“I lied about my age,” I said.

“Ah. And volunteered for service.”

“Yes.”

“And fought boys younger than yourself,” he said. “In the Vietcong, an eighteen-year-old was a grizzled veteran. If he was still alive. And in the hill tribes of Burma, the children fight alongside their parents. The Shan, the Kachins. The Kareni.”

“Yes.”

“But childhood itself is a Western invention, don’t you think? Childhood as a time of innocence. Only the fortunate get to have such a childhood in this part of the world. The rest are not so innocent.” He lit a cigarette, pursed his lips, blew smoke at the ceiling. “You know how a Thai girl celebrates her eighteenth birthday?”

“How?”

“She puts her daughter on the street.”

I drank some more beer. I’d had Thai beer in New York, a brand called Singha, but I’d never even heard of Kloster, which tasted like a German beer – Beck’s, say – but lighter. It wasn’t bad.

I said, “On the river I was offered the opportunity to watch a seven-year-old girl have sex with a dog.”

“And you passed it up, eh?”

“So that I could meet with you.”

“I am honored,” he said. “But it is upsetting to many people, this business of child prostitution. For myself, I would not want a partner of such an age. I prefer a woman who knows what to do. Although some of these children learn quickly.”

“I imagine they do.”

“But for most of their customers they are best advised to appear ignorant and inexperienced. We get whole planeloads of men on organized sex tours, you know. Americans and Europeans and Japanese. Some want boys and some want girls and some don’t seem to care. It is curious, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Of course, the U.N. wants to put a stop to it. And now I suppose the SPCA will stick its nose in as well, saying it is cruel to the dogs. You want another beer?”