I’d passed on the train. I was a helpful woman. A good wife.
SIXTEEN
Marcelle
October 4, 1933
“How do I look in this hat?” asked Khoi, picking up a straw boater from an end table and setting it squarely on his head.
“You look like a very handsome naked man wearing a straw hat,” I said, grinning at him.
He had been able to get Sang on a boat to Japan, and we were celebrating his freedom and our own. This meant giving all of his staff the day off, except his chauffeur. We then proceeded to take off all our clothes and swim naked, Khoi lapping me again and again. We stayed unclothed and roamed wherever we pleased. It almost felt like life in Paris.
“Let’s scream like animals while we make love again.” He’d pushed me against the door as soon as he’d closed it. An hour later, we were reclining in the living room, idly drinking lemonade spiked with gin.
“You should empty the house more often,” I said, stretching my legs onto his lap. “I like being able to do this.” I waved my hand above my head, indicating all the space that was temporarily ours.
“But how will we eat?” he asked, laughing.
“We’ll just have to cook. We do know how to cook. Or at least I do. We should be forced to do it every now and again, so we don’t forget.”
“I cooked for us in Paris,” said Khoi. “Is that already forgotten? I made you shark fin soup.”
“I’m pretty sure that was a diseased minnow that you and Sinh fished out of the Seine,” I said. “But no. That is not forgotten. I will never forget anything about those days.” I inched my legs higher on his lap. “Ever.”
“Do you think Anne-Marie is still in Italy?” Khoi asked. “Or maybe Spain? I wish I knew. I wonder if she’s even aware that Victor Lesage is here.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just hope that wherever she is in the world, she’s found some happiness.”
“What about you?” he said, pouring me another drink. “Are you happy?”
“Me?” I said, smiling. “You and I are alone. Whenever that happens, I’m happy.”
“Good,” he said. “Because while everything we are doing is extremely important, this,” he said, gesturing to me and then to himself, “is the most important.”
“Of course. There is nothing more important to me. And there’s no greater love in Indochine than this one,” I said, “though I can see that Jessie Lesage is convinced that what she and Victor have is the most passionate love affair ever written. But I’m trying to change that slowly. She met Red at the club the other day, and he clearly had an impact on her. As soon as I can, I’ll get them both on your boat.”
“Good,” he said, eyeing me. “And your impression of her is still the same?”
“Khoi, that woman is calculating. I can see it. Every move of hers is considered. That guise of docility that she puts on, like she’s some rule-follower tiptoeing through her new country. I don’t believe any of it.”
“Maybe,” said Khoi, looking at the smoke he was exhaling instead of me.
“‘Maybe’? Please. How did that woman convince Victor Lesage to marry her? She’s pretty, yes, and has that female softness that men so often mistake for a gentle maternal quality, but that can’t have been enough. She comes from nothing. She surely relied on the age-old art of conceiving out of wedlock. He loves her now, that’s quite obvious, but I am sure he didn’t from the start.”
Khoi puffed on his expertly rolled cigarette and remained silent.
“What?” I said, annoyed.
“It’s just that when you told me about your time together at the Officers’ Club, it sounded as if you’d enjoyed yourself. As if you welcomed her company.”
“I do not enjoy Jessie Lesage’s company,” I spat, although I recognized as soon as I said it how unconvincing I sounded. “I’m telling you, she’s calculating. I’m sure she got pregnant on purpose. She probably hid half naked in Victor’s bushes and then threw herself on him when he was two bottles of wine in.”
“Oh, yes, with all those bushes in Paris,” said Khoi, laughing.
“You have too much sympathy for the devil sometimes. She sold her soul long ago. Are you forgetting the family she married into?”
“Of course not,” he replied. “Of course not.”
He kissed me on the cheek and walked upstairs to get dressed. I watched him disappear, his presence still lingering below. Sometimes I was quite sure that I