better inform me on how he fell into such a thing when we meet.
When I arrived in Haiphong the following day, I was informed that Sinh had died during the night. That he had started arguing with one of the officers, who told him that he would never be able to return to France again now that he was a known communist. Then, I am told, Sinh physically attacked him. Another policeman acted on an order to protect his comrade and shot Sinh. The bullet, unfortunately, found its way through his back and into his heart.
I was able to see his body the evening I arrived and have it moved for proper burial at home. The government has been very supportive of our family as we grieve, and over the last several months, there has been a thorough investigation, which concluded that it was as they said, just a terrible accident. The policeman in question remains in the service, though I’m told his mental state is quite fragile and that he is filled with remorse.
In most circumstances, news like this would have made it to the newspapers in France, but I asked the police for discretion during our difficult time, as I did not want Sinh’s mother to have to deal with further grief at seeing her son’s memory, and our family name, forever associated with communism. I ask that you please consider her and be equally discreet with this awful news.
Again, we are thankful that Sinh had such a loyal friend while he was in France. It is a comfort for the whole family to know that in his final days Sinh may have been misguided, but he was happy. That came through in the many letters he sent to us and his siblings.
We look forward to welcoming you in Hue the next time you find yourself in Indochine.
Cao Van Quang
“Khoi,” I managed to say between sobs when he was quiet. “How will we tell Anne-Marie?”
Khoi shook his head, as if he couldn’t even think about such a thing yet. I continued to sob, while he remained alarmingly quiet, and an hour later, when our grief allowed us to, we tried to figure out how to tell her the awful news. In the end, the burden was lifted, and Anne-Marie came to us. She had known about Sinh’s death for several days.
Four days before we received the news, she had finally admitted to her parents, Charles and Joséphine de la Chaume, that she was worried about an Annamite friend, and it was her anxiety about his safety that had put her in a nervous state for several months. As soon as she’d said “Annamite friend,” her father had erupted.
He informed Anne-Marie that they knew about her relationship with Sinh. That they’d known about it for six months, after a neighbor had seen Anne-Marie holding hands with an homme Asiatique, while herself dressed in men’s clothing. The neighbor had been in Pigalle to meet “a friend,” who was certainly a prostitute, which perplexed Anne-Marie’s father even further, he admitted. Not believing the neighbor, as he was sure his daughter was at that moment asleep in her apartment near the university and very much dressed as a girl, he had started following her the very next day. He soon learned that not only was she certainly having an affair with an Asiatique, she was also involved in not-so-clandestine communist activity. That she and her lover were, together. As soon as he had seen it with his own eyes, he set about doing the only thing that made sense to him. He made plans to get rid of the yellow pest.
“That was how he said it,” Anne-Marie told us, no longer crying. Her face was just deeply filled with anger. “He framed his outrage about it all as being about communism, about how he was sure this Asiatique, this activist, had turned my head. But I could see what he was most angry about. It was that his only daughter had been ravaged by a jaune. He looked at me like I was sullied forever because I’d let Sinh inside of me.”
Anne-Marie’s father had admitted nothing more than that they had asked for advice from their powerful Michelin cousins on how to handle “the ugly situation.” André Michelin had been particularly helpful. His answer to Charles de la Chaume had been not to worry. That these types of things took care of themselves.