than I did a dutiful wife, but I knew that sentiment had to change. I slowly let go of the door frame, feeling my heart bleed. Even if I’d wanted to, I was powerless to save those men. Everyone’s arms were linked together here: the government, the police, and businessmen like Victor. And those dying men were the enemy. They were trying to take what the French and so many Annamites had built and improved over the last nearly fifty years, the economic prosperity, and knock it down again.
But the real reason I was powerless was that I needed money, far more than Victor did. I needed a good life for my daughter. I needed the world I’d fought so hard to be a part of not to disappear. No matter what.
I closed my eyes a moment and exhaled what felt like the remains of my soul. Then I turned to Victor, sitting back comfortably in his open-top car, looking at me expectantly.
“They were just days away from starting a communist uprising here. They were hiding weapons. Daggers and knives that they made in the auto shop. And worse. Over a dozen guns that had been smuggled in. Burying them in the earth. They were stocking food, had been for months. But thanks to you, I beat them to it,” he said, a glint of pride in his eyes. “I notified the police, who are as scared of another uprising as we are. It was decided that we should make an example out of these men instead. After this, things will be different. You’ll see. There will never be another strike like 1930 here, not after these men meet this fate.”
I lifted my right hand and threw the keys at him. “Then it’s all for the better,” I said, smiling.
TWENTY-TWO
Marcelle
November 2, 1933
“I told Sinh’s father,” said Khoi, who had just returned to Hanoi from Hue.
“I’m so glad he saw you,” I said, my anxiety over Khoi’s trip subsiding. After our shock that Paul Adrien was in Indochine, Khoi had rightly decided that the first thing we should do was tell the Cao family. We had not had much communication with any of them in the last year. “How did he react?” I asked.
“He’s not ready to call the firing squad on Haiphong, that’s for certain. He just said, ‘That’s unfortunate.’ I said, ‘The man who shot your son is in Haiphong,’ and he said those two words: ‘That’s unfortunate.’ I used the word ‘killed’ instead and he repeated the same phrase.”
“Well, it is unfortunate,” I replied. “And fortunate.”
“Fortunate because maybe we will find some closure. Other than that, what can we do? Murder him?”
“Potentially,” I said, not entirely joking. I looked at Khoi’s lacquered dining room table, the one that supposedly had blood in it. Far more valuable people had died in Indochine. “Or turn him in to the police,” I suggested. “Have someone investigate the details of Sinh’s death again. But, realistically, that would be aided greatly by the cooperation of Sinh’s father.”
“He will never help us. And to what end, Marcelle? Paul Adrien still wouldn’t be brought to justice. At most, he would be fined. Don’t you remember in 1927 when that native overseer Nguyen Van Chanh was kicked to death by the French senior overseer at Phu Rieng? A man named Valentin. The other Annamite overseers reported it, the police all nodded and smiled, promising the workers justice. They launched an investigation that lasted several months and then a trial that went on for only a few days. The overseer Valentin admitted to kicking the man to death but said it was Chanh’s fault. That the native man moved suddenly, and his spleen simply got in the way. Valentin was only trying to give him a small tap with his toe. Come to think of it, the story doesn’t sound that different from what we were told.”
“I remember it,” I said. It was something that I had thought about often since I’d found out the Lesages were coming to the colony.
“Then you’ll remember that the French overseer was found guilty of manslaughter and his only punishment was to pay the widow of the native overseer five piastres. Five! That is about sixty francs. So what would happen if we tried to get them to open a new inquiry into something they already investigated four years ago? Do you think they would really find a French policeman guilty of killing a communist? Even one with a father in