by Kim Fay
Anne guided her into a wicker chair. “You must let this go.”
It seemed impossible to Irene that something like this could be let go, yet she felt as if she was going to be sick if she thought about it any longer, so she asked, “Where were you last night?”
Anne gazed beyond the balcony railing, down into the alley, where a shop leaned into the open shack next to it. A thin veil of sunlight reddened jars of snake wine and pickled duck eggs. She sank into a chair beside Irene and tucked her feet up on the seat, covering her toes with the hem of her dressing gown. “Why don’t you tell me.”
“You were with us,” Irene answered.
“What were we doing?”
Irene had the strangest headache. The pain was new to her, a tightness that wrapped around her temples and pushed through to the backs of her eyes. She had to squint to bring the rooftops into focus. She had to breathe deeply in order to harness her thoughts. “Having a bon voyage drink. As far as you know, I came to Shanghai to talk to Simone about her father’s work on Khmer trading routes. Digging through the archives at the Brooke Museum, I discovered new research on the subject.”
In fact, this last part was true. While analyzing everything she had access to in relation to the reverend’s diary, Irene had come across a file of letters from a Swiss botanist. He had casually noted a trail of stone markers that he’d encountered during an exploration of Ratanakiri province. The location of these markers fit neatly into conclusions Simone’s father had drawn about commercial roads passing through northeast Cambodia. Because travel in even the most remote areas of French-controlled Indochina required a restrictive number of government-issued permits and requisitions, Irene had used all of this information to create a subterfuge—an expedition disguised as a scholarly search for historic trading routes. She added, “It’s your understanding that I came to Shanghai to ask Simone if I could study her father’s papers.”
“And that’s why the two of you are going to Cambodia?”
“Yes. After her parents’ death, she left all of his work with the museum in Phnom Penh.”
Anne reflected on this and then asked, “Why would Roger let Simone leave this time?”
“He was worried she might break down and do something that could harm the party. He had to pacify her, to keep her in line.”
“I assume you want me to let this be known?”
“Roger came to you.” Restless, Irene stood and retrieved the teacup from the railing, holding it tightly, savoring its heat. “Sending her to Cambodia was your suggestion.”
“No,” Anne said. “Roger would never come to anyone about Simone. Not even me. I went to him because I was concerned about the cause. About the damage she could do if she was pushed too far.”
“Is this far-fetched?” Irene asked.
“No more far-fetched than anything else that happens in this city.”
Although Anne had put sugar in the tea, Irene could taste only its bitterness. The image of Roger, standing so close that she could smell the pipe smoke woven into the fabric of his shirt, sparked insistently at the edges of her thoughts. “Do you think he would have shot me?”
“Yes,” Anne said, with sympathy. “And he would have thought nothing of it.”
“Surely Mr. Simms must have known how dangerous Roger was.”
“That’s a reasonable assumption.”
“I can’t figure it out. Why is Simone worth putting my life in jeopardy?”
Anne looked back into the apartment. The bedroom door was still closed. “Have you told her you intend to take the scrolls out of Cambodia?”
Irene felt confined, hemmed in by the chairs and potted palms on the small balcony. “No.”
“Don’t you think she has earned the right to know? She killed her husband to save your life.”
“She killed her husband to save her own life,” Irene protested. “Anne, I have to get us on that ship tomorrow. I have to get us to Cambodia. I need your help, but if you’re about to give me an ultimatum—”
“What if I am?”
“Then I hope we will never need an alibi.”
“I only want you to think carefully about taking the scrolls out of Cambodia. If you are fortunate enough to find them, I want to know you’ve considered everything.”
