The Silk Merchant’s Daughter

by Dinah Jefferies

  She took the bag, and his voice, already low, dropped further. ‘Make haste. Do not stop. Do not sleep.’

  She thought of her antique purse with the photograph of Mark inside it. ‘I need to get my purse.’

  ‘No time.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  He stepped away. ‘I care for you, Nicole, very much. I always have. I will come for you when it is over.’

  Over the following days Nicole moved as quickly as she was able, creeping over perilous land, often losing her footing and sliding into steep wet ditches. Cold and wet, she learnt to scramble out and grew better at picking her way through jungle and swamp. She found ways to sneak across mountain streams, and begged for food in the tiny villages where some of the people were friendly.

  Each time the sound of her footsteps set off a troupe of howling monkeys she paused in fear. She never knew who might be following, nor who she might encounter, but worked out that her only chance was to make it back to Hanoi. If it was a chance at all. Never had home seemed more appealing, and when she found herself longing to see it again, the image of it comforted her. As she walked she thought of Lisa, who had always been so solidly on her side.

  A memory came back of the time they’d lived in Huế and she’d been in the garden with Lisa. It had been early and as the sun came up she’d watched it paint the edges of the trees with a frill of pink light. The breeze filtered through the garden and she’d felt uplifted. A little bit of heaven that didn’t happen every day.

  ‘Here I can still feel the voice of God in the sound of the wind,’ Lisa had said, ‘and his spirit in the endless sky.’

  Nicole had joined in. ‘Here I can still smell the fragrance of lotus blossom and imagine the lotus ponds and the little frogs leaping and splashing.’

  Lisa hugged her. ‘How poetic we are today. Let’s take a little walk and then I’ll give you the most beautiful French plait of any girl in your class.’

  The memory faded and now Nicole thought about Trần. It was not a comforting thought at all. Had his behaviour been a masquerade? Yet those people he punished? No deception there. She had to force herself to stop thinking and concentrate on getting home.

  Home. She thought of it all the time, and even when her eyelids were bitten and so swollen with dirt she could barely see, she stumbled on. Her waterlogged boots fell apart and the sores on her legs became infected, yet despite the savage pain she continued to walk. Winded by fear each time she heard signs of life, she took refuge inside bamboo thickets or behind liana-cloaked trees, only stopping to rest when she could go no further.

  One day while gazing down at the little dykes and paddy fields she noticed woodsmoke and saw the roofs of a ruined village still smouldering. She crossed a stream and, closer up, spotted a French soldier dragging a woman from where she’d been hiding. Horrible, horrible sight. Still in her nightclothes, the woman had long chestnut hair, lighter than was usual, and must once have been pretty. She stumbled and fell backwards to the ground, then reached out her thin arms, pleading and begging as the soldier pulled her to her feet again. Nicole closed her eyes, unable to witness what was coming. But when she heard the woman’s scream, she forced herself to look. The screaming stopped quickly. The woman’s face had grown rigid. She must have known what the soldier was going to do and was not about to give him the pleasure of her fear. She repeatedly spat in his face as he pushed her against a hut, lifted her nightdress and raped her. Then he shot her in the head. Blood. So much blood. Heartsick, Nicole doubled over. The woman had been somebody’s wife, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s mother. How could men do it? She felt the rage crushing her chest and at that moment she hated men. All men. She wanted to slit their throats, and worse, in revenge for what had taken place.

  She waited until long after the soldier had gone then, forcing herself not to buckle, she dragged the woman’s body into a hut and covered her with whatever sacking she could find. Afterwards she scavenged the abandoned vegetables plots, scratching with her fingernails for any remaining root vegetables in the red earth. At the back of one hut she found a large pot full of rainwater. She drank and ate, looking out at the dusky blue horizon, then rested for an hour.

