showed the location of all the Union forts defending the city—an elderly man sitting at an adjacent table asked if he might also have a look. I explained to him the map’s historical significance. It was printed in 1862 by a commercial publisher to sell to tourists but depicts a secret, wartime landscape. The government confiscated all copies, destroyed the plates, and put the publisher out of business. “It’s very rare,” I told him. The man rubbed his chin and nodded as if he knew something more. I wondered if he was recalling the soda fountains and flophouses of a city I was too young to remember.
He lived in a small wood-frame house with red paint peeling off the siding in thick chunks. The shades were drawn on all but the top-story windows, which made the place seem minimally inhabited. The front door was on the second story. I climbed the cracked iron staircase, pressed the buzzer, and waited. I was about to give up and leave when a window just above me opened. “Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you. We met at the library.” I took out the card and waved it for him to see.
“Oh, yes. Yes,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”
By the time the door finally opened, several minutes had passed. He was much frailer than I remembered and was wearing a tie and jacket, which explained the delay. I apologized for not calling first. “I wouldn’t have answered,” he said and offered his hand. “Sales calls are all I get anymore.”
The house smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. “You got my note,” he said, closing the door.
“I was just at the library.”
This seemed to please him. He ushered me into a dimly lit living room lined with bookcases. The musty smell of old furniture made it feel cramped, but in a cozy way. An old clock ticked loudly on the mantel above the fireplace. On a side table, mounted on a polished wooden block, was a stone head from a Hindu temple. When he saw that I was looking, he asked, “Do you recognize it?
“From India?”
“From a temple, I’m ashamed to say.”
“Ashamed?”
“I bought it in Delhi. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have bought it.” He touched his fingertips to the stone. “Pillaged works of art were for sale everywhere right after independence. Have you been to India?”
“I lived in New Delhi and Madras as a child.”
“Well then you must know where Kanchipuram is.”
“I do, yes. My mother has a sari from there.”
“What were your parents doing there?”
“Foreign Service,” I said.
“Well, it would have been well after my time.” Looking slightly pained, he asked, “What do you think I should do with it?”
The question came as a surprise. I hesitated for a moment, unsure what was meant by it. “Give it back,” I finally said.
He ran his fingertips over the figure, then turned to me and said, “Precisely what I intend to do.” He stepped over to a staircase leading down to the lower floor, and motioned for me to follow. He took the steps one at a time, holding on to the railing with one hand and bracing himself on the wall with the other. At the bottom, he pointed to something hanging on the wall. “The map,” he said and stood aside. It was drawn in ink on yellowed paper, about two feet square, mounted in a black lacquer frame protected by glass. I stepped up for a closer look at what appeared to be a diagram, heavily annotated in Japanese.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Of course I do. I was there.” He pointed to the land feature at the bottom. “That’s Guadalcanal,” he said. “And that’s Tulagi.”
“You were at Guadalcanal?”
“Yes,” he said. “Right there. In one of those boats.” He pointed to a small row of triangles. “Two Higgens boats and a tank lighter. I was in the middle one.”
“Can you read the Japanese?”
“I can’t. But I have a translation. Sit down. I’ll get it.”
The room was comfortably furnished with a sofa and a large easy chair. It looked onto a small, enclosed back garden lit by lights recessed in a high brick wall. The house had long ago come to a standstill and would remain exactly as it was until he was gone. The walls were hung with paintings that had the feel of works by friends. One, a whimsically rendered tropical bird, was captioned at the bottom in thick black paint: This bird is native to Papua New Guinea ... a rather hard to find variety but once in the hand it speaks, it squawks, it lives on foreign currency.
“I can’t seem to find it,” he said, coming down the steps. “But if you like, I can tell you what happened.”
“Only if you’ve got the time.”
“I’ve got nothing but time.” He laughed. “Speaking of which, it’s time for my cocktail. Will you have one? All I can offer you is a vodka martini.”
“Why not?” I said, still buzzing from the whiskey and coffee.
He carefully prepared the drinks and then served them on a little silver tray. “Cheers,” he said and sat back down in the easy chair. As he sipped, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a packet of cigarettes. “Care for one?”
I shook my head, watched as he produced a Zippo lighter. “You look surprised,” he said.
“Don’t see too many people your age smoking.”
“Don’t see too many people my age, period.” He grinned. “I’m ninety-three. At my age, the effects of smoking are entirely positive.” He held the lighter with both hands and lit the cigarette. “I was the press officer for the First Marine Division,” he said settling back in the chair. “There was very little fighting on Guadalcanal when we landed. The Japanese had their main base on Tulagi, and there had been fighting there, but we could only get scattered messages by radio. First Division headquarters decided to send over a party to get firsthand info on what was happening. It was August 12, 1942. As press officer, I was one of the ones chosen to go. Japanese ships had free use of the channel between our island and Tulagi. They’d been shelling us quite freely. They had no opposition except guns and artillery, so they’d pop up and shell us. We knew the crossing would be dangerous and wanted to get started before sunrise and their planes started coming. But we didn’t get off until after nine.”
He took a puff of his cigarette, leaned forward. My eyes kept returning to the map behind him.
“I took a dunking getting aboard the boat. Soaked my boots, so I took them off. I think every time I got into a landing craft, I soaked my boots.” He drifted off for a moment, then got up and went to the map. “We were in these three boats.”
“It looks like six to me,” I said.
“Yes. Three going and three returning. I told you it was a special map.” He turned and smiled. “Anyway, we were three boats. Two Higgens boats and a tank lighter filled with drums of gasoline and supplies for the marines on Tulagi. It was a beautiful South Pacific day, sunny, clear. Except for the sound of the boats’ engines, everything was quiet. After about an hour and a half, Captain Murray shouted to me, ‘Take a look. Is that a submarine?’ My glasses and binoculars were too wet with spray to make anything out. Just then it began firing. Shells splashed to the left and right. Ranging shots.” He pointed to the diagram of a submarine just to the right of the boat convoy. The glass covering the map was smudged with fingerprints, years of pointing. He must have sensed what I was thinking because he turned to me, finger still pressed on the glass, and said, “My life didn’t flash before my eyes or anything like that. But I was very absorbed in the moment.”
There was a strange ambiguity in his expression, as if all the intervening years could be traced back to that single point on the map. I stepped in for a closer look and wanted to ask if he told this story often, but didn’t want to risk