A Hundred Suns

by Karin Tanabe

  A driver in a private car tried to wave me over as soon as I emerged from the station. I would rather have taken a pousse-pousse, but I knew I could be fighting time. I had already cursed myself on the train for not driving, though I was a decidedly terrible driver.

  “L’Hôtel du Commerce, xin vui long,” I said. “Please.”

  “Oui, oui, madame,” he responded, stepping on the gas as we roared off in the direction of the famously beautiful hotel. Jessie Lesage was undoubtedly staying there. Anyone who could afford it did.

  As the man drove, I stared at every Western woman I saw, but there were not many on the streets at such an early hour. Suddenly, the car turned sharply off the boulevard Paul-Bert and squeezed into a road barely wide enough for it.

  “Why are you taking the back streets?” I shouted to the driver. “Please stay on the main road!”

  “Quicker here, madame,” he said in French, navigating a bend expertly.

  “I don’t like this route,” I insisted. “Please go back to boulevard Paul-Bert.” Jessie had only been to Haiphong when she arrived, and I doubted she’d seen more than the route from the docks to the train station, and that from the back of a car. She was unlikely to be wandering the back streets at an hour past dawn. If she was walking anywhere, she would be walking on Paul-Bert.

  I looked down at my watch again. It was 7:35.

  But the man was right. This way was quicker. We arrived at the hotel in just ten minutes. He helped me out, and a porter from the hotel ran out to greet me, his crisp white jacket almost glowing in the morning light.

  I looked up at the mansard roof of the grand, cathedral-like baroque-style structure. It was striking, but so European. In a city that did not yet feel completely taken over by the colonists, the sight was jarring.

  After I paid the driver, I walked up the steps, into the grand foyer, and straight to the front desk.

  “I’m afraid I was not able to telephone ahead,” I told the hotel manager who greeted me. “But I would like a room for the night. Or perhaps two nights. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Mais bien sûr. That can be arranged, madame,” he said, his square jaw worked into a smile.

  “Madame de Fabry. Marcelle de Fabry,” I said, trying to sound pleasant. After I’d said it, I regretted it. The man would certainly know the de Fabry name. Arnaud was often in the newspapers.

  “I’m meeting my friend here today,” I said as coolly as I could manage. “Her name is Jessie Lesage. Could you tell me if she’s checked in?”

  The man consulted the large guest book in front of him.

  “Yes, she checked in yesterday,” he said, running his finger down the list, written in large script, “but she checked out this morning.”

  “What?” I said. “No, that can’t be.”

  “Yes, she did. I see it right here. She spent last night here but checked out an hour or so ago. Perhaps earlier. I can’t quite read the script. I was not the one to assist her, I’m afraid.”

  “But you’re sure?” I said, trying to get a look at his book, which he inched away from me.

  “I’m certain,” he said, closing it.

  “Have any boats from France come in since yesterday?” I asked, trying to think of every reason Jessie could have come to Haiphong.

  “No,” he replied. “But one is due to leave in a few hours.”

  “I see, thank you,” I said sweetly, trying to seem more like a dim-witted colonial wife and less like a huntress on the prowl.

  Haiphong was not like Ha Long Bay or the caves of Trang An, places that attracted foreigners seeking sights. It was industrial. It housed rice factories and large storage facilities. It had pockets of charm, but it was essentially a dirty working city. Michelin, however, sent hordes of new coolies from Haiphong on boats south. Perhaps she was here to observe one of their slave ships?

  I turned down the pousse-pousse drivers jostling to get a fare and walked quickly toward the harbor precinct. When I reached the crowded docks, I stopped for a moment and watched the boats coming in, full of wares rather than passengers.

  I didn’t see any men in large groups who looked like they were on their way to the plantations. I turned to the east and walked to the canals, a more tightly packed section of the port where smaller boats docked. The crude wooden crafts, shaded by thatched bamboo roofs, bobbed in the midmorning sun, some overflowing with goods, others with people. I watched as men loaded cotton sacks of rice onto wide carts, then ran off, somehow able to pull five times their body weight.

