I live alone now. In a one room hut that squats like a huge thatched toad along the canal, surrounded by mangrove swamps, tamarinds, and oleanders. My hut is very small. An oaken cot, an amboyna wood table, a kerosene lamp, a stove, and three chairs. In the evenings, when you should not go out, I sit by my door, running my hands along the scraggly surface of the table as though stroking a salamander, and I wait for the return of Thi Hanh.
Finches chirp in a nearby kapok tree, and grasshoppers ratchet in the hay fields.
The monsoons have ceased, and the wet hay smells like the warm matted hair of a water-sprite who has surfaced in the canal now the storm has passed. These Americans have many little expressions that stick in the mind. I like that, though my native language is French. And their malice was not confined to me . . . . My hut measures 576 square feet, exactly.