“I might be caught.” Irene was frustrated that Anne would not let this go. “I might go to prison. I’ve thought about all of this.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Anne said, refusing to back down. “How are you going to explain what the scrolls are doing in Seattle? You want this discovery to be yours. You want everyone to know you found the scrolls in a lost temple in the jungles of Cambodia. But if they’re in America, then everyone is also going to know you stole them. You might be forgiven. Probably even lauded. But what if you’re not? The Great War has changed what is acceptable. You know that. All of a sudden, ethics matter, laws are changing, and the Stars and Stripes are leading the way. You’re not thinking this all the way through.”
In order to achieve what she wanted, Irene could not just discover the scrolls and then leave them in Cambodia. She had to have them in her hands. Among the many lessons she had learned from her mistakes at the museum: She needed proof. Taking the scrolls back to America was the only way to make anyone pay attention to her. The only way to make the trustees understand how much they had underestimated her. “Don’t tell me I haven’t thought this through! Thinking things through is what I do best,” she insisted. She slammed the teacup onto the railing, and it cracked within its cloth wrapping. She looked defiantly at Anne.
“Oh, Irene.” Anne’s voice trembled. “I don’t want you to leave here angry with me. You know I’ll do anything I can to keep you out of harm’s way. I have contacts, resources, but I can’t protect you—”
“From myself?” Irene asked.
“I can’t protect you once you leave Shanghai, no matter how good your alibi.” She slipped her hand into the pocket of her robe and withdrew a gleaming object. She offered it on her outstretched palm.
Irene’s fingers closed around it, and she felt as if she had captured a small steel bird. She aimed the coral-handled pistol at the distant murk of the Whangpoo River. It felt harmless in her hand. So different from Roger’s revolver, the thought of which turned her body to liquid. The air around her had absorbed the river’s industrial stink of coal and rotting fish. Across the water she saw the smokestacks of the Pootung district factories. She wondered how many belonged to Mr. Simms. She asked, “Have you ever regretted coming here?”
Anne gazed over the slanting rooftops below. “When I first arrived in Shanghai, I was enchanted by how it smelled of jasmine right before dawn. During the first months, I could barely sleep; I was afraid of missing that perfumed hour. At the same time, I was sure I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I abandoned a decent husband, a comfortable home, the regard of my family. My father never forgave me. When he died, he had not spoken to me for eight years.”
“Has it been worth it?”
“I’m thankful every day for that moment of recklessness. How else would I ever have made it to the other side?”
“What do you mean, the other side?”
“The place where one feels truly alive. Too many people surrender to a place of safety. That place where all they do is long to sleep so they can dream about living. Even if you don’t find what you think you’re looking for, darling, it’s the going out and looking for it that counts. That is the only way you can know you have lived.”
Irene persevered through the remains of the day, refusing to think about what had happened—what could have happened—with Roger. She returned to her hotel room, gathered her belongings, and paid her bill. Letting herself into Simone’s apartment with a key that Anne had given her, she went to the bedroom to try to figure out what Simone might want or need, and discovered two trunks behind a screen. They looked as if they had been hastily packed, piled with the circuslike assortment of clothing that made u
p Simone’s wardrobe. Irene secured the trunks, asked the landlord to send them to the dock, and gave him a forwarding address for the central post office in Saigon. It was important to do things publicly. She did not want it to appear that Simone was running away.
From Simone’s she went to Marc Rafferty’s. She had begun to wonder if she and Simone should hire a bodyguard, and he seemed the right person for this kind of advice. But the nightclub was locked, and when the Algerian watchman for the brothel across the street told her that Marc had already left Shanghai, she realized that she had not come for counsel. She wanted to see him again. Even though she could not tell him what she and Simone had done, she wanted the reassurance she had felt sitting with him in his bar.
Irene made it through the night with the help of a bitter herb from Anne’s tall lacquer jewel case of narcotics, each of its drawers offering its own means of escape. When she woke on the morning of the Lumière’s departure, her head was filled with mud. The bungalow, the Chinese countryside, the body in the grass—all were buried so deep that she could not have dredged them up if she had tried.
