They couldn’t take them all but Daeng requisitioned a wheelbarrow from the back of the council building and they piled in as much as they could. They took only those pertaining to the first six months of the occupation and the last three months of the failed invasion. But still the barrow was stacked high and they had to steady the top folders as they negotiated the dirt path beyond the council gate. The skinny girl watched them go and said nothing but, “That wheelbarrow will have to be returned.”

The old couple wheeled their plunder back to the guesthouse, where they found Roper facedown on the balcony boards. Siri checked his pulse, pronounced him “alive but soused,” and decided it would be best to leave him there. For the Englishman’s safety he rescued what was left in the flagon—barely half—and took it back to his room.

Daeng went to check on the girls. They looked up at her when she entered the room, not with fear or excitement but with what Daeng could only describe as resignation. It was the same look she’d seen on the faces of the animals at Dong Paina zoo. They’d been removed from everything they understood and had surrendered. It was then she decided to spend the night with the silent sisters and travel with them the following day. Everything about them seemed out of place somehow. She had to meet the girl’s father and understand why his daughters were so afraid of the world. As interesting as the hunt for crazy Toshi may have been, it didn’t trump her instincts.

Siri had reluctantly agreed to spend that night alone despite the fact that he still had half a flagon of nectar from the gods of the jungle. It was a horrible loss of romantic opportunity. He lay on his mattress that night beneath an oft-repaired mosquito net and he thought about Toshi, the pilot. His life had seemed so ideal for so long. He clearly enjoyed his time in Laos and he wrote of his coworkers with affection. He was a military man in a war but he was stationed in a place that saw no warfare. The French had a garrison nearby but they were no threat. Thousands of his countrymen were falling in battle but there was Toshi swimming in a crystal cool pond and socializing and drinking fresh coconut water. And Siri wondered whether that alone would be enough to turn a man’s mind. Whether the guilt had got to him. Whether survival could become treasonous.

Siri turned up the gas lamp, poured a short mug of grog, and opened the diary. He was almost at the end. If there was a climax it would have to come that night. He read aloud as if Daeng were with him.

12/22/1944