A Hundred Suns

by Karin Tanabe

  “But first, a bath,” I said, helping her out of bed. When we were standing together, I heard the water running in the tub. Cam must have been listening and started it straightaway.

  When Lucie was immersed in the warm water, her servant cleaning her, I switched to English to keep our conversation private. Intimate.

  “We will be meeting your father’s cousin Roland and his family in Vinh, so you will have to be very polite and well behaved. No shouting out in Annamese or talking about opium pipes. Okay?”

  Lucie smiled at Cam as she scrubbed her arm with a thick pink bar of soap.

  “Lucie, did you hear me?” I asked, trying to fight through the familiar pounding that had begun in my head. Lucie was not the problem in our family. I was, and my body seldom let me forget it.

  She looked at me and nodded.

  “Best behavior,” I said.

  “You’re not allowed to speak English to me when we are on best behavior,” she rightly pointed out.

  “I’m well aware,” I said, rubbing my eyes, which were still heavy.

  I sat with Lucie as she finished her bath, letting her fill me in on the last four days. Perhaps I had made some wrong decisions in my life, but crashing into Victor’s world was a brilliant one. Without it, I would never have had Lucie. Victor was right. The brave, decisive Jessie who kissed a perfect stranger in the Tuileries gardens needed to be found again.

  An hour later, the whole family was dressed, starched, powdered, and settled in the car, Victor and I acting as if it were just another routine family trip.

  When we arrived at the station, the stationmaster, a wiry, energetic man, greeted us, along with a porter, who took my bag from me. It was the one with the broken handle, which I’d grabbed in a hurry. I pointed it out quietly, not wanting to give Victor another reason to question my behavior, and Lucie quickly jumped in and explained to the porter in Indochinese that he had to be careful with it.

  He nodded politely before the stationmaster barked at him and hurried off with all of our bags.

  Once inside, Victor paid off the stationmaster so he would leave us alone; then we headed to the benches in the waiting area farthest from the entrance. The station was jammed with people.

  “This is the busiest I’ve ever seen it,” Victor murmured in annoyance. He turned sideways so a group of native men could pass.

  Lucie hovered by the benches, not sitting down even as Victor and I did. I realized it was because she didn’t want to wrinkle her dress.

  “We have a very long train journey ahead of us,” I reminded her, gesturing to the spot next to me. Lucie nodded and was about to sit when she was suddenly struck by a young boy who had rushed toward us. She tumbled back, her body slamming into the wooden bench. I reached out for her as Victor spun around.

  “Careful, boy!” Victor yelled. The youngster was a shoeblack who had been coming after Victor’s expensive brogues. Victor angrily swatted him on the back with his newspaper.

  The boy grinned, ignoring Lucie and me, and suggested a shine, holding up his brush and pointing at Victor’s shoes.

  “After this!” Victor shouted, gesturing to frightened Lucie and adding a string of the few insults he knew in Annamese. “You’re lucky I don’t have you banned from the station.”

  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 starting to flow.

  “No, Lucie, no, don’t cry,” I said, hugging her, making sure to avoid the stain. “I’ll take you to wash it. We can get it out, don’t worry, chérie.” I patted her on the shoulder, but suddenly my nerves flared again in sympathy with hers. I had spent so much of my life comforting crying children, sibling after sibling, but when it was Lucie whose tears dampened my cheek, I usually shared them with her.

  “Take her to the washroom,” said Victor, stroking Lucie’s head comfortingly while keeping his eyes on me. “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, breathing deeply to try to stop her tears.

  “Are you sure it will come out?” she asked.

  “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 fabric with my left. But all that did was spread the black stain, so I crouched down on the floor to get a better angle.

  I scrubbed as hard as I could and listened as her sobs quieted. If I could do anything right today, it would be this. To help my child. But as I looked up to smile at her, happy that the mark was starting to fade, black spots swam before my eyes and I had to bend my head quickly.

  “Maman?” I heard her say, but her voice sounded small and far away.

  “I’m just a bit faint,” I said, standing up carefully. Feeling dizzy enough to fall, I gripped the sink and closed my eyes, letting my head drop heavily forward. The darkness felt welcome, and with my eyes still closed, I turned on the water. I opened them and watched the stream coming out of the metal tap. I placed one of my hands under it, keeping the other on the sink for balance.

