“Yes, he is. And he hasn’t informed me when he’ll return. I hope it’s not too long, but I suppose I understand if it is.”
“His first trip there, I imagine it might be,” she said. “But I’ll keep you busy here. Come,” she said, shaking the water out of her ear. “Let’s stop swimming for a bit. My muscles feel too well exercised. I need to abuse them again with the consumption of morning alcohol.” She got out, wrapped herself in her towel, and bent her knees so that her long, slender legs formed a bridge on the chair.
“Will Victor sleep on the plantations?” Marcelle asked, turning her head toward me and pushing her wet hair from her face.
“Yes, he will,” I said, still surprised by his decision myself. “He said that’s one of the most important things for him to do. To be seen by everyone. The managers, the overseers, the junior overseers, the coolies themselves. To make it feel like someone from the family really cares about the community.”
“I suppose after that unfortunate incident last year that that’s for the best,” she replied thoughtfully.
“He is very committed to preventing anything like that from happening again. The deaths of those men, it was horrible. He has to stay abreast of any rising unrest, any communist activity. It’s been hard for the company to keep such a thing out. But I’m sure it’s been hard for everyone. Arnaud must speak of it, too.”
“Of course. The chamber discusses it regularly. It’s been a problem in the mines, and in the factories, too,” said Marcelle breezily. “But of course, it’s a problem in France as well,” she noted. “All over Europe.”
“Less so at the factories in Clermont-Ferrand, Victor says. There is a real company loyalty there. And diversions, too. They have many sports and leisure activities to engage in after working hours. It’s something that the company has recently implemented here as well, and according to the overseers, the groups are thriving.”
“How lovely,” said Marcelle, smiling. “It can’t be all work and no play. What kind of activities do the workers get up to now?”
“All sorts of things,” I said, trying to remember what Victor had said on the ship over. “Renovation theater, Annamese opera, soccer. They even play teams from other plantations. It sounds a little silly, I know,” I added, thinking about how I’d pulled a face when Victor told me the coolies were spending their leisure time singing Hat Tuong, a type of opera. “But I think sometimes people drawn to communism are just desperate for community. Poverty can be so isolating. Then they are sold the notion that everything will be shared, that they won’t be wanting anymore, but what they don’t realize is that it simply doesn’t work. They’ll be enslaved to the state, and in the end, they won’t have any freedom left.”
“You seem to know quite a bit about it,” said Marcelle, rapt.
“Before coming here, we had to educate ourselves about it. I suppose I didn’t have to, but I’ve always been a reader.”
“Me, too,” said Marcelle. “In recent years anyway, after I stopped being a human coat hanger.”
I smiled at the thought. “Poor people the world over are susceptible to the kind of rhetoric that the communists espouse. But what the far left doesn’t tell them is how much better their lives are because of things like the French mission civilisatrice. Some French, I know, say it’s a burden on the Europeans to have to bring social reforms, teachings on new industries, fresh political ideas, religion, and even modern thinking about women to the colonies. But I think it’s wonderful that the French can help change lives. Look at Indochine now. The hospitals are better, their transportation is faster, even the life expectancy for natives is longer since the French have come.” I thought about the care that I received at home in Virginia. I only remembered ever seeing a doctor once, and it was after I had broken my arm when I was eight and would not stop crying. My father had finally admitted that the doctor’s bill would be less painful than the sound of me wailing. On the Michelin plantations, Victor had told me, everyone, families included, received free medical care.
“But the worst part is,” I said, thinking back to the only thing that proved true sustenance to me in my youth, “if you take away a person’s dreams about what they might be able to achieve