A Hundred Suns

by Karin Tanabe

  I wanted to help Victor and, more important, wanted him to trust me after two incidents where I might have inspired mistrust. “Of course, I’ll do it. Thank you for asking me,” I said brightly, though nerves were pricking at me. I couldn’t have anything go wrong.

  “Good,” he said, kissing my forehead and then taking a step back. “Bright as you are, I suppose it would be a waste to just have you recline by a swimming pool all day.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad, though,” I said, smiling.

  “Let’s make sure you do that this afternoon then,” he replied. “Keep me company while I change,” he said, walking toward his large dressing room, “I’ll explain everything. But like I said, it should only take a matter of minutes. Have a cocktail while you’re at it. Secretarial work, I hear, is far more interesting with a drink in you.”

  * * *

  “Trieu,” I said after I rang for her and she hurried to my room. Victor had left a few minutes before, staying only long enough to set the course for my morning. “I need Lanh to chauffeur me somewhere, a neighborhood south of the train station, and I must arrive a few minutes before eleven. Could you alert him?”

  “Yes, madame,” she said, turning around quickly.

  There was still over an hour before I had to leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything except alternate between sitting on the bed and sitting on a chair on the large balcony off the bedroom. Even though I told myself it was ridiculous—I was overqualified to take dictation, as Victor had described it, even if it was in this entirely foreign place—I could not stop feeling nervous.

  At twenty minutes past ten, I exited the house and climbed inside the Delahaye.

  “Did you take Monsieur Lesage to the governor-general’s house?” I asked Lanh brightly as he started the engine.

  “Yes, I did, madame,” he replied without looking at me.

  “Oh, good. He’s very excited about it, even if he’s not letting on.”

  “I did detect that, yes,” said Lanh. “As he should be.”

  He maneuvered the car onto the street, and we moved through the neighborhood slowly as I tried to enjoy the view of the large houses and the few elegant women I saw strolling down the sidewalks. That was what I might have been doing if I hadn’t read the dossier.

  I flipped the face of my watch mindlessly. When I looked up again, we were in a local neighborhood. I lowered my window a bit, but when Lanh turned a corner abruptly, an animal carcass hanging on hooks outside of a butcher shop hit the car, causing me to yelp.

  “I’m sorry, madame, such tight streets here. Maybe better if you roll up your window. Can you do it yourself, or should I stop and help you?”

  I rolled it up quickly without answering.

  “Are you certain that this is the neighborhood you’re due to visit today?” Lanh asked, still keeping his eyes in front of him.

  “Yes, quite sure,” I said, feeling utterly unsure all of a sudden. “In fact, I think this is the correct street, no?” I said, glimpsing a row of noodle stands. Victor said I would know I was in the right place by the noodle vendors.

  “It is, yes. At least it is the address you provided,” said Lanh, slowing down. “And this is the café that you mentioned.”

  I looked down at my watch. I was twenty minutes early.

  “You can let me out just here and then drive on, Lanh,” I said.

  “Yes, madame,” he said, stopping the car, exiting, and opening my door. “I will return in an hour then. That’s what you would like?”

  “That is. Thank you, Lanh.” I watched him climb back in the car and drive off.

  The street was sunless and narrow, with wobbly bicycles and rickshaws weaving among the pedestrians. Men and women carried bundles on their backs or slung on wooden rods that they balanced on their shoulders. Among them darted rickshaw coolies in worn shoes or wearing no shoes at all. I tucked myself between people until I was against the row of rusting iron tables in front of the café. There was no terrace, so the tables and chairs were placed on the road, pushed up against the café’s front wall to take up as little room as possible. There was a young woman leaning in the door frame, with a tray dangling from her hand. Café Mat Troi. I checked the sign, to be sure I was in the right place, and then slipped into an empty seat and smiled at the waitress.

