A Hundred Suns

by Karin Tanabe

  “She doesn’t seem too well. My mother said that she is constantly wandering around town muttering French to herself, her long white hair unbrushed and dirty. There’s talk in town that she’s sick. In the head. Sick in the head,” she repeated. “I saw her myself actually, from a distance, but even from there, I have to agree.”

  “She hasn’t had an easy life,” I started. “And she still struggles with cultural differences. Even after all these years.”

  “Trust me, my dear,” she said, trying to hide her disdain for my excuse. “This isn’t a cultural difference. She’s not well. Naturally, I didn’t see your father,” she added in the same breath.

  “Yes, well, things were difficult after all that,” I said quietly, looking toward Lucie. How I wanted to disappear in that moment. Or, better yet, to march Dorothy to the Pont Alexandre III and shove her into the Seine. The bridge wasn’t very high, but people had lost their lives from even shorter falls. I could not have her speaking about my parents to my daughter or husband, and I could definitely not have her living in the same city as me.

  “People still talk about it in town,” she went on, looking at me with false sympathy. “How can they not? So, I understand why you wanted to leave so badly. I wouldn’t want to be talked about like that.”

  “I wanted to leave well before all that happened,” I said, knowing that her little pea-sized brain was recording my every word, ready to dish it all in letters to her friends and mother in Blacksburg.

  “Don’t you miss that open space, though?” she said when she noticed Lucie was walking back to us. “The smell of the grass? It’s pretty here, but there’s hardly anywhere for a child to play. I don’t have children yet, so for me it’s just fine. But that poor little one looks like she’s desperate for wide-open spaces, no?”

  “We don’t need grass,” I said sharply. “We prefer gold bridges.”

  Lucie stopped walking and instead pointed to the bridge. “May I play there?” she called out in French.

  “Of course, chérie,” I replied, watching her turn away from us. “I should go with her,” I added, making my excuses. “But what a lovely coinci—”

  “I never see your sisters and brothers around,” Dorothy said, interrupting me. She had to say it. Her mouth now looked fat and chapped rather than pert and pink, as it had when she approached me. “Did you bring them all here with you? Maybe I can say hello to them when I call on you.”

  “They don’t live here,” I said with finality and started to walk off.

  “You haven’t told me where to call on you!” Dorothy yelled out, stopping me.

  “I think it would be best if I called on you,” I said sharply, not bothering to ask for her address.

  “Whatever suits you best, dear,” she said, picking up her pace behind me. We reached Lucie at the bridge together, and Dorothy held out her hand to her.

  “And what’s your name, darling?” she asked before I could cut her off. “You’re very pretty.”

  “Lucie Lesage,” Lucie answered immediately.

  “Lesage,” said Dorothy, with a victorious smile. “Jessie Lesage then. Has a nice ring to it. If you don’t call on me,” she said, reaching into her purse and handing me her card, “then I’ll be sure to find you. I really must meet your husband. I’m sure he’s a wonderful man.”

  “He is,” I said.

  Dorothy looked at me appraisingly, and I could tell she was trying to calculate how much I had spent on my outfit. I cursed myself for having chosen my most expensive coat that morning.

  “Jessie, you really have changed, haven’t you?” she said.

  “I just have nicer coats now,” I said. “As do you.”

  “Yes,” she said, rubbing her gloved hands together. “Well, I must be off, but it was wonderful to run into you like this. I’ll be traveling a bit for the next few months. To Spain, then Portugal, perhaps even farther afield to Morocco. But when I return, we really do have to introduce our husbands. I just know they’ll get on. And I’m sure your husband will want to hear all about our childhoods. There really are so many stories to tell.”

  “Indeed,” I said. A few months. How long was a few months? Could I get out of Paris before she returned? Or could I see to it that she never returned? She could not tell Victor about my mother—or, worse, the things I couldn’t even bring myself to think about.

