murders and communist strikes. And he must have a handsome paycheck waiting for him if he succeeds. Now we have, well, I don’t know what we have. A disaster, I suppose.”
“We need someone to replace Sang,” I said, terrified not to have a contact on the plantations.
“We do,” said Khoi. “But he is irreplaceable. We won’t find anyone as capable. Still, as pressing as that is, the first thing to do is help Sang leave Indochine for a spell.”
“Of course,” I said, worried for a man I had never met. I looked at Khoi, who had lain back on the bed, exhausted. “Three days ago, I spent the morning at the club with Jessie Lesage,” I said quietly. “You should have heard her. She went on and on about how the capitalist system in America allowed her to change her own life. To bootstrap her way to the top. She is quite sure that what the Michelins and the rest of them are doing is paving the way for great opportunities for the poor. Smart as she claims to be, it’s impossible for her not to know that the Tonkinese coolies on their plantations went there because our colonial policies drove them to desperation. That we brutally eroded their way of life, their subsistence farming, and then imposed draconian personal taxes that have to be paid in cash and lead directly to financial ruin. Of course, that works out just fine for us French because it means cheap slave labor for the plantations. She refuses to admit that. Oh, how I wish you’d heard her. It was just awful, Khoi. Her blind idealism about how anyone can improve their station in life if they just work hard enough. As if there is some teachers’ college around the corner all the laborers can attend, and some rich savior a bit further down the road for them to marry if they just work hard enough. Indochine is not America. I don’t care where she’s from, whatever it was like, I know she had people to help her. Teachers who taught her how to read at the very least.”
“I believe it,” said Khoi. “But she is still not the one who licked the stamps sealing Sinh’s death sentence. Remember that.”
“I remember,” I said, growing frustrated. “But she married the man that did. And she’s supporting him now, fueling him, every step of the way.”
Khoi took off his clothes and lay down next to me.
“I’ll leave the house again in an hour. Try to sort out this whole mess with Sang. But I need a minute of rest first.” He laid his head on my chest and let his eyes focus on the picture of Sinh and Anne-Marie, which was half glowing in the moonlight.
“I miss Anne-Marie so much,” I said. “Spending time with Jessie—even if she’s untrustworthy—is reminding me what it’s like to have female friendship. I want that back.”
We were both quiet for a moment, listening to the whirl of the metal fan in the far corner of the room. Before there was electricity, Khoi told me, the rich colons used to have servants tie one end of a string to their big toe, the other to the fan, and pull all night while their masters slept under the cool breeze. He’d assured me that the Nguyens had never bothered with such a service.
“We need Victor to disappear,” I said quietly. “Both of them need to disappear.”
“He is proving to have a knack at quickly undoing everything we have spent years on,” said Khoi. “It terrifies me to think that all our efforts could fall away in such a short amount of time, and that Victor could rise to the top in the process, when all he deserves is to sink. I really was expecting him to be far less interested in being present on the plantation. It’s almost like he’s not a Michelin.”
“He is certainly a Michelin,” I said. “They both are.”
“This way of ours,” said Khoi, starting to fall asleep, “it’s exhausting.”
“But it’s the only way,” I said.
“I know,” he murmured. “And it’s the right way. But this is a battle with many fronts, and I’m trying to win them all. At this rate, I think I’ll be dead by thirty-five.”
“Never say that again,” I said, kissing his forehead. “You have two lives to lead now. Yours and Sinh’s. So you’ll have to live to be at least two hundred years old. On that note, we should probably stop drinking