“I see. For a moment there I thought…Oh, never mind. Silly idea.” She looked dramatically at the grandfather clock. “Goodness, it can’t be that time already.”
Bodge took a step toward the door. “It was very kind of you to come by.”
“Nonsense. We’re all foreigners in a heathen country, M. Roger. We have to offer what support and solace we can to our own kind in times such as this. Are you certain you don’t want to come and stay at the Residence?”
“Yes, I am. Thank you.”
“Then I’ll just have to pay you visits here.”
“That really isn’t necessary.”
“Of course it is. You’ve just lost your loved one. The last thing you should do is mope around here alone. You need company.”
“I’d far prefer to mope around alone, at least for a few weeks. But, thank you for the offer.”
A tear miraculously appeared at the corner of her eye, as if on cue, and rolled down her red cheek. “You poor, poor man. How must you be feeling? Forgive me.”
Before he could forgive her, she had him locked in a sisterly embrace. It was what the people back home would have called a hug, but in this case it felt like some erotic slow dance. Her orangey breasts were crushed against his stomach and the scent of oil rose from her hair. He stood with his arms loosely by his sides and thought of Kilpatrick’s Sliced Bread and what a marvelous, time-saving invention it was for the average North American housewife. Thankfully, the thought diverted him from an erection.
At last, Monique pulled away and did nothing to disguise her frown of disappointment. There was no doubt in Bodge’s mind that this was a dangerous minx. A good-looking and lethal one at that. If he could get her out of the door he’d bolt it. He wondered what there could possibly have been in his missed orientation program to numb a field agent against circumstances such as these. She was armed with some kind of libidinous kryptonite that made him feel ashamed and weak.
“Well then, I shall go.” she said. “If there’s nothing else I can do for you...”
“Absolutely nothing. Thank you so much. The Lord blesses you for your kindness.”
“Does he? I’m pleased.”
She walked to the door and allowed him to open it for her. She shook his hand, gave a vaguely cryptic smile, and rocked her backside down the front path with his pilfered umbrella up against the storm.
For the next twenty-four hours, Bodge was able to keep himself isolated. In the beginning, despite his posted note; ‘In mourning. No visitors.’ people had hammered on his front door.
He’d heard the voices of Petit and Monique and Captain Henry calling up to him from the front stoop. He’d heard coins tapping on the glass doors at the rear, so loudly he was sure the glass would shatter. The rains fell incessantly and, eventually, drowned the enthusiasm of his callers.
On the afternoon of whatever day it was, he was sitting, as usual, in Cornfelt’s leather chair looking at the gray view between the rain trails. The drips were the races at Belmont. He had his life savings on a small dribble in the left hand lane. He’d been watching it for several hours so perhaps it was a series of drips. Perhaps his concentration was shot. Since returning from the clinique, the depression had seeped into him. He’d countered it with booze, but his misery was stronger. He’d worked his way through everything in the drinks cabinet and various unidentified bottles from the cellar.
He’d lied to himself about his reaction to Stephanie’s death, pretended he wasn’t wounded. Instead of openly mourning, he let it work its way through him like mildew. In the beginning he was depressed because people wouldn’t leave him alone. When they left him alone he started to be depressed because nobody cared. In his effort to drink himself happy, he hadn’t had time to sleep. He’d eaten what was available in cans but had gradually lost the ability to negotiate their opening. He was depressed because he was tired and hungry. And he was angry now, and that made him more depressed. His weakness made him angry, and anger made his depression total and irreconcilable. He decided that his misery couldn’t be complete without someone to share it with. He needed company, desperately.
He had to smash the lock on his back doors because he couldn’t remember where he’d put the key. It felt grand to be out in the rain, the black sky curling around him like a hypnotic python. He set off, walking, crawling, staggering, falling often, in search of friendship. He’d forgotten totally that his friendship killed people.
44.
There were moments.
Dark. Dark, but cozy and wrapped in smells and smoke and ignorance. Fireflies here and there, or candles. A low table with dried fruit, tiny tea cups. An ache in his side as if he’d been lying for hours — days — forever. A mesh net around him, darned in one place. The gathering like a fairy’s star. No sound but for a single cough, not his own. No movement. No ideas. Emptied of thoughts and purged of worries and responsibilities. This was the numbness he’d sought. He smiled and reached for the shadow of the fairy star, and slept.
A long-fingered hand stroking his face. A voice deep as an unwanted old memory.
Laughter and sweat. Tears and perfumed beers and sweet opium, caramel fragrance, hashish. Yes, more. Hot moths. Coverless books. Chocolate concubines. The bitter taste of tin. The embarrassment of vomit, of trying to light an empty pipe, of his own smell, of forgetting his name. Seeing stars in the day sky, being able to take handfuls of darkness and mould it into shapes. Yes, more.
A scream. A fight. A flight.
Light. A faint smell of bleach and perfumed oil. A chandelier like a firework frozen in crystal above him. An electric chandelier in a house with no electricity. A dull wooziness in his head, long phrases of frightening daydreams — daymares. One of them of flesh beside him, taut, intense flesh. Two people in his wife’s bed and he recognizes neither. They melt together, and thrash and pummel and stop, wet with sweat. Yes, more. Not his voice. Reach. Reach for the flesh and restart the process. Yes, more. When it’s over, throw up again.
