ENJOYING HAPPINESS
AFTER OTHERS

Pierre Lazarie.

IF nothing else, my trip up the Mekong had taught me not to let chickens disturb my slumber, so on my first morning back in F Saigon I slept until ten past six, when the porter carried in my wash-water. I wiped the sweat from my chest with the pillowcase.

—And a note, sir. Came late last night.

In my half-dreaming mind it contained news of Adélie Tremier, but the note was only from Frémont: he wished to welcome me back with co¤ee and a pastry. The porter brushed talc from the bureau into the palm of his hand.

—And Monsieur Henri? he asked. Comes back another day?

—Ah, no, I said. He won’t. He… passed away. Uh, chet, you understand?

He stood in his neat white shirt, eyes big as headlights.

—Dead? Monsieur Henri?

—I’m afraid so. I realize you must have—

—Do you want his room? he asked. It’s bigger.

I told him I’d consider it, gratefully stepped into freshly ironed clothes and hurried out. It was my first day in Saigon without Marguerite to dream of or Adélie to pursue, and I felt at loose ends. At the top of the stairs a red-headed figure stood immobile, his hand upon the banister; at my approach he shuffled backward and I saw it was my once-garrulous housemate of the acne scars. He smelled like a kennel. He’d lost considerable weight since advising me on the economics of soliciting prostitutes, and his skin looked as though the dye had been wrung from it. I had heard that the rare opium-smoker actually thrived on the stu¤.

—She gives me too many, he muttered. I can’t stop her. Do you know? She’ll be the death of me. My ruin already.

—Ah, I said.

—Yet… doesn’t everything look so sweet?

As I descended I might have taken this exchange as a warning, a harbinger of the day’s trials, but instead I climbed into a rickshaw and asked for boulevard Norodom.

Frémont sat outside a café opposite the dome of the Governor General’s Palace. In the morning light the tabletops glittered like new coins as each patron threw one creased leg over the other and refolded his newspaper. Frémont rose and we shook hands, then I lifted a four-sheet paper from the seat opposite him—The Struggle, it was called, with the banner headline, “Form a Representative Indo-Chinese Congress!” I saw that a copy lay on every untenanted chair.

—Trotskyites, muttered Frémont. They paint those notices about electing Workers’ Candidates to Municipal Council, but why should they complain? Now that you’ve seen a bit of the country you know what I mean!

With alarm he raised his eyebrows, then slowly brought them down.

—Ah, here are the éclairs! Let us toast Henri!

After which I could say nothing for a quarter-hour as every white-skinned passerby, to a man, had to exchange pleasantries with Frémont—he was an extremely competent tennis player, among other things.

—Now then, he said, smoothing his napkin across his knee. How shall we report your lack of progress to Captain Tremier?

I would’ve wagered the topic to be the furthest thing from his mind.

—Oh! I said. Dubois indicated we were no longer obliged—

—Dubois thinks one crisis means the end of everything. No, no. Our country, this country, it all goes around in cycles. Even if the issue were foreign hordes invading rather than, what, franc devaluation, do you believe it would dissuade the fellow from looking for his mother? Dubois ought to take the long view—study Le Loi and the Tay Son brothers, don’t you think? This part of the world requires perspective.

Perspective? I thought of Gironière, exiled at Leit Tuhk to study Le Loi and the Tay Son brothers while a woman who loved him waited at his side!

—We might, said Frémont, make mention that Henri met his end, and what else? Your riverboat troubles. “Yes, but what now?” the captain will ask.

—We could write to the outstations, I suggested. Lai Chau and—

—Yes, good. If there were only some way to get a man to Luang-Prabang besides these dinky little boats, you might nose around with a good deal more efficiency!

I took the notebook from my inside pocket and dutifully jotted down the point raised. I did not mention that I’d been sitting in a contrivance called an aeroplane only sixteen hours before, because I’d already learned that great deeds can only be accomplished within the parameters of ego.

—We might cable them again up in L-P, he said. A few more enquiries, or—what did I read yesterday? They’ve advertised for a supervising bookkeeper up there, you’ve certainly the experience, but then what would be the sense in your going if Captain Tremier’s mother was no longer your responsibility?

—I might be posted to Luang-Prabang? I asked. As simply as that?

