world transition to pneumatic tires. After that he helped stamp the Michelin Man, Bibendum, as the French knew him, on just about everything. To his credit, it was work that he hated but did not complain about. Still, even his good attitude failed to move him an inch closer to Clermont-Ferrand.
Victor had never been too concerned with money, as he was sure we would always have enough, but I knew how easily money could come and go. Especially go, in an economic crisis.
Before I went to Victor with my idea, I told his mother, Agathe, presenting it in a way that I thought she’d be able to support. Everything that happened with Victor, besides marrying me, went through his mother first. Shockingly, she agreed.
Thanks to a push from Agathe, Édouard Michelin had granted Victor the newly created post of family overseer of the Michelins’ two vast rubber plantations: the 22,000-acre Dau Tieng, where the deaths of the coolies had occurred in December—vast land due north of Saigon and over nine hundred miles away from Hanoi—and the 14,000-acre Phu Rieng plantation, another sixty miles northeast of Dau Tieng. He would also supervise the small 300-acre plantation, Ben Cui, that they had transformed into a company test station.
Dau Tieng was located in the gray-earth region of the colony and Phu Rieng in the red-earth, but both had performed well since the family started cultivating the land in 1926. Soon, the Michelins would no longer need to buy rubber from other sources. The importance of eliminating dependence was a business principle we had both heard time and again, but I now realized that it had been from men who had never set foot on their own plantations.
But we were changing that.
“The club is just here,” Lanh said, taking a sharp left. Victor lifted his arm from my shoulders, straightened his jacket, and ran his right hand softly across his dark hair to make sure no strand was out of place, which it wasn’t. It never was.
Lanh took another turn onto a nearly hidden driveway, which widened as we went, palm trees lining either side.
“Look,” I whispered to Victor excitedly, pointing them out. When we’d first arrived in Indochine, docking at Haiphong on the coast and then traveling to Hanoi by train, I had seen many palms, but these were far more handsome—thin and tall and sinuous, trying to touch the sun with their leaves.
“Look there,” said Victor, and I turned my head just as a white building came into view.
After years of living in France, I thought I was used to grandeur, but this was architectural beauty of a different kind. The building was softer, more welcoming than the hard-edged stone edifices of France. It sat on a vast green lawn, and the sight of the white-painted wood against the perfectly manicured grass radiated something I’d had trouble finding in Paris, especially of late: tranquillity.
“This may be my favorite building in the world,” I murmured as we drove slowly up the road.
“I thought it was the Louvre,” Victor said, putting his hand on mine.
“That is in the past,” I replied as Lanh pulled up in front of the building. Three Annamite men in white uniforms with stiff mandarin collars and bright gold buttons came out to greet us, opening both car doors simultaneously.
“Welcome, Monsieur Lesage, Madame Lesage,” said the third man as we made our way around to the right side of the Delahaye. I was surprised he had addressed us by name but knew not to show it.
“Thank you,” said Victor, heading toward the club with an air of authority.
The building was long, with wings to the left and right that seemed to disappear into the trees and a two-story veranda punctuated by white columns running along the facade. Before we entered the main hall, I glanced up at the steeply slanted, red-brick-tiled roof that protected the veranda. Every part of the building was constructed with the natural elements in mind, yet without sacrificing beauty. I now understood why the French ran to the club as soon as their passports were stamped.
I followed Victor to the lower veranda. It was dotted with high-backed rattan chairs, sporadically occupied by men in tennis whites or casual tropical suits. There were also a half dozen women draped over the chairs as if they had melted into them. They were sipping cocktails, their hair short and casually styled or pinned up off their necks, conversing softly, all seemingly part of a sun-drenched world created with nothing