  Gradually, over the coming days and weeks, she identified with the wildness of the landscape, and felt herself growing braver. No longer frightened at being alone, she discovered that, of course, nature was incredibly powerful, but she too was strong, in a way she’d never understood before. Sometimes she stopped to marvel at the carpets of purple flowers stretching in every direction. Once, when the mists came and thunderclouds exploded, she sheltered under bushes and, sitting with her knees drawn up, attempted to sleep. But even there, hidden away and enveloped by a rain-lashed wall of blue-green jungle, she couldn’t block out the sound of thunder. She was desperately hungry and there could be no respite.

  One morning, perched at the top of a jagged limestone cliff, she watched a drift of enormous dragonflies. Except for that one storm, the weather had been relatively dry, but it meant that the midday glare was intolerable and the light too sharp. She closed her eyes for a second or two and dreamt of toast and eggs. With the taste on her lips, she opened her eyes again and, shading them with her hands, looked down over the valley. A troop of Vietminh soldiers was creeping past. She would have been right in their line of sight, but crouched down behind the bushes from where she watched, they couldn’t see her. The soldiers wore helmets wrapped in black net, laced with palm leaf; circles of wire on their backs swathed in foliage completed the camouflage. They exactly matched the green of the surrounding vegetation. Nicole felt sorry for any French planes circling above, with no way to spot these columns of men.

  She kept very still until the Vietminh had passed then felt dizzy with relief.

  When hills rose to the right of marshy land stretching as far as the eye could see, she wasn’t sure what to do. Should she attempt to wade through or take the long way round? She had to keep going, and eventually decided to risk the stepping stones through the marsh. A little further on she watched the Vietminh blow deep holes in the roads and dykes, so when the French finally caught up they’d have to spend all their time and energy repairing the damage before they could move their heavy vehicles forward.

  Soon after that, she witnessed a Vietnamese mortar attack on an unsuspecting French garrison and she felt utterly divided. Her life as a Vietminh supporter had come to an abrupt end, and she couldn’t allow them to find her. But neither did she believe in French rule either. Within an hour the devastation was total and she had no choice but to watch from afar as the French survivors shuffled past with raised hands, guarded by a double column of Vietminh. One thing was certain: her father had underestimated their strength. Everywhere she had been people were turning against the French in their thousands, and she was aware that from the moment the Vietminh had reclassified themselves as communists, their support was growing all the faster.

  Intellectuals like Trần had joined the cause early on but now she’d seen peasants acting as a support network, ferrying the injured to makeshift hospitals and trekking across stark mountain terrain to deliver food and weapons. Many had died for their country and Nicole knew many more would do so. She truly recognized now that it was their country. Neither side was free from blame when it came to clandestine operations, but she had a better understanding of why it had to be that way.

  She had no plan for what she would do when she reached home, and no idea if her family would even accept her. Going back was a huge risk. She’d be branded a traitor to the French – which of course she was – but it was a risk she had to take. There was nowhere else to go. The police knew she’d escaped house arrest and would have long suspected she had joined the enemy. She prayed they wouldn’t imprison her, and hoped that her father might persuade Giraud to deport her to France. She thought of going to Huế but it was much too far on foot.

  To take her mind off the fear, Nicole thought about her life in Huế. She’d learnt to
do that. When you have to keep going, no matter what, you don’t dwell on what frightens you, even if it shadows you. To prevent it crushing your spirit, you have to think of something else. Something good.

  For as long as she could remember, while they’d been living in Huế, they’d spent summers in the hilltops of Dalat, with cool breezes blowing in the trees and bright hydrangeas everywhere. The house they used to rent was in a dusty, tree-lined boulevard and belonged to the owner of the area’s largest rubber plantation. The whole place was overgrown with camellia, hydrangea, chrysanthemum and roses of all colours. While their father went hunting – deer, wild boar, black bear, panthers, tigers and even elephants – she and Sylvie lived in a blissful outdoor world, with days so long she’d thought they would go on for ever.

  She closed her eyes and in a flash was back there on the day Lisa had taken them to a waterfall where they gazed at gentle cascades of white water. It wasn’t noisy as the falls didn’t drop vertically but took a slow diagonal path, the water flowing along several rivulets.