  Victor was terrified of “episodes,” as he called them. Mental illness. Of what had happened with his father. Of what had happened to me in Switzerland. If he knew that it ran in my family, that my mother had been sick since I could remember, that my brother Peter, the second oldest, had never been able to work a day in his life because of his streaks of mania, then what? Would he leave me for good? Would he be waiting for signs of it in Lucie? Would he love her less, afraid that she was wired more like a Holland than a Michelin? That thought alone made me want to jump into the Seine and just keep swimming.

  I had told Victor, the very first night we’d met, that both my parents had died. That they were long dead. It was much easier than the truth. He could never know the truth. Never. But Dorothy was ready to deliver it to him like a Christmas hog. That was painfully obvious.

  After that terrible chance encounter, I spent many sleepless nights trying to think of a solution. Then one day, Victor had left a newspaper on the table that he said featured a disparaging article about Michelin, focusing on their activities in the colony. In Indochine. No one in Victor’s family had any desire to live in the colony. But they clearly needed someone on the ground who might be able to prevent another communist uprising. I put the leftist paper back on the table and started to formulate a plan.

  The following day I summoned my courage and had lunch with Victor’s mother. Would Victor keep his employment much longer without André to advocate for him, I asked, or would he be pushed out like an old tire? I told Agathe that if Victor could prove himself in the colony, make himself indispensable, then surely he would be rewarded upon his return.

  She nodded while sipping her tea, the cogs of her brain spinning slowly. I watched, fighting the urge to scream that good logic aside, she owed me after what she’d done when Lucie was born. And if she cared about me keeping my sanity in the long run, she had to help me.

  “I think it’s a very smart idea,” she’d finally said after slowly draining the entire cup of tea. “It’s one I’ve often had myself.”

  “Yes, I assumed you had,” I replied, even though I was quite positive that no such thought had ever entered her head.

  “You suggest it to Victor, and I’ll second it when he comes to ask for my opinion. I’ll also push for it down in Clermont-Ferrand if need be.”

  “Thank you,” I said, bowing my head slightly in the type of show of reverence that Agathe adored.

  Six months later, Dorothy had not called on me and I was on a boat to the Far East.

  FOURTEEN

  Jessie

  October 3, 1933

  “I know you’ve had Lucie to look after, but have you been getting up to much in my absence?” Victor asked me over breakfast the morning after he returned.

  We had fallen asleep early the night before, while still discussing his discovery on the plantation.

  “I’ve been to the Officers’ Club a bit,” I said, “but Lucie loves to play here, so we often do.” I certainly did not intend to tell Victor about who I had met at the Officers’ Club.

  “Now that I’m back in Hanoi for a spell, I can go with you to the club if you’d like.”

  I nodded but didn’t look at him.

  After Trieu had cleared our breakfast and closed the glass doors behind her, Victor gestured for me to come closer.

  “And Marcelle?” he asked quietly.

  “I do think it was just an unfortunate coincidence,” I said just as quietly, remembering our lazy hours by the pool together. “We went to the club together once, and I saw that she speaks frankly with everyone, sharing snippets about her life that most women would want t
o keep secret, and also giving a lot of unsolicited advice. She told one of the guests to apply sandalwood and turmeric to a sunburn. Likened them to a lobster. I’ve seen others taken aback by the things she says. But I’m sorry I was so dramatic about it all,” I said with a genuine laugh. “You don’t have to worry. I’m back to my usual self.”

  “That’s a tremendous relief,” Victor said, leaning back again. “I understand why it worried you, of course, but it did seem highly unlikely to me,” he added. “I thought about every scenario. Could she know someone at the clinic? Could she know a friend of my mother’s? Someone maman could have confided in about you?”

  “Whom would your mother confide in?” I asked, trying my best to remain outwardly calm. I was back to normal, after all—I’d just declared so to Victor. I couldn’t seem worked up about his mother. “Didn’t you once say that she never spoke of it because she didn’t want a stain on her family?”

  “Yes, and I’m sure it’s true,” he said hastily. “But you were so distraught. I was just trying to get to the bottom of it.”

  “I am sure it’s nothing. Just an odd coincidence that brought back old memories.”

