The Silk Merchant's Daughter (19 page)

Another man spoke up and Nicole cringed at the hatred in his voice. ‘She’s a spy.’

Everyone apart from Trần and the leader nodded.

‘Get rid of her,’ one muttered.

‘Agreed.’

‘We don’t need a
métisse
here.’

A man with unusually heavy brows and a narrow
sun-darkened face withdrew a knife from a pouch at his waist and wiped it on his trousers. He grinned at Nicole. She shuddered and glanced at Trần, who was now gazing at the floor. The leader ignored the men and, speaking a little less rapidly, addressed Nicole directly.

‘You can trust her,’ Trần butted in as he glanced up. ‘I vouch for her.’

‘Let her speak. What do you have to say for yourself?’

As everything Trần had ever said about the resistance ran through her mind, she clutched at the fleeting phrases. ‘I believe in land reform,’ she said. ‘I believe the rich should be made to pay for what they have done. I want to help free the country from slavery. The French have enforced inhuman laws. They have drowned uprisings in rivers of blood. They have robbed us of our raw materials.’

The leader glanced at Trần. ‘You say she gave you information?’

Trần nodded.

A tense silence spread across the room as the leader leant back and returned his gaze to Nicole. Sweating profusely and feeling the patches spreading beneath her arms, she hardly knew where to look. Even though she had just been to the toilet she desperately needed to go again. One or two of the men muttered, but the leader held up a hand for silence. He rolled a cigarette very slowly, flattening out a paper, shredding the tobacco, then laying it in a neat line on the paper, the frown lines on his forehead deepening. Nicole wanted to shout at him to hurry, but the moments kept dragging. At last he slipped it between his lips, but still did not light it.

‘So what was it?’ he said, tilting his head and speaking out of the side of his mouth.

Suddenly feeling cold, her mind refused to work. What was what? What did he mean?

He slammed the table with the palms of his hands. ‘This information. What was it?’

It was on her lips but, close to tears, she faltered. She steadied herself and the words came out rapidly. ‘The French are sending fifty thousand troops north, including American planes.’

He nodded. ‘You are a singer?’

She continued to make a huge effort to control herself. He must not know how scared she was. ‘Yes.’

‘You know Vietnamese songs?’

‘My mother was Vietnamese.’

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Nicole felt certain she was about to come unstuck. All eyes were on the leader as he bowed his head.

‘If you want to stay, you will sing for us. Stand up.’

She got to her feet, her mind a complete blank. This felt like a terrible mistake. She risked a glance in Trần’s direction but his face was passive and he avoided her eyes. She tensed. What would she do if she couldn’t think of the right song? A tune came back to her, a line from her show, and then another, but the rest of the words were missing. From there she frantically ran through more songs in her head. Would she be judged on her choice of song as well? Or would it be the quality of her singing? Certainly they would expect her to come up with something typically Vietnamese, something they would all be likely to know, but her mind kept giving her French songs. Why couldn’t she recall the songs she’d learnt with O-Lan?

She felt as if her throat would implode, but at last a tune sprang into her mind; a lullaby about an autumn wind and the coming of the winter, one of the songs she’d sung with O-Lan recently, so most of the words came back. Ignoring the feeling of dread that threatened to consume her, she began. And, as the haunting rhythm of the song filled the room, she closed
her eyes and pictured herself at home in the garden with leaves floating on the breeze. She managed to convey the peace and melancholy of autumn and, when she opened her eyes, she saw all the men were listening. When she had finished nobody spoke.

After a moment, the leader nodded. ‘She stays. Is everyone agreed?’

They all agreed, with the exception of the man with the knife, who looked disappointed and left the room muttering.

The leader finally lit his cigarette, slowly blowing the smoke out as he turned to her. ‘You are not lying about the troops. We have heard this too. But you will be watched. Put one foot wrong …’

He got up and walked away, but turned back at the door. As he did so he smiled, then went out, leaving a trail of smoke behind. It had not been a warm smile.

The following day, while they waited to hear when they’d be leaving, Nicole and Trần sat in the privacy of the walled courtyard behind the house. She watched a chameleon race up the wall and, feeling a little out of place, she reached for his hand. He refused to take it.

‘We cannot be seen to be close. We are comrades now.’

She blinked in confusion. ‘What about affection or friendship?’

