anti-colonialism. And as you know, I met foreign students, most from countries we have colonized, chopped up as we wish to scrape them apart for our economic gain while we starve and impoverish generations of people, who we don’t really see as human anyways, because they are a bit darker or a bit yellower than we are.”
“I don’t think we are chopping them up,” I said, raising what was left of my eyebrows at her.
“Trust me, in some places, like plantations, coal mines, we are killing people—sometimes we don’t even bother to chop them up because that might cost more.”
“And here I thought that all girls did at university was read Molière and meet their husbands,” I said, smiling.
“Perhaps I have done that,” she said, grinning.
“So, your father is on the far right. And your mother?” I asked.
“My mother, too, of course. She is whatever my father is. But she’s also richer than he is. She’s a Michelin, of Michelin et Cie, the tire company, on her father’s side. That’s one of the main reasons I care so much about the colonies. About laborers being treated worse than farm animals. Because I am distantly attached to the whole thing. I am an oppressor through blood.”
“I see,” I said, remembering the colorful advertisements the company had all over Paris. “These Michelins are not communists, I take it,” I asked, running my finger across the top of my now empty glass.
“Far from it. Do you read L’Humanité? What we are doing over there, as in my family,” she said, pointing to her chest, “is slavery under the guise of patriotism. And the men managing the headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand, these third and fourth cousins of mine, they’ve been on the right for a long time—all these industrialists are. I remember my father talking about them when he explained the Dreyfus affair to me. He and the Michelins were all anti-Dreyfusards, mais bien sûr. They’ve already forbidden me from ever dating a Jew, can you imagine what they’d do if they knew I was bedding an Annamite?”
“You fascinate me,” I said, pointing at her bare feet, her toes still adorned like they were her hands, “and now how you became you fascinates me. After seventeen months, you’re still surprising me.”
“Like I said,” she continued, closing her eyes for a moment, “I met students who had defied their families and inched over to the left. Some to the very far left. One of those students was another named Nguyen, no relation to yours. A very intelligent boy from a small town in northern Annam. He was the one who really changed everything for me.” She leaned into me, her cheeks flushed from the wine. “You need to educate yourself about the colonies, Marcelle,” she said. “Especially Indochine, since one of the best and the brightest it ever produced is in your bed every night.”
“We speak of the colony, sometimes,” I said. “He’s told me about the growth of the industries, the opium. Silk, of course.”
“‘Growth’?” she spat out. “France is profiting off peasants, Marcelle. We are taxing the masses at such an obscene rate that they lose their homes, their lands, and become tenant farmers enslaved to their French masters, forced to give them at least half their output. As for opium, yes, it’s a growing industry, because we’re drugging them, too. The French have actively tried to turn the peasants into opium addicts because the tax on it is exorbitant. Opium, alcohol, and a pinch of salt here and there provide half of the colony’s revenues. It’s what got the colony out of the red thirty years ago. And while our government does all that, they also force them to practice Catholicism, then to abandon their language, their way of governing, all while we strip away their livelihoods and dignities. It started with religion, why we put our toes on that land in the 1600s, and now it’s all about money. It always is.”
“Have you been to Indochine?” I asked.
“No,” Anne-Marie said defensively, curling her bare feet underneath her. “But I don’t need to. I read everything I can about it. And in Paris, conveniently, Indochine has come to me.”
“I suppose I don’t know much about it,” I said. “I’m embarrassed, but most of what you’re saying is new to me.”
“You and Khoi need to educate yourselves further,” she reiterated. “I think most days Sinh and I speak of almost nothing else but colonialism. Unless we’re discussing sex. Or food. Or if we should