  When I felt a bit steadier, I bent down and drank from the sink, lapping the cool water in large gulps.

  “I’m sorry, Lucie,” I mumbled when I felt I could stand up again without help. I 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 toilet stalls. Three were empty, but one had the door closed. I pulled it open, and it flew back, banging the wooden door of the next stall. Lucie wasn’t inside. “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 jammed with travelers, and out to the central space. “Victor!”

  The weather was the nicest it had been since we’d arrived, so it was no surprise that the station was packed, but suddenly I felt as if I were swimming in a sea of bodies, when I should have been able to spot them so easily.

  “Victor!” I cried out again. I sprinted through the station, bumping people as I did, and out the front door. There were rows of vendors, some desultorily trying to make a sale, others asleep. At the end of one row, I saw a man selling sugarcane and ran to him. It was Lucie’s favorite snack. I asked him if he’d seen a little French girl, accompanied by her father in a beige traveling suit, but he just smiled and held out a stalk of the sugarcane. I repeated the phrase in Annamese, but he just shook his head no. Lucie would have translated better than I did. Where was she?

  Back inside the station, I looked up at the clock. The train for Vinh was due in two minutes. I ran out to the platform and studied the large group of travelers waiting. I even glanced down at the tracks, fearing the worst.

  But Victor and Lucie were nowhere to be seen.

  I rushed back inside to the bathroom where I’d washed Lucie’s dress, but she was not there. She wasn’t in the waiting area nearby. She wasn’t anywhere. I sat down on the bench where Victor had said he would wait for us and started to sob.

  “Madame Lesage!” the stationmaster exclaimed as he approached me, handing me his handkerchief. “What is the matter?”

  He tried to guide me to a waiting area, but I balked. He handed me another starched handkerchief and sat next to me.

  “Can I assist you in some way, Madame Lesage?” he asked as I cried.

  “Yes. I hope you can,” I managed to say, clenching his handkerchi
efs in my fist. “Something just went terribly wrong.”

  “I’m sure I can help,” he said soothingly. “That’s why I’m here. Please tell me what’s upsetting you.”

  My words poured out through sobs.

  “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 gestured toward the bench we were sitting on. “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.” My voice cracked again.

  The stationmaster looked at me intently. “You say that you are looking for your husband and daughter? Victor and Lucie Lesage?” he said slowly.

  “Of course!” I said, exasperation getting the better of me. “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.

  There was no husband and child. I was alone.

  “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.”

  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. “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.

  The man had to be wrong. He had to be. But then I thought of the blood I had seen pouring down the Annamite woman’s arms at the Nguyen house and Victor contesting my account. I thought of the poster I had seen displayed over the train timetables and glanced in that direction. The image of a hundred suns still wasn’t there. Then there was Red. Red, whom I was absolutely sure I had kissed. Yet he’d assured me I was very wrong, and why would a man like that deny a conquest? I bit my lip, my tears welling up. This couldn’t be happening again.

  The stationmaster was walking back to me, and I could tell from his expression that he did not have good news.

  “Did you phone, Monsieur Pham? 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,” I said frantically. “Please.”

  “Of course we can look again, Madame Lesage,” he said gently. “Perhaps they arrived in a separate car. Perhaps I just didn’t see them.”

  I recognized the way he was staring at me, that look of feigned concern, when he was really trying to identify signs that I wasn’t quite right. That I was crazy. It was how everyone in that psychiatric prison in Switzerland had looked at me.

  I stood up and shook my head.

  “You’ve been very kind. I’m sorry to have been such a bother, Monsieur Dat,” I said, looking at his gold nameplate again. “You’re right about everything, I’m sure. I must just be remembering incorrectly. Perhaps I’m unwell.”

  I turned around without thanking him and hurried out of the station. He didn’t follow me.

  I could still feel Lucie’s touch and see the distress on her face when the shoeblack had collided with her. I wasn’t unwell. I wasn’t forgetting anything. My family had disappeared.

  I sprinted down the street, a panicked surge of energy making me feel as if I were floating instead of running, but I stopped suddenly as I approached a large group of indigène children. They looked so similar, like siblings. They reminded me of the way people always said that my brothers and sisters looked alike.

  Another one, that same Holland face, our teachers used to say at the start of every school year.