  Khoi wanted me to be patient. For two years I had let him determine how we could create some meaning from Sinh’s senseless death. But it was time for me to act without him as a constant guide. As soon as I’d realized the kind of woman Jessie was, and had confirmed that Victor was, in fact, the man we had assumed, I had begun acting on my own. Clearly, it was the right decision. It had brought me here.

  I lingered for a moment, looking in the shadows for a European woman, but I was one of the only ones walking the docks. When the sun grew too strong, I walked back to the side of the port that had cafés and restaurants, catering perhaps to the people who had just completed a long journey and were eager for a meal at a table that wasn’t bobbing up and down.

  I stopped in front of a rather pretty one, one of the few with an awning. Café Rodier, it said. I looked the patrons over but still saw no foreign women, only men.

  That’s when I spotted it. Café Mat Troi. It had the same name as the one in Hanoi where Jessie had seen the dead man tossed onto his doorstep.

  “May I help you?” said a man in heavily accented French. “Hungry this morning?”

  “Oh, yes, why not?” I said, glancing at him and then at the sign again. “Can I ask you what that means? The name of the café. Mat Troi. What does it translate to in French?” I asked, wanting to confirm that what I was thinking was correct.

  “Sun Café,” he said, smiling. “Very popular name. I think there must be ten more cafés in town with that name.”

  “Of course,” I said, still looking up at the large metal letters.

  I didn’t care how many more cafés there were in town with the same name. Jessie had been at this one. I could sense her.

  I was about to sit when I stopped abruptly.

  There were times in my life when I feared my heart might burst from shock—when my father died, when Khoi read me the letter from Sinh’s father, and then when he sailed for Indochine without me. But this moment eclipsed them all. My heart, I was sure, would burst.

  “Are you all right?” the man sitting in front of me asked. His back had been to me when I approached the café, but I could now see his face.

  I was looking directly at Paul Adrien, the man who had shot Sinh dead and changed the balance of my universe, of so many people’s universes, forever. This man calmly drinking in the bright morning sun had taken one of the country’s strongest rays and extinguished it in an instant.

  I had given up trying to find him. We all had, believing he had vanished. Back to France, we were told, except he couldn’t be located there, either. And now, when I had stopped looking, when I had put all my efforts on bringing Michelin to its knees, Paul Adrien had appeared in front of me.

  What kind of man could put a bullet through someone’s heart? I wondered as my own heart rattled inside of me. Especially the heart of a stranger? Sinh had provoked him, the report had said. I knew it wasn’t true. Sinh wanted to change a lot about his country, but he had never planned to do it through violence.

  “Can I help you?” Paul asked, peering up at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to manage my shock. “I felt a bit light-headed.” In truth it was far worse than that. I felt like I might just crumple at his feet.

  “Here.” He stood. “Let me help you to a table. Or would you like to join me?” he asked. “I was just finishing my drink here and would be happy for some conversation.”

  “That’s very kind,” I managed to say, not understanding
how I was able to get the words out. “I’d like to.”

  He pulled a chair out for me and introduced himself.

  “Paul Adrien,” he said.

  “I’m Alice Bisset,” I said, giving my sister’s name.

  “Are you waiting for a boat, or do you live in Haiphong?” he asked, his voice calm and easy.

  “No, I’m just passing through,” I replied, desperate to say as little as I could. I needed to regain my composure and then make him talk as much as possible.

  “I see,” he said, seeming to understand that I wasn’t much of a conversationalist. “Perhaps you would like a drink as you pass through?” he asked, gesturing to the waitress.

  “A whiskey. A double. Neat,” I said as Paul raised his eyebrows at me. “If they’ll serve me.”

  “A good breakfast,” he said, grinning. “And they will. I know them well.”

