The Silk Merchant's Daughter (9 page)

In the days that followed, Nicole avoided both her sister and her father, except for the briefest of interactions. With no idea why Sylvie and her father had been in the cell, she longed to confront them over the murder, but the instinct of self-preservation stopped her and she kept silent, gradually locking it at the back of her mind. In her darkening world, she wondered what might happen to the memory of a thing you’d rather not have seen. Could it be suppressed? Wouldn’t it remain hidden only until the time came when it began to smell, like the rotten thing it was? And what if she had no control? She clasped a hand over her mouth, as if to prevent the truth from spilling, but nothing could prevent it from haunting her dreams.

They seemed puzzled by her behaviour and Sylvie even popped into Nicole’s bedroom early one morning, dressed for work, with a sombre look in her eyes.

‘I wanted a word,’ Sylvie said as she leant with her back against the door.

Nicole sensed something different in her sister’s voice, perhaps even a hint of remorse, but she refused to meet Sylvie’s eyes and went to gaze out of the window instead. She didn’t want Sylvie in her room. Feeling cornered, she watched a lizard run up the trunk of a tree.

‘I wanted to put you in the picture about that conversation you overheard.’

Nicole spun round.

‘I thought it best you hear it from me.’

Nicole stared at Sylvie, who hesitated for a moment, as if
weighing her words. ‘Look, the Americans are financing an alternative Vietnamese party, non-communist, to fight the Vietminh. People’s lives could be in danger, that’s why it has to be secret. Can I rely on you?’

‘Why don’t the Americans just support the French?’

‘I suppose they think we’ve had our day.’

‘But you don’t think that?’

‘Of course not.’ Sylvie straightened up. ‘But an alternative to the Vietminh can only make us stronger.’

‘Is Papa involved?’

‘That’s what I wanted to say. He is. But the government can’t know about the new party or its army yet. It would damage his position to say the least.’

Nicole narrowed her eyes. ‘So Mark isn’t a silk merchant? You, Mark, Papa. You’re in this together?’

‘For the good of France. You know that’s what Papa cares about.’

Nicole shook her head.

She went straight to the shop and decided to lose herself by working long hours. By the end of the day, with stinging eyes and muscles aching with the effort of lifting heavy bales of silk, she felt a little better. The next day she painted the shop a gorgeous shade of greenish blue, soft, like a duck’s egg.

Over the following days she collected lotus flowers to display and worked to make the upstairs flat habitable, polishing the furniture with beeswax and washing the tiled floor over and over with lemon-scented soap. She spent hours sewing off-cuts of silk together to make shimmery curtains, cushions and a matching bedspread. She learnt how to construct tasselled lampshades and devised a way to make beautiful feathered birds out of silk, which she hung in the shop front. After that she began running up shawls and scarves to sell.

As the young Vietnamese girls flocked to the shop to buy them, the silk shop became the centre of her life; she felt safe there, and it was where she intended to carve out her place in the world.

One evening she bumped into O-Lan outside. Her mind tumbled over itself. What on earth could she say to her friend? How would she hide the fact that she knew O-Lan’s cousin was dead?

‘Hello,’ O-Lan said. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t seen you lately, but I’ve been occupied with my mother.’

Nicole shifted her weight and struggled to keep the anxiety from her voice. ‘No. I … I’ve been busy too.’

‘Would you like to sing? My mother is sleeping so I have the chance.’

Nicole hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. I’m tired.’

‘Please. It will wake you up. It always wakes me up at the end of the day.’

Nicole gave in and the two of them went upstairs, where O-Lan gazed at the changes.

‘This room is beautiful,’ she said. ‘You have a real talent.’

They started to sing but O-Lan looked terribly low and Nicole was gripped by a dreadful feeling of guilt. Neither girl was in good form, and they soon took a break. Nicole opened a bottle of ginger beer and passed it to O-Lan.

‘Let’s sit on the sofa,’ she said, trying to sound relaxed and normal.

O-Lan was quiet and stared at the bottle in her hands. Oh God, Nicole thought, she’s going to tell me her cousin Trần is dead. She felt an acidic taste on her tongue. Did lies actually have a flavour? She thought of something else to say. ‘How is your mother?’