A smoky drizzle dimmed the city, but it did not, as one would expect, cool the dawn hour. Instead, as Irene stood in line at the customs shed with Simone and Anne, heat percolated through the steaming air. She found it hard to believe that she was already leaving Shanghai. Hadn’t she just arrived, standing on the deck of the Tahoma, admiring the Bund’s massive stiff-upper-lip banks and trading houses? How impressed she had been by the respected names mingling shoulder to shoulder down the waterfront: Jardine Matheson & Co., Asiatic Petroleum, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. But that was before she learned how little respectability was valued in this city.
Simone, who had positioned herself between Irene and Anne, was wearing the most outlandish hat Irene had ever seen. Its brim folded and flopped around her face, and she had to hold on to Anne’s arm like a blind woman whenever she walked. Occasionally she would lift the brim and peek around furtively, and comment on this man or that. “He’s watching me, do you see that? They know it, they all know it, how dangerous I am.”
Roger’s death was undoing her. Of course people were gawking at her, or rather at her clownish hat with its trim of multicolored ribbons. They couldn’t help themselves, the coolies loading cargo and the British soldiers standing guard. Even the beggars, limbs swaddled in strips of ocher-stained cotton, cast second glances, as did husbands saying goodbye to their wives and children, who would wait out the city’s latest nuisance—a rash of kidnappings from which even infants were not exempt—in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Irene tried to think of any of these men as a threat, but she couldn’t, and she knew that this was her shortcoming. She had underestimated the Brooke Museum’s trustees. And she had underestimated Roger, even though everyone from the countess to Marc Rafferty had cautioned her. But it felt safe here on the docks, so routine, with the porters transferring luggage and the odor of roasting garlic seeping through the tincture of drenched river weed. Even the American destroyers sent to protect Western interests seemed innocuous, drab as the overcast sky, surrounded by sampans that looked as if they had drifted downriver from a previous century. Sails the color of damp tea leaves drooped above the domesticity of bamboo birdcages, sleeping cats, and limp, faded laundry.
Anne pressed a packet into Irene’s hand. “Have her take this as soon as she’s in her cabin. If she doesn’t want it, dissolve it into her drink.”
Irene tucked the envelope in her pocket.
Anne’s pale blouse was stained through with sweat, and her gray bob was uncombed. But although her appearance was unusually careless, her tone was not as she put her hands on Simone’s shoulders and said, “You’re going home, my darling.”
Solemn in spite of her hat, Simone said, “I’m going to make you proud of me.”
“If you need anything, anything at all, I will always be here for you.” Anne leaned in to kiss her cheek, and Simone hugged her. Blinking rapidly, trying not to cry, Anne said, “Be careful. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you. Either of you.” She let go of Simone and pulled Irene to her. Instinctively, Irene stiffened before slowly reaching around Anne’s waist. Anne tightened her embrace. Up close she smelled of nutmeg. Irene did not move. She did not want Anne to stop holding her.
“That man,” Anne whispered into Irene’s hair. “Near the noodle cart, do you see him?”
“Yes.”
“His name is Eduard Boisselier. If anyone has been sent to watch Simone, it’s him.”
Simone went straight to her cabin and took the sleeping powder without resistance. There was enough left over for Irene, who was grateful to disappear into her own cabin and sleep for the rest of the day. When she woke, the temperature had plunged. Headed for Saigon via Hong Kong, the steamer had reached the open sea. Gone were the polluted, oily gray waters of the Whangpoo, and with them the billboards advertising Tiger Balm and chewing gum. The air through her open window smelled clean, of cold water and salt. She wrapped a wool blanket around her shoulders and went outside. Her breathing constricted in the alkaline chill. Waves fanned against the side of the ship, and the gray phantom of a gull paced the wake. She leaned against the railing.
