I didn’t close my eyes all night. I thought about Caroline and my inability to save her. What a disappointment my brain turned out to be. After everything I had witnessed in my life, I had almost convinced myself that the wheel of personal history spins on thought, and therefore my history was muddy because my thinking had been muddy. I imagined that everything I’d experienced to date was likely to be a materialization of my fears (especially my fear of Dad’s fears). In short, I had briefly believed that if man’s character is his fate, and if his character is the sum of his actions, and his actions are a result of his thoughts, then man’s character, actions, and fate are dependent on what he thinks. Now I wasn’t so sure.

An hour before dawn, when it was time to leave to catch the boat, Dad still hadn’t returned. I imagined he was either lost in Bangkok, weary at having spent the night bargaining down prostitutes, or else soaking in a bubble bath in a fancy hotel, having changed his mind about the voyage without telling us.

“What do we do?” Terry asked.

“Let’s get down to the dock. Maybe he’ll turn up there.”

It was a half-hour drive to the dock through the stacked-up city and then through ramshackle suburbs that looked like an enormous house of cards that had fallen down. We parked next to a long pier. The sun, emerging over the horizon, glowed through the fog. Above us we could just make out clouds the shape of lopped-off heads.

“There she is,” Terry said.

When I saw the fishing trawler, our dilapidated would-be coffin, all the joints in my body stiffened. It was a crappy wooden boat that looked like an ancient relic restored in a hurry just for show. I thought: This is where we’re to be stored like the cod livers we are.

It wasn’t long before the asylum-seekers, the Runaways, began appearing in fearful, suspicious groups of two and three. There were men, women, and children. I did my own head count as they crowded the dock- eight…twelve…seventeen…twenty-five…thirty…They kept coming. There seemed no way this little boat could accommodate us all. Mothers hugged their sons and daughters tightly. I felt like crying. You can’t overlook the poignancy of a family risking its children’s existence to give them a better life.

But here they were! The Runaways! Here they were, demonstrating twin expressions of human desperation and human hope, huddling together furtively, examining the trawler with profound mistrust. They weren’t fools. They knew they were riding on a coin toss. They were deeply suspicious that this rusty vessel could possibly be their deliverance. I checked them out, wondering: Will we resort to cannibalism before the journey’s done? Will I be eating that man’s thigh and drinking that woman’s spinal fluid with a bile chaser?

I waited with Terry on the pier. The smugglers appeared as if from nowhere, all wearing khaki. The captain stepped off the boat. He was a slim man with a tired face who stood rubbing the back of his neck over and over as if it were a genie’s bottle. He ordered us all on board.

“I’m not going if Dad’s not going,” I said with enormous relief.

“Wait! There he is.”

Dammit, yes, there he was, coming down the dock, staggering toward us.

Someone once said that at fifty, everyone has the face he deserves. Well, I’m sorry, but no one at any age deserves the face my father had as he walked toward us. It was as though the force of gravity had gone haywire and was pulling his face down to the earth and up to the moon at the same time.

“Is that it? Is that the boat? Is that the fucking boat? Is it watertight? It looks pretty loose to me.”

“That’s her, all right.”

“It looks like it couldn’t float in space.”

“I agree. It’s not too late to chuck this whole idea.”

“No, no. We’ll carry on.”

“Right.” Fuck.

The sun was rising. It was almost morning. The captain came over and urged us on board again. Terry put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it like a lemon.

“All right. Remember what I told you: if these two men do not reach Australia in tip-top condition, I will kill you.”

“And if he doesn’t,” Dad said, “my ghost will come back and kick you in the balls.”

“That’s settled, then,” Terry said. “You got it?”

The captain nodded wearily. He seemed used to threats.

Terry and Dad stood facing each other like two men about to wrestle. Dad tried to smile, but his face couldn’t support the sudden strain. Terry puffed a little, as if he were climbing stairs, and slapped Dad lightly on the arm.

“Well. This was a hell of a reunion, wasn’t it?”

“I’m sorry dying’s made me such a shit,” Dad said. He looked awkward with this goodbye, and put his hand on his head as if he were worried it would blow away. Then they gave each other a smile. You could see their whole lives in that smile: their childhood, their adventures. The smile said, “Didn’t we turn out to be two different and amusing creatures?”

“Just have a nice peaceful death,” Terry said, “and try not to take Jasper with you.”

“He’ll be OK,” Dad said, and turning away from his brother, he boarded the boat, which knocked gently against the pier.

Terry grabbed me by the shoulders and smiled. He leaned forward, smelling of coriander and lemongrass, and planted a kiss on my forehead. “You take care of yourself.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I think I’ll get out of Thailand. Maybe move to Kurdistan or Uzbekistan, one of those places I can’t spell. I’ll try setting up a cooperative there. This whole thing with your dad and Caroline has shaken me up a little. I think I need to go on a long, rough journey. See what’s up. I have a funny feeling the world’s about to go up in smoke. The war has started, Jasper. Take my word for it. The have-nots are getting their act together. And the haves are in for a rough trot.”

I agreed it seemed to be developing that way.

“Will you ever come out of the shadows and return to Australia?”

“One day I’ll come back and give them all the fright of their lives.”

“Come on, let’s go home,” Dad shouted from the deck.

Terry looked at Dad and held up a finger to say he needed one minute. “Jasper, before you go, I’d like to give you a word or two of advice.”

“All right.”

“From watching you these past months, I’ve worked out that there’s something you want above all things. You want not to be like your father.”

That wasn’t something I kept hidden, even from Dad.

“You’ve probably worked out by now that if you think courageous thoughts, you will cross busy streets without looking, and if you think sadistic, venal thoughts, you will find yourself pulling out the chair every time someone is about to sit down. You are what you think. So if you don’t want to turn into your father, you don’t want to think yourself into a corner like he did- you need to think yourself into the open, and the only way to do that is to enjoy not knowing whether you’re right or wrong, play the game of life without trying to work out the rules. Stop judging the living, enjoy futility, don’t be disillusioned with murder, remember that fasting men survive while starving men die, laugh as your illusions collapse, and above all, always bless every single minute of this silly season in hell.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I thanked him, hugged him one last time, and boarded the boat.

As we set off, through a heavy curtain of black engine smoke, I waved goodbye to Terry until he disappeared from sight. I looked at Dad to see if he was sad to never see his brother again, and I noticed that he was turned in the opposite direction, gazing out at the horizon and smiling an inappropriately optimistic smile.