A Hundred Suns

by Karin Tanabe

  I stood up, took a bath, and then looked at my naked body in the mirror. Even that didn’t look like mine. I was too thin and too bronzed. But I had to find a piece of myself or I would never make it home to Hanoi. When I had enough strength, I would tell Victor that seeing those men had marked me. Sickened me and made me deeply hate myself for doing nothing. I’d clawed through continents to create this life. But I couldn’t keep living in it if I didn’t say something.

  A day later, I was back in Hanoi and felt a wash of relief when I saw the station. I felt that I’d been away for months instead of just twelve days.

  Victor had sent a telegram to the house to say I would arrive the morning of November 6 so that Lanh could be waiting for me.

  I was almost outside the station when I remembered the poster I’d seen on my journey out depicting the house of a hundred suns. I returned to the ticket counter, but it was no longer hanging by the timetables.

  When I reached the wall where I’d seen it, I touched it but felt no pinholes. Perhaps it had been attached with adhesive. I badly wanted to give Lanh the poster, to show him that the government was still trying to enchant children and travelers with visions of the suns shining down on them. I needed to do something kind for someone.

  I stopped a porter and asked for the stationmaster, but he shrugged. I waited five more minutes, keeping my eyes on the front door, where I knew he often escorted rich French travelers in, but there was no sign of him.

  “Does madame need assistance?” a man behind the ticket counter asked, craning his neck to see me better. His hair was parted and slicked, and like all the other men, he was dressed in a dark uniform.

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “When I took the train to Tourane twelve days ago, there was a poster on the wall here.” I pointed to my left. “It was an advertisement for train travel, showing a station with a big sun over it. I would like that poster. I will buy it, of course. If you have a moment, could you find it for me? And is twenty piastres enough?”

  I reached into my bag, moving my hand through it quickly, searching for my money.

  “Which poster was it, madame?” the man nearest to me asked, looking confused.

  “It was an advertisement,” I repeated. “An Indochine Railways advertisement. Just as I said, it was a print of a train station, with a sun above it, and the text read, ‘Pour aller loin, pour payer moins, pour être bien, prenez le train.’”

  The man who had first spoken to me left his counter and came over to look at the wall where I was pointing.

  “No, madame, I’m sorry. I don’t remember it,” he said, staring at the white wall, where only timetables were tacked up now.

  He called out something in Annamese to the other ticket vendors, and they all shook their heads no, replying to him in their many tones.

  “They don’t know it, either,” the man said. “There is never anything else hanging here. Only the train timetables.”

  I looked at the wall, stark white, unmarked, but the poster was so vivid in my mind I could have traced exactly where it was hanging. I was sure it had been there.

  “I see. I apologize for taking up your time,” I muttered, shuffling quickly away.

  They were wrong—of course they were. They had to be. I ran out of the station, searching for Lanh, wanting nothing more than to hide with Lucie in the big yellow house.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Marcelle

  November 13, 1933

  “Be careful!” I exclaimed. I was used to the chaos of Dong Xuan market on the rue du Riz, but someone behind me had just slammed hard into my shoulder, making me stumble into a vegetable seller’s wares. Pulling myself up from a pile of Chinese cabbages, I saw the shock in the vendor’s eyes, only partly visible under her conical straw hat, and began to apologize, but I stopped when I heard a male voice also apologizing.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the man said. “I don’t know what happened.” He turned to me. “Are you all right?” he asked as he held out his hand.

  “You must be careful! Look what I’ve—” I exclaimed, then abruptly fell silent when I saw his face. It was Pham Dat, the stationmaster.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I said. “No apology needed. It can get so crowded here.”

  He nodded, still holding my hand. He was wearing a casual shirt and trousers, not his usual white uniform. He squeezed my hand tightly, and I felt him press a small piece of paper into my palm. I pulled my hand away discreetly, tucking it into my right trouser pocket.

  “Let me pay this woman for the damage I caused,” Dat said, indicating the vendor.

