That evening, I decided to take stock of what I had for The Human Zoo. I wanted to have something to show for my few months here, if not for my editor, then for myself. That conversation with my husband had struck a nerve. He was wrong about my requiring a robust clothing budget, but I did need to feed myself. If, miraculously, the book did well, it would buy me my freedom or at least more time to figure things out. I flipped through my notebook, which was filled with little outlines, names and dates, clipped bits of Philippine history. I had also jotted in some random pseudophilosophical musings including: What is it to be other? If one is other, what is the thing that is not? Check Achebe on Heart of Darkness. The inspiration for all of this, Timicheg, was just a historical figure, not yet even a character. And he certainly did not justify the three-hundred-odd pages of writing necessary for the book. I still didn’t know how I would organize the material, but there were a few models I admired. I’d been looking over King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild. Hochschild brought the characters to life and that’s what I needed to do. But I kept circling back to a central problem, which was how to make the book necessary to an American reading public. At this point, had I been back in the States, I would have called Ann and asked her to take me to lunch. We would have had a meal of branzino and wilted spinach, washed it down with a glass of Sancerre, and this would have reminded me that I was actually a writer, because writers were people who had lunch with editors, and thus fortified, I would have plowed on. Instead, I had summoned Ann’s voice, imagining what she might say to me. I was reminded of that Pico Iyer book, The Man Within My Head, in which the writer had claimed to be in constant dialogue with Graham Greene. Initially, I had tried to summon Greene, but he was very cynical. And had nothing much to say to me. The voice of my editor, however, once conjured, had several opinions.

Christina, what is the book about?

Well, you know that. It’s about Timicheg.

But you’ve written almost nothing about him. I can’t see him. What is he like?

There isn’t a whole lot of information on Timicheg. He lived and then he died and then the Belgians named a tunnel after him.

That’s a very short book. What is it really about?

I suppose it’s about what killed him.

Pneumonia?

No. I think America killed him, that the Americans sold him this idea of advancement and then abandoned him.