—But she can’t really be dead. I have given this some thought. There have been any number of times that a tribal has walked into a police station with a watch chain or half a boot and said, “We found this man or that man dead in the woods,” but a woman’s things have never been brought forward in such cases. You know, she might wander back into town at any moment—even after all these years, it wouldn’t be unheard of!

—It wouldn’t?

—Even me—in my early days I got away from my detachment out on the Cambodian frontier, damn foolish, and only lived to tell about it by getting captured by Siamese slavers and winning their favour by giving dance lessons every night! So if you ever see a tango in that part of the world that doesn’t look quite right, well, you’ll know why. Then I had to skipper a steamer across the gulf to get back here, with just a lot of Burmans for crew!

—And you were gone for years and years?

—Eighteen months, but that was only because things went my way. A misstep here, snake bite there—or if they’d actually sold me!—then I’d be lucky to walk back into town today or tomorrow, and that’s forty years later! I wouldn’t be married then, would I, wouldn’t have kids—it beggars the imagination what I’d do with myself! Now, if you ask any of these gentlemen they’ll tell you my instincts are keen, especially returning serves, and my instincts say that the captain’s mother will return!

—But even thirty years ago, sir, she had tuberculosis.

He waved a large hand dismissively then called out to a gentleman adjusting the wing nuts of a racket case while standing on the running board of a parked car.

We eventually shared a rickshaw to the office, and while Frémont nattered on about the recent paucity of typewriter ribbon I stared at the rickshaw man’s abnormally wide fingers. I imagined stepping o¤ the aeroplane in Luang-Prabang to accept the bookkeeper’s position, then using every syllable of my Lao language to cast an ever-widening net over the countryside—this was my line of thought as I climbed flights of Vice-Regency stairs—even if it took me, bearded and sweaty, across China and Outer Mongolia to the islands of Japan, to find Adélie breathless in a white skirt, ropes of pearls draped down her chest. Waiting for me all that time. Just as I reached our office door Dubois came charging out—I’d forgotten how diminutive he was!

—Ah, Lazarie! Wasn’t sure you’d make it back. I’ve just had the boy pack up LeDallic’s things, you can do what you like with them, I suppose, and Madame Louvain brought up a cable. Must have slipped from the envelope because I believe I saw the Sorbonne’s address across the top. Must be the alumni association!

I felt my hair stand on end, yet I refrained from knocking him down so as to get to my desk.

—You’ve lipstick on your face, Dubois.

He rubbed either cheek vigorously with the heel of his hand.

—Not surprised! Tonight we’re making a foray into Cho Lon, and Georgette says you must sit beside her cousin. Bring the car at half-past eleven?

—Georgette?

—My wife—surely you know Georgette!

He hurried o¤, wiping his palms on his trousers, and I stepped into our office. The ceiling fans hung idle, and in that grey room smelling of mothballs and feet only the rectangles of window stared back at me. My scalp went on tingling. A cable from the Sorbonne could not be bad news—they couldn’t take my baccalaureate away—so I savoured the anticipation just as my parents had puttered about drying dishes on Christmas Eve while we’d thrown fits jostling gifts beneath the tree.

I took o¤ my jacket and hung it on the hook. Three towers of files stood on each of our desks. On the corner of mine sat Madame Louvain’s envelope. A wooden fig box, balanced on the edge of Henri’s desk, contained a rusty jackknife, three wadded handkerchiefs, five dice, a mummified orange, a great many pen nibs and a long, battered box of J.W. Spears-brand dominoes. I went to the window and looked out but in my distraction my eyes took in nothing. At the coat hook, I pulled my notebook from the jacket pocket, took the Tremier family photograph from the inside cover and stood the portrait against my inkwell. Adélie was somewhere in the world yet. She watched closely as I slid the cable from its envelope.

DUE TO KOSSUTH’S ILLNESS LECTURER POSITION NOW AVAILABLE IN RUDIMENTARY HISTORY AND LANGUAGES. TWO COURSES THIS SEMESTER, THREE NEXT. HEARTY HANDSHAKE ON YOUR RETURN.