  “There’s no need,” I said, pasting a polite smile on my face. “I will buy her produce. But it’s kind of you to offer.”

  He nodded and walked quickly away. I had not thought that of all the people we paid off that Pham Dat would prove to be the most useful, but of late, he was worth far more than the fifty piastres we gave him at the start of each month.

  I purchased all the vegetables the woman had spread out, stuffing them into my straw bag and a bundle of cloth she gave me. Then I toted them to the far end of the market, where beggars were waiting for the day to end so they could salvage the food that had been trampled or had spoiled in the sun. I dropped my vegetables with a woman cradling a young boy, slipping some piastres into her fist as well.

  “Eighty,” I whispered. “Don’t let them steal from you.”

  Free of the heavy load, I hurried to the east side of the market, past the streetcar that ran through the middle of it, past coconut vendors with bright strips of blue and red cloth tied around their foreheads, toward a dozen young men wearing white sarongs. They were carrying boxes of live animals. I followed them to the cluster of meat sellers who came en masse on Sundays, past their rows of butchered and live animals to a man who was roasting a whole pig on a spit. The animal’s mouth was wide open as if still in shock from its untimely death. The flames had seared half the poor beast and were burning brightly, the edges tinged blue as a crisp fall breeze fanned them. The market was not devoid of French women—some of us liked to shop this way, among the locals—but I still stood out from the crowd. Trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, I stood near the people observing the fire, many of them children, and took out Dat’s note.

  “Paul Adrien, the police officer, came in on the nine o’clock train,” it read. I scanned it again, then crumpled it in my hand, my nails nearly puncturing my skin before I let my muscles relax. I walked past the fire and dropped the small piece of paper in the flames, watching it turn to ash. Paul was in Hanoi now. Khoi had said he wanted to speak to him. To see what his eyes looked like when he mentioned Sinh. With the lure of a romantic engagement, and through a series of messengers, I had pulled Paul here.

  Back at the perimeter of the market, my chauffeur was waiting. “The Aéro-club, please,” I said. I saw him hesitate a moment before he started the engine and pulled out into the street without a word. Membership in the Aéro-club was restricted to men, but I couldn’t let another moment pass before I told Khoi the news.

  We pulled up to the handsome colonial-style building where men of Khoi’s position met to discuss their passion for flying machines, and I searched for Khoi’s black Bugatti.

  “Circle around,” I directed my driver. It took four trips through the neighborhood, but I finally spotted the Bugatti on a narrow street, nearly hidden behind a delivery truck.

  “Pull up alongside, please,” I said, lowering my window. Khoi’s driver, Trung, recognizing my car, lowered his as well.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I told him. “I need Monsieur Khoi to return home. At once.”

  “Oui, madame,” he said, quickly opening his door.

  We sped off, passing the adjacent French Aéro-club, a space where white men met to talk about exactly the same things as the locals—just not with them.

  Thirty minutes later, we were at Khoi’s house. I ignored the servants and headed straight to his bedroom, where I undressed, put on a silk dressing g
own over my slip, and climbed between the covers.

  Khoi would be worried about me, but that would make him move more quickly.

  I shifted onto my left side and fluffed one of the green-silk-covered pillows. Above Khoi’s zebrawood dresser hung a family portrait. It wasn’t a formal gathering, just a group of Nguyens on a sojourn on one of the family’s junks, but it was his favorite picture of all of them together, and mine, too. They were all dressed immaculately, in the slimmer silhouettes of the twenties, with their backs to the water. No land was visible behind them, no natural landmarks, nothing but the boat’s railing separating them from the South China Sea. I liked it because it showed the Nguyens looking as if they still owned Indochine, despite the French overlordship. At least the water was still theirs, they seemed to say. That could never be taken away.

