by Karin Tanabe
“He doesn’t speak French,” Lucie said, stepping in front of me, translating what I’d said. The porter smiled at her and took the case into his arms instead of holding the crooked handle.
I reached into my purse for a tip but was interrupted by the stationmaster, who barked at the man to keep moving and hurried over to greet us.
“Madame Lesage, I saw the car and was hoping you were inside,” he said, executing a quick, polite bow. “And your husband, of course,” he added when Victor opened his door and nodded at him. “And Lucie,” the stationmaster said, slipping her a piece of hard candy from his pocket. “The most intelligent child in Indochine.” He added a phrase in Annamese, and she answered readily, pointing at her father behind her.
“Let me help you inside,” the stationmaster said to me, ushering us in and shooing off the line of weathered men hawking food, fortunes, and shoe shines.
As I passed under the archway, I took a slow, deep breath, something that had become a ritual. The air changed a few inches from the train station. It was richer, as if the smells of the rest of the country had been brought up to Hanoi by the steam engines but weren’t strong enough to make it farther into the city and mix with us.
“You’re very kind to escort us in,” Victor said politely to the stationmaster as we all walked, a tense half smile on his face. “But we will be fine from here,” he said. He stopped and gestured to one of the waiting areas. “We wouldn’t want to pull you from your duties.”
He handed the man a few coins and nodded at him in a way that implied we didn’t want to be bothered again. The man disappeared as quickly as he had come, managing a subtle wink at Lucie as he backed away. Victor was not a particularly tall or physically imposing man, but there was something in his demeanor that brought him an enormous amount of respect and obedience. Perhaps it was the scent of money.
“It’s just part of his job,” I murmured to Victor as we sat on the wooden benches.
“Yes, and he’s very good at it,” he said, smiling at me, his black hair slicked neatly with pomade. “But I need to get back to these papers. I don’t have the patience for small talk today—except with you, mon coeur,” he said to Lucie, who was hovering in front of him. Victor could have looked Annamite from the back, too, but he carried himself too rigidly—a posture that marked out well-bred Europeans in the colony. And from the front, his glacial-blue eyes gave him away instantly.
Lucie was still standing, shifting her weight from one thin leg to the other as if she were trying to float. When I realized it was because she didn’t want to dirty her dress, I stood with her and kissed the top of her head, warm from just the few steps in the unforgiving sun. “You do know there’s a half day’s train journey ahead?” I said. “You’ll have to sit sometime.”
“Those benches over there look a bit cleaner,” she said, pointing and pulling my hand. “May we sit there instead?”
I nodded yes, and we turned to the east side of the station, Lucie leading the way. We had almost reached the row of more modern benches when she was suddenly struck by a boy who was rushing toward us. She tumbled back, her body forcefully colliding with the wooden bench.
“Careful, boy!” my husband shouted after he heard me gasp, leaping up and pushing the child off of Lucie.
The boy, a shoeblack, grinned, not bothering to look at her, and suggested a shine, pointing at Victor’s brogues.
“After this!” Victor snorted, pointing at Lucie and shouting out the few insults he knew in Annamese. “You’re lucky I don’t have you banned from the station.”
He shooed the child away with one of his rolled-up papers, hitting him across the back.
I held Lucie by the shoulders. She was looking down at her dress in horror. On the upper part of her starched white skirt was a black checkmark-shaped swoop of shoe polish.
“Maman!” she cried, staring at the stain. “He ruined my dress,” she whispered, tears quickly forming in the corner of her eyes. “I can’t go on the train like this,” she said, sobbing.
“No, Lucie, no, don’t cry,” I said, embracing her, but making sure to avoid the stain. “I’ll take you to wash it. We can scrub it out, don’t worry, chérie.” I patted her on the shoulder.
“Take her to the washroom,” said Victor, stroking Lucie’s head comfortingly. “I’ll wait here.” He gestured to the bench closest to the bathroom.
I nodded and pushed Lucie the few steps to the door.
When we were inside, and luckily alone, Lucie pulled her skirt up and looked at the mark.
