At last he found what was most certainly a book of some kind. The cover was made of a sort of skin; leather perhaps. It was dotted with a dark mold and smelled rancid. He opened it carefully but all he found were blank pages.

“Hmm,” he said. “That’s odd.”

He turned the book to what should have been the back and there on the rear cover were two small Chinese-looking initials branded onto the skin. He opened it to the back pages, where he was met by line after line of neat handwritten text.

“Chinese?” said Daeng.

“Japanese.”

“Can you read it?”

“I’m afraid not. I picked up the numbers when we were in the underground and the Japanese were threatening to invade. Thought it might be useful for recognizing times and dates in captured documents. But I didn’t get around to the letters. They don’t use the same date system as us. It starts with the reign of the current emperor and that began in . . . 1926. So the number here is probably Showa Eleven. I’m assuming this is a diary and it starts in 1937.”

“And there I was thinking I only married you for your body.”

“It’s a two-for-the-price-of-one package, Daeng. No extra cost for the genius.”

“So, 1937? Japan’s at war with China,” said Daeng.

“This starts July seventh.”

“Stop showing off.”

Siri flipped through the pages, right to left.

“It’s beautifully penned,” he said. “Someone’s obviously put their heart into it. Every page neat and precise. Not a crossing-out or a smudge; not so much as a wine stain. There’s a week or two between each entry. And it looks like the writing gets more confident. Much stronger. It’s as if the writer’s gouging the ink into the paper. And I . . .”

“What?”

“Daeng. Look at this.”

She leaned over the page.

“Well, I’ll be,” she said.

The Japanese text ended halfway down the page and was replaced with the date 12/30/1940, in Western numerals, and the Lao sentence My name is Kangen Toshimado (咸元利圓). The Lao lettering was childish but it was legible, and to Siri’s eyes, it seemed to introduce a sudden burst of fun: a hibiscus sprouting suddenly in a cabbage patch.

“Our Comrade Toshimado’s learning Lao,” said Daeng.

Siri turned the page and there was Toshimado agreeing with her.

I am studying Lao, he wrote.

A week or two had passed in diary time but he’d obviously been practicing his lettering. Daeng turned the page and read the entry for 1/6/1941.

I am Japanese. I am a major in the Imperial Army of Japan. I am thirty-four years old. My friends call me Toshi.