  “A whiskey, please,” I said as she approached me, my smile tight. I said it in French, but I was quite sure that “whiskey” was a universally known word. She shook her head no. “Pas de whiskey ici,” she murmured. “Café. Thé. Eau.” “Eau,” I replied. She nodded, went inside, and returned quickly with a chipped glass and a carafe of water.

  When she was out of view, an indigène man next to me reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a dented metal flask.

  “You French own the alcohol. We Annamite are not allowed to sell. Can’t pay the taxes. They have it here. Bootleg whiskey. But she won’t give it to you.”

  “Why not?” I asked, watching him pour whiskey in his water glass. He rubbed the rim between his fingers and handed it to me.

  “You are French. You can report her for selling alcohol. And then the café owner must pay heavy fines. Maybe worse. You’ll never be served whiskey, or anything else, in a café like this one. You go to the nice hotels, the ones built for you. There you can drink it. But today I’ll help you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Victor clearly had no knowledge of these rules or he would have warned me.

  “A little more,” he said in French, refilling my glass as the waitress eyed him angrily.

  On this tight street, life seemed to be lived on the pavement as much as it was indoors. It was loud and chaotic, and there was not a face like mine to be seen.

  I tried to drink my second whiskey slowly but drained it in a matter of minutes and received a third from the man without even asking.

  Feeling slightly numb, I was finally able to sip instead of gulp, mindlessly spinning my emerald ring on my finger. It was something I often did to soothe myself.

  There was no trace of the scent of hoa sua flowers here, no one in formal clothes, and only a few cars tried to inch through. Instead there were barefoot children running around, women in conical straw hats or with rags on their heads pouring out buckets of brown water, men with greasy gray hair hurrying here and there with cigarettes dangling out of their mouths, and a few establishments, like Café Mat Troi, that catered to them. I thought about how strange it was that this world apart existed just a twenty-minute drive from my new home. It was also odd that the policeman wanted to meet Victor in such a neighborhood, but perhaps he was patrolling it. What did I know of life here yet?

  “Are you lost?” I heard a voice say to me in perfect French. I looked up to find a Caucasian man in a three-piece cotton suit staring at me with interest. I had not expected anyone to speak to me except the man I was meeting, and my pulse quickened at the sight of him. “It’s five blocks that way,” he said, pointing. I looked in the direction he was gesturing, where the street seemed to grow even narrower and more packed with willowy Indochinese bodies.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “Luong-Vuong,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Pour le chandoo.” He looked at the nearly empty glass on my table and repeated the word “chandoo.”

  “I’m not looking for Luong-Vuong,” I replied. I tried to sound as if I knew what he was referring to, even though I hadn’t the faintest idea. “I’m just enjoying a drink.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to keep it a secret here, my dear. These people don’t care.” He waved at the Annamites around us, none of whom were looking at us, and then quickly left, hopping in a rickshaw just a few steps away.

  “C’est quoi Luong-Vuong?” I asked my waitress, who I hoped spoke enough French to understand me.

  “Une fumerie d’opium,” she replied, barely looking at me. “Chandoo c’est l’opium. Et Luong-Vuong est une fumerie très connue.”

  She ran her hand over my table with a rag and th
en took a few piastres off the table next to me, which was leaning askew, one of its legs broken. Luong-Vuong was an opium den. That man thought I was going to smoke opium, chandoo, at 10:57 in the morning. I wondered what exactly about my appearance gave him that grim impression.

  “It’s why a French will walk down this street,” the waitress added, as if sensing my confusion. “Not why you here?”

  “Me?” I said, looking up at her. Why was I on this street? Because I was helping Victor. Because I had made a life for myself supporting my husband. Because my old life was something I could never return to. And perhaps most importantly, because I spent countless hours thinking of my childhood self and how I didn’t want to disappoint her. But perhaps opium was an easier explanation.

