A woman with carmine-stained lips and hair that dances around her ears looks through a bakery window. Above, a royal-blue awning protects her paper-thin skin from the sun, enhancing its deathly hue. She bites her bottom lip as she surveys the offerings from under her furrowed brow. A row of roulé Normand. A solitary abricot-frangi poire panier. Three pistache-framboise pliés. She is neither hungry nor full. She has felt the same for the past few days, and she wonders why, even faced with tiny delicacies she knows she enjoys, she’s not moved enough to buy a single one.
A man with a paper bag packed full of pastries opens the bakery door to leave and the pale woman walks slowly through the wooden frame. She doesn’t thank the man for holding the door open for her, nor does she notice his chagrin. The man’s not even sure she noticed him at all, but he rolls his eyes to himself and tuts.
The woman shuffles towards the counter, where more baked goods await appreciative tummies. Her eyes, wide and light, stare. She does long, slow blinks, as if she’s a baby taking in the world.
A kindly man behind the counter nods, indicating for her to tell him what she wants while he puts out oven-fresh delights. As he leans into the glass cabinet that separates them, he notices the woman’s bottom half. The way her white cotton vest clings to her flat waist; her blue chambray shorts have a cloth belt of the same fabric; she has nothing on her feet, except for a chain on her left ankle.
Silly tourists, he thinks, still smiling amiably.
The man places croissants in a row behind the sign that reads ‘croissants aux amandes’, like little, dappled soldiers, hot from battle in the oven.
Customers sit at tables reading books, maps and newspapers. A small man dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte stands in the corner, waving his arms, trying to catch the woman’s attention.
‘Pssst! Pssst!’ he says, hoping no one else in the bakery cafe will notice.
None of the customers – the gossiping friends, the businessmen nor the backpackers – look up from their crêpes and coffee. The hissing man disturbs only the woman, wide-eyed at the counter.
‘Pssst! Pssst! What is your name?’ he asks, in an abrasive voice.
‘You already know my name,’ whispers the woman, with alarm. His craggy, caricature-like face reminds her of an illustration from her past. The man looks like Rumpelstiltskin, hopping on one leg and making a fist, from the cover of the book her father read to her as a child. The face scared her then and it’s unsettling her now.
‘Ahhh, yes,’ he says, rubbing his hands together. ‘Man. On. Well. Pay me some attention, Manon, and I will give you good advice,’ says the little general in his navy coat with gold brocade epaulettes. He has a mischievous look on his face.
He is bothering Manon and he’s enjoying it.
She wonders why he is bothering her when she was minding her own business, seeing if she could arouse a hunger from within her aching stomach by looking at the pastries laid out in front of her, reminiscent of those she loves from her favourite bakery in her village back in Alsace; wondering why no one else has noticed the man in the corner, causing a brouhaha.
Show him my fear and he’ll grow. If I am friendly he might go away.
‘Aren’t you hot in that?’ Manon finally gets the courage to ask, turning to the little man in the corner as she says it, but not looking him in the eye. It is a hot and languid day outside. The heat is bringing the scents of tamarind and coconut into the bakery, where they marry with pastries and coffee. It is far too hot for such military regalia.
The baker behind the counter looks puzzled.
‘Hot? I’m OK. It hotter out back with my ovens,’ he shrugs in broken English. ‘What would you like?’
Napoleon laughs. ‘Silly girl.’
‘What?’ she says towards the corner. Taken aback.
‘Would you like something to eat or drink?’ says the man behind the counter, confused by the delicate-looking woman without any shoes on. He looks at her over the counter now, getting a fleeting impression of her from the floor up, and wonders whether she has the means to pay.
I’m not a charity, you know.
But she looks clean enough. She might just be lower maintenance than most of the travellers who come in with backpacks, long lenses and guidebooks.
The baker looks to the pockets of Manon’s chambray shorts and she secretes a shaky, self-conscious hand inside the left one.
Napoleon starts taunting her, egging her on to eat. ‘An army marches on its stomach, you know.’
‘I’m not hungry!’ says the woman irritably.
The man behind the counter puts his palms up submissively, as if to say he doesn’t care whether she does or doesn’t buy anything, and he slopes off out to the ovens, to check his next batch of cinnamon whirls.
Napoleon laughs. A nasty, goading, belittling laugh.
‘I said I’m NOT HUNGRY!’ She bellows this time, like a child having a tantrum, repeating the words NOT HUNGRY, NOT HUNGRY, NOT HUNGRY.
The man in the corner laughs demonically under his bicorne hat, his Rumpelstiltskin face contorting, until he laughs so hard that he rolls on the floor and starts kicking his little legs into the air like a beetle stuck on its back.
Diners pause their conversations and look up at the woman as she runs out of the bakery and onto the steamy street, towards the curve of the mighty Mekong river.