as if I’d caught him with something inappropriate.
“So, you do miss me a little when you’re here,” I said, smiling.
“I miss you very much,” he said, smiling back. He picked up my hand, but I pulled it gently away from him when guilt started pricking at me.
“Do you know who Hugh Redvers is?” I asked, launching right into what had happened before I grew too scared to.
“I do,” he said, dropping my hand. “British. Railroad man. Gives all the women syphilis. That’s the one, yes?”
“The very one,” I said, not mentioning how close I’d come to being one of those women. “I spent an evening in his company recently, along with Marcelle de Fabry, her Annamite lover, Nguyen Khoi, and a few other people. It’s a long story, but I’ll get to the point now and recount the rest later.”
“Very well,” said Victor, noticeably tensing.
“We were all on an excursion on Khoi’s boat. During the trip, Red demanded to know why I hadn’t been to visit our plantations. It wasn’t just a simple question; he pushed the subject. He clearly wanted me to come here. So now I’m hoping you could explain why Hugh Redvers would insist that I visit? Is there something about Dau Tieng or Phu Rieng that I should know about? Or that your uncle and cousins should know?”
“No,” said Victor, eyeing me a bit more warily. “Uncle Édouard and the rest of the managers know about everything that goes on here. The overseers keep them abreast of every detail, and now so do I.” He leaned back. If he guessed that something untoward had happened between me and Red, he didn’t say so.
“Marcelle de Fabry has an indigène lover she flaunts?” he asked instead. “That’s very surprising. I wonder why Arnaud doesn’t put a stop to that.”
“Yes, she does. A very rich one,” I said. “Although I think ‘lover’ isn’t a strong enough word, actually. Love. He feels more like her love than her lover.”
“How original of her. But it will end badly. Those types of relationships, unions, affairs, whatever you want to call it, always do.”
“I don’t really see an end in sight for them,” I said.
“Yes, well, the world seems to right those sorts of things on its own. Or perhaps Arnaud will get some sense and put a stop to it.”
“Perhaps,” I said, not mentioning that Khoi seemed like a far more appealing choice than Arnaud.
“And Red being with Marcelle. Was that a coincidence or—”
“No. I don’t think it was. She arranged the party. As I said, we were on her lover’s boat.”
Victor raised his eyebrows at me and reached for a cigarette from the case on the end table. “Where were you sailing?”
“Ha Long Bay,” I said.
He looked at me for a long moment without replying. Finally, he lit the cigarette and said, “I hear it’s very nice there.”
“It is,” I said, looking away from him.
“Maybe I was too quick to tell you I thought that woman’s allusion to Switzerland was a coincidence,” he said.
“Well, it still could have been,” I replied. “But with all this nonsense with Red … it doesn’t feel random, like an accident. His hope that I end up right here was not the least bit veiled.”
“That’s odd. Maybe he is involved with something untoward,” said Victor, tapping his long fingers together.
“Like what?”
“A communist uprising? Or funding a communist uprising,” said Victor.
“A communist uprising? Red can barely wake up before noon. Unless the uprising had to do with stealing whiskey or women, I doubt he’d be interested. And he’s British, and a railroad man. An industrialist. Wouldn’t that suggest he wants to stamp out communism, not throw wood onto the fire?”
“Not every European here is for industry, nor is every native a communist. It doesn’t work that way. That would be too easy.”
“I don’t imagine it does, but even so, wouldn’t Red want to reform his own industry first? How many coolies have died building the railway line south?” I asked.
“Twenty percent, on average,” said Victor quickly. “And they’re far less policed than we are. The work inspectors leave railroad construction alone because they want a train that goes straight down to Saigon even more than the rest of us, since they have to make the trip so often. Which means it’s likely a higher percentage than that.”
“Then why would a man like that have anything to do with our plantations?” I asked. “Or care about funding the communist workers?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice showing his