“Are you sure it will come out?” she asked, dropping the fabric and wiping at her tears.
“Of course,” I said brightly, reaching for a hand towel. I wet it and soaped it up before starting to scrub.
We watched as my right hand moved back and forth and I tugged at the garment with my left. But all that did was spread the black stain, so I crouched down on the floor, hoping to get a better angle. It was not going to be easy to remove.
I scrubbed as hard as I could and listened as her sobs quieted. When I looked up and smiled at her, happy that the mark was turning gray, black spots started swimming before my eyes and I had to bend my head quickly down to avoid falling over.
“Maman?” I heard her say, but her voice sounded far away.
“I just feel a bit faint,” I said, standing up carefully. Feeling dizzier, I gripped the sink and closed my eyes, letting my head drop heavily forward. With my eyes still closed, I turned on the water. I placed one of my hands under the stream, keeping the other on the sink for balance.
When I felt a little steadier, I bent down and drank from the sink, lapping the cool water in large gulps. I stayed like that for a few moments, feeling as if my thirst would never be quenched.
“I’m sorry, Lucie,” I mumbled when I felt I could stand up again without help. I wiped off my mouth, glanced in the mirror briefly, surprised by my pale reflection, then whipped my head to my left.
Lucie was no longer standing next to me.
“Lucie?” I exclaimed, turning around to the stalls. They were empty. “Lucie!” I called out, running in a circle in the little room. She wasn’t anywhere.
She was gone.
I ran out to the waiting room and checked the bench Victor had pointed to, but she wasn’t there, either. Neither was Victor.
“Lucie!” I shouted, rushing between the benches, all packed with travelers, and out to the central space. “Victor!”
The station was crowded, and I suddenly felt as if I were swimming in a sea of bodies, when I should have been able to spot them so easily.
What could have happened? Lucie wasn’t a child who wandered off, but perhaps she had something pressing to say to her father or wanted our cases back so she could change her dress. Perhaps the shoeblack had convinced Victor to get a shine after all. I stared at the empty bench a few seconds more, then swiveled to look at the row of benches where Lucie had wanted to sit. They weren’t there, either. I looked up at the clock inside the station. There were still ten minutes before the train down the coast was due to arrive.
It was a large station. And they could be anywhere.
Fearing the worst, I walked the length of the building, avoiding the small groups of Indochinese men in three-piece traveling suits, their hair deeply parted and slicked down, leather bags at their sides. I moved through the left and right wings, the center hall twice, then out the back door to the platform with the rows of tracks. They weren’t there, so I hurried out to the front again to see if they were with the vendors. There were no children and no men who resembled Victor.
I looked at all the peasants peddling wares, some shirtless and half asleep in the shade, all too thin, their hands listless, their long yellow fingernails pointing down, their skin deeply darkened by the sun. I stopped and questioned the one nearest to the door.
“Did you see a man, a Frenchman, in a beige tropical suit and a little girl here?” I asked him, glancing at his calloused bare feet and his pile
of sugarcane. Lucie loved sugarcane and was still taken with the fact that people consumed the sweet substance in raw form in Indochine. How I wished she were here now, chewing the fibrous stalk.
“Sugarcane, madame?” the vendor asked in French.
“No,” I said, shaking my head vigorously. “But did you happen to see—”
He waved his sugarcane again, repeating his request through his smile. It was foolish to think the sugarcane vendor would have understood more than a few words in French. I repeated the phrase in Annamese, to the best of my abilities, but he just shook his head no. Lucie would have translated better than I did. Where was she? And where was Victor! I gave the vendor a few coins and backed away.
I ran back inside, my lungs tight, my breath shallow, and checked the clock above the ticket booth. The train to Vinh was set to arrive in two minutes. I rushed to the rear of the building, exited onto the platform, and inspected the scrum of travelers. One man I recognized from the French Officers’ Club. He gave me a friendly smile, and I returned it but quickly twisted myself to the side to avoid his gaze, a new wave of panic crashing on me. I pulled down my hat and looked at every person standing on the platform except for him. I looked at them twice. I walked across the platform and stared at them from the other side. I even went to the edge and glanced down at the tracks, holding my breath, praying that my husband and child weren’t lying there, unnoticed yet flattened and dismembered, but there was nothing but steel and tufts of grass poking up between the ties.
