Tetsukimo began to spend more time in the mountains after our conversation, watching the birds. He started his natural flights by hitching a small goods parachute to his back and running a line from our river cruiser. He’d build up a head of steam, and like a kite, the parachute would take off. He’d travel for miles downstream and up. From there he designed a leather suit. It had webbing beneath the arms and between the legs. He started on small hills, getting pummeled by the earth time and time again when he landed badly. But he’d revise and adapt the suit and soon was taking off from higher hills and then cliffs. I don’t know how many bones he broke but I’d never seen him so happy. There may have been an Aki and an Ako but what does it matter if they didn’t exist?

Thanks to half a mug of Woophi, Siri and Daeng were half an hour late for their appointment with Beer. That didn’t matter too much because he wouldn’t show up at all. They were in a merry state, walking hand in hand, giggling, along the dirt road. It was only when they saw the run-down stadium looming in front of them that they realized they’d been walking in the wrong direction. So they cut back past the duck pond the locals called a lake, took a shortcut through the Chomtong temple where Private Oshiira had left his toilet brush, and, quite by accident, found themselves at the council building. They approached a young woman in the first office they came to. She was skinny enough to fall between the keys of the old typewriter she was pounding. She wore glasses with only one lens that made her eyes look like they’d come from two different donors.

“What?” she said and Siri fell into a trough of nostalgia for the days when public officials were polite and respectful. But then again he wondered whether those days only ever existed in his mind.

“Has Comrade Beer been here already?” Daeng asked her.

“Who?”

“Comrade Beer.”

“Never heard of him.”

Siri took over.

“Have you heard of Comrade Kayson?” he asked.

“The prime minister?” she asked.

“That’s the one,” said Siri. “We’re here to pick up the documents he ordered a month ago. I’m Civilai Songsawat from the Central Committee.”

She rested her bony fingers on the keyboard.

“I . . . I can’t,” she said.

“Can’t what?”

“I don’t know anything about documents,” she said.

“Then let’s talk to someone who does,” said Daeng.

“I’m the only one here today.”

“And where is everyone else?”

“They’re over there.” She nodded in the general direction of Thailand.

“Why?” Siri asked.

“To celebrate the Mekong’s transition from a battlefield to a marketplace,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”