  Luckily, the family was finally starting to understand that everything besides the water could be ripped out of their hands. Silk was not like rubber. It did not take years of investment and planting. It took dedicated wealth, which the French had not put into it until now, and experts on harvesting and spinning, whom they were finally hiring. It was time to panic.

  Nothing could move slowly anymore, Khoi had stressed to his father, who had finally changed his mind about their business approach, who was finally giving his blessing as Khoi diversified their investments. His decades of obeisance to the French were starting to waver. He, it turned out, was not a perfect colonial-made copy of Sinh’s father.

  I was on Khoi’s bed when I heard the door open. I looked up expectantly and saw him enter, appearing not the least bit concerned.

  “Dying, are you?” he said, strolling over to his dresser. He placed his hat on it, right by the ukulele, then took his jacket off, hanging it neatly on the back of a chair on the other side of the room.

  “Maybe,” I said, motioning for him to close the door.

  He walked over, then collapsed next to me. “You aren’t. If you were, you would have just stormed the club, men be damned. I know you.”

  I smiled, because of course it was true.

  “What is it, then?” he said loudly.

  I cupped my hand over his ear. “Paul Adrien came up on the morning train. He’s here. Paul is here.”

  “I don’t want to know how you arranged it, do I?”

  “You don’t,” I said, remembering Caroline’s line at the club about the sexual arts. I had used a rather similar line in my note that I’d had delivered to Paul. I needed to do something to ensure his arrival.

  “Then he needs to be here. When can you get him here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, having had no plan past getting Paul to Hanoi. “But I will. Soon.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Jessie

  November 14, 1933

  I sat rigidly on the couch in my living room and picked up the black handle of our brass telephone with a shaky hand. I put my finger in the dial, pushed it in a slow circle, and placed my request with the dame téléphoniste. Two minutes later, I heard his voice on the phone.

  “Red here,” he said sleepily.

  “Red,” I echoed, caught off guard by the fact that he’d answered his own telephone. The French simply didn’t do that. “This is Jessie Lesage,” I said.

  “I know,” he replied. I could practically hear his smile. “The girl said as much. Nice of you to telephone me.”

  “I’d like to see you,” I said, trying to make my voice sound easy, like his was. “Would you be able to meet me this afternoon for a bit?”

  “Certainly,” he said, without even a trace of surprise. “My place isn’t too far from that row of palaces where you live. I’m on le rue Jacquin, across the lake. Why don’t you have your driver deposit you here? I’ll keep the bed warm.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “How about La Taverne Royale?” It was one of the city’s most popular bars.

  “Not my style, chérie,” he replied, yawning loudly. “Meet me at the hippodrome at four o’clock. There’s a horse I’m going to bet on. You can be my good-luck charm.”

  Seven hours later, the Delahaye headed to the west side of the city. We roared past the narrow, closely packed streets where the locals lived, over the train tracks and toward the open spaces that began on the route du Champ de Course. After a bumpy twenty-minute drive, we turned sharply left and began to slow down. I rolled down my window for a better look. I could hear music playing faintly as the two-story pavilion where I was supposed to meet Red came into view. There were a few tented areas to the side of it, and in front was the racetrack, nothing more than cleared grass trimmed into an oval and surrounded by white wood-and-concrete barriers to keep the horses on course.

  Lanh helped me out of the car, and I spotted Red in front of the pavilion, leaning against a slender column.

  Feeling unsteady on my feet, I thanked Lanh and went up to Red, who kissed my cheeks familiarly.

  “I didn’t know there was horse racing here,” I said, nodding at the track.

  “There’s everything here,” he said, a half smile on his face. “Look up,” he directed, pointing to the pavilion’s second story. Dozens of Indochinese men were crowded together up there, facing the track.

  “Want to join them? Live how the real people live?” he asked.

  “You do not live how the real people live,” I replied.

  “Quite right,” he said, laughing. “Come, let’s sit here, in the shade.”

  We sat on the first level, our seats shielded from the sun by the roof’s deep eaves.