There were still no bells ringing to indicate the arriving train, so I slipped back inside to see whether Lucie might be in the ladies’ room looking for me. She was not. I again covered every inch of the station, indoors and out. There was no Lucie, no Victor. My head felt heavy, yet I was filled with an almost painful energy that refused to dissipate. I ran back to the waiting area, sat on the wooden bench where we had left Victor, and started to sob. If Victor were with me, he would have been deeply mortified by the state I was in, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t anywhere.
I dried my face with the edge of my sleeve. My eyes were tired, unfocused, but I felt compelled to blink the feeling away and keep searching through the blur.
I stood up and darted off again, this time nearly tripping the stationmaster, who was headed to the main entrance, surely to greet another rich French family in hopes of a big tip. He stopped abruptly when he saw me.
“Madame Lesage!” he exclaimed, taking his handkerchief out of his pocket and pressing it into my hand in one elegant movement. “What is the matter? Please sit down here,” he said, guiding me to a wooden bench in the waiting area.
“No!” I snapped through my sobs. “I need to sit there! Right there. They’ll be coming to find me.” I indicated the bench where Victor had been. He nodded, his hand outstretched to guide the way.
“Can I assist you in some way, Madame Lesage?” he asked after we sat, handing me yet another starched handkerchief as I continued to cry. I hadn’t used the first one yet.
“Yes. I hope you can,” I sputtered, clenching his handkerchiefs in my fist. “Something just went terribly wrong.”
“I’m sure I can help,” he said gently. “That’s why I’m here. Please tell me what’s upsetting you.”
I looked up at his concerned face and tried to get the words out.
“Just a few minutes ago I went to the washroom to clean my daughter Lucie’s dress,” I said. “To get out a shoe-polish stain. A boy, a shoeblack soliciting my husband’s business, had pushed up against her with his greasy brush, making a terrible mark on her white dress. But I couldn’t wash it out. Then, I don’t know what happened. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, perhaps a minute at most, and when I opened them, Lucie was gone. I ran out to find her, but she’s not anywhere in the station—and I’ve looked everywhere—and neither is my husband, Victor, who was supposed to wait for us right here.” I slapped the bench we were sitting on. “He’s not here sitting where he’s supposed to be waiting for me, and Lucie’s not anywhere, either. I’ve been running all over the station for fifteen minutes now, but I can’t find them. I’m alone, and we are going to miss our train to Vinh. We have to meet Victor’s cousin. It’s a very important trip, and now he and Lucie have disappeared. They’re gone!”
The stationmaster nodded and looked at me, not unkindly but blankly, as if he had failed to follow me.
I stared back at him, thinking that perhaps I had mistaken idiocy for kindness.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I blurted out. “Don’t you understand me? Don’t you understand?” I knew I sounded horribly rude, but I needed him to help me.
He shifted slightly but said nothing, and instead of crying again, I dropped my gaze to the gold nameplate on his jacket. Pham Van Dat. After nearly two months in Indochine and many hours waiting for trains, greeted each time by the same stationmaster, I had never bothered to learn his name.
“Monsieur Dat, I beg you,” I said quietly. “Please help me find them. We have to meet Victor’s cousin tonight. We must have already missed the morning train, but perhaps there is one later today? We must be on that one. Together. Please help me find them.”
“You say that you are looking for your husband and daughter? Victor and Lucie Lesage?” he said slowly.
“Of course!” I bellowed. “You just greeted us outside a half hour ago! Who else would I be looking for?”
He shook his head and laced his hands together. “But madame, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said, meeting my gaze. “I did greet you a half hour ago, as you said, but it was just you in the black car. Just you and your chauffeur. There was no husband and child. You were alone.”
Alone.
It couldn’t be. The stationmaster was mistaken.
