replied. “Then a kiss for old time’s sake.” He let go of the handle and leaned into me but pulled away right before our lips touched. “Don’t worry, Marcelle,” he whispered. “I’ll never tell Khoi about Paris. Luckily for you, I like him too much. Him, and that boat.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Marcelle
November 16, 1933
“Bird’s nest soup?” I asked, picking up the beautiful handwritten menu from the dining room table, which was extended and set for twenty-six. “Impressive.” I held up the thick sheet of rice paper, admiring the elegant image of a mulberry tree above the details of each course.
“Nothing but the best for our guests,” said Khoi. “Now, how about you return to the living room before people think we’ve abandoned them?”
“They’d be thrilled if we did,” I murmured. “Those who’ve never been to your house are itching to go upstairs. They all want to see how the Nguyens really live.”
“Never,” he said, bringing his lips to my neck. “I have to keep some secrets.”
“I hope you at least locked up that photograph. If Victor wandered up to your room for some reason.”
“I did,” he said, kissing me quickly. “And you’re still sure about the rest?”
“I’m still sure,” I confirmed.
After I’d talked to Red, I’d run out of the car and spoken to Paul Adrien again. I’d asked him if he knew what Red was referring to. Who were the dead communists on the Michelin plantation?
He’d told me about a list he’d given to Jessie in Haiphong, which in turn had been given to him by the chief Michelin recruiter in Tonkin at the request of Victor Lesage. It was a list of ten names. Men who were suspected of trying to incite a communist uprising.
“Did you tell her what to do with the names?” I’d asked Paul in a panic. “Did you suggest they kill them all?”
“No. No!” he’d replied. “I was told to give them to her and that she would deliver them safely to Victor. I didn’t even know she was his wife when we met.”
“It sounds like Victor Lesage then delivered those men a death sentence.”
Paul had looked away from me and I’d felt very sorry for him in that moment, something I thought I would never be able to feel for Sinh’s killer. This time it was he, not Victor, who had started the death march.
“I can find out more,” he’d said. “I need to.”
This morning it was Paul who contacted me.
“Ten known communists died. All from complications with malaria, Michelin is saying.”
When I relayed what Paul had found out to Khoi, he’d slammed the window that he was closing in the living room so hard that he shattered the pane.
“Marcelle,” he’d said, shaking the glass off his fingers. “I know you’ve been acting without me. Seeking your revenge in ways I would never agree to.”
“Perhaps,” I said cautiously, thinking of what I knew about Jessie that Khoi didn’t.
“You’ll get no more fights from me,” he said, brushing the glass from the windowsill with his sleeve. “Do whatever you see fit. Push them both off a cliff at this point for all I care.”
“Happily,” I’d responded.
Khoi headed to the kitchen for the bird’s nest soup, to taste the prized delicacy before it was served, and I walked to the living room door. I opened it and paused, breathing in the aroma of women’s perfumes. I wanted to take a moment to watch the guests before toppling back into the evening.
On such occasions, the house seemed even more awe-inspiring than the everyday version I had come to know, because it was filled not just with life but also with palpable envy. How, all the French wondered—some of them audibly—could a mite have so much more than they did? Then, after consuming glass after glass of the mite’s expensive champagne, they would have a change of heart and decide that instead of envying him, they should be applauding themselves, because obviously it was they, the French saviors, who had made this simple native man’s success possible. I had heard this particular mental progression from many of Khoi’s guests over the years. But they were wrong. It was despite the French that the Nguyens had succeeded. Everything they had was despite us.
I looked past the other guests in their colorful finery to where Jessie and Victor were seated on a deco couch recently shipped in from Paris. The upholstery was a deep blue cotton velvet, the cushions resting on glossy Macassar ebony wood. They had sunk comfortably into its depths