Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  With the arrival of Paris’s brilliant autumn, Félix opened his door to find Charles and Hélène on the step. The order prohibiting his presence in Paris had been lifted, said Charles. Félix suspected otherwise, but for the moment he was genuinely glad to see the young couple. On their faces was the glow of love. They were expensively and fashionably dressed. And Hélène bore on her finger a diamond and ruby ring. They told Félix they would marry on an October afternoon at a mayor’s office in Paris. “Congratulations to you both,” cried Félix as he embraced them. But how had Hélène persuaded her father?

  “We did not ask him for permission,” answered Charles. “We told him. This beautiful woman is an adult, and an adult makes her own decisions.”

  And so they were wed, in a simple civil ceremony that was memorable principally for the best man’s nervousness. Félix fretted that the presiding mayor might ask Charles for his permis de séjour, the residence permit, absence of which might send the bridegroom back to jail before the ink dried on the marriage license. Félix knew that Charles did not possess one legally, but he did not know that Charles had purchased a counterfeit document on the very day he bought his navy blue wedding suit. Whatever, the mayor did not ask for it, he only beamed and blessed the couple, and the winds of love blew softly. The day was perfect. Even Song, bejeweled and eye-catching, traveled to Paris, and at the reception she was a center of attention. Sobhraj the Tailor was absent, even though Charles had sent his father a telegram and had spent several days trying to call Saigon. Hélène’s father filled the parental gap. Toasting the couple, dancing with Song, filling his belly with champagne, the butcher seemed as happy as any man in the room.

  The newlyweds leased a small apartment in a suburb south of Paris where, for a few months, they lived lives outwardly respectable, decorous enough for the blessing of a country friar. While Hélène commuted to Paris each day and worked as a file clerk, Charles found odd jobs in restaurants and read books on philosophy and law. He was becoming a serious student of Jung and often kept Hélène awake at night interpreting words like “anima” and “animus” and “synchronicity.” Jung made exceptional sense to Charles, particularly the philosopher’s contention that meaningful events in a person’s life are not necessarily traceable to specific causes. Rather they occur in different lives and different places, but at the same time. “It’s like the bumper cars that people ride at fairs,” said Charles. “Each person had a different reason for coming to the fair, and each person had a different reason for choosing to buy a ticket and ride one of the cars. And each person chose to bump into another car at a certain moment. Why?”

  Whatever had lured Charles on his mysterious visits to Spain and Monte Carlo was apparently forgotten, for on the few occasions that Félix dined with the couple in their flat—furnished neatly with cast-offs from friends—the subject did not arise. The talk was of happiness, of Hélène’s growing prowess as a cook, of their desire for a child. When Félix took his leave one evening, warm and content from a meal of pot-au-feu and a new Beaujolais, Hélène walked with him a way toward the train station, reassuring the old friend of Charles’ new sense of responsibility and permanence. All it took were marriage and the knowledge that someone needed him and loved him, said Hélène. Félix blessed them both, almost envying the marriage, for he had never found a woman to whom he could commit his life.

  Just as he took his leave, Félix could not resist asking Hélène if any of Charles’ old prison friends had turned up, perhaps trying to lure him back into a dangerous line of work.

  Hélène did not like the question. She hedged. Yes, a few had come around, particularly one dreadfully fearsome Spaniard with a huge scar across half his face. But she had sent them away, and as far as she knew, Charles was not seeing them.

  On the train ride back to Paris, Félix felt almost patriarchal, realizing that he had played matchmaker and was someday going to be rewarded with a godson. “Our first boy will be named Félix,” Charles had promised at dinner.

  Then, abruptly, either by coincidence, or synchronicity, or the caprices of fate, or from the forewritten and inescapable script of destiny, a series of small shocks unsettled the tenuous earth on which Charles walked. They would not have interrupted the progress of a normal man, and indeed, when Félix looked back and analyzed them, every one seemed minor. But their sum was awesome. They set in motion an odyssey that would sweep over half the world, launch a journey that would bring Charles into collisions with unimagined lives and destinies. And snuff out dreams not yet even born.

