Lucie raised her eyebrows at the word “bean,” but took the pastry in her hands. She leaned down to sniff it, gave it a lick, and then devoured it after she realized it was indeed made of sugar.
“There aren’t beans in here!” she exclaimed to her father, eyeing the crumbs left on the plate.
“But there are, chérie,” said Victor, pulling on her braid. “Why don’t you go to the kitchen and ask how it’s made? Then you can see the beans.”
Lucie smiled and ran off as if she had lived in the tall yellow house for years.
“Don’t you look beautiful,” said Victor, tilting his head back and smiling at me affectionately once Lucie was out of sight. He was reclining on the metal chaise’s black-and-white-striped cushions, smoking a cigarette. He alternated puffs with sips from his glass of white wine. On the boat journey over, I’d wondered if there would be French wine in Indochine, but that was a silly worry. The French wouldn’t have bothered colonizing a place where they couldn’t consume their own wine.
“Glad to be off the boat?” he asked, standing to kiss me before reclining again.
“To say the least,” I answered, my smile feeling momentarily put on. I let the corners of my mouth relax, trying to forget the journey, and took in this new image of Victor. He had changed into beige linen pants and a crisp white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and he was surveying the small but well-manicured garden, the borders aflame with hibiscus. His shirt buttons were done up only to midchest, and he had a carafe of water full of lemon wedges positioned within reach. Next to it was a small silver bell.
“Do you think you’ll like it here?” he asked eagerly. I could tell that he certainly did. We lived well in Paris, very well, even when the economic crisis hit the country two years ago, but it was already clear that in Indochine, where costs were so low, we would no longer live like Lesages. We would finally live like Michelins.
“I do,” I said, sensing my happiness rise to meet his as we focused on the present, not the weeks we had spent cramped together on the bobbing ship. “The house is incredible, isn’t it? Every room bright and full of light. And so much space. Lucie has her own wing on the third floor. But most of all, I like that it feels like a happy home.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette and putting his hands behind his head, the small family-crest ring he wore on his right pinkie quickly vanishing in his thick black hair. “I’m very glad we bought this house, despite those who advised me to rent it, not purchase it. ‘Rent for a year, maybe two, then decide,’ they said. They warned me that Indochine wasn’t for everyone, especially the women. But they don’t know me as well as they think, and they don’t know you at all. You were born to see the world, and so was I.” He smiled at me admiringly. “That’s what you’d say in our early days, when I’d ask you if you were homesick for America, and look at us now. I’m sure that this house, and Indochine, will be right for us. Even if no one else in my family has dared to spend time here.”
It was true. No other Michelins had spent more than a few weeks in Indochine, even Victor’s uncles, Édouard and André, who had controlled everything in the twenties, including first buying rubber from the colony and then deciding to establish their own plantations in the French federation in 1924. They had spent over 200 million francs to acquire land in those early years. But Édouard was now seventy-four years old, André had passed in 1931, the younger generation was engaged in Clermont-Ferrand—and no one wanted to actually live in Indochine.
When they’d considered the colony as a place to set up their own plantations, rather than buying rubber from the existing plantations in Indochine, British Malay, and the Dutch Indies, they sent two executives—non–family members—on a boat, declining to make the journey themselves.
But in January, Victor had volunteered to come to Indochine, not just for a visit but to live. It was an idea I had planted in his head.
He had yet to obtain a high position in the company, kept out of the headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand, working in