  “I’ve been up for a while,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “You must live in Haiphong?” I asked, hoping it sounded natural. Easy. This man had an easy air about him, which I hadn’t expected, and it bothered me. According to Sinh’s father, he’d been plagued by his actions. It looked like the only thing plaguing this man was a life of leisure.

  “I do, but I’ve just recently returned. To Haiphong and to Indochine,” he said. “I lived here before, in Haiphong, but I returned to France in 1929 for a time.”

  “But you came back to the colony, most people do not,” I said, taking a big gulp of my strong drink.

  “I was hesitant. I didn’t love my early years here, but the economy is difficult in France now. There is more opportunity here.”

  “May I ask what you do?” I said, my shock having transformed into a quiet rage.

  “I used to be a policeman. I was a militaire in France, the army, and then I came here because it seemed full of adventure. And again, the money was better.”

  “It’s important work,” I said, practically choking on my words.

  “Yes, I enjoyed it. And it is important, thank you for saying that. But it was difficult, too. I think it was right for me to stop.” Finally, his face turned stormier.

  “And now you work on the docks?” I asked.

  “No, now I work for Michelin et Cie. The rubber company,” he clarified. “I was just meeting with one of the plantation’s owners earlier today. Actually, I don’t know exactly what her role is. But she was very pleasant. Everyone at Michelin is. I’ve been lucky.”

  She.

  She had been here. Jessie Lesage had come to Haiphong to meet with the man who killed Sinh. I took another drink and forced myself to speak.

  “Oh, lovely,” I said, trying to nod.

  “Anyways, I help keep order here, which is a bit like policing, I suppose. Mostly when they send boats down to the plantations. New workers. Today, no ships are sailing, so I have a bit of a day off, which is most welcome.”

  “How did you choose this particular job?” I asked, the patio starting to feel like it was narrowing in on me. I had to leave soon. I could not keep up this charade for much longer.

  “I suppose in a way it chose me. The Michelins approached me for it because I speak the language. Annamese,” he specified as if I thought they spoke German in the colony. “That’s why they hired me.”

  That, I was very certain, was not why they hired him.

  “It must be steady work,” I said, shifting in my chair and reaching in my purse for money for the drink.

  “It is steady. I lost myself a bit back in France after my first sojourn in the colony. I was in need of something steady.”

  I nodded, now at a complete loss for words.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m going on like this,” he said, grabbing his drink and swigging the rest of it back. “You most likely did not come to a café alone looking for conversation.”

  “I think I was just looking for a drink,” I said, staring down at my near-empty glass. “But the conversation is an added pleasure.”

  “Still, I’ll leave you in peace,” he said, standing. “I hope we meet again.” He looked at me meaningfully. I realized that I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring; I had left in such a hurry.

  “I’d like that.” It was the first true thing I’d said since we met.

  He put his hand on my shoulder before he left, and then walked off.

  I took a pousse-pousse to the hotel where Jessie had stayed the night before. I did not have time to wait for an evening train, opting to hire a car instead. The weight of all the years of searching and waiting was crushing me. I needed to be home. I needed Khoi next to me. I was willing to act alone on some things, but this was not one of them. I did not have the capacity to handle this alone.

  After an agonizing trip back to Hanoi, I rushed into Khoi’s house, nearly trampling his housekeeper Kim Ly.

  “You’ve been where?” he started, but I didn’t let him finish.

  I threw my arms around him and put my mouth to his ear, my body exhausted.

  “I saw him. Khoi, I saw him. Paul Adrien. Jessie Lesage was in Haiphong to meet him. She sat with him and talked to him. And so did I. I had a drink with him.”

  “You what?” he said, grabbing my arm. “Are you certain?”

  “Khoi, he introduced himself to me,” I said. “After all this time, he was there in front of me, all because I was chasing Jessie Lesage.”

  “What do we do?” Khoi whispered.

  “We have to tell Anne-Marie.”

