I saw him in the market yesterday. He was sitting on a three legged stool surrounded by wooden trinkets. He looked tired. The lines in his face seemed to strain against gravity to keep his eyes open. He made half-hearted attempts to call out to passersby. Most just passed without looking. No one took a double-take as if they could smell the stench of death.

He had the most luck with foreigners. British, and even American tourists looking to bring home a touch of the exotic. They would hand their children the same little toys that he had held. He had a penchant for gripping every one of his wares like they were precious objects. This worked at instilling in his prospects a sense of desire. To have what he had, these intricate Chinese artifacts.

He got them from the same factory that made bed posts.

He looked so frail. So old. Could this have been the same man from fifteen years ago? Surely he must have died in the fighting as the city was retaken. I had to be sure.

I left my cold tea at the cafe and crossed over to the packed market. Everything from cabbage to monkey brains. The air was thick with spices, air dampened by shouting in a hundred different dialects. I walked from one stall to another, surveying goods, looking interested, and going on to the next one. I bought some chicken feet for Kim. I took my parcel and walked by his stall.

I stopped there, and inspected a particularly intricate carved elephant. Its horns curled all the way over its back. He sat there, looking half asleep until he noticed someone at his stall. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him watching me. He looked at the elephant of interest and slyly smiled. He leaned forward on his stool--he might as well have stood--and tapped my shoulder with gray talons sticking out from mottled fingers.

"A thousand pardons sir. But I know you."

I barely looked over and said he did not. I resumed inspecting the elephant. Its tusks were actually driven into its back.

"Sir I am quite sure that I know you." Just when it seemed he would rise from his stool he sat back and crossed he still had the sly smile. "You are a man who knows my secret."

I turned to face him. The man who had killed mercilessly killed my wife. Who had shot her in the street like a dog. Who had forced me to watch him indulge in his wretched thrill even as American planes darkened the sky with bombs.

He laughed. It was him. It was the same laugh as all those years ago, rising from a shrill gasping sound to gutteral repetitions of "Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!" He rose from his chair and pinched my shirt between his talons. I just stood there as he leaned in and repeated, "You are a man who knows my secret." And before I strangled him right there he gestured to the elephant I had been looking at. "You know that I get this rubbish from the bed factory. It is distasteful, but the white foreigners pay handsomely for such trash."

He turned away and went to the back of his stall. There was a chest on the floor there, and ornate facade of brass on its face. He opened it and pulled out a small object and presented it to me.

It was a carved jade frog. It had characters etched all over its surface, and the largest one on its head said 'Hope.' He clutched it to him just like he did with the wooden trinkets, and said "Now I know you sir. You know of my secret. I do have beautiful objects to sell. I just keep them hidden from the foreigners." He unclutched his grey hand and looked at the frog like it was precious to him, "Maybe you'd like this, sir. It brings good luck. If not for you, maybe your wife would like it. Women love charms."

The lines in his face worked against his smile. The weight of them made his face look like a theater mask. I stuck my hand out. He looked at it one more time, as if debating whether he should really sell it, and then handed it to me, smiling all the time.

I went back to the market today with the local police. He was gone.