Pierre Lazarie.
I SLEPT like a stone until four o’clock in the morning, when I discovered that in the Far East even a well-tended urban villa can have chickens roosting beneath its eaves. At dawn the yawning porter set a pitcher of cold water on my dressing table, and after washing I made a compromise between reality and my expectations by dressing in brown serge trousers and a white linen jacket. I resembled the comic relief in an American film.
Then, to begin my employment. As Henri had not come home I shared a rickshaw into the centre with a garrulous housemate, his neck awash in acne scars, who informed me in the most solemn tones that a native prostitute who is as tall as a white girl can write her own ticket and therefore demand a commitment of two nights.
—And not only will she want boiled eggs, he said, but mayonnaise to dip them in!
—Grateful for your advice, I said.
More fodder for my letter to Marguerite; I pictured her lips parting in wonder as she read. The muscles in our coolie’s back shifted subtly as he hurried over the pavement in that soft morning light—the city seemed to be all in blues and yellows—past terrace cafés where a hundred men read newspapers, then on into the still-softer shadows beneath the trees. No white women were apparent, as though Saigon were an Alpine resort where they slept while the men set out hiking. The air smelled of mould.
The porter at the Vice-Regency on rue Lagrandiere did not appear in any way to be an opium addict bent on soiling the contents of my trunk. Rather he was an immaculate young Vietnamese in blue suit and black necktie.
—LeDallic? he asked. Oh, yes, these stairs here. All the way to the top.
—Cam on ni-yoh, I said.
He grinned slyly while regarding my jacket and trousers; a tennis racket would’ve complemented the ensemble neatly.
A half-dozen electric fans busied themselves on the ceiling of our third-storey office, yet the moment I was through the door I could smell Henri—a sweetness like cherries. He sat with elbows on his knees, a pen between his teeth and a swaying tower of documents on the desk before him. For a moment he regarded me from beneath heavy lids then glanced across to the only other desk, untenanted except by a comparable tower.
—They’ve been expecting you, he said.
My desk chair’s wheels must have been freshly oiled, for it darted away into the corner. As I led it like an unruly colt to its stall I reassured myself that I’d slip away just as easily—I might visit the Far East Institute on my co¤ee break.
—The unsightly Madame Louvain brought up a telegram, said LeDallic.
A yellow envelope lay in the shadow of my tower of documents, and as I extricated the slip of paper I guessed at its import: that I ought not to make myself comfortable with Immigration, as my professors had arranged a lucrative research position. The sender’s line, though, made no mention of the University of Paris—the telegram had been sent by Marguerite Gély.
REGRET TO INFORM YOU, it read, THAT I HAVE MARRIED ALDO MASSON. WISH YOU WELL.
From what I knew of Aldo Masson he was not a bad chap. But it was not the vagaries of his character that dropped my chin to my chest or turned my knees elastic.
—You’ve won the Bavarian sweepstakes, suggested Henri.
I lay the paper on my desk and looked across at him. At his sweat-beaded temples. And then, rather than rereading the telegram, as I’d planned, I wrenched my arms free from that idiotic linen jacket and stu¤ed it into a desk drawer. I would never wear the thing again, for at the sight of it I’d recall the pallid creature I’d been at that moment and have to choke back a quantity of bile. That task accomplished, I crumpled the telegram and lobbed it into the Saigon morning before slamming down the window and fastening the latch behind. I turned to find LeDallic suddenly on his feet.
—Keep your personal interests in your trousers, yes? That is your seat, do you see it? Take your seat.
—You now have my full attention, I replied.
In the February heat my mistakes in India ink couldn’t be blotted out for love nor money, and indeed my blunders with the rubber stamps couldn’t be blotted out at all. The labels for both “Cancelled” and “To Be Filed” had been eradicated by the acidity of innumerable palms, and in my distress I hazarded to guess which was which.
—They may not drive the economy entirely, Henri shouted, but entry fees are more than enough to pay our wages, my friend, more than enough, so when certain Shanghai businessmen— how many, fifteen of them?—apply to be ordinary residents and—what else—to bring in a half-million piastres’ worth of machine parts, I suggest you not reach for your “Cancelled” stamp, you understand me?
—Did I really? I must apologize, I can’t seem to—
—There’s a notch out of the wood on that one, take a goddamn bite out of it if you can’t tell the di¤erence, they… is this the top carbon you stamped?