  “How?” said Khoi, asking the question that I had been turning over the entire journey in the car.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We don’t even know which country she’s in. Or if she’s alive,” I said, finally uttering the one fear we never dared voice.

  “We’ll find her,” said Khoi. “Together.”

  NINETEEN

  Jessie

  October 16, 1933

  “A group of us are taking a boat out on Ha Long Bay. Have you been yet?” Red asked when he found me on a sun lounger near the club’s swimming pool eleven days after I returned from Haiphong. I shook my head no.

  “You must,” he said, sitting down next to me, his gaze lingering on my bare thighs, which had become leaner and tanner since I’d moved to Hanoi. “It’s like heaven on water. Please come. Your husband will let you, won’t he? In fact, bring him. He probably hasn’t seen it, either.”

  He slid his sunglasses down his nose so that I could see his eyes.

  “He’s in the south,” I said. “And will be for the foreseeable future. He was home for a week, but he had to travel down to the plantations again, so it’s just me. But I would love to come. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

  He wouldn’t mind because I certainly wouldn’t tell him until after the trip was over.

  Victor had been very pleased that everything in Haiphong had gone so well. “If we didn’t have Lucie,” he’d said to me, “I would simply hire you to work beside me.” Maybe one day, despite Lucie, we could arrange that.

  “Good,” Red said, touching my bare knee as he stood. “You’ll like the group. They’re a little eccentric, but that’s welcome here. We’re far away from the Eighth Arrondissement, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Very far,” I said.

  “Marcelle and her man are the ones behind this trip, so don’t worry too much about the eccentrics. She was going to send you a note, but I told her that I wanted to be the one to invite you.”

  “How thoughtful,” I said, smiling. “Of them. And you. But eccentric? Maybe Marcelle, but Arnaud seems anything but.”

  “Did I say Arnaud?” Red countered, backing away with a smile. “I don’t think I did.”

  He turned before I could ask more.

  “Saturday at seven a.m!” he shouted, his back still to me as I watched his strapping figure disappear.

  * * *

  “Have you really not been to Ha Long Bay yet?” asked Marcelle as we made our way in the Delahaye to Quang Yen Province, of which the bay was the crown jewel. “What is Victor doing
with you? Keeping you chained in the cellar?”

  “Me, chained? No, quite the opposite,” I said, suppressing a smile. “But I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to find my way here,” I said, pointing out the window as the water came to view.

  “In the end it’s for the best. This way you can experience it for the first time with me. And the others.” Marcelle paused briefly and took my arm. “You do understand about Khoi, don’t you? It’s not that I don’t love Arnaud. It’s just that I couldn’t take any more of his behavior without replicating it on my own. I tried to be the patient wife and all that, but I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  “Has he had many … lovers?” I asked, unsure how to phrase it. There was plenty of adultery in Paris, of course, but the parties involved didn’t flaunt their betrayals as the French seemed to in the East.

  “Many!” Marcelle said, laughing. “I think every fille indigène under twenty-one with questionable morals or a need for some quick money has been in his bed.”

  “Does he pay them?” I blurted out.

  “He doesn’t not pay them,” Marcelle said. “I haven’t ever looked into his arrangements, but I think he helps pay off certain debts their families may carry, that sort of thing. It’s not a direct exchange, but a more circuitous one.” She stroked the leather of the car door. “When I put it that way, it actually sounds quite benevolent, doesn’t it?”

  She lowered the window a bit and we both breathed in the air, which had become fresher as we moved farther out of the city. “Khoi doesn’t pay me, if you’re wondering. But he could certainly afford to.”

  “No. Of course,” I stammered. “I assumed as much.”

  I looked away from Marcelle, closed my eyes, and thought of Victor. We had never been tempted. But we’d never been in a country like Indochine, either.

  “What are you thinking about?” asked Marcelle. She must have been watching me.

  “I’m just thinking of Victor,” I said quickly. “I hope he has a chance to see all this soon. The scenery is so beautiful.”