‘Cannot come into it.’

Nicole picked up a pebble and threw it at a tree. She had not expected to experience such tedium or for Trần to be so cold.

‘Once we have won the war,’ he said, ‘things will change. I will have status within the party and will be free to marry.’

‘Strange idea of a proposal.’

He grinned. ‘Not romantic enough for you?’

She shrugged. She liked him but marriage had not been on
her mind, and certainly not to him. The thought of Mark’s photo in her purse popped into her head.

‘Now remember, show an attitude of humility. Be vigilant. Respect age, knowledge and social rank. Remember too, with strangers, it’s best to always say
ong
or “grandfather”.’

‘I know what it means,’ she said, irritated by the patronizing way he’d spoken.

She glanced at the orchids growing on the trunk of the nearby tree and listened to the birds. It would be all right. Everything would be all right. It had to be. She didn’t tell him she was beginning to feel homesick.

‘When you meet anyone, bow slightly and smile. If they ask how you are, say “
Tôi khὀe. Cám ơn. Còn bạn
.” And nothing more. Whatever you do, keep a civil tongue. Nobody will reveal their true feelings so you must not either.’

‘And as a woman I must be modest.’ He didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm in her voice.

‘Exactly.’

A jasmine hedge ran all along one side of the courtyard and the sweet scent made her sneeze. She leant against him, the morning sun sparkled between the gaps in the clouds and she felt a little better. Dozing in the warmth, it seemed her best option was to surrender to whatever lay ahead.

‘What about the man with the knife?’ she asked.

‘Duong? Don’t worry about him.’

Her mood lightened further when one of the village women brought out a pot of rice and a fresh green papaya salad with pickled vegetables.

‘It’s a good sign. If they’re feeding us now it means we’ll be leaving soon,’ he said. ‘We may not eat again for several days.’

‘Will the journey be hard?’

‘It will. You’ll get used to doing without luxury.’

Not without a pang, Nicole thought back over the journey her family had made from Huế to Hanoi. That had been a turning point too, just like this. It had seemed like a tough journey at the time, but compared with what might lie ahead, she now knew it had been nothing at all.

The journey north during early November was not as arduous as Nicole had expected; rather, she enjoyed the sense of freedom, and loved the evenings when the countryside, softened by the gold of the setting sun, cast a spell that made anything seem possible. These were the months when it was good to walk. They walked at night when they could, ducking bats flying haphazardly between low trees. When they glimpsed a black bear in the blue light of the moon, Nicole froze. Trần’s wide-eyed look warned her not to move. The bear passed by. When they tried to sleep during the day, it was snub-nosed monkeys who woke them, pulling their hair and sniffing their bags in the hope of finding food.

It might only be an interlude before the hard work began but, determined to make the most of it, she was content to sleep rough, thrilled by the wilderness, and took each day as it came. There were moments when they drew too close to French troops and the sharp feeling of danger coursed through her blood, but being out in the open with the wind, the rain and the birds for company created a kind of exhilaration that fizzed and bubbled inside her. She felt as if she was starting to discover something new about herself, and she was relieved that Trần wasn’t expecting to have sex again.

The early days with the theatre troupe passed quickly. She felt strange at first, but followed Trần’s instructions and managed
not to give herself away. She had learnt to watch for signs, little facial giveaways and the like, and was good at spotting what people were thinking. She hoped none of them could see into
her
mind. Hospitable and ready to share, they tried to engage her, but she kept to herself, sang her songs well and made sure she never uttered a word of French. She made one particular girlfriend, a musician called Phuong, and they’d usually smoke together at the end of a show before striking the stage and moving on.

The show was a form of Chèo, previously a satire showing vignettes of everyday life and performed by peasants in a village square; a simple drama with songs that suited Nicole, who found all her work with O-Lan was paying off brilliantly. Traditionally the action had shown people dealing with ethical quandaries and religious issues, but now the narratives were more frequently modern Vietminh versions, riddled with the theme of self-sacrifice. Intended to reinforce the spirits of the rural supporters and persuade drifters to join the resistance, the stories showed men and women heroically defending their country against the French.

The songs were performed accompanied by traditional instruments: zithers, lutes, fiddles and bamboo xylophones. And the drums beat to the eight-rhythm structure of the military.