  Lisa pointed down at one of the natural platforms. ‘Shall we sit there? They’re smooth enough.’

  After they climbed down they made themselves comfortable, and Lisa unpacked the picnic. They took off their shoes and dangled their feet in the water.

  ‘Come on, Lisa,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s not too cold.’

  ‘This is the most peaceful of the waterfalls,’ Lisa said.

  She was right. The peace was infectious. Nothing went wrong that day. Nicole, feeling the sun on her skin and breathing in sparkling air, had fallen in love with the spot and Sylvie seemed happy too.

  ‘Why is it called Tiger Waterfall?’ Nicole asked.

  ‘It’s named after a cave they believe was once a tiger den.’

  When she spotted a large monkey with a golden face and fluffy white beard staring at her, she sat still, feeling amazed.

  ‘It’s a red-shanked langur,’ Sylvie whispered. ‘Look at its bright red stockings.’

  Nicole saw at once. The reddish-maroon fur ran from its knees to its ankles. As quickly as it had appeared, the monkey vanished.

  But one summer, their last at Dalat, war had come and the Japanese arrived. Those days had not gone on for ever after all. They’d left for Huế the moment the war had broken out and when it ended Sylvie had been sent to America, because their father had wanted her to make contact with Americans sympathetic to the French cause. She’d stayed with a cousin of their father’s in New York, while Nicole had remained in Huế. Nicole recalled a sense of emptiness without her sister, and a horrible feeling nothing was going to turn out well. A bit like now, she thought. You could never imagine how the world you knew and loved could be so suddenly and so unexpectedly broken.

  At the end of one day as the sun dropped in the sky, and still using her compass, she reached the Red River, close to a French defence tower. It looked as if it had been erected to guard an area of land the French were in the process of clearing. She took in the piles of wild bamboo and the heaps of rubble, then crept back to where she’d spotted a stream. She splashed her face and, where there was enough cover, quickly changed into the French dress she’d been given. She brushed herself down and straightened her back. Then, though every muscle was aching and her feet were in agony, she walked into the outpost. There she told the guard she had been captured by the Vietminh and held in a re-education camp, but had escaped. He looked doubtful at first, but when she told him stories of her life in Hanoi, and how it had been at the camp too, she managed to convince him. The state of her legs and feet helped. She had been hoping for food, but all he offered was a cup of water, which she gulped down, and a filthy black Gauloise Troupe cigarette, which she refused.

  The next morning she was piled on to a truck with French soldiers heading for Hanoi. Most were kind, though some looked at her warily, but their mood was low as they talked about the advance in the communist penetration. They spoke of villages abandoned by people who knew an attack on nearby French camps was imminent. They talked about their own control of the air while, increasingly, the Viets, masters of camouflage, were controlling the land.

  As Nicole dozed on the journey their voices faded in and out, but she was jolted awake when the truck came to a shuddering halt at some kind of depot in the French quarter. As she climbed out she saw a line of officials and a group of people being shepherded into a queue. In the confusion of their arrival, she slipped behind a stationary van and swiftly crossed the road. With a quick backwards glance, she disappeared down a side street adjoining a familiar avenue, not far from her home. She could not go straight back to the house, as first she needed to retrieve the keys hidden at the shop. And dressed as she was, she could only enter the Vietnamese quarter under cover of darkness. So again she concealed herself in the same clearing beneath the trees where she had once lain hidden with Trần. She longed to be clean and pictured the aquamarine bathroom she had shared with Sylvie, imagining filling the bath with warm scented water and letting it wash away the last few months. Layer by layer, each awful thing would be gone.

  Being back there made her think. She had abandoned her family; had pushed them to the back of her mind for more than six months. She couldn’t help feeling deeply ashamed and it made her want to weep for what had been lost. She thought of her mother, and what her father had done. People made mistakes. It was still wrong, but considering everything she had seen since leaving home, what her father had done seemed less shocking than before. She thought of Sylvie too and a fist closed round her heart. Despite learning that under the right set of circumstances anyone could inflict terrible suffering on another, she found she could not forgive her sister for helping Giraud to place her under house arrest.

