I looked at him now on our new terrace, handsome and happy as he lounged in his new kingdom. “We are only seven and a half hours in, but so far I agree. I know that it’s right for us.”
I sat and took a sip of Victor’s wine. It tasted crisp, despite the heat. Victor also didn’t seem to remember that I had been the one who’d advised him to buy the house.
“Good. I was sure you would feel that way,” he said. He was a man who always enjoyed feeling one step ahead of his peers, even if his wife was the one who had steered him to water. “After all, you already left your country once. Why not twice?” He took back his glass and pointed at my hair. “Did someone already tell you? About this evening?”
“Trieu. My servant,” I clarified. “She said we would probably go to the French Officers’ Club.”
“Yes, we are. That’s the etiquette it seems. No rest for the weary,” he said, sitting up straighter. “There was a letter waiting for me when we arrived. We are to dine with Arnaud de Fabry, a very successful financier and the head of the chamber of commerce of Hanoi.”
I nodded, racking my brain for any familiarity with the name. “But in his note de Fabry also said there’s a chance that the governor-general will stop by to greet us. Pierre Pasquier. He’s from Marseille, but he knows my mother. I thought it would be days before we met him, so this is a welcome turn of events. But still, even if we only meet de Fabry, it’s important that we do. We need to be on very good terms with him. Not everyone who has a stake in rubber feels warmly toward us—ever since we began planting ourselves, we’ve far surpassed the competition in technology and production. Still, we need the other industries to support us. Especially in Tonkin—that’s the region we are in now, Tonkin—as this is where we recruit many of our workers.” He circled his finger around the rim of his glass. “I wonder if de Fabry has met maman?”
“Most likely. Everyone has met your mother,” I said, moving to the edge of his chair.
“It does seem that way,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder and standing up. “It’s a blessing and a curse. But here, I think, it will be a great blessing.”
Victor’s mother had grown to like me much more after Lucie became a toddler. It was hard not to love Lucie and impossible to ignore that she wouldn’t be here if not for me. Still, I seldom traveled with Lucie when she went to visit Agathe, a distance we both appreciated.
“We dine in an hour,” my husband said, pushing his sleeves higher. “Will you be ready?”
“I’m ready now,” I said, motioning to my hair and lightly made-up face.
Victor reached for my hand and gestured for me to stand.
“Almost. You’ll have to change your dress. Ask Trieu what to wear. I’m sure Louise van Dampierre put her through the wringer on etiquette and dress. She’ll have an idea of what’s suitable.”
When we’d decided to come to Indochine, Victor’s cousin Pierre, the younger son of Édouard and the new director of the company, had suggested that we reach out to the van Dampierres. Théodore van Dampierre, Pierre noted, had attended school with Édouard. They were the only good friends of the Michelins living in Indochine, Pierre had admitted. Théodore van Dampierre, who was working for the Banque de l’Indochine in Hanoi, wrote to us at once, even sending his letter by the new airmail system, which only took eleven days between the colony and Paris. A week later, we received a series of lovely letters from his wife, Louise, telling us all about life in the colony and why she’d enjoyed it so much. She even suggested that we stay for a time in their large yellow house, as they were headed back to France before we were due to arrive. She’d sent a few photographs of the home, so Victor had seen the large size of it, the many balconies and terraces, all looking like an invitation for the world to join us indoors. He was delighted with it, and I suggested that we do more than just stay there. Why not purchase the lovely place? Firmly plant roots before we arrived. Since the price of everything in the colony had fallen drastically as the depression swept France, it was a fine time to buy. Victor had jumped at the idea.
We’d traveled down to Clermont-Ferrand to tell Édouard and Pierre in person, convinced that now that Victor had a special place in the company, we wouldn’t be imposing.
Pierre was still getting his legs about him as director, as he had only taken over the position in September and for the worst reasons. At the end of August 1932, his older brother, Étienne, died in a plane crash. Despite being an expert airman, as many Michelins were, he’d lost control of his small airplane in dense fog and hit the ground in Saint-Genès-Champanelle, less than ten miles from the factory.
The management said they were all excited for us to go, and I could tell it was genuine, and an utter relief for them. You can contract malaria instead of us, their eyes seemed to say. But I’d dealt with far worse in life than a bit of a fever.
“I’m sure Louise was quite stylish,” I said, returning to thoughts of the evening ahead. “But my guess is that Trieu simply has good taste on her own.” I pictured her elegant black and white clothes, her dark hair a smooth curtain just grazing her shoulders.
“Either way,” said Victor, letting my hand go. “She’ll know.”
As I made my way back up the stairs, I thought about the summer I met Victor. He had been drinking cold white wine with his shirt collar open, just like tonight. And even though July in Paris was usually quite pleasant, it had been a rare heavy day, and the air felt much as it did on this September afternoon in Hanoi.
It was a midsummer evening in 1925 when our divergent worlds collided with full force. I was sitting near the front window of Maxim’s, the fashionable café on the rue Royale, drinking a glass of champagne, something I’d never had before. I also had never been to Maxim’s but had passed it many times on my walks in the Eighth Arrondissement. I’d decided that since it was a month to the day from when I was due to leave Paris, I would spend foolishly and have a glass there. The restaurant was famous, and I wanted to tell the other teachers in the boardinghouse about places besides the usual cheap café in the Thirteenth where I dined nightly.
Victor came in a few minutes after I did, apparently with revelry on the brain. It was just two days before Bastille Day, so drinking and merriment had already begun. But unlike me, Victor did not walk in alone. He was with three rowdy friends, and they had quite obviously been guzzling wine, perhaps worse, for hours. They ordered enough food for ten men, sampled all of it, finished none of it, then smashed a bottle of Saint-Émilion Bordeaux onto the floor with the swing of an ill-placed elbow, causing a stream of blood-colored liquid to flood the polished parquet wood. The management wanted to drag them out by their shirtsleeves, but the men bought ten bottles of wine to apologize and proceeded to put one on every table in the room, much to the delight of the patrons. When the waiter began to open mine, an expensive Chablis, I shook my head, assuring him I had no need for it, but Victor leapt to my side.
“But you must take it,” he said, leaning down and kissing my hand. “I only bought all these to impress you.”
“What nonsense!” I said, laughing, suddenly quite glad that I’d worn my lowest-cut dress. “You bought all these to impress the proprietor, not me.” My boldness fueled by the two glasses of champagne I had already consumed, I added: “And to keep from being tossed out on the street.”