And again.
And again.
The slam of a door. The slam of a head. Still light when his eyes open. To the chandelier. Bodge was alone and naked and in pain. He needed a drink the way winos on the Bowery needed booze to keep breathing. His mouth was Nevada after the A bombs. He edged his way off the bed and swayed to the bathroom. Wondered why there was no tiger skin on the floor, wondered who the beast was in the mirror. A horror. How many days of growth on its face? How many pipe rings of opium around its eyes, and blood tendrils of liquor in its cheeks?
He gulped water from the tap, careful not to look again into the glass. This was no time to pull himself together. He needed a drink. The door to the hallway was gone. It threw him into a panic till he realized — of course, he was in the bathroom. He stumbled back to the bed. There, on the bedside table, a bottle, a full bottle, open and ready. He sat on the floor propped up against the bed and worked on that bottle — worked on it like an artisan. It mattered not a jot what was in it.
He drank.
And sat.
He was still sitting there, in the dark now, when he heard the front door. Beyond the open bedroom doorway was the staircase, and he saw a halo of lamplight rising from the ground floor. Monique’s face behind the flame was almost saintly. Evil and saintly. She came into the bedroom and knelt beside him.
“I see you’re wearing my favorite suit,” she smiled. Bodge looked down and noticed he was still naked. Realized he could understand French. She put the lamp on the table and reached for his penis. He watched her play as if he were in a fifty cent dirty picture house. Watched himself become aroused but felt nothing. “My darling husband is in Pleiku for the night. I can enjoy this till morning,” she said. “But you smell. Come and take a shower.”
Without question or protest, Bodge rose on numb legs and she helped him into the bathroom. He had become exactly what she wanted. The opium had worked its way out of his system but she’d been able to keep him topped up with alcohol, and today she ha
d a new devil for him. It had arrived via the Sureté for the attention of the Administrator. A marvelous new drug, highly addictive. Her husband informed her it was technically called Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Unless someone came up with a more fashionable name, it would be known as LSD. A stash of it had been confiscated from French troops who’d apparently bought it in Saigon from a journalist. It had been left with the Administrator for safe keeping.
As Monique had access to the safe, there wasn’t a great deal of the stuff left. She found the effects particularly arousing, and decided to add it to her slave’s cocktail of intoxicants. It was a decision that would prove to be her undoing. For an hour, Bodge tumbled around in its current like a fool in a Technicolor Electrolux washer and spin drier. But when he came out of it, he was ironed out and folded into an angry paranoia. While Monique slept off her high, he showered again, dressed, and sat in the leather chair, working his way through the last of the bourbon.
He extinguished the lamp flame, found the Luger, and went to the bedside. She was to blame. This one. She had no right to live.
45.
Madame Vin recalled that there had been three shots in all. Why should she come forward with such information? Gunshots were common enough, and she had no idea at the time where they’d come from. The first had woken her. The second and third came a minute or so later. There’d been no screams, police whistles, or sounds of fleeing. She looked at the luminous dials of her alarm clock. It was 3 AM exactly. That’s how she remembered. One shot for each hour. She yawned, and swore, and fought her way back into her dream. Women like Madame Vin needed all the beauty sleep they could get.
Indeed, there was no mystery reported for the first three office hours the following morning. Nobody at the Residence was surprised that Madame Dupré hadn’t come downstairs for her breakfast. She often slept late. As Monsieur Dupré was in Pleiku, the breakfast things were still there untouched at eleven fifteen. The servants cleared them away and prepared the table for lunch.
The acting administrator, one Monsieur Desailly, a pale-faced career clerk in his late fifties, had come in from the district office to man the fort while the Administrator was away. It was in the regulations that there had to be someone of level four or above in situ at all times. But without phone lines or telegraph, there had been no urgent business that called for his attention. He dealt with a minor inquiry from Duc, the Montagnard coordinator, and gave permission for the plumbing engineer to re-chlorinate the water tank. He then sat at Dupré’s desk and worked on a three-month old crossword in Le Figaro.
The butler came and asked his advice on whether they should awaken Mme. Dupré for lunch. Desailly thought it wise to knock and see whether she was unwell. As the butler was leaving the office, a guard passed him in the doorway. He saluted and informed the acting administrator that an armed jeep had just arrived from Pleiku and a garrison lieutenant would like to speak to Administrator Dupré.
Desailly wasn’t surprised, given the difficulties of communication, that wires had somehow gotten crossed. What did surprise him was that the captain hadn’t noticed the Administrator’s convoy on his way south. There was only one road. He walked out to the covered front porch where the jeep stood dripping like a large muddy hippo. The lieutenant, a large-chested
Breton, obviously didn’t know Dupré by sight.
“Administrator?” he saluted. “We’re here to escort you to the Northern garrison.”
“No, Lieutenant. I’m not Dupré,” Desailly told him. “He left already,”
“Left? For where?”
“Why, for Pleiku. The convoy left yesterday morning. He should have arrived by now.”