  With no boots, socks or a coat, the damp Hanoi air seeped through her thin cotton dress and yet, exhausted by a journey that had taken almost a month, she fell into a dreamless sleep for a couple of hours. Hearing gunfire, she woke suddenly. Surely the war hadn’t reached Hanoi already? Silence followed. She listened carefully. Wondering. Frightened.

  27

  Under cover of twilight, Nicole summoned the courage to retrieve the key from the shop and, despite feeling conspicuous, managed to slip back to the house by sticking to the shadows. She passed the lake, leaving the glittering water behind her. After a last glance back, she twisted the key in the lock and stepped over the threshold, crying with relief at being in the safety of her old home. The hall was in darkness, and she tripped on something discarded on the floor. She listened to the tick of the hall clock, then felt around for the light switch. It clicked but no light came on. She leant against the door and, after waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, groped her way to the sitting room by the faint moonlight shining down from the cupola. The light switch there didn’t work either, so she tiptoed to the kitchen. It seemed as if her family must have left quickly. Alert to danger, she felt a rush of heat. What if they hadn’t been able to leave? What if the Vietminh had taken possession? She struggled not to allow her imagination to spin out of control, but in her absence anything could have happened to her father, Sylvie and Lisa.

  The house smelt damp and felt cold, as if uninhabited for weeks, or possibly months, and that shocked her. She listened to the creaks and groans of the place and pictured Papa snoring and Sylvie lying perfectly, beautifully asleep. The images faded. It might be the enemy who lay asleep upstairs, even as she shivered down below. But no, if anyone was living here, the house would not be so icy.

  In the darkness she fumbled her way around the kitchen to the dresser, feeling for the top drawer on the left, where Lisa had been in the habit of accumulating an assortment of bits that might come in handy: candles for power cuts, matches for oil lamps, a nail file, a pair of extra-sharp scissors, postage stamps, envelopes. She pulled the drawer open and fished for candles and matches, eventually locating them. The first matches were damp. It took six or seven attempts before she finally succeeded in striking one, then watched as the darkne
ss bunched back against the light.

  In the flickering glow she glanced around at the shadowy ceiling and dark corners. She pulled open a shutter and stepped back in alarm. The window had been completely boarded up. She went back to the drawer to find and light more candles, then dripped wax into the coffee cups abandoned on the table. She rammed the candles in, using one to find her way to the pantry to search for food. The sound of scratching mice meant there’d be nothing fresh to eat, but Lisa kept a store of pickled vegetables and jams, plus a few tins of beans. At the thought of the cook, Nicole could hardly keep standing for fear of what might have happened to her old ally.

  She yelped as hot wax dripped on to her hand, so covered her hand with her sleeve as she searched for an empty wine bottle. Once found, and the candle successfully jammed into the bottle, she twisted the lid from a glass storage jar and devoured the pickled courgette, vinegar dripping down her chin to her chest. The cold tap in the sink was still in working order, so she filled a mug and drank the rusty-coloured water. She would have liked a baguette with butter and jam but, of course, there was none, and she couldn’t make coffee on a cold range.

  Her feet were raw and hurting badly, so she pulled Lisa’s old blanket from the chair by the window and, wrapping it round her, picked her way towards the back stairs, wanting to head up to the sitting room.

  At the sound of footsteps in the hall above, the muscles in her neck and shoulders went rigid. Thoughts raced through her mind – memories, fragments, words – as she pulled the blanket round her and tried to concentrate on keeping silent. As the footsteps halted, her heart was clamouring so much she felt as if it might burst from her chest. She listened as the door at the top of the stairs opened. Was it Giraud now coming down the stairs? The dark corners of her mind caved in on her as she prepared herself to meet her old adversary.