I allowed a pencil to roll from my desk, and in bending to retrieve it spent a tranquil moment studying the geometric flowers in the red linoleum and wondering whether there might be positions with the Indian & Australian Chartered Bank.
—The entire carbon, when I said very plainly the third? Threequarters of an hour ’til lunch—has the clock stopped? I have to take a walk or I’ll vomit. Good God, now what are you doing?
—Filing them as approved for ordinary residence permits.
—No, no! Give them privileged!
—But they don’t want more than three years, look, they have the departure—
—Give them privileged and charge them each the extra hundred piastres, they’re rich men and won’t know the di¤erence, and we can report that this office has floated its own barge well and truly! Yes, and now the third page, “To Be Filed,” yes, exactly, I can see what made you such a hit at the Sorbonne. But now what to do with the “Cancelled” on every page, eh?
Junior Chief Clerk Dubois bustled in, knocking a sheaf of papers o¤ the filing cabinet but catching it deftly behind his back as though it had happened a hundred times before. Short, rather young, with an alabaster forehead and close-cropped hair, he wore his jacket and collar while LeDallic and I were both now in shirt sleeves. Dubois stood beside my desk, for there was nowhere else to stand, lit a cigarette, then tapped one of my ledgers.
—You can’t make money in the service here, not like in China. A white man needs to be the only white man if he wants to make any real money. Consider it.
The longer he stood there, the larger the notch I’d gouged into the “Cancelled” stamp seemed to loom. I tucked it under an empty folder.
—The Felix Roussel’s just come in, he muttered.
—Yesterday it came in, said Henri. Where’d you think I found this reprobate?
—An army captain came o¤ the Felix Roussel. He’s in with Frémont. Agitated.
—Frémont? With the stacks of files he ladled over us it’s we who ought to be agitated, and Lazarie here has—
—Frémont wants the two of you to talk to this army captain.
—After lunch might be all right, said Henri. Half-past three? Time permitting afterward we’ll get some dominoes.
Dubois’ gaze wandered over that disastrous multiple-party ordinary residence application—I deftly turned it over while replacing stamps on their carousel.
—But if you prefer, I said, we can come along and see him now.
—Bring a notebook of some kind, said Dubois. And put on jackets.
—Lazarie’s promoting a jacketless initiative.
In the corridor Henri ran squarely into a native copyist in canary-yellow trousers, wavering beneath a stack of folders topped by a cast-iron embosser. As papers spilled from their folders like so many autumn leaves I gave the poor man my most sympathetic glance, but he never raised his eyes.
—Pick those up and quick! hissed Henri. You ought to staple those shut if you don’t want trouble counter-filing—like it or not, it’s the best system in the world!
—It’s only that he’s sober just now, murmured Dubois at my elbow. A few drinks with lunch and his mind will be agile. He’ll be docile as a kitten.
The corridor’s linoleum was a black square for every three of white. On the landing Dubois turned to LeDallic.
—Tremier is the captain’s surname—that remind you of anyone?
—Who, a jockey? I don’t know! Shall I guess again? Shall I hop on one foot?
—Frémont had thought you might have come across the name.
The ground floor corridor was of pink marble. As we hurried toward Frémont’s office I was nearly blinded by the blaze of light emanating from between the slats in a colossal teak door. Dubois turned the pewter handle and we rushed after him into a wide room decorated with a massive desk, a few wicker chairs and a low table displaying trays of cigarettes and a bottle of whisky. Fully a dozen fans produced a breeze not unlike the seaside. A tall old man with spectacles rose from behind the desk and an equally tall man in a brass-buttoned khaki uniform shot up from one of the chairs. I felt an immediate kinship with him as his trousers looked as hot and uncomfortable as my own.
—LeDallic and Lazarie! announced Dubois.
—LeDallic has been here longer than anyone, said Frémont.
The room was lined with windows looking out over the trees and boulevards from an angle that somehow revealed no people at all. We newcomers threw ourselves into the creaking wicker chairs.
—How long have you been with Immigration? the captain asked me. You look to be the junior partner.
He couldn’t have been past forty yet his broad forehead was deeply lined, with eyebrows set so far apart as to sit nearly on his temples. A physiognomist might’ve spent an entire semester on him. I tried unsuccessfully to meet his gaze and realized that his left eye was glass—it contemplated a potted fern in the corner.
—In truth, sir, I stammered, you find me on my first day at this—
—First day? the captain shouted at Dubois. Why’d you bring him into this?