  CHAPTER NINE

  On a fine spring morning in 1970, Charles learned that Hélène would deliver their first child by year’s end. And on that very afternoon, the government of France informed Charles that his presence was needed in the military service for a minimum of eighteen months. With panic, Charles telephoned Félix. How could these events have dovetailed? How could he abandon Hélène with his seed growing within her? Why did the military even want him, his past being what it was? “You were happy enough to be granted citizenship by this country,” lectured Félix. “Now you must pay for it.”

  Félix promised to look after Hélène, who, after all, was not exactly being thrown out into the cold. She lived near her parents and could visit them daily if she wished, she would continue working, Charles would earn enough money to keep his wife in maternity clothes and pay the obstetrician.

  “I don’t believe the Army will want me very long,” grumbled Charles ominously. He did report for induction, as ordered, but he did not last more than several weeks before a medical discharge was granted. One of his brother soldiers, a farm youth named Serge from a town in the Midi, recalled Charles’ brief moments in the military. “Every day he was either sick—or acting crazy,” said Serge. “The guy was incredible. He was able to make his face turn pale and his temperature go up the moment the doctor put the thermometer in his mouth. He convinced them he had a bleeding ulcer. Maybe the doctors knew he was acting, but they also reasoned he was more trouble—and expense—than he was worth.”

  Charles rushed home to Hélène and fretted that his wife was being attended by a suburban doctor rather than the chief of obstetrics at Paris’s finest hospital. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he went to visit his sister Leyou, married now to a man who owned a restaurant in Paris. He begged for employment. Perhaps that was also the reason that, once engaged as a waiter, he stole 6,000 francs from his sister’s purse and lost every centime the same night at the Casino d’Enghien near Paris. Furious, Leyou reported the theft to the police, ignoring her half-brother’s pleas to retract the accusation. “I was just trying to get enough money to buy Hélène the best doctor in France,” he swore. He promised to pay her back, twicefold. Leyou, unmoved, refused. She intended to prosecute Charles. If he wished to steal from other people, that was his own business. But when he behaved larcenously toward his own blood, then no pity was due.

  Once again Félix made the now familiar visit to Charles in jail, and this time he found his young friend hysterical. The theft was stupid, wept Charles, but it was not really of criminal intent, only a “loan.” He had intended to pay back his sister before she even discovered the loss. But fate had cursed the cards dealt him at baccarat. “I swear that I will never go near a casino again,” promised Charles. The promise was not necessary. Félix suspected that the court would ban Charles from admission to gambling establishments, considering his record.

  Already Charles had scribbled a legal brief of sorts. He thrust it into Félix’s hands, begging him to act as conciliator with the judge and with his half-sister. In lawbooks, Charles had found numerous cases wherein the injured party agreed to drop charges in return for complete financial restitution. Félix sighed. Why did Charles make such demands on his life? And, more appropriately, why did Félix agree to help him? “Because,” answered Charles, “you are the only one in the world who can help me. And my wife. And little Félix.” Little Félix? The unborn son whose father, if not pried lo
ose from the vengeance of an angry sister, would enter the world under direst conditions.

  Félix went to Leyou and convinced her to withdraw the charge, a substantial down payment from his own pocket helping his petition. Then he went before the court in a pretrial hearing and one more time preached a sermon on behalf of Charles. The judge agreed to release Charles provisionally, but unless the money were repaid in full, the charge would be reinstituted. And if Charles Sobhraj as much as spat on the sidewalk, he would face the wrath of justice.

  But the paramount event of the early summer of 1970 was neither Charles’ brief career in the Army nor his wife’s pregnancy, nor the contretemps with his half-sister. It was the sudden arrival in Paris of Sobhraj the Tailor, whom Charles had not seen for almost a decade, since he was banished from Saigon and put aboard a ship bound for Bombay.

