“I’m sorry, Lucie,” I mumbled when I felt I could stand up again without help. I wiped off my mouth, glanced in the mirror briefly, surprised by my pale reflection, then whipped my head to my left.
Lucie was no longer standing next to me.
“Lucie?” I exclaimed, turning around to the stalls. They were empty. “Lucie!” I called out, running in a circle in the little room. She wasn’t anywhere.
She was gone.
I ran out to the waiting room and checked the bench Victor had pointed to, but she wasn’t there, either. Neither was Victor.
“Lucie!” I shouted, rushing between the benches, all packed with travelers, and out to the central space. “Victor!”
The station was crowded, and I suddenly felt as if I were swimming in a sea of bodies, when I should have been able to spot them so easily.
What could have happened? Lucie wasn’t a child who wandered off, but perhaps she had something pressing to say to her father or wanted our cases back so she could change her dress. Perhaps the shoeblack had convinced Victor to get a shine after all. I stared at the empty bench a few seconds more, then swiveled to look at the row of benches where Lucie had wanted to sit. They weren’t there, either. I looked up at the clock inside the station. There were still ten minutes before the train down the coast was due to arrive.
It was a large station. And they could be anywhere.
Fearing the worst, I walked the length of the building, avoiding the small groups of Indochinese men in three-piece traveling suits, their hair deeply parted and slicked down, leather bags at their sides. I moved through the left and right wings, the center hall twice, then out the back door to the platform with the rows of tracks. They weren’t there, so I hurried out to the front again to see if they were with the vendors. There were no children and no men who resembled Victor.
I looked at all the peasants peddling wares, some shirtless and half asleep in the shade, all too thin, their hands listless, their long yellow fingernails pointing down, their skin deeply darkened by the sun. I stopped and questioned the one nearest to the door.
“Did you see a man, a Frenchman, in a beige tropical suit and a little girl here?” I asked him, glancing at his calloused bare feet and his pile of sugarcane. Lucie loved sugarcane and was still taken with the fact that people consumed the sweet substance in raw form in Indochine. How I wished she were here now, chewing the fibrous stalk.
“Sugarcane, madame?” the vendor asked in French.
“No,” I said, shaking my head vigorously. “But did you happen to see—”
He waved his sugarcane again, repeating his request through his smile. It was foolish to think the sugarcane vendor would have understood more than a few words in French. I repeated the phrase in Annamese, to the best of my abilities, but he just shook his head no. Lucie would have translated better than I did. Where was she? And where was Victor! I gave the vendor a few coins and backed away.
I ran back inside, my lungs tight, my breath shallow, and checked the clock above the ticket booth. The train to Vinh was set to arrive in two minutes. I rushed to the rear of the building, exited onto the platform, and inspected the scrum of travelers. One man I recognized from the French Officers’ Club. He gave me a friendly smile, and I returned it but quickly twisted myself to the side to avoid his gaze, a new wave of panic crashing on me. I pulled down my hat and looked at every person standing on the platform except for him. I looked at them twice. I walked across the platform and stared at them from the other side. I even went to the edge and glanced down at the tracks, holding my breath, praying that my husband and child weren’t lying there, unnoticed yet flattened and dismembered, but there was nothing but steel and tufts of grass poking up between the ties.
There were still no bells ringing to indicate the arriving train, so I slipped back inside to see whether Lucie might be in the ladies’ room looking for me. She was not. I again covered every inch of the station, indoors and out. There was no Lucie, no Victor. My head felt heavy, yet I was filled with an almost painful energy that refused to dissipate. I ran back to the waiting area, sat on the wooden bench where we had left Victor, and started to sob. If Victor were with me, he would have been deeply mortified by the state I was in, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t anywhere.
I dried my face with the edge of my sleeve. My eyes were tired, unfocused, but I felt compelled to blink the feeling away and keep searching through the blur.
I stood up and darted off again, this time nearly tripping the stationmaster, who was headed to the main entrance, surely to greet another rich French family in hopes of a big tip. He stopped abruptly when he saw me.
“Madame Lesage!” he exclaimed, taking his handkerchief out of his pocket and pressing it into my hand in one elegant movement. “What is the matter? Please sit down here,” he said, guiding me to a wooden bench in the waiting area.
“No!” I snapped through my sobs. “I need to sit there! Right there. They’ll be coming to find me.” I indicated the bench where Victor had been. He nodded, his hand outstretched to guide the way.
“Can I assist you in some way, Madame Lesage?” he asked after we sat, handing me yet another starched handkerchief as I continued to cry. I hadn’t used the first one yet.
“Yes. I hope you can,” I sputtered, clenching his handkerchiefs in my fist. “Something just went terribly wrong.”
“I’m sure I can help,” he said gently. “That’s why I’m here. Please tell me what’s upsetting you.”
I looked up at his concerned face and tried to get the words out.
“Just a few minutes ago I went to the washroom to clean my daughter Lucie’s dress,” I said. “To get out a shoe-polish stain. A boy, a shoeblack soliciting my husband’s business, had pushed up against her with his greasy brush, making a terrible mark on her white dress. But I couldn’t wash it out. Then, I don’t know what happened. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, perhaps a minute at most, and when I opened them, Lucie was gone. I ran out to find her, but she’s not anywhere in the station—and I’ve looked everywhere—and neither is my husband, Victor, who was supposed to wait for us right here.” I slapped the bench we were sitting on. “He’s not here sitting where he’s supposed to be waiting for me, and Lucie’s not anywhere, either. I’ve been running all over the station for fifteen minutes now, but I can’t find them. I’m alone, and we are going to miss our train to Vinh. We have to meet Victor’s cousin. It’s a very important trip, and now he and Lucie have disappeared. They’re gone!”
The stationmaster nodded and looked at me, not unkindly but blankly, as if he had failed to follow me.
I stared back at him, thinking that perhaps I had mistaken idiocy for kindness.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I blurted out. “Don’t you understand me? Don’t you understand?” I knew I sounded horribly rude, but I needed him to help me.
He shifted slightly but said nothing, and instead of crying again, I dropped my gaze to the gold nameplate on his jacket. Pham Van Dat. After nearly two months in Indochine and many hours waiting for trains, greeted each time by the same stationmaster, I had never bothered to learn his name.
“Monsieur Dat, I beg you,” I said quietly. “Please help me find them. We have to meet Victor’s cousin tonight. We must have already missed the morning train, but perhaps there is one later today? We must be on that one. Together. Please help me find them.”