overpowering stench of human feces. All I saw was blackness, but I opened the door wider, and in the shaft of daylight it let in, I could make out the shadowy forms of what was inside.
I stepped in, my face still covered. On the floor, without a wall to support them, was a row of five men. Their ankles were shackled to the same wooden bar, but two of them were lying down, not sitting up like the others. I stepped closer still and saw why. They were dead.
I took a deep breath, then lowered my hand from my face. As soon as I did, I jumped, losing one of my shoes. I moved frantically to put it back on, seeing a line of ants crossing my foot. They were all over the dirt floor. I stood up quickly and looked at one of the dead men. His skin had been partially eaten away. I turned away from him at once, nausea hitting me like a swell. I suddenly realized what I was looking at. I peered at the man closest to me and said, “Ai trong mấy người này là Ly Duc Khai?”
My Indochinese was still clumsy, but this they would understand: Is one of you Ly Duc Khai?
My heart began pounding the way it would in the seconds before my mother forced me to slaughter a chicken. The anticipation of the blood spattering from its neck, even if I had given it a blow to the skull before beheading it, the adrenaline surge that kept it moving even when headless, the tautness of its skin after I’d killed it. That was what I thought of as I looked at the emaciated, naked figures in front of me.
Two of the men who were still alive didn’t look at me, their bodies bent over, their torsos nearly touching their legs, their ribs visible even in the dim light.
But the man closest to me, the one I had addressed, turned his head to see me. “I am Khai,” he said.
His face didn’t match his voice. He had somehow found the energy to smile. He had hope—I was a woman, after all, and women had softer hearts than men. Even Western women.
I took a step forward so he could see me better.
Ly Duc Khai was the first name on the list that I’d obtained for Victor in Haiphong.
I stared at him for a few seconds more, at his naked body, his fading smile.
I met his eyes and saw the soul of the man still there, despite his body giving out. I bit my lip as hard as I could. My tears were desperate to fall, but I could not let them. I did not deserve to cry.
I could not help him. I had created a life for myself where I was nearly as tied up as he was. I was powerless to release him.
“Xin lỗi Anh.” I’m sorry, I whispered in Annamese. “I’m so sorry.” I walked into the pungent room a few more steps until I knew I was far enough inside that Victor could not see me. I leaned down and touched his head, my hand on his hair, which was heavy with grease and the dirt he’d been lying on. And then I brought my lips down on it quickly. “I can’t help you,” I said in French. Then I stood straight up again and put my hand on his back. “Please forgive me,” I said. “I am much weaker than you.” I hadn’t said those words since Virginia. Since the darkest day of my life.
A person could live for a week without water. But in that windowless room, in their coffin, it would be different. In three days at most, they would all be dead. I turned around, unable to bear the sight anymore. I shut the door behind me, locked it, and squeezed the doorknob, my heart hammering. Victor would be waiting for my reaction. What kind of a person was I, eight years into our marriage? Was I the kind of person who could support him as he carried out a plan that I had set into motion? As he made money that I needed more than he did? Was I the kind of woman who could forget such a sight and continue as a loyal wife no matter what? Or was I still the girl he’d forced on a train to be drugged in Switzerland? I felt much more like the girl on the train