‘Getting worse.’

So that was it. Though it felt unkind to feel relieved, she was. ‘Has she seen a doctor?’

‘He does not seem to be able to help much.’

Nicole held out a hand to her friend. ‘If there’s anything I can do.’

She thought about her part in the musical at Les Variétés and was glad the rehearsals took her mind off things in the evenings, even if it did intensify the feeling of being a
métisse
. The night before she had worn a shirtwaister in sherbet pink, with a full skirt falling a fraction below mid-calf, cinched at the waist with a black leather belt. It made her feel glamorous but had only served to increase the growing split within her. With her daytime hours being so thoroughly Vietnamese, she felt as if she was pulling further away from her French family. It frightened her. If she split apart from them, what would be left? She longed to discuss her problems with O-Lan, but she’d have to leave out the shooting, and that was at the centre of everything.

‘Your singing has improved,’ O-Lan said.

O-Lan was right. With practice, she’d mastered voice control, and that gave her added power. With a wide grin on his face, Jerry had even begun to say he thought she’d make a passable impression on the audience.

‘Shall we have another go at it?’ Nicole said.

O-Lan stood and gave her a sweet smile.

This is good, Nicole thought. If I can hold on to the positive things in my life, perhaps the awful images from the night of the shooting will eventually fade. She paused in her thoughts. What about Mark? She would just have to try to reconcile herself to what she now knew about him.

On a slow day in the shop Nicole decided to rearrange the stock in order of colour categories, starting with the cooler blues and greens and working her way through to the oranges, reds and magentas. The colours spoke to her. Blue and lilac for their days in Huế. Red for her anger and yellow for the warmth
of the garden in summer. She liked to lose herself in the silks, wrap herself up in them and pretend to be one of the emperor’s women; the time, long gone, when life must have been so simple. As she stroked the silk, the feel of it comforted her.

She had been wondering about visiting the village where the silk was woven from threads produced by families who lived there. Though much of the Duval silk still came from near to Huế, it would be great to find a local provider too. She knew all about the different qualities and thicknesses of silk and how the thread mattered, varying from so fine it was almost invisible to thick and inferior, which was used for the lesser fabrics bought for everyday.

Just as she was mulling this over, a voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘So, you are still here?’

She spun round then felt the blood drain from her face as she stared at the gap between his front teeth. Surely he was the young Vietnamese man, O-Lan’s cousin Trần, who’d been killed in the hotel cellar?

‘You can’t be … I thought you were –’

‘Dead? You thought I was dead?’

‘I … I mean, I …’ Profoundly shocked, Nicole swallowed rapidly.

‘So you know about the shooting?’

She rubbed the back of her neck. ‘I don’t know anything.’

She hadn’t meant to use such a haughty tone of voice and regretted it the moment he moved a couple of paces closer. She stepped back beside the desk and cast around for what to say. He came right up and, placing his hands on her shoulders, stood too close. As he wasn’t much taller than her their eyes were on a level. She had no option but to look at him, though his eyes bored right into hers. How was she to hold his gaze without giving herself away?

He snorted. ‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ she said as sharply as she dared, though all she could see in her mind’s eye was the dead man. She tried hard to hold eye contact, but the stinging in her eyes meant she couldn’t stop blinking.

He narrowed his gaze. ‘Something wrong with your eyes?’

She heard the sound of wheels from beyond the shop door, the squeal of brakes, a door opening and slamming shut again. Her instinct was to escape his grip and run from the shop.

‘So?’

He continued to look at her steadily, and when he increased the pressure on her shoulders she felt as if he could see right into her mind. She thought quickly. ‘I hadn’t seen you around, and one of the neighbours must have said you’d gone back to your village.’

‘Is that so?’

Her palms began to sweat. She nodded but knew it had sounded lame.

He gave her a sarcastic sort of a smile. ‘And which neighbour would that have been?’

‘I don’t remember. Maybe it was your cousin O-Lan.’

He grabbed her left arm and twisted it behind her back. His body, pressed too tightly against hers, felt taut and raw; she could smell peppered onions and vinegar on his breath.