—But you needn’t worry! I said. If my colleague’s expertise can’t help, I happen to be a specialist in Vietnamese military history prior to European involvement!
The captain cracked his knuckles against the arm of his chair.
—When did you start here? he asked Henri.
—In 1911. I’d heard that girls in this country could be had for nothing.
—And can they?
—Yes.
—Captain Tremier, said Frémont, is hoping our records will lead him to locate his mother, a Madame Tremier, who landed in—which year? I can’t read my own writing.
—October, 1909, answered Dubois.
—First name Adélie, the captain said. Adélie Tremier.
—Does that mean something to you, LeDallic? asked Frémont.
—Just that it’s nearly lunch, said Henri.
—She’ll celebrate her fifty-sixth birthday before long, said the captain, but the fact remains I haven’t seen or heard from her in twenty-seven years. Now, I have confirmed that on August 29 of ’09 she sailed from Marseilles for Saigon aboard the Salazie, and I trust you fellows will be able to do more with that information than I have. I’ve been trying to trace her since I was ten years old, but until recently the Messageries Maritimes had misplaced the relevant records.
—Typical of their inefficient practice back there, murmured Frémont.
—I did check the civil registers with the Ministry before coming to you, even the Saigon telephone directory for 1910, so if she did stay on here I—well, I can’t imagine where! Forgive me. It’s very seldom that I talk about her.
He massaged those distinctive brows. His unwavering glass eye was able to contain its emotion.
—The Salazie docked here in one piece? asked Henri.
—It was sunk in 1912. A cyclone o¤ Madagascar.
—If it had gone down sooner that might have resolved your query.
At that Frémont fingered his pencil nervously. I fixed the captain’s good eye with my most professional gaze.
—And she… she departed in good health, twenty-seven years ago?
—Ah, said the captain. On the contrary, she spent the year before she went away convalescing from tuberculosis.
—Odds are she died en route then, Henri said. They threw her over to Poseidon.
—The good captain, announced Frémont, leaves for Haiphong tomorrow to join his new battalion, so you and Laramie—
—Lazarie, I said.
—The matter is in your hands. Locate her arrivals ledger, see where it leads you.
Henri twisted a rat-tail of hair between his fingers.
—But, now, you see, Captain Fornier, you really must picture the stinking piles of work upon our desks. If the dear woman’s indeed lost herself, surely the police, the secret police, will have—
—Henri, young Dubois said, this is the Department of Immigration for the Vice-Regency of Cochin-China—
—Yes, I’ve seen the letterhead, said Henri.
—And as we’ve told Captain Tremier, we have proved and will continue to prove ourselves capable regarding any matter called to our attention simply as a matter of pride. What’s more—and this point should hardly concern the captain—Paris has lately discussed how best to make each department better accountable, not only in light of economic conditions—
—Discord, said Frémont. These people’s laughable notion of self-government!
—Only a natural progression, said Dubois, as we shepherd the protectorate toward maturity. In coming months there will be audits at every level and, should we be found wanting, Paris of course has the power to ransack our funding, our sta¤, and apparently even our pensions.
—Our pensions! said Henri. Lazarie, you’re done for!
—This “discord,” is that these Bolshevists? the captain asked. I’m meant to ferret them out around Haiphong.
—Their political stripe is irrelevant, said Dubois. They’re only youngsters looking for excitement.
—Same boys at home would be content to get drunk, said Frémont.
—To whom exactly are we referring? I asked. Is this some tribal group?
—Here’s a useful professor! said Henri. Every idiot knows there are Bolshevik rats filling Paris, didn’t they come fill your academic ears with all their talk of Indo-Chinese autonomy and a free drink special if ordered before five o’clock?
—Our faculty is aware that something is afoot, I said. But there’s no way to make a study of a thing while it’s still unfolding, is there? Perspective is required if we—
—I’ve met with the police about them any number of times, announced Frémont, and I do find the whole situation rather tiring. These are sons of rich men, landowners, these are native boys without a care in the world, yet they run their mouths about independence and they do it right in Paris, in the lion’s den, because they know how soft the courts are back there— for a conversation that’d draw the death penalty here no one so much as blinks. Now any number of them are trying to sneak home and we’re expected to catch them, despite their slipping in under assumed names and dressed as fishermen. And I would like to catch them! I shouldn’t like to see what happens to my Michelin dividends if a lot of hoodlums burn a plantation down!
—The death penalty? I asked. For a conversation?
—Certainly! said Frémont. Hangings by the dozen.
