“You say that you are looking for your husband and daughter? Victor and Lucie Lesage?” he said slowly.
“Of course!” I bellowed. “You just greeted us outside a half hour ago! Who else would I be looking for?”
He shook his head and laced his hands together. “But madame, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said, meeting my gaze. “I did greet you a half hour ago, as you said, but it was just you in the black car. Just you and your chauffeur. There was no husband and child. You were alone.”
Alone.
It couldn’t be. The stationmaster was mistaken.
“No, Monsieur Dat. You are mistaken,” I said, shaking my head. “Of course they were with me. We are all journeying to Vinh together, as I said. To see Victor’s Michelin cousin. A young but important one. He and his wife—she’s from the La Trémoille family—they are nhan vat quan trong,” I said, using the Annamese words for notable persons. “Victor, Lucie, and I—we are all here in this station somewhere. We came here, together!”
He shook his head again. “Madame, I saw the black car from my perch outside just thirty or so minutes ago,” he said. “And even when it was still moving, I saw you and your red hat inside. I knew when I saw the hat that it was you, as I’ve seen you wear it before, on more than one occasion. And Madame Lesage,” he finished up, his spine straightening, “do not think me rude, but I am sure it was you getting out of the Delahaye car. Alone. You are a difficult person not to notice.” He looked at me with concern and repeated, “I am sure you were alone.”
“That can’t be,” I insisted. “You are not remembering correctly.”
I rested my heavy head in my hands, my vision blurring even more, and closed my eyes. “We traveled together to the station,” I repeated, feeling queasy. “We came inside together. Victor, Lucie, and I.”
I lifted my head with a jerk, propelled by a sudden idea. “Lanh will tell you!” I said loudly. “Please call my tai xe now. I insist. Phone our house. Lanh will have returned. And our servants saw us all off this morning. Please phone them,” I begged. “Ask for Lanh, or Trieu. One of them should answer straightaway.”
“Of course,” he said, standing up.
When he had left, I looked at the restroom, holding my breath, waiting for Lucie to skip out of it. Was she still refusing to sit, afraid to wrinkle her now stained dress? Had they really wandered off? Or had something happened to them? Had they been taken away by force? Everyone knew who Victor was. Our wealth wasn’t what some thought we had, but it was still more than nearly everyone else in Indochine.
I rubbed my eyes, but I still had to squint to see the stationmaster returning.
“Did you phone, Monsieur Dat? Did you speak to Lanh? Or Trieu?” I asked anxiously when he was close.
“Yes, Madame Lesage,” he replied, his voice even. “I made the call myself and spoke to Madame Trieu. I’m sorry, but she said that she saw you off this morning, alone. That your husband and daughter are in Trang An for the day. To see the caves.”
“Caves! What are you talking about?” I cried out. “They are here, with me. Victor doesn’t have time to take Lucie to inspect caves. Please help me look again, please.”
“Of course we can look again, Madame Lesage,” he said kindly. “Perhaps they arrived in a separate car. Perhaps I just didn’t see them.”
In the center of the station, coming in from the five round archways, I spotted the porter who had helped me with my broken suitcase, the one with the cloudy brown eyes. I wanted to beckon him over. To ask him if he remembered Lucie speaking to him in Annamese. Little Lucie with her dimpled face, overly pressed and powdered by her maid. Lucie, who cared far more for Indochine than France now. But instead I turned away. I knew what he’d say, and I couldn’t hear it from one more person. I clenched my teeth together and tried to set my mind straight. My roiling, heavy mind.
I straightened my back against the hard, polished wood of the bench.
“Yes, yes, I could be remembering it wrong,” I said calmly, forcing a smile. But I knew I wasn’t. We were together in the car. Lucie’s hands were fiddling with my gold rings, her thin, tan leg was next to mine, her perfectly formed head against my shoulder. The way she rubbed her foot against my uncovered ankle, sitting so close even though the back seat of the Delahaye was very wide—I could still feel the sensation lingering.
“Come, we shall look again,” said the stationmaster, waiting patiently for me to stand.
I rose but felt like screaming out in frustration. Even though I had just asked to, I did not want to search the station again, pecking my way through the crowd like a chicken without a head. What I wanted was my family next to me.
“When you helped me enter the station, did I have a suitcase?” I asked.
“You did!” he said enthusiastically. “It had a broken handle. You handed it to a porter here,” he said, looking around for the man. “I explained to him that it was broken and that he should carry it from the base. Cradle it.”
“You explained that to him?” I asked, feeling my stomach churn.
“Yes,” said the stationmaster, his worried look returning. “Would you like me to fetch your suitcase for you? Perhaps that would help your mem—”
I found the strength to smile, the corners of my mouth quivering, my eyes blurring again, and interrupted him. “You’ve been very kind. I’m sorry to have been such a bother, Monsieur Dat. You’re right about everything, I’m sure. I must just be remembering incorrectly. Perhaps I’m unwell.”
“May I fetch a doctor?” he asked, stepping closer, but I shook my head and backed away from him. “I’m unwell,” I repeated. “I must be. I’m terribly sorry.” I turned around and ran as fast as I could in my brand-new, barely creased shoes toward the nearest exit.
I hurried to the left wing of the station, to the corner door that Lanh had pointed out to me on our first journey there, and slipped out, past the cars heading to the main entrance, past the line of coolies and the calls from the vendors, into the shadows of voie A. It was a narrow road that ran parallel to the large avenue that the station was on, the route Mandarine. Voie A, like the other narrow roads surrounding it, was full of Annamite workers shading themselves with newspapers or sheltering under tattered store awnings. I paused to catch my breath, my throat dry and aching from thirst, and shut my eyes tight, imagining Lucie’s little voice, her hand on mine.
I wasn’t unwell. I wasn’t forgetting anything. My family had disappeared.
TWO
Jessie
September 2, 1933
“It’s the hoa sua flowers. The lovely smell. That’s what you paused to sniff, yes?” Trieu’s pleasant voice came at me slowly, mimicking the breeze drifting in the open doors. “Milk flowers, in your language. But we say hoa sua.” She overemphasized the pronunciation and nodded as I repeated the words, trying not to catch my tongue on the S.
“That’s it,” she said approvingly.
I smiled at the smooth, oval face of the girl who was employed as my personal servant. She was thin as paper and startlingly beautiful, her body managing to curve in the places that mattered, despite her slight size. When we were introduced in front of the house just that morning, I assumed she spoke almost no French. I had assumed wrong.