  When the tailor, now elderly, arrived at Orly Airport, he was surprised to see a striking young man in sleek clothing and dark glasses rush to him with open arms, crying, “Papa!” Charles hugged his father fiercely and wiped tears that spilled from beneath his glasses. The tailor, a man who rarely showed emotion, managed to extricate himself from the overwhelming embrace. He wondered how Charles knew which flight to meet. Before he had left Saigon, Sobhraj had written his son a vague letter, saying that he was beginning another round-the-world trip and might spend a day in Paris around June 25. “I have met every flight,” answered Charles. “I would sleep on the floor of the lobby if it meant having my father with me in Paris. Come, my wife is waiting for us.”

  Sobhraj the Tailor was fêted like a sultan. Dinner the first night was at Maxim’s, and on his plate was a gold watch. Hélène was gloriously pretty, dressed in an expensive new gown, her beauty enriched by the soft pink glow of the restaurant’s famous light that flatters any woman. “It was Hélène’s idea,” insisted Charles, squeezing his wife’s hand under the table so that she would not spoil the small lie about the watch. Later, when they were alone, Charles produced a sapphire ring for his wife, saying that it was a wedding gift from the tailor. The older man was too shy to present it himself, informed Charles, and would be embarrassed if she even mentioned it. When Félix heard the story of the lavish gift exchange, he knew immediately what Charles was up to, clandestinely buying his father’s approval of a new daughter-in-law, and gilding the father’s image in the eyes of his wife. Félix also wondered where Charles obtained the money to buy gold watches and sapphire rings—but he dared not ask.

  Chauffeured limousines bore the tailor about Paris; fresh flowers filled his hotel room. When, after two days, Sobhraj announced his intention to leave for Geneva, Charles insisted on driving him there. “Nothing is too good for my father,” said the son.

  In a rented car, they set out for Geneva, and immediately the tailor noted a certain tenseness that played around the face of Hélène. Her husband dominated every conversation, talking expansively of an import-export business he planned to inaugurate, waving around a checkbook that seemed to have thousands on deposit. Every time Charles spun his tales of money and success, Hélène was stricken. En route, Charles impulsively stopped at a jewelry store outside Paris and invited his father and bride to pick out a trinket, anything that caught their eye. Both declined any further demonstrations of love and generosity, but Charles selected a gold watch band and a Swiss watch priced at 3,800 francs. When he wrote a check to pay, the saleswoman refused to accept it. The day was a Saturday; banks were closed. The account could not be verified. But Charles put on a dazzling show, convincing her that he was a man of quality. Would he write a bad check in front of his wife, expectant with child, and his father, distinguished visitor from the East? Of course not, agreed the clerk. She took his check.

  Later on the journey, when Charles was washing his hands at a roadside restaurant, Hélène broke down. A simple girl, she was unable to act out charades as professionally as her husband. She told her father-in-law that Charles spent the week prior to the tailor’s arrival in frantic pursuit of money. He sold their furniture, some clothing. Strange and disturbing men called at their apartment after midnight with hidden parcels. Their bank account was not only overdrawn but closed. The check Charles gave the jewelry store was worthless. The entire outpouring of gifts was meant to impress the tailor, and it was fabricated out of nothing. Their brief months as husband and wife had been troubling. Charles was a compulsive gambler with a temper that could flare into violence. But even with all of this, she still loved him and hoped to change him.

  The tailor shook his head in despair. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “You are married to a Number One Crook.” The father had recognized the dark side of his son when the child was barely able to walk. Perhaps it was his fault, perhaps it was Song’s, perhaps it was the judgment of the gods. His advice was to get out fast. “My son is a destructor,” he said.

  The rest of the journey to Geneva was strained and mostly silent. Upon arrival, the tailor suddenly found an excuse to change his itinerary and fly directly back to Saigon. New war headlines from Vietnam made his story plausible. At the airport, Charles clung tightly to his father until the tailor disappeared down the ramp to the plane. And then he called out, “I love you! I will see you soon in Saigon! We will be one family again!”

