prayed that he would be able to keep his word.
When I’d shared my idea with Lanh, he’d suggested that education was not just needed for the natives. That if the Europeans on the plantation were to learn Annamese, that perhaps the historically tense relationship between workers and managers might change. He suggested that it would be a good way to build loyalty to the company and to show Michelin’s investment in the colony. Victor, after looking at the relatively low financial cost of it all, had agreed.
“Lucky for Victor to have a clever wife,” he’d whispered in my ear, recalling our first night in Indochine, and Marcelle’s declaration.
I let his praise ring out in my mind, but I couldn’t let it sit without finally telling him the truth.
When it was just the two of us alone, and I was at last feeling stronger in body and mind, I told him about Eleanor. I explained the way she’d died, those few seconds where I had chosen to act with myself in mind instead of her. It had led to crushing guilt that I knew would never leave me. Victor wrapped his arms around me as I cried. Then, at last, I told him about my parents. They were not dead. My father was in prison, and while my mother was free, she had lost her sanity long ago. I told him about my brother Peter, about how much of my allowance was sent off to him and my other siblings every month. I admitted that it was my intense fear of his finding me out, my fear of my daughter then being taken away from me, of a repeat of Switzerland, that had caused me to keep lying. And I told him about Dorothy—it was not because I was a clever wife that we had come to Indochine. It was because my growing pile of lies had finally caught up with me. They were the noose around my neck.
I expected anger and a feeling of betrayal, but Victor was steady and calm. He finally spoke at length about his own father. About his mental demise and how he’d let his fear of his father’s state guide too many of his decisions. We realized, together, that we did not have to shoulder our burdens alone.
But there was still the burden of what I’d seen. Of what Victor had orchestrated. The ten names on the list. The dead communists.
“They were inciting rebellion,” Victor said wearily, without conviction. “It was the right thing to do. It was the police that suggested it.”
“But they died, Victor,” I said. “They were someone’s children, too.”
“They were no longer children,” he shot back.
“There must be another way,” I’d pressed.
“Yes, there is,” he’d said confidently. “We will weed out those men before they ever get that far with such plans. They’ll go to prison, and not ones of our making,” he’d assured me. “We can’t just let them roam free—our success has to come first. For Michelin, and the colony,” he’d added.
Maybe someone like Marcelle wouldn’t have been able to stomach such a bargain, where self-interest was clearly still king, but I could.
My family came first. Always. Even if I had to make difficult decisions for the right outcome.
“Did you see this?” Victor said to me as our car rumbled over the bridge out of Hanoi. I looked at the newspaper in his hand.
“Khoi is to be married. It was even in the French paper. A girl from an indigo-producing family. They own many plantations. See, there are natives who own plantations, too. We don’t have a monopoly on everything,” Victor said.
I raised my eyebrows and took the paper from him. There was no picture of her, but I didn’t have to see her to know she was not as beautiful as Marcelle. And that Khoi would never love her. I also knew that this marriage would be as much of a sham as Marcelle and Arnaud’s, and that one day, despite my best efforts, Khoi would find a way back to her. They were impossible to tear apart.
I looked over the bridge at the water below. Marcelle was looking at water, too. And in a few days, her view would be of the Seine. She had said many times how at home she was in Indochine. But it was my turn. It was my time to make it home.
I finished reading the article.
The Nguyen family had started to expand their silk empire, the writer detailed. They were building