As she stared out at the water, a cloud fled, and a luminous flight of moonlight poured over the vast expanse of the East China Sea. Constellations spread across the sky and were absorbed into the curving retreat of the earth. It was as if while sleeping Irene had entered a new country, an unspoiled landscape invulnerable to the decay that lingered beneath the incense and jasmine of Shanghai. She held the letter opener over the railing and let it go. It sparked as it knifed the water. Marc Rafferty had said that you cannot know what a place like this does to a person until it has done it to you. Irene wondered how long it would take to discover what Shanghai had done to her.
Our plan had been a slight affair, and quite vague: we talked about it so much that it assumed familiar shapes—far away in Cambodia there were huge flowers waiting patiently until we should come and pick them. Then suddenly, as though the sky had darkened, the adventure took on another form.
CLARA MALRAUX,
Memoirs
Chapter 8
The China Sea
The following morning, Irene entered the Lumière’s meandering salon through a mahogany door with a porthole murky from years at sea. The steward greeted her with an invitation to join the day’s bet on the ship’s speed. She declined and scanned the room. It reminded her of the lobby of a hotel that had once been grand. The burgundy fleurs-de-lis on the carpet had faded, and the scuffed wooden floor showed through in patches. It was not even eight, but tables were already occupied by the ship’s middle-aged set, fleshy European businessmen and their wives, who looked perpetually overheated, despite the foggy air. Dehydrated old colonials sat alone, reading newspapers they had brought from Shanghai, and a Chinese man dressed in a neat gray business suit had been seated off to one side by himself, the only Oriental in the room. Having scarcely eaten the day before, Irene had woken up hungry, but her appetite withered at the greasy smell of bacon and frying butter. She spotted Simone at a table tucked in the corner, staring out the window into the thick marine drizzle.
Anne had given Irene enough pills, powders, and vials of henna-colored liquids to keep Simone sedated all the way through Saigon and Phnom Penh and into the Cambodian jungles. But as appealing as that possibility was, Irene knew they must confront what had happened. It would not be easy, for even as she said good morning, she could feel the cold pressure of Roger’s gun against her face. She could see Simone’s hands coated in blood. There were moments when it felt as if that night would be superimposed on her life forever. She lit a cigarette, and with the timidity that follows the sharing of a profound intimacy, she asked, “How do you feel?”
“I can’t say that I’m happy right now, but I no longer feel unhappy. May I?” Looking uncomfortable in her lavender blouse, such a demure item of clothing compared to her ou
trageous outfits in Shanghai, Simone took the cigarette from Irene. “Roger forbade me to do so many things,” she said, inhaling hungrily, as if the smoke was a lost part of herself she was trying to recover. “I think you should know, Irene, that while it was happening, I was thinking about the temple.”
Irene had expected Simone to avoid talking about Roger’s death, and the bluntness of this statement surprised her.
“I hadn’t planned to do it, I’m certain of that. But it was in my heart,” Simone said. “I can’t pretend I didn’t want it. That it didn’t feel good once it was done. When I cried, I thought at first it was because I felt regret. Then I realized it was because I had forgotten what it felt like to be free. Even though I knew I could go to prison, I was finally free.” She studied the gray haze spiraling off the tip of her cigarette. “I’m not sorry. But you. I’m worried about you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I’m afraid of what the guilt will do to you.”
“Why would I feel guilty?” Irene asked, unsettled by how defensive she felt.
“If you hadn’t come here, I wouldn’t have killed him.”
“Are you saying this is my fault?”
“You don’t think you have any blame in it?”
Irene looked outside, at the fog thinning along the deck, revealing the outline of a life preserver secured to the railing. She had been so concerned about Simone’s fragility that she had not considered her own. “I didn’t mean to hit him with the car.”
“And I didn’t mean to stab him in the throat. I was flailing. Trying to keep him away from me.” Simone opened Irene’s cigarette case and examined its contents, even though she was not finished with the one Irene had given to her. “We killed him so we could find this temple. We, Irene. And I think that given the choice, we would do it again. That’s what I need to know if you can live with.”
