After a few minutes of silence, she grabbed my shoulder and pointed out the window behind me. “Look!” she said as I turned my head.
We had been driving by the water for some time, but when Lanh slowed the car after Marcelle raised her voice, I saw the boat. It was a beautiful wooden structure, painted white, unlike the other boats around it, which were made of unpainted dark wood. The white boat had three sails of bright orange cloth, open and flapping wildly against the blue sky, like emblems of an endless summer. There were three levels and a deck and white wooden railings that encircled every level to meet at the prow, where a long wooden spar stuck straight out.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” said Marcelle, following my gaze.
“Pretty? It’s magnificent,” I said. “What does Khoi do again? Is he the emperor?”
“No, darling. The emperor is in Annam. His name is Bao Dai, and he isn’t even twenty years old yet. Khoi’s family owns most of the silk industry in this country. Everything soft that you touch was originally chewing on his mulberry trees.”
“Seems lucrative,” I said as Lanh opened the car door for me.
“For now,” Marcelle said before following me out.
“The party has arrived!” a man’s voice sang out. It was definitely Red. I saw him waving at us from the deck. A half dozen others stood nearby, but I could barely make out their faces.
“In force!” Marcelle shouted back.
Red cupped his ear and shook his head, indicating that he couldn’t hear and instead waved us toward him.
The sparkling blue waters of Ha Long Bay played with the light, the sun bouncing off it in undulating lines and shapes as we made our way onto a wide plank to reach the boat.
“This is breathtaking,” I said as Red took my hand. He gripped it tightly and held it until someone else approached us.
“I’m glad you like it,” said a strikingly handsome Annamite who took my bag from Lanh and handed it to a boy behind him. His jaw was square, and his cheekbones, just prominent enough, were so perfectly placed that they looked almost painted on. I could see right away why Arnaud was a mere companion for Marcelle now. “It’s called a junk,” he went on. “A term that comes from the Javanese word for ‘boat.’” He reached for both my hands, shaking them and bowing his head as he did. “I’m Nguyen Khoi,” he said. “And you’re Jessie Lesage. Marcelle is so fond of you. We’re very glad that you could join us. In Indochine and on this little boat.”
“It’s marvelous,” I said, nodding good-bye to Lanh, then stepping on board. The floor of the deck was dark wood, the narrow planks buffed to a shine.
“I’m quite fond of it, too, Madame Lesage,” he said as another boy came to collect my shoes. Khoi explained that no high heels were allowed as they dented the wood and instead gave me a pair of navy-blue silk slippers to wear. They were my exact size.
“Jessie, please,” I said to Khoi.
“Jessie, then,” he said, indicating the deck. “Come, Jessie, I will introduce you to our friends.”
I walked behind Khoi and Marcelle as we made our way up the stairs to the sundeck. Marcelle’s white dress was very pretty against the backdrop of the orange sails and the wooden boat, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Khoi’s clothes. His jacket, cut in a Western fashion and paired with wide-legged white trousers and a white jersey shirt, was made from the loveliest light blue silk I’d ever seen.
“That fabric, your jacket, is beautiful,” I couldn’t help saying as we stopped for Marcelle to rearrange her hat, which the breeze wanted to blow off. “I’ve never seen silk quite like that.” It was true. It looked almost like linen, or cotton, with no sheen to it, but up close it was unmistakably silk.
“Thank you,” Khoi said, looking down at his sleeves and smiling. “It was made especially for me. A gift from my father on my thirtieth birthday. I shouldn’t wear it out, especially with the water spraying into the boat on occasion, but I don’t believe in keeping beautiful things in boxes. And now that it’s nearly November, it’s finally cool enough to wear something like this.”
“I agree, about beautiful things. We must enjoy what we have,” I said, looking around at the boat. There seemed no doubt that Khoi was a man who