rude, but your French is so perfect. Did you live in France?” I asked him after he’d finished sizing me up. “I wish my accent was as Parisian-sounding as yours.”
“I quite like the way you speak,” he replied, pouring himself a glass of water from a carafe. “And I think I had a leg up on you. I’ve been speaking French all my life. I also went to school in Paris from the ages of sixteen to twenty-four.”
“Did you! Without your family?”
He nodded. “It’s a normal custom here for well-to-do boys. My parents visited, once, maybe twice, to make sure I wasn’t having too much fun, but they were mostly very busy here running our silk company.”
“That’s a terribly long time. Didn’t you miss it here?” When I left my family, it was without a return date, something that gave me both the happiness I was desperate for and lingering guilt I’d never quite shaken.
“Yes and no. I knew I would return,” he said. “And I liked my freedom in Paris.”
“Funny. That’s what all the French say about here.”
“Well, there’s something about being dépaysé, isn’t there? Maybe you care less when you’re out of your native habitat. You know your imprint won’t last forever.”
“I still would try to act as though it might,” I said, thinking how much I needed this experiment in Indochine to be successful.
“Then you are in the minority,” he said. He stood and leaned against the boat’s wooden railing, drink in hand, and didn’t flinch when a spray of water caught his face, dampening the starched collar of his shirt but seeming to miss his jacket, which he hadn’t changed.
“I would like to meet your husband,” he said suddenly. “For business reasons, and to welcome him to this part of the world. Might you arrange it for me?”
“Of course,” I said. Victor would happily meet a man as rich as Khoi. And he would be dreadfully jealous when he heard about the three Delahayes.
Looking out to sea, Khoi pointing out the more famous formations as the sinking sun hit the water, its glow spreading along the horizon like gold ink.
“I should go check on Marcelle,” he said after a minute.
I nodded. “I like Marcelle very much.”
“So do I,” he said. “Women here, the Annamites, they aren’t as free-spirited as Marcelle. As independent. She really lives by her own rules.”
“She certainly does,” I said. “But I think you’ll find that many women are quite free-spirited; it’s just that our societies—here or there,” I said, pointing west, “don’t want us to be.”
“Maybe,” he said politely, “but still, she’s different. There’s just something about her.”
“Yes, there is,” I said, and meant it.
When Khoi was gone, I watched the sun’s rays of gold fade, the last gasp of light green yielding to darkness. Then, I made my way downstairs to join the others. I walked slowly, listening for voices, but heard only a slight murmur that might have been Marcelle.
When I reached the sitting room, I peered through the open door into the shadows, wanting to see if people were still smoking before I decided to enter or not.
I could see Marcelle and Khoi lying together, her head on his chest. He was tapping his fingers rhythmically to the piano music and playing with her hair. Next to them, but paying them no attention, were the journalist and Madame Claire Angevine. They were lying together. I looked for the journalist’s indigène companion, but she was asleep, or nearly asleep, on a long, silk-covered mattress in the corner. The journalist’s right hand was inside Claire’s dress, which was unbuttoned low enough to show her slip. I watched as his hand moved slowly, fondling her breasts, his fingers lingering. Without thinking, I held my breath nervously. I looked for Claire’s husband in the corner where he had been lounging when I left, but he was no longer there. Instead, he was in an armchair just across from his wife and the journalist, his eyes open, watching them. In the corner he had vacated, one of the Annamite attendants now sat, her legs folded under her, holding a pipe and other paraphernalia, looking at a spot on the wall as if her eyes didn’t even register the scene in front of her.
I watched as the journalist’s hand switched to Claire’s other breast, this time moving in slow, hungry circles, and I leaned back against the wall. My head struck the plaster with an unexpected crack, a noise no one would have heard in