and Japanese. The Lao continue to be bemused by all the attention they’re attracting. Our village headman is most kind. He provides us with workers and goes out of his way to bring us fruit and vegetables from Lao gardens. The French are like ghosts. They don’t talk to us and I feel they would not even if we shared a language. None of them speaks Lao and it seems all the clerks they hire are French-speaking Vietnamese. And then there’s us. We work hard and competently. We are kind to each other and to the locals.

And I promised to mention the dog. His name is Taigou, which means “big bite.” I never considered myself to be an animal lover but I have become very close to two creatures since I arrived here. The first was a cat I called Hal. He was always somewhere close by watching me. He would not accept food from me but he was usually asleep at the foot of my bunk when I woke up in the morning. And then suddenly came Taigou. There’s something about him that reminds me of a small person in a fur coat. One day, Private Oshiira came running to me and said there was a dog behind the latrines whose head was stuck in a teakettle. He’d obviously been dunking for water and managed to get his head wedged inside. He was galloping around like some crazed beast, running into fences and trees. I was afraid he’d hurt himself. I wrestled him to the ground and held him while my men pried off the kettle. He bit me, of course, when his head was free. It was only to be expected. But after that, the little man in the fur coat felt remorse. It was as if he understood that I was only there to help him, and from that day on, he became my protector and I became his guardian. We have adopted him as a mascot but he sleeps in front of my tent every night and nobody else’s. I feel that I am getting closer to nature with every day that passes. Sadly, with Taigou’s arrival, Hal no longer stays with me, although I do see him lurking in the shadows from time to time. I suppose there is some deep animosity between these two species that I do not yet understand.