C. LAMBERT, ORIENTAL STUDIES.

Then I was standing at Madame Louvain’s window in the foyer. Without returning her baleful gaze I took up two telegram blanks and wrote carefully with a stub of pencil before addressing the slips and sliding them across the counter. Madame glanced at the first, her lips languidly mouthing the words.

REGRET THAT RESPONSIBILITIES KEEP ME IN INDOCHINA, it read. KINDLY FILL POSITION WITH ALTERNATE.

She passed it to her visored assistant, who carried it with great deliberation to the Morse key at the rear of the room. I had every opportunity to call him back. Madame registered the telegrams in her ledger.

URGED BY FREMONT, the second read, TO APPLY BOOKKEEPING SUPERVISOR POSITION. CAN COME LUANG-PRA-BANG IMMEDIATELY.

Because if I’d learned anything from Le Loi—not to mention from the great Le Quy Don—it was that, while the caprices of the mind might win a battle, the heart spurs one to fight in the first place. And the heart moves quickly. It does not deliberate.

—Anyone I know in Luang-Prabang, Madame Louvain said, has gone to pot.

AS I HAD those six towers of applications to review I told Dubois that the car might pick me up at the office rather than at home if he’d be good enough to lend me a dinner jacket. All day and evening I waited for word from Luang-Prabang. At twenty past eleven the watchman telephoned to inform me, a bare two-and-a-half piles into my task, that I was wanted on the street.

I hurried out, yawning, to find a black Renault idling at the curb. Beside it a tall, thin woman stood cracking her knuckles, a cigarette between her lips. The cut of her gown left her long back quite bare.

—Ah, you’re right! she said. That jacket is aggressively wrong!

—Madame Dubois? I asked.

She stepped on the cigarette and we kissed each other on each cheek, though my kisses were far gentler than hers. Her eyes were bright beneath the streetlight, and her smile extremely wide.

—The one and only! shouted Dubois through the window. That’s Georgette!

The cousin had apparently gone ahead into Cho Lon, leaving me alone in the back seat while from the front Madame Dubois described the parties people in France were throwing despite their rainy spring and how a certain girl had found a new gown designer and the very same night had started stepping out with a ravishing young man who had quite rightly climbed the Alps. She inevitably described each desirable young man as “tall.” Behind the wheel little Dubois remained intent on the traffic, which was light.

But, crossing into the Chinese district of Cho Lon, the streets filled suddenly with keening hawkers, fortune tellers’ tables, honking rattletrap cars and jostling rickshaws, and again and again Dubois asked Georgette to remind him whether there’d be a valet to park the car. Had Cho Lon been so riotous when Adélie had last seen it, a gloved hand pressed to her cheek? Georgette wanted to buy a bottle to smuggle into the club but Dubois was disinclined.

—Well, the fact is, I said, that the Chinese only built Cho Lon after the Tay Son brothers burnt down their village at Thanh Ha.

—And when was that? asked Georgette, her lean arm across the seat back. Nine thousand BC?

His spare jacket was too short for me, particularly through the arms, but by fussing incessantly with either cu¤ I hoped to not betray too much wrist. It was undeniably for the best, though, that I had left my serge jacket in the Renault, for besides the club girls in high-slit ao dai gowns swaying alongside blacktuxedoed Chinese gentlemen, the Triple Lucky Room was rife with vociferous, bowtied Europeans in white suits—for once I could’ve made use of those misbegotten things! Even the Oriental musicians, nodding onstage with their banjos and brass, would have looked equally at home boating on the Seine— which flows only blocks to the north of the Sorbonne, I thought despite myself.

As we manoeuvred the smoke-filled room en route to our table I couldn’t help but notice a slim blonde girl in a tight-fitting tunic dress, a cigarette in either hand, chatting a¤ably with a clutch of stout moustached men at the bar. She spun on her stool as I passed, blocking my way with a firm white calf.

—Hold on! she said. Stay awhile!

I bowed my head, turned red as an apple, I confess, and hurried around the end of her foot after Dubois. In my wake the stout men laughed as though I’d emitted nitrous oxide. I looked after her as I took my chair but saw only the back of her tightly coifed head, so I attempted to shake hands with Dubois’ many large-toothed friends as they threw peanuts into the bell of the saxophonist’s horn.

—Come, come! said Georgette, seizing my hand. There’s space on the dance floor!

