And no one talked to me. My silence was met by silence, with no interrogation whatsoever. I had decided at first to try convincing them that I was not an American agent named Evan Michael Tanner and then I decided to convince them that I was. Both of these decisions were quite irrelevant. No one asked me anything, not name or rank or serial number, nothing at all. I stayed where I was and waited for something to happen, but it didn’t.

I don’t know what I was waiting for anyway. Divine intercession perhaps. A bolt of lightning could strike the tree, thus causing my cage to drop to the ground and shatter itself apart. The encampment could be raided by troops loyal to His Majesty’s Government. Or by the Marines. Or the U.S. Horse Cavalry. Most of the time, though, I tried to avoid thinking about what it was that I awaited. Since there was nothing to do in the cage and no way to get out of the cage and no escape route if I did get out, waiting was almost an end in itself; I didn’t have to wait for anything.

Until late one afternoon someone finally spoke to me. A hand poked a rice bowl through the central hole in the bottom of the cage. I snatched the bowl rather greedily – they had, by accident or on purpose, missed my morning feeding. I wolfed down the rice, worms and all. This sounds even worse than it was; after you’ve done it once or twice, worms cease to turn your stomach, and protein, after all, is protein. I sent the bowl back empty, received a cup of tepid water in return, drank the water, returned the cup, and a soft, sad voice said, “Tomorrow.”

Or perhaps the voice said, “Morning.” Siamese, like so many other languages, makes no distinction between the two concepts. Whether my new friend meant tomorrow generally or tomorrow morning in particular was indeterminable from the single word spoken.