  “I think these are just the kinds of things that women talk about. Especially women like Marcelle. The bold, loud kind. You weren’t spending time with women like that at home.” He put his hat on as the sun moved over us, the parasol no longer fully covering our faces. “My mother kept you around all those aristocrats in Paris.”

  “Marcelle isn’t exactly a street urchin,” I countered.

  “No, but she’s a little more common than the ladies you saw at home. A little more eccentric, no?”

  “I don’t think I can label anyone common,” I said, thinking back to my beginnings. Victor knew that I had not grown up with money, but I had told him nothing beyond that. It was all he needed to know.

  “Some people shed their first skin better than others,” Victor said, his arm brushing against mine as he reached for his coffee. “I did ask around a bit about Arnaud. He’s quite the ladies’ man, it seems, but one of Governor-General Pasquier’s closest economic advisers. He remains prominent in the Alliance Républicaine Démocratique. He was also in Burma for a few years, one of the only Frenchmen there. It’s a bit of a unique position, since we have such little presence in Burma, but he seems to have come out of it well.”

  “A ladies’ man?” I asked, remembering what Marcelle and I had seen in the billiard room.

  “Those might just be rumors,” said Victor. “Men like to start such rumors about themselves when they’re abroad and there are willing native women in such large supply.”

  “I hope they are just rumors, for Marcelle’s sake.”

  Victor nodded. “On a different note, I have a proposition for you. A bit of a redo of that terrible situation that I put you in with the policeman. If you’re up for it, that is.”

  “A redo? As in I have to live that nightmare again?” I said, my heartbeat picking up.

  “No, I phrased that badly,” he said, smiling. “But I do need your help. We need your help,” he said, referring to what was bigger than us, “and this time I promise you’ll enjoy it.”

  For many years I’d wanted to be more helpful to Victor, in his working life especially, but Agathe had always forbade it. Finally, she wasn’t here.

  “What is it?” I asked, appreciative of Victor’s trust in me.

  “I need someone to travel to Haiphong, eighty miles east of here, and meet with a man. He helps with recruiting and worker transport in the rural parts of the region. I’m told that he has some important papers for me, but I can’t make the journey myself, as our overseers down in Cochinchina are insisting I come back to the plantations straightaway. The hospital expansion at Phu Rieng is finished, and I’m to give the governor-general a tour. He is very invested in how we are bringing modern European health care to our workers. I can’t tear myself in two, but I don’t want our man in Haiphong to hand off the papers to just anyone. I want them in the possession of someone I trust. And given what happened with that overseer at Phu Rieng, I’m more cautious. But I know whom I can always trust. I can always trust you.”

  “Yes, you can,” I said, feeling a rush of love and pride. “You can always trust me.”

  “Plus, it would allow you to see more of the country,” said Victor. “Take the train and spend a bit of time relaxing. We can set you up in a lovely hotel and you can contribute to our success here in a more concrete way. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Very much so,” I said. Victor knew that I wanted to feel useful, to exercise parts of my mind that I’d ignored since we’d married. The parts that only belonged to a working woman.

  Haiphong. I thought about the commotion on the docks when our boat had finally anchored in the port city. I’d barely slept the night before, anticipating our arrival at dawn, as the captain had promised. When the boat started to slow, I expected to pull into the quiet of the Far East, greeted by gentle waves, the murmur of soft voices. Instead, we heard loud shouting and the bang of metal containers moved around on the docks. There were huge cargo ships, piled high with wares—from household goods to bags of dried rice—and men running shirtless on the decks and below, wrapping rope around large containers, others trying to pull them to shore. The few women appeared to be carrying loads of at least fifty pounds on their backs, weaving unsteadily between the men, trying to keep their balance. There was nothing quiet or gentle about it.

  But this trip would be different. I was no longer a stranger to Indochine. It was starting to become my home.

  FIFTEEN

  Jessie

  October 4, 1933

  “Have you ever been to Haiphong?” I asked Trieu as I prepared for the journey. It was just past seven in the morning, but I was already dressed.