—If we may return the topic to my mother, the captain said, I have an item which may prove useful.
From his breast pocket he drew a photograph in a small oval frame and leaned across to place it in my hand. No one spoke, though Henri’s chair creaked peevishly. The picture showed a smiling couple and long-haired child in a white pinafore; the man appeared to be in the act of graduating from the Sorbonne.
—Look at the regalia, I said. Your father was an engineer! Around 1905, judging by her blouse—I’ve a picture of my mother in a number just like it. This is you, isn’t it?
—I was the only child.
—It’s not hard to see he’s your father, with those eyes of his. Ah, and your mother, yes. Striking.
Henri rose to look over my shoulder: the future captain upon her knee, Adélie Tremier flashed white teeth at the camera while her masses of black hair gave the impression, even in that diminutive portrait, of a gale gusting around her. And there was a particular squint to her eyes that somehow spoke to me, despite every likelihood the woman had been dead two decades, of lust.
—Not hard by half, said Henri.
—My father was a professor of trigonometry, I said. And he’d drag me to these things—I’ve seen more convocations than I’ve had hot baths! Look how proud he is in that eight-sided tam. Now, does she have any particular interests, your mother?
—Charities. Had a particular interest in veterans and sick children.
—She’d fit in well around here! cried Frémont.
—“To care for others first and enjoy happiness after,” I blurted. How old is she in this picture?
—Twenty-five.
Only two years my senior! I looked again and, honestly, the contrast of that ivory forehead framed by her black hair was so succulent that I imagined planting a row of kisses across her hairline. My wretched lips pressed together. Marguerite hadn’t been able to hold out two months, yet Adélie Tremier had already waited twenty-seven years—here was a girl I could have for myself! Which made no sense, of course, as her brassbuttoned captain of a son stood there blowing his nose, but who in the world is such an authority that he might explain the behaviour of the heart under every conceivable circumstance? Never again Marguerite Gély, for my future lay with Adélie Tremier: the fact was as concrete as a lowland Lao whisky jar cast in bronze.
I was breathing too quickly. Frémont scratched his moustache and smiled across at the captain as Henri plucked the photograph from my hand and returned to his seat.
—And what if no results are forthcoming? he asked.
—Ah, to a resourceful man, Dubois said, this department can o¤er opportunities on the Cambodian frontier. You’re fond of the countryside, aren’t you, LeDallic?
—Captain, I said, if I may—it might aid in our inquiries for us to know exactly what you fear may have become of her.
—Perhaps sold into bondage of some sort, suggested Frémont.
Tremier rose and seized the photograph from Henri and then, unfolding his handkerchief, carefully wiped the glass and held the picture out to me. His mother smiled. I took it with a nod; he raised the handkerchief and blew his nose.
—You must forgive me.
—I’d like to go up to Haiphong myself, I said, and look into Le Loi’s victory over the Ming in 1427. “If you want a thing done properly,” I used to say, “give it to Le Loi!”
I followed my colleague back upstairs. With each landing the badly lubricated motor within his chest grew louder—groaning or growling, I couldn’t say. He held the office door open for me then slammed it behind us, and I confess the rush of air was blessedly cool. He threw himself behind his desk, and his head onto his arms.
—Dubois has a cousin who wants my job. I saw the letter on his desk. And who do you suppose that captain really was? Some embezzler of public funds that they put up to it, all to be rid of me!
I stepped smartly to the window and looked out at the treetops of Saigon, each boulevard of them rolling down toward the river. How many of the city’s doors would we knock upon in our investigation? I hoped it was five thousand. Every moment outside those four walls would be a windfall, until I glimpsed a woman in an enormous hat, the fashion of thirty years previous, the back of her white neck visible beneath of a swath of pinned black hair. I studied the picture again and yes, there really was something appealing in the carriage of Madame Tremier’s head. I had not been wrong about her.
—Get that Malay bitch up here and pour us some co¤ee, said Henri.
I went to the door and grasped the glass knob but found I could go no further. My tongue fairly vibrated in my mouth.
—What ignorance could possibly prompt you to call these people “Malays”? They are Cochin-Chinese, the specific woman you refer to is Cochin-Chinese, or “Vietnamese,” if you agree that they and the Tonkinese are the same race, as they themselves do—there really are several possible terms, but to call these people “Malay” is as correct as calling them Eskimo or German, can you understand that?
Henri bit down on his balled-up handkerchief.
—Do not try me just now, he finally said.