“Sir, the convoy arrived yesterday as planned.”
“Well, then.”
“But the Administrator wasn’t with it.”
“Of course he was. I saw him off myself.”
“I understand he left with the convoy, but it appears, on the way, he ordered his driver to take him to a Montagnard village off the main road. The rest of the convoy was instructed to carry on without him. They were told he’d catch up. But he never did. We assumed he’d returned here.”
“He left the convoy? But that’s…that’s…”
“Crazy, sir.”
“Exactly.”
“The Administrator suggested the rains would prevent an ambush. The Viet Minh wouldn’t expect anyone to be traveling in the monsoon.”
“That’s awful. He didn’t come back here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’d know whether the Administrator returned or not. What village did he go to?”
“R13. We stopped off there on our way down.”
“And?”
“They didn’t see anything.”
“Or, so they say.” Desailly shook his head. “Lieutenant, I want you to go to the southern garrison. You tell them what you’ve told me and get them to pull together as many men and vehicles as possible. Tell the acting commander there we need to launch a search of the area around R13 immediately.”
“With respect, sir. That would be an army decision.”
“With no respect, Lieutenant. There are no senior military people in the region and the Government representative has vanished. If your army has a better idea, let me hear it now. If not, get your ass over to the garrison.”
The army man paused for a second, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ll go see Captain Henry of the Gendarmérie. This is awful. Just awful.”
The lieutenant climbed into his dirty jeep and looked up at the sky. “The roads are in a terrible state. Most of the bridges are out. If these rains keep up, the rivers will be too deep to ford and we’ll be cut off.”
“Then get a move on, son.”
“Sir.”
As the jeep splashed off through the puddles, Desailly headed for his own truck. There was no key in the ignition and the driver was nowhere to be found. The man hadn’t expected to work while his boss was in the office. Desailly yelled at the top of his voice. His shouting brought out everyone but the driver. Soon, the servants and the Administration staff, caught up in the new atmosphere of panic, were running back and forth in search of the errant driver. As Desailly stood waiting in the drizzle, a Montagnard chamber maid walked nervously up to him and bowed.
“What is it?”
“Mme. Dupré,” she said.
“What about her?”
“She no here.”
“No where?”
“No in room. No in bed. No sleep in bed.”
“Ee, gods. What on earth’s going on here? They’re both missing?” The driver appeared from down the road, still buttoning his uniform shirt. “Lord! What have I done to deserve a day like this? What have I done?”
46.
By mid-afternoon, every vehicle from the Ban Methuot garrison had left to scour the countryside for the missing Administrator. Many had spent their time getting stuck in mud or slithering off the road into trees. Only five men remained at the base.
In the town, Inspector Henry and his men had the task of locating the Administrator’s wife. Henry and his sergeant had begun by visiting the expatriate wives in their homes. His first two interviewees said they had no idea where Madame Dupré might be, although both were lying through their teeth. Henry wasn’t much of a policemen, but he could tell the women were holding something back, something important. They didn’t seem nearly concerned enough that Mme. Monique had vanished.
It wasn’t until his third house call that he got an answer. He was at the house of Mme. Moncur, wife of the doctor. She was in her sixties, prickly as a cactus and had no love for what she called the ladies of the expatriate wife pack. She was particularly hostile towards the Administrator’s wife who she considered a tramp in fine lace. Although most of the women agreed, this was far too honest for small town domestic politicians so they kept their distance from Mme. Moncur.
“You don’t seem very surprised that Mme. Du
pré is missing,” Henry said. He sipped his ice lemon while his Vietnamese sergeant, Officer Nga, stood in full uniform and thirsty behind the couch.
“I’m not.”
“Then, perhaps you might know where she is?”
She laughed. “How many single men are there around Ban Methuot, Inspector?”
“Madame! I hope you aren’t insinuating…” He cast a glance at his sergeant.
“No, Henry. I’m not. It’s an outright statement. The woman’s a whore. I’m surprised she hasn’t bedded you, yet. Or perhaps…”
He let out a sort of growl and glared at the old woman. There had been advances, but Henry, given his position, was forced to play the small town community deaf and blind game. “Unlike yourself I’m not one for rumors Mme. Moncur. I’m a policeman. I rely on hard evidence.”
“You’ll no doubt find hard evidence between Mme. Dupré’s lovely thighs this very minute.”
“Mme. Moncur, I’m surprised at you. I don’t feel this type of talk is appropriate when referring to the wife of our Administrator.”
“Well, then stop asking me questions. More lemonade?”
“No. Thank you. If you have any specific information as to Mme. Dupré’s exact location, I would appreciate such information.”
“Why is it always the police are the last to know?”
“To know what?”
“About the rescue of the American missionary from the whore house.”
“Rescue? What rescue? He was held captive? What are you saying?”
“He was held captive by his grief and his sudden dependency on opium to get him through it. It wouldn’t have done him any harm. I’d have let him stay there till he’d worked it out of his system. I certainly wouldn’t have gone in there with the morality cavalry blowing its trumpets. But our great leader’s wife went in with her salvation army to save his soul…for herself.”
Bleeding in Black and White Page 22