  After I married Victor, I returned to America only once, traveling to New York and then on to Virginia. I knew it was the last time I would see my mother. With Victor’s money, the generous allowance he gave me, I had moved every one of my siblings to upstate New York. It had been my plan all along: As soon as I had the means, I would rip my siblings away from my mother and into the safety of a new, anonymous town. They wouldn’t know what to do in a city, and it would be too expensive to support them there. But with Victor’s funds, I bought a tobacco farm in Lindley, just west of Elmira, one of the few areas in New York known for the crop. Tobacco farming was the only work any of them had ever done. I could take them out of the South, but I only wanted to strip the bad from their lives, not the good.

  To my brothers and sisters in Lindley, Virginia was just a distant spot on the map that they would probably never see again. When I told my mother she would be left to live out the rest of her life in Virginia alone, she hadn’t even wept. She’d just looked at me coldly, as if she’d forgotten that I was her firstborn child, and said, “My family has disappeared.”

  But she had disappeared for me long before I did for her. The first time my father’s fist hit my face and she did nothing to protect me, nothing to comfort me when the blows finally stopped—that’s when she started to disappear. When my brother Peter, who was just three years younger than me, went blind in his right eye and partially in his left from a particularly vicious assault when he was only ten years old—that’s when my parents turned into monsters. And when Peter’s brain stopped working right—when he started suffering what the doctors called hallucinations, mania—that’s when I knew I would never see my mother again.

  Thousands of miles away, I shook my head, trying to fight the memories. In my worst moments, my mother always found a way to return to me, to seize my hand and try to wrench me down, just as she had done in life.

  The words sounded in my head as I continued on down the street, whispers from voices I didn’t recognize. I put my fingers in my ears, but still the sentence reverberated, circling me, strangling me. My family has disappeared. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see my mother and her long gray hair, but all I saw was a sea of locals jostling one another as they navigated the crowded street.

  At the end of the road, a house appeared to be in flames, but when I got near, I saw that it wasn’t, just a vendor roasting nuts over a fire and the breeze carrying the smoke up. I sank to the ground, too tired, too confused, to go any farther.

  Time seemed to stop, and my eyes grew heavier, but before they closed, I felt someone’s breath on my forehead. A rickshaw coolie was bending over me.

  “You need ride? Where you go, madame?” he said in a nasal voice.

  I looked up at him and shook my head. I looked at his hands. They were dirty, with yellowed fing
ernails that were curling over. I looked more closely. The dirt on his fingers looked like opium tar.

  I thought of the beds in Khoi’s boat and then of the beds I knew were in all the opium dens in Hanoi. There, I could lie down. I could shake off the nightmare this day had become and give my mind space to right itself. I could try to piece together where my family had gone.

  “Take me to Luong-Vuong,” I said to the man. “I want to lie down at Luong-Vuong.” I knew I didn’t have to ask if he knew what it was.

  He helped me into the back of his rickshaw, and I nodded off as we bounced through the streets. Then I felt us slowing, and someone carrying me inside, where I heard whispers, felt a woman’s hand on my face, and then was lowered onto a wooden bed.

  When I was horizontal, I let my hand go slack. “Take my money,” I said into the air, letting my bag drop to the floor, desperate for past and present to just disappear in curls of smoke.

  “Your pipe, madame,” a woman said, holding up my head.

  I took in the smoke deeply once, then a few times more in quick succession, before pushing her away with my limp hand. “No more,” I said, rolling onto my side and trying to bring my knees to my chest. I wanted to shrink to nothing.

  I was drifting in and out of sleep when I felt hands on me again. “I don’t want any more,” I said, trying to wave the woman away.

  “It’s Lanh,” I heard a voice say. I managed to open my eyes. It was indeed Lanh. I held my arms out to him, not able to get up on my own.

  Under Lanh’s reassuring touch, I let my eyes close again and collapsed against him as he picked me up.

  When I awoke, I couldn’t tell if it had been minutes, hours, or days. I blinked and sat up slowly. I was in the back seat of the Delahaye with the doors open on either side, a cool breeze passing through. Outside the car, on a large rock, I saw Lanh sitting, though the edges of my vision were still frayed from sleep. We were on the bank of the Red River, in a spot he had driven me past before. A scenic detour, he’d called it. One of many he had taken, happy to meander and show me the city when Victor wasn’t present. When he realized I was awake, he jumped up and came over to the car.