At first Nicole felt roused by the music and content with her new world. And so the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months and, as time went on, she was surprised to realize that she’d been in the show for almost six months. One afternoon after a long trek through marshy land, she was sitting on a log in a quiet spot in the shade, thinking. Lately the paltry food supplies and dire personal arrangements had become worse than before. Now they were having to sleep in draughty barns and rat-infested hovels, her thoughts more often turned
to the little luxuries of the past. An empty stomach didn’t help. Perpetually hungry, she also felt hot and sticky and, as she scratched the multiple bites on her legs, the memory of their French villa became more appealing. She tried to remember the details of each room but the images were hazy. She racked her brain trying to recall, but only her old bedroom, the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen came into focus.

She would have liked nothing better than a bath in the little bathroom she had shared with Sylvie. She smiled at the memory and even missed her sister as she thought of the way one section of the bathroom had been tidy, and the other littered with her pins, clips and pots of face cream with the lids left unscrewed. She pictured the large art-deco mirror covering one wall – the way it steamed up when you had a bath – and how, if you looked out of the window, you gazed down on tropical fronds. It seemed so long ago; how innocent she had been.

Now, lonelier than ever before, she questioned herself. Had it been a mistake to come north with Trần? Had she been wrong about Mark? Maybe he really had been looking out for her when he encouraged her to go home. She had acted on impulse, but perhaps if she’d demanded the truth about the house arrest and the shooting, things might have been different. She checked to make sure nobody was watching, then ran her fingertips over the photo of Mark before stuffing it back inside her purse. She looked at it every day, and always smiled at the memory of him falling into the lake. But she had grown up in a family who did not tell each other the truth, and so, instead of standing her ground, she had run away. O-Lan had been right about that.

Though Trần had insisted he would be working in league with the troupe, in fact he went away for weeks on end. When he did turn up, he paid her less attention than before, and the
warmth in his eyes was gone. It upset her more than she cared to acknowledge; not because she wanted him, but because it left her feeling even more adrift. She knew certain members of the troupe were messengers for the Vietminh – she couldn’t be sure which ones – but in every village they passed through, they spied out who was on the side of the nationalists, and who was not. Harsh reprisals were becoming increasingly frequent.

The troupe performed in masks or painted their faces in red and white, which meant there was little chance of any French recognizing her. By day she wore traditional Vietnamese dress, which also acted as a disguise, and while of course she worried about being found by French army officers, at times she wished she could be, if only to be able to speak French again. But it was also true that in the months she’d been with the troupe she’d seen things she wished she had not: things that had shattered any remaining belief that Indochina should still be French. And the longer she spent with the troupe, the more Vietnamese she felt.

She got up from the log, stretched and went to get made up in the wagon she shared with three others. They’d already finished and she’d need to hurry.

She loved painting her face, and only had her lips left to outline when the spell was broken by a new performer appearing at her side. She glanced in the mirror and froze when she saw his reflection. With growing unease she recognized Duong, the man who had relished showing her his knife all those months ago. He nodded, so she stood and, recalling Trần’s words about respecting her elders, gave him a scrupulously polite bow before leaving the wagon, heavy in mind and body.

That evening the show went on as usual. Nobody said anything to her but she had the impression they all knew why the man was there and nobody was telling. She could see him
observing her throughout the show and it saddened her that, despite all the months she had travelled and performed with them, the troupe still considered her an outsider.

The next day she came across some members gossiping. The talk ceased once they spotted her and a chilly silence followed. The little knot quickly broke up, though one remained: her musician friend, Phuong, who was now in the process of restringing her instrument. Nicole tried to question her, but she shook her head and lowered her eyes. Nicole had the impression she’d wanted to speak, but could not. When you didn’t know who you could trust, it made you vulnerable and a careless word could mean disaster. If she wanted to find out what was going on, she would have to confront the man with the knife.

As she scanned the area, she longed for Trần to be there and on her side, in the way he had once been. But Trần wasn’t there and she would have to tackle this on her own. She soon found the man sitting beneath a gnarled tree next to one of the caravans. She stood tall and made eye contact with him. It would have been safer to take it slowly, but the words spilled out.

‘What are you doing here?’

He tapped the side of his nose and lit a cigarette. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Where’s Trần?’

The man didn’t speak, but blew the smoke out through his nostrils.