  I looked down at my watch, wondering if it was eleven yet, when I heard a car engine roaring. It grew louder, and I turned to see a large black Citroën making its way down the street, forcing people to press against the buildings so it could get by. It slowed just one door past the café, in front of a run-down row house with light blue walls and faded, peeling shutters. It jolted to a halt, and the back door, the one closest to the café, was flung open. A French policeman in a black uniform with bright gold buttons and a wide belt emerged and banged on the roof of the car.

  I stood up quickly and smiled at him, giving a friendly wave, as he wasn’t expecting a woman. The front doors of the Citroën opened, and two more officers, one French, one native, climbed out. The Annamite policeman walked around to open the other back door before soundlessly dragging a man out of it. Wearing only a black stretch of cloth tied around his lower half, the man wasn’t putting up a fight. He wasn’t moving at all, his body heavy in the officer’s arms. He was dead. I sucked in my breath and gripped the table. This could not have been what Victor was expecting. All I had to do was write things down, he’d insisted. Secretarial work. Instead, I was looking at a dead body.

  The dead man’s face as they moved him, battered and burned, was visible to all of us on the street.

  I stared, frozen. I watched the police, the dead man, the Annamite men and women coming up to see, the few children whose eyes were being covered by their mothers’ hands, and then I opened my mouth and screamed, gripping my chair for support. Embarrassed, I moved my hand over my mouth to make sure I didn’t emit another sound.

  I watched as one of the French policemen helped move the body, grabbing the dead man’s ankles. Together, the officers sauntered a few paces, looking as if they were holding prize game, not a human being, and deposited the man in front of the blue door. He fell with a thud, his head rolling in the direction of the café, and I could see how badly bruised it really was. The burn marks around the man’s eyes and mouth were still raw. He clearly had not been dead for long. The older policeman, who hadn’t yet touched the body, put his boot against the man’s torso, rolling it even closer to the door, exposing the back of his head, which had large patches of hair missing. From the bloody flesh that was exposed, which looked sticky and not the least bit scabbed over, I guessed it had been pulled out just a few hours ago.

  “Victor,” I whispered, not sure why I said it. He certainly couldn’t help me now.

  I heard another scream, and then another. A woman shouted something in Annamese, and I saw someone hurry out the door to my right. It was a young woman dressed in a brown ao. She ran to the dead man’s side, slumping against the door of the blue house. I held my breath as I watched a rush of grief hit her.

  She pulled the man’s body into her lap. She was facing me now, and I saw that she was quite pretty, perhaps in her early forties, with her hair tied back at the nape of her neck. She was weeping. The three officers said nothing, stepped over her, and climbed back into their car, driving off, their speed slow and leisurely.

  I removed my hand from my mouth and shook my head. She had to be his wife. “Help her!” I called out in French, taking a few steps toward them. The café server followed and pulled me back to my table, wordlessly refilling my drink. This time she gave me whiskey.

  I looked at her, picked up the glass, finished it in two swallows, and held it out for yet another pour. She motioned for me to sit back down.

  “Communist,” she said, refilling my glass again when I was seated. “He is a member of the Indochinese Communist Party. They want him dead for long time. Now, he dead.”

  “Communist?” I whispered, looking up at her.

  “Yes, communist. Men in that party getting killed now. It’s very dangerous to be in the party. Especially to be in the party and to be talkative. This one talkative.”

  “It’s this dangerous?” I asked, still whispering. I knew what a problem communism was the world over, but I didn’t think that in a French colony the consequences could lead to what was in front of me.

  “They want independence,” she said as another patron lifted his glass to her for a refill. “From you,” she said without glancing at me. “The police in the black car, they Sûreté générale indochinoise. Political police. Dangerous police. This is how they do it. Kill people.”

  “Because the people who die want independence?”

  “Yes. Independence and more. They want the workers to lead the country and they want you out. But communists, they are stupid people. They won’t have it, never. Independence. You French. You are too strong for us.”

  “I’m not French,” I said. “I’m American.”