There was only space enough for Georgette and I to press tightly together. Over her shoulder I watched Dubois buy a cigar from the passing girl, then pu¤ with determination, glaring at us all the while. Georgette was perfumed with jasmine.

—You met Mariette? she asked in my ear.

—Who is Mariette?

—My lovely cousin!

With a long finger she indicated the blonde at the bar, nearly jabbing a smiling club girl in the eye.

—She is lovely, I said.

—Every planter from here to Yunan wants to marry her, but those planters are terribly unreliable, aren’t they? Ah ha, see the face she made? She likes you! And she’s a city girl, wants to settle in town, not on some muddy plantation!

I tried to glimpse the cousin again but we’d made too many turns into the throng. And what was the sense? Georgette backed away and seemed to stare at my feet, her arms still looped around my neck.

—She likes kissing, that’s what, and some chaps don’t know what to make of it!

—You must forgive me, I shouted. I like kissing too, but—

—You’ll dance the next with her, won’t you?

—The fact is, I won’t be in town long—I’m on my way up to Laos!

She gave a pained look before we stepped away from each other to applaud the band as the high-hat neatly ended the number.

—And what’s more, I said, my heart belongs to another.

Perhaps I ought to have given the blonde more consideration. Perhaps I half-believed I was still travelling north with Henri with that one goal before us.

—Ah, Georgette sighed. Another with a girl a world away!

Despite my admissions I was led to Mariette and told to kiss her cheeks. She really was lovely, with a smile just as wide as her cousin’s, but the place was too loud, too modern, and I longed for my bed. Georgette frowned at my glazed expression.

—My Dubois will kill me for saying so, so you must keep this between us, but a love a¤air conducted across vast distance is no a¤air at all. It was nearly the end of us.

—That’s good advice, I nodded. I’ll give this business a few more weeks.

—You might let the girl have some say in it! Is she from Paris?

—Naturally.

—They’re all the same, winked Mariette.

The cousins drank a good deal after that, and they snored together in the back of the Renault as we sped back into Saigon.

—What’s this about a transfer to Laos? asked Dubois. You can see very damn well how much work we have!

I put my elbow out the open window and amiably told him of my morning’s chat with Frémont. But the moment I mentioned bookkeeping he began to giggle.

—Oh, there’s no way you could have known! he sputtered. It’s just that every year the resident up there advertises for this bookkeeping supervisor, to keep up appearances, you know, as though gold were dropping out of the trees and he didn’t know how to count it. In twenty years of posting the job they haven’t hired anyone!

He chortled. I watched black buildings whirr past.

I’d already been in Saigon far too long.

Though it was three o’clock in the morning the porter sat barefoot on the steps of the villa, smoking a long pipe beneath the lamp. As the car purred away he stood up and said good evening, and I nodded hello. I no longer attempted Vietnamese.

—Do you want Monsieur Henri’s room? he asked again. It is bigger.

—It seems I may be here some time, I said. How much will the rent increase?

He led me into the slumbering house and up the stairs.

—The same price for you, sir, he yawned. But for the room it goes up. Monsieur Henri paid the same rent since 1918, and if we sent an increase he called the police! Yes, go in.

He left me in the corridor, turning Henri’s key.

If I’d expected any sort of museum I’d have been disappointed, for its four walls enclosed no busts of LeDallic, no selected letters, for what exactly does the uncelebrated man leave the world? In the glow of the hallway lamp I saw the bed was freshly made and the wardrobe, its doors hanging open, stood empty. I straddled the cane chair to admire the many yellowing portraits, evidently clipped from newspapers, of ’20s film actresses beaming coquettishly from behind palm fronds and parasols. One blonde in particular, Huguette Duflos, had been tacked up a dozen times above the chi¤onier.

I undressed and threw my clothes across the bedspread, where they lay as though their occupant had dissolved. Like burning incense. I sat on the cane chair, and as the moths flitted down my bare back I listened through the window to the night that stretched too far in all directions to even be called night. Night was when one was meant to sleep.

After an hour I rose and circled the room, ripping the ladies’ pictures from the walls. Then I methodically tore each one to shreds. Their mouths in two. Their ears.

—Forgive me, I murmured to Huguette Duflos. My heart belongs to another.