‘Is he all right?’

He stuck out his chin and rubbed it. ‘I think you and I need a little time to get to know each other.’

‘And Trần?’

‘Are you a virgin?’ He narrowed his eyes and grinned.

Nicole was not going to allow him to intimidate her. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Why are you so interested in the boy?’

‘He’s a comrade.’

‘Good answer.’ He coughed on the smoke. ‘But there’s a bit more to it.’

She steeled herself not to react. The Vietnamese rarely showed their feelings, and she knew he was trying to provoke her.

She shrugged. ‘I am loyal to the cause.’

‘We shall soon see,’ he said, then got to his feet and strode off.

The underlying threat in his manner unnerved her and for the next few days she watched him. He had some kind of power, but with no idea what it was, or how he was planning to use it, she felt defenceless. The other troupe members were wary of him too, and it seemed none could risk taking her side. The feeling of unease grew and when she could not sleep for the heavy, oppressive air, she went outside to listen to the cacophony of night-time sounds rising from the jungle. Imagined dangers loomed disproportionately at night, so how could she tell if it was just her own fear or if the man really posed a threat?

The next day, a small village nestling in a valley where they had stayed for one night was torched by the French. She had watched helplessly from higher up the mountain as the last curls of smoke broke up in the wind. Even women and children had been slaughtered and those who survived were now destitute. When she asked who would bury the dead she was shocked to be told they would not be buried; such outrages reminded the peasants of what the French were capable.

As she was thinking about it, she caught sight of the man. She had not sought him out this time, but there he was sitting beneath a battery-driven lamp swinging from a branch. He pulled out a cut-throat razor, like the one her father used, and began whittling a stick, the blade gleaming in the light from the lamp.

‘Can’t leave me alone, can you?’ he said and winked at her. ‘I can help you out there. You’re available, aren’t you, like all French women? Don’t think I haven’t had the experience.’

It frightened her more than his previous behaviour had done. She noticed his thick wrists and heavy shoulders. She’d stand no chance.

The next day was foggy and cold. Their wagons passed through a village where they had to swerve to avoid a blanket of black flies feeding on the corpse of a woman who’d been thrown in a ditch. The woman wore the typical black costume of the female Vietminh and had been chucked away as if her life was nothing at all. Nicole forced herself to keep looking out of the back of the wagon and spotted a little girl partly concealed by the woman’s body. She was painfully thin, no more than five years old, and though her clothes were also black, around her neck was a bright blue scarf. At the sight of the child’s brown eyes, wide open and utterly blank, Nicole immediately thought of Yvette. With tears in her eyes, Nicole turned away. She could do nothing for them.

A short while later, as the trail of caravans snaked along the mountainside, the road became little more than a ledge, so Nicole followed one of the wagons on foot. It wouldn’t take much for a wagon to tip over the precipice, and she felt safer walking. Soon after, Duong brushed alongside her and she caught sight of a satchel on his back. She had been waiting for him to make the first move, and wasn’t surprised when he grasped her by the elbow and began to draw her aside.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘You’re hurting me.’

He laughed.

‘Where is Trần? Is he hurt?’

‘Not that again. Tell me, are you truly loyal?’

‘Of course, surely you must believe me? The party demands obedience and I am obedient.’

‘Just words. But you can rest easy. I have been instructed to take you to Trần.’

She stopped walking, tripping herself up on her boots. ‘I don’t believe you. I want to stay with the others.’

He gave her a blank stare. ‘Believe me or not. You will soon see. When the road descends shortly it will fork. We shall linger at the back of the caravans and veer off to the left, while the rest will go right.’

Her breath deepened. She must not show her fear. ‘What about my things? They’re in the wagon.’

‘You won’t need them. You can only take what you have on your back now. Flatten yourself against the side of the mountain and let everyone pass.’

‘And if I won’t?’

He glanced down the edge of the precipice and sucked his teeth. ‘Mighty long way down.’

Nicole did not know what to think. Nobody could survive a fall like that. If this was to be a death sentence, the few members of the troupe who might have noticed her with the man would simply claim they’d seen nothing. She could feel her chest rising and falling, and hoped he couldn’t see the early signs of panic. At the likely outcome, her mind went into free fall, but she had no choice. She’d have to do what he wanted.