  “American,” she said, stopping to think about what that meant but evidently coming up with nothing.

  “The wife there,” she said, nodding toward the sobbing woman. “She must forget it. If it is not the French in Indochine, it will be another. The Chinese again. Or the British also very greedy. Worse than the French, I think. Maybe they want us, too, and then we speak your language. I don’t want to learn another language. And it’s an ugly language, yes? English.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied in French, standing up and strewing more piastres on the table, my hand unsteady. “I barely use it anymore.”

  FIVE

  Jessie

  September 4, 1933

  “Madame Lesage!” I heard Lanh cry out. I turned to see him rushing toward me. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling completely lost. “I was supposed to meet someone on Victor’s behalf, a policeman, but he never came. Or I don’t think he did. Other policemen came. And I was waiting longer than I thought I would be, so I had a drink. Many drinks,” I admitted. “Then this,” I said, gesturing to the man’s body and the grieving woman in the street behind us. “It’s horrible.”

  Lanh took a few steps away from the café, guiding me with him. “I heard a police siren. I should have known to turn back. Is he dead? How terrible,” he said. He stopped a passerby and spoke to him in rapid Annamese, then turned back to me, shaking his head.

  “The dead man is a communist leader,” he confirmed. “He was a political prisoner before but managed to escape. The police have made it very clear what happens to these men, these communists trying to spread their message. They want to put the country in the hands of the peasants, and the French, and many Annamites, do not agree. I’m terribly sorry that you had to see this.”

  “Are there … Does this happen often in Hanoi?” I asked, wondering if Victor could have had any idea about what I was going to witness.

  “No,” said Lanh. “Not on the street anyway. But it is a mounting problem. I believe it is a bit of a problem on the rubber plantations, too, no?”

  I nodded my head yes. Clearly, it was a very big problem.

  Lanh offered his arm. “I should have found you sooner. I was circling the neighborhood, but I should have sped over when I heard the siren. Please forgive me.”

  “Of course,” I said, but my voice sounded weak. The whiskey was suddenly catching up with me, and I felt off balance. I desperately needed something to eat and my bed.

  Lanh walked me to the nearby car and helped me lie down on the back seat. I nodded off immediat
ely, and when we arrived home, he offered me his arm as we climbed up the stairs to Trieu and Cam, who got me out of my dress and into my bed. I took two bites of a warm chicken bun that they brought up and fell sound asleep.

  When I woke up, my head heavy as lead, Trieu was perched on a seat by the window, arranging a cluster of photographs I’d put there. She was positioning the one of Lucie so that it was more visible from my bed. When she saw I was awake, she came to me and fluffed the three white pillows behind my head.

  “I have something for you,” she said, picking up a ceramic cup from a tray near the frames. She brought it to me and wrapped my hands around it. Inside was a pungent broth.

  “It’s a local recipe. We fetched it from the herbalist while you were asleep.”

  “That’s thoughtful,” I murmured.

  The cup, which had no handles, was extremely hot.

  “It’s part of learning to live in Indochine,” Trieu said, watching me turn it in circles. “You need to become accustomed to drinking from cups like this. What is inside is thuoc ta,” she said of the broth. “That’s what we call our traditional medicine. We use many kinds of herbs, but this one is special. In your language, it’s called the king’s herb. We drink it after we’ve had a shock—the death of a child, the news of a very bad illness, any strong shock that won’t leave us. This will help it pass from your body.”

  “But I haven’t experienced either of those things,” I protested, sniffing the dark liquid, its scent like wet earth. “I’ve just had too much to drink.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I think you are also sensitive to death. Even a stranger’s death. Maybe you’ve never seen someone like that man. A dead person.”

  I thought back to Virginia, to our farm and the woods beyond it. I had seen death before.

  “It’s not the first time. But he was so badly beaten. His face, and the back of his head—he had to have been tortured for hours for it to look that way. And then just left by the police, dead on the street.”