  “The racing is better in Saigon,” said Red. “It’s right at Le Cercle Sportif. But there’s one horse here today, Midnight Blue, who is supposed to be a different sort of species. Part horse, part airplane.”

  He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket, and I watched him study the odds for each race. A job as a railroad man would be a perfect cover, Victor had said. I looked at Red, his shirt collar wide open, a worn wool blazer draped lazily over his shoulders. Cover, I scoffed. Red could barely cover his chest.

  I wanted to ask him if he knew about those men at Dau Tieng. If he had wanted me to see them, wanted it to affect me. To hurt me. But first, I had to address what had happened on the boat.

  “I’m mortified about Ha Long Bay,” I said before the first race started, launching the conversation I’d been dreading for weeks. “Can we forget about it? And keep the details between us? I can’t believe I allowed that to happen. It was completely out of character for me, if you can’t already tell.”

  “You’re going to have to adapt to this place one day, Jessie,” he said, pointing to the horses being brought to the starting line by their jockeys. “Chandoo is a way of life. People aren’t embarrassed by it here. It’s as natural as smoking tobacco, although so much more enjoyable. In fact, your government would like you to keep smoking opium so they can profit off your future addiction.”

  “Red,” I said, watching his horse, Midnight Blue, who did almost look blue, trot elegantly to the starting line. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “The Pegu cocktails, then?” he said, his attention elsewhere. “Look at that magnificent animal,” he said. “I should have bet more money.”

  “Red, please,” I said, my fears multiplying again. “Let’s just have this conversation so that we can get back to normal.” What would it take for me to feel normal again?

  “Did I get you hooked?” he asked, still not looking at me.

  “Red. I don’t give a damn about your cocktails. What I’m talking about is the kiss.”

  “Whom did you kiss?” he asked, eyeing me mischievously.

  “You! I kissed you,” I said loudly. “We kissed.”

  “Jessie,” he said, leaning away, just as the race began. “What are you talking about?”

  “Our kiss,” I said, louder than I meant to. “Our many kisses.”

  “We did not kiss.” He placed his index finger on my lips for a few seconds, then removed it. “We have unfortunately never
kissed. I know I was flirting with you, but it was all in fun. I am quite aware that you’re married. I’ve made some foolish decisions during my time here, but I’m not that stupid. I’m not going to seduce some Michelin’s wife.”

  “Stop being like this,” I said angrily, my stomach queasy.

  “Like what? Jessie, you and I never kissed,” he said, vehemently now, his eyes locked on mine even as the horses leapt forward at the crack of the starting pistol.

  “Yes, we did,” I said, on the verge of shouting at him.

  “Jessie,” he said, putting his hand on mine. “If you think we kissed while we were indulging in a little tar, it must have been a lucid dream—which I’ve been told happens. But in real life, it did not.”

  “It did,” I hissed. “It did.”

  Red jumped to his feet and cupped his hand over his mouth. “Run, you magnificent animal, run!” he yelled as Midnight Blue headed into the home stretch.

  I held my breath as the pounding of the horses racing past us made our seats vibrate. I didn’t exhale until they crossed the finish line. Midnight Blue came in second.

  “Miserable idiot of a horse,” said Red, kicking the empty seat in front of him. “I hope he’s fed to the dogs later.”

  I stared at him silently.

  “Jessie.” His eyes had lost their usual gaiety, his mouth, which was barely holding his cigarette, turned down. “We didn’t kiss. We most assuredly didn’t. I’m sorry if you’re remembering things differently, but I’m certain.”

  I was dangerously close to tears. “You kissed me, and then you insisted that I go to Dau Tieng. To visit Victor. And to see them, too. The dying communists. If you knew what was happening, why didn’t you intervene? Call the police yourself instead of sending me?”

  “What?” said Red. “I don’t remember that, either. Who are ‘the dying communists’?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He looked back at his paper, then finally glanced at me again. “Haven’t you been to the plantations anyway?”