She clenched her jaw, trying to stop herself from crying out. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I don’t know anything.’

‘And yet you looked so shocked to see me.’

He let her go. She cleared her throat, but her body felt too stiff, the muscles tense. She tried to read his eyes, and thought carefully before she spoke again. Saying the wrong thing now might cost her dearly.

‘Why are you here?’ she finally said.

He hung his head for a moment but when he looked up again his eyes were blazing. He slammed the desk with the
palm of his left hand. ‘We thought my brother had gone back to the silk village where we are all from, but nobody had seen him there. His motorbike is still here with a full tank of petrol. He keeps it in a shed at the back of O-Lan’s shop and we couldn’t understand why he’d left it behind.’

‘You have a brother?’

‘His body was found by the river. I’ve just had to tell O-Lan. The animals were devouring his corpse, but it was clear he had been shot in the chest. He looked like me. People used to call us the twins, though he was taller. You’re telling me you know nothing about it?’

She looked at the floor and then up at Trần. ‘I –’

‘The French shot him in the chest.’

‘I’m very sorry for your loss, but how do you know it was the French?’

He frowned. ‘Who else? My brother had a police record for nationalist agitation, so
they
would hardly have shot him, would they?’

‘He must have committed a crime. Was he in the Maison Centrale?’

His frown lines deepened. ‘You mean Hoa Lo
.
’

‘Is that what you call the prison?’

He nodded. ‘Hell’s Hole.’

‘I know what it means.’

‘My brother was not there, as far as we know.’

Nicole took a deep breath and saw, behind the menace, a look of pain. ‘I’m so sorry, but I don’t understand why you think I’d know anything about it.’

‘Your reaction when you saw me.’

‘I’ve explained that. It was only surprise.’ She paused. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Find out who killed him.’

She lowered her eyes to the counter. ‘Of course.’

He shook his head. ‘He was a good man. We think it might have been in retaliation for the murder of a French official, something he did not do.’

She searched for a way to change the subject. ‘Why are the Vietminh challenging us again? I thought the fighting would be over by now.’

‘This is war. It will never be over until we win. Your entire economy is built on the export of
our
raw materials.’

‘But what about the
mission civilisatrice
? The French mean to increase the wealth of the country.’

The man spat on the floor. ‘To the glory of France!’

Nicole knew that was not entirely fair. The French had tried to educate people as well and develop the country in other ways.

‘You know what happened when the Japanese came?’ he said.

‘A bit.’

‘They tolerated you French, while we starved.’

He had hissed the last few words and alarm rose up in her again. She shook her head and thought about backing towards the door. She had heard stories about how the Japanese had requisitioned the stocks of rice, and how a terrible famine had ensued. She’d heard that Vietnamese corpses had been piled up in the streets of Hanoi, and left to rot, but hadn’t known if it was true.

Nicole bit her lip. ‘You call me French. I’m half Vietnamese. And anyway, when they lost the war, the Japanese shot French people.’

She glanced at the door as he rolled a cigarette and then took out a packet of matches. If she could just keep him talking.

‘We had our own country to ourselves, but you French came back with the help of your allies. The destruction was terrible here in the ancient quarter and the Cité Universitaire area.’

He stopped speaking and gazed at the floor. In the silence, Nicole thought hard. There was no doubt he believed everything he was saying, but her father wouldn’t have shot Trần’s brother for no reason.

He lit the cigarette. ‘Tell me. Why is your family in Hanoi now?’

She shrugged and started to fold some silk she’d left on the counter.

‘Your father has an important position. I think you might be able to help me,’ he said, then drew deeply on his cigarette.

She frowned, uncertain where this was leading.

‘This city will be under siege before long. And you could help us.’

‘Why would I?’

‘You said it. You’re half Vietnamese, aren’t you?’

When he looked into her eyes, she noted they were as dark as her own.

‘Don’t you want to know more? I can show you things. Come with me tomorrow after you close up. I’ll meet you on the corner.’

She nodded slowly, pretending to think it over. ‘How do you know I won’t tell my father?’