Zula was free to move around as long as she gave the impression of doing something useful, such as cooking or cleaning. At one point when no one was paying much attention, she took a yellow pad and a few pencils back into her room and hid them under the mattress. Later, when she’d been nailed back into her room for the night (having begged for and been given an extra ration of blankets), she sat by the light of a candle (these, at least, were abundant) and wrote a letter in the same general vein as the one she had scribbled on a paper towel and stuffed into the disconnected drain trap in the safe house bathroom in Xiamen. This one was a little more discursive, since she literally had all night. When she was finished, she slipped it under the mattress. Her body was showing no interest at all in going to sleep. She tried to tire herself out by doing all of the exercises she could think of that would not make a lot of noise: push-ups, dips, squats, and a gallimaufry of half-remembered yoga moves. But this only jacked up her energy level and made matters worse.