Hok-Yee laughed too—thinly, but she laughed. Her eyes remained dark with grief.

At last they were back at the cricket club. Cheung staggered up the front steps with his mother in his arms, went straight to the first-floor bar, and laid her on the counter, at which Noma, Tanaka, and Horace sat, nursing their drinks. All the astonished players and fans in the first-floor bar, including Yim-Fong, Tak-Wing, and Emily, stared, unsure whether Cheung and Hok-Yee were alive or dead. Even little Raymond stopped his howling and gawped in amazement.

“How has my life and the life of this poor fishing village come to this?” wailed Cheung. “Curse you Japanese devils and curse you vile British. Down with Englishmen and their damn superiority complexes! Down with pith helmets, bureaucracy, and cricket! Down with the opium trade that brought this evil upon us! Down with tea! Down with silk and porcelain, down with the hard work and genius of my people that caused us to make things you vile devils wanted! Down with our capacity for hard work and suffering! Down with junks and clipper ships, down with indentured labour, down with coolies, their long poles and strong backs. Down with our beautiful women for bearing children for you demons to exploit. Down with the Manchu who have not cared for us poor southerners for centuries. Downs with the queues of our servitude! Down with bound feet, down with nimble fingers! Down with you arrogant Japanese and your fascist emperor! Down with your army, your brutal and brutalized young men, your bayonets and penises! Down with the Kempeitai, your samurai swords, your beheadings and executions! Down with the pan-Asianism! All Asians are clearly not brothers! Come on, Colonel Noma, I know you’ve got a pistol in your pocket.”

He raised his arms, staggered like a drunk toward the demonic head of the Kempeitai. “I don’t care anymore. Everything has been taken.” He thumped his chest. “Go ahead. I know you want to. Shoot me.”

All of the bar’s drinkers, with their own weary and bloodshot eyes, looked on, amazed. Stoic, sturdy Cheung was not supposed to crack.

Finally, Tanaka said, “Come on, old man. Let’s get you to bed. Your mother will still be dead in the morning.”

Exhausted from his ordeal, Cheung slept, but not for long. He woke with the sun, his mind racing. His uniform was still wet from the day before, so he put on an ordinary white shirt and black pants. In the foyer outside the bar, Horace and Tanaka struggled with four Kempeitai, who were attempting to carry his mother’s body downstairs.

“Where are you taking her?” Cheung said.

“Disposing of the body,” said one of them, whom Cheung recognized as an interpreter.

“They are taking her to the dogs,” said Horace.

The interpreter shot him the stink eye.