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They lay side by side, their arms draped around one another, or touching in a casual, familial way.
    At dawn he crept outside, sat cross-legged on the damp ground, and cleared his mind by focusing on the progress of the breath in and out of his nostrils, as during his boyhood he’d done every morning and evening at the New Star. And he’d been doing it again now, daily, for nearly a year, and had no notion why. The practice was making a lousy Communist of him. In fact he was no longer persuaded that blood and revolution made useful tools for altering the concepts in a person’s mind. Who said it?—probably Confucius—“I can’t beat a sculpture from a stone with a sledgehammer; I can’t free the soul of a man by violence.” Peace was here, peace was now. Peace promised in any other time or place was a lie.
    The four dogs last night—they’d been the Four Noble Truths, dogging his lies into the darkness.
    —Losing track. He returned his awareness to the movement of his breath.
    Again he wondered why he’d asked Hao for money.
    Hao’s face when he saw me: like the puppy I played with too roughly. The little thing came to fear me. I loved it. Ah, no—
    —Sooner or later the mind grasps at a thought and follows it into the labyrinth, one thought branching into another. Then the labyrinth caves in on itself and you find yourself outside. You were never inside—it was a dream.
    He returned his attention to the breath.
    Morning—a mist hiding the river and a cloud caught on the peaks beyond. He heard the boys stirring within, waking to the earth’s richest triumph, another day outside the grave. Groggy-eyed, everyone shuffled forth, blankets wrapped around them, to pee. “Young men, while you live,” he told them, “find out how to wake up from this nightmare.” They looked at him with sleepy faces.

 
    A s had become the weekly routine, on Monday night William “Skip” Sands of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency tested his energies by accompanying a patrol of the combined Philippine Army and Philippine Constabulary in a fruitless search for invisible people among dark mountain places. This time his friend Major Aguinaldo couldn’t come along, and nobody else had any idea what to do with the American. They drove the rutted roads all night wordlessly, noisily, in a convoy of three jeeps, looking for any sign of Huk guerrillas, as was the routine, and seeing none, as was the routine, and just before dawn Sands came back to the staff house to find the lights dead and the air conditioners silent. For the third time this week the local power had failed. He opened his bedroom to the jungle and sweltered in his bedclothes.
    Four hours later the window unit came to life, and he woke quickly and completely in sheets damp from sweat. He’d overslept, had probably missed breakfast and would have to omit his morning calisthenics. He showered quickly, dressed himself in khaki pants and a native box-cut shirt, a gauzy dress item called a barong tagalog, a gift from his Filipino friend Major Aguinaldo.
    Downstairs he found a place set for him at the otherwise bare mahogany dining table. The ice had melted in his water glass. Beside it lay the morning’s newspapers, which were actually yesterday’s, delivered in a courier pouch from Manila. The houseboy Sebastian came out of the kitchen and said, “Good morning, Skeep. The barber is coming.”
    “When?”
    “He’s coming now.”
    “Where is he?”
    “He’s in the kitchen. You want breakfast first? You want egg?”
    “Just coffee, please.”
    “You want bacon and egg?”
    “Can you stand it if I just have coffee?”
    “What kind of egg? Over easy.”
    “Bring it on, bring it on.”
    He sat at the table before a wide window that looked onto the insane spectacle of a two-hole golf course surrounded by overripe jungle. This tiny resort—a residence, servants’ quarters, a shed, and a workshop—had been built to serve vacationing staff of the Del Monte