“No, Monsieur Dat. You are mistaken,” I said, shaking my head. “Of course they were with me. We are all journeying to Vinh together, as I said. To see Victor’s Michelin cousin. A young but important one. He and his wife—she’s from the La Trémoille family—they are nhan vat quan trong,” I said, using the Annamese words for notable persons. “Victor, Lucie, and I—we are all here in this station somewhere. We came here, together!”
He shook his head again. “Madame, I saw the black car from my perch outside just thirty or so minutes ago,” he said. “And even when it was still moving, I saw you and your red hat inside. I knew when I saw the hat that it was you, as I’ve seen you wear it before, on more than one occasion. And Madame Lesage,” he finished up, his spine straightening, “do not think me rude, but I am sure it was you getting out of the Delahaye car. Alone. You are a difficult person not to notice.” He looked at me with concern and repeated, “I am sure you were alone.”
“That can’t be,” I insisted. “You are not remembering correctly.”
I rested my heavy head in my hands, my vision blurring even more, and closed my eyes. “We traveled together to the station,” I repeated, feeling queasy. “We came inside together. Victor, Lucie, and I.”
I lifted my head with a jerk, propelled by a sudden idea. “Lanh will tell you!” I said loudly. “Please call my tai xe now. I insist. Phone our house. Lanh will have returned. And our servants saw us all off this morning. Please phone them,” I begged. “Ask for Lanh, or Trieu. One of them should answer straightaway.”
“Of course,” he said, standing up.
When he had left, I looked at the restroom, holding my breath, waiting for Lucie to skip out of it. Was she still refusing to sit, afraid to wrinkle her now stained dress? Had they really wandered off? Or had something happened to them? Had they been taken away by force? Everyone knew who Victor was. Our wealth wasn’t what some thought we had, but it was still more than nearly everyone else in Indochine.
I rubbed my eyes, but I still had to squint to see the stationmaster returning.
“Did you phone, Monsieur Dat? Did you speak to Lanh? Or Trieu?” I asked anxiously when he was close.
“Yes, Madame Lesage,” he replied, his voice even. “I
made the call myself and spoke to Madame Trieu. I’m sorry, but she said that she saw you off this morning, alone. That your husband and daughter are in Trang An for the day. To see the caves.”
“Caves! What are you talking about?” I cried out. “They are here, with me. Victor doesn’t have time to take Lucie to inspect caves. Please help me look again, please.”
“Of course we can look again, Madame Lesage,” he said kindly. “Perhaps they arrived in a separate car. Perhaps I just didn’t see them.”
In the center of the station, coming in from the five round archways, I spotted the porter who had helped me with my broken suitcase, the one with the cloudy brown eyes. I wanted to beckon him over. To ask him if he remembered Lucie speaking to him in Annamese. Little Lucie with her dimpled face, overly pressed and powdered by her maid. Lucie, who cared far more for Indochine than France now. But instead I turned away. I knew what he’d say, and I couldn’t hear it from one more person. I clenched my teeth together and tried to set my mind straight. My roiling, heavy mind.
I straightened my back against the hard, polished wood of the bench.
“Yes, yes, I could be remembering it wrong,” I said calmly, forcing a smile. But I knew I wasn’t. We were together in the car. Lucie’s hands were fiddling with my gold rings, her thin, tan leg was next to mine, her perfectly formed head against my shoulder. The way she rubbed her foot against my uncovered ankle, sitting so close even though the back seat of the Delahaye was very wide—I could still feel the sensation lingering.
“Come, we shall look again,” said the stationmaster, waiting patiently for me to stand.
I rose but felt like screaming out in frustration. Even though I had just asked to, I did not want to search the station again, pecking my way through the crowd like a chicken without a head. What I wanted was my family next to me.
“When you helped me enter the station, did I have a suitcase?” I asked.
“You did!” he said enthusiastically. “It had a broken handle. You handed it to a porter here,” he said, looking around for the man. “I explained to him that it was broken and that he should carry it from the base. Cradle it.”