  “Yes, I’ve been,” Trieu said. “With Madame van Dampierre. She attended a party at the opera house there, Nhà hát Tây—or the Western Theatre, in French—and Cam and I traveled with her since she insisted on bringing all the boys. I think what you are doing, traveling alone, is a better idea. It’s very modern for a woman to travel alone. A foreign woman especially.”

  “Yes, I’m excited, but I’m a bit anxious about silly things,” I said, sure that my nerves showed. “Such as, what if I miss my train or can’t find the hotel that Victor has reserved for me?” I went on. “Part of me wishes he was coming along,” I admitted. “Though that doesn’t sound very modern of me, does it?”

  “If something like that happens, then you just ask for help,” Trieu said, kindly. “And all the pousse-pousse drivers know the Hôtel du Commerce. It’s the prettiest in Haiphong. It’s even prettier than the Métropole here. They’ll expect that that’s where you’re going. Unless Lanh has arranged a car?”

  “No, I asked him not to. I prefer to take a pousse-pousse. You can see so much more that way. Hear everything, too.”

  Trieu nodded and looked at my outfit, my gray pants and short-sleeved white blouse with a slightly puffed sleeve, all cinched by a thin alligator-skin belt.

  She pointed at my head and turned back to the closet, emerging with a hat, a bright geranium-colored straw boater with a narrow grosgrain ribbon that edged the crown. It was designed by Reboux and cost a pretty penny, but I hadn’t worn it yet, wondering if it was a bit much for a day hat. It was wide-brimmed, with a dramatic dip on the left side, but I had to admit it was striking.

  “You should wear this,” Trieu said. “Un canotier en paille. I think it’s your prettiest straw hat. And you’ll feel confident in it. The color is something only a self-assured woman would wear. One who doesn’t get nervous.”

  She placed the hat gently on my head, so as not to muss my waved hair, and I looked at my reflection in the mirror.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” asked Trieu. “There’s something about the color that makes it even lovelier.”

  “Yes, there is,” I said, smiling. I looked at it from all angles and then moved to my dressing
table. I reached into a drawer and applied a bold lipstick to match, my hand trembling slightly.

  “Beautiful,” she said approvingly.

  When Trieu was gone, I checked my suitcase again and added one last thing to my handbag. Victor had left me an envelope with 1,000 piastres, the equivalent of 300 American dollars, in it. He said I was to give it to the contact as a bonus.

  I placed it carefully inside my bag, both wishing I didn’t have to carry such a sum of money with me and reminding myself that I was foolish to let my nerves get the better of me. How many husbands let their wives be involved in their work? Especially such important work. All Marcelle did was sun herself at the club all day. She certainly wasn’t allowed to have any involvement with Arnaud’s business dealings at the chamber of commerce.

  I had decided to come to Indochine, and I had to be devoted to us prospering here. I looked at my reflection and saw a very competent woman looking back at me.

  “Off to the house of a hundred suns?” said Lanh when he opened the door of the Delahaye for me. I got in slowly, then sat up rigidly in the back seat.

  “The what?” I asked. “The house of a hundred suns?”

  “That’s what I call la gare de Hang Co,” he said, closing my heavy door. He sat down in the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and gently moved the car out of our driveway, launching into the story of why he chose that moniker.

  I smiled, thinking about a young, hopeful Lanh. Haiphong was just a ray, then. A simple sun ray.

  At the station, Lanh didn’t leave my side until he’d made sure the stationmaster was there to take care of me. In fact, the stationmaster and a porter met the car as it pulled up in front of the elegant building, then stayed with me until the train arrived.

  Once inside the black steam-engine-powered train, I again sat rigidly, my back barely grazing the seat behind me, highly aware of the amount of piastres I was carrying.

  The car was half full, and I was thankful that so far no one had sat beside me, or across the aisle. I felt a breeze and looked up to see eight fans on the carriage’s ceiling, one on either side of the four round light fixtures. The walls were a polished wood, the windows large and separated by decorative mirrored paneling—it looked as elegant as any train I’d ridden in France, perhaps even nicer.