  Félix owned an old MG sports car whose speedometer had twice reached a hundred thousand kilometers. It was his intention to sell it to Charles for the token sum of a hundred francs, for it was hardly worth trading in. When Charles returned from Geneva and asked to borrow the car for one afternoon to fetch a table, Félix agreed routinely. He never saw his car again. By nightfall, the ancient MG was speeding out of Paris, south, bearing Charles, his distraught wife, and their few remaining possessions. Their first destination was Greece, where Charles had a contact he needed to see, then a left turn toward the East. He planned to drive ten thousand miles across half the world, over the muddy ruts of rural Turkey, through the deserts of Iraq and Iran, into the awesome emptiness of Afghanistan, dodging the Himalayas, plunging across a corner of India, into Thailand, Cambodia, and finally Vietnam. He would not be turned away by his father again.

  A flurry of letters crisscrossed the world, with Félix finding himself in the middle of many voices clamoring as to the whereabouts of Charles and Hélène. Leyou called regularly, shrieking for the return of her stolen 6,000 francs. Coincidentally, French police built a case around the worthless checks that Charles passed to purchase tribute for his father. He was sentenced to one year in prison, in absentia. Plus permanent expulsion from France. Hélène’s parents were devastated, her mother stricken with worsening heart disease, her father threatening to telephone the Sûreté if necessary to obtain the return of his pregnant daughter. To all of them Félix could respond honestly, “I have no idea where they are. If I hear anything I will let you know.”

  Then, in a matter of a few days at the end of summer, 1970, two letters arrived, and the picture became clear—and ironic. The first was from Charles, postmarked September 11, mailed from Delhi but written somewhere along the way. “Forgive me,” wrote Charles to Félix, “I didn’t have the courage to tell you that I was leaving, knowing it would make you sad. And if I had seen you, I could not have kept my decision to leave France … Please understand that I only wanted to break with my awful past—and not with you. I can never forget those years when we worked together and you pulled me out of the mud where I was mired, how you helped me find myself, my being, my potential, how you brought me happiness and joy I had never known before. I know now that my destiny is here, in the East. Hélène and I are going on to Saigon, where I will join my father …

  P.S. The car served us well. No mechanical problems. It’s like you had whispered inside the engine and told it to take us to India. Only problem was going through Turkey—1,500 kilometers of bad road, dirt, rocks, and a wife who kept throwing up.”

  Hardly had Félix pressed the letter into the folder where he kept Charles’ mountain of correspondence when a letter a
rrived from Sobhraj the Tailor. He, too, had received a letter from Charles—somewhere along the road—and, not knowing where to send his answer, he had chosen Félix. It seemed that the tailor was prepared to stand at the city limits of Saigon with a rifle to bar admission to his son and daughter-in-law.

  “If you hear from them,” wrote Sobhraj, “please tell them they are not welcome at my home. If they come to me, I will be the first man to inform the French Consul General here in Saigon and they will be arrested and sent to France … My son does not know truth from lies, nor good from evil.

  “My friend Félix, have you heard the fable of the blind boy who was sitting on a big rock near a pond where other boys were swimming? This boy could hear the others laughing and singing and having races with one another. A priest passed by and saw the blind boy sitting so lonely. He took pity on the boy and prayed to the Mighty God to give the boy sight so that he could swim too. And God answered the prayer and gave the boy sight. He jumped into the pond and beat all the other boys at their races and pushed some of their heads under the water and caused them to drown. Those left alive were frightened and they ran away. Then the boy with the new eyes came out of the water and asked the priest to swim with him. The priest refused and prayed a new prayer—that God should make the boy blind as he was before. God once more answered the prayer and took away the light. Then God said, ‘I saw that this boy was dangerous for others and therefore I took away his eyes.’