The Map of Lost Memories (15 page)

The only detail of her meticulous planning that Irene did not share with Simone was the one of which she was the proudest: an inconspicuous leather clothing trunk she’d had customized by Mr. Simms’s tailor. It was lined with false panels large enough to hold and hide the ten scrolls. More than once she had wanted to show the trunk to Simone, knowing that she would admire its ingenuity. But although they shared the same dream, to uncover the history of the Khmer, and although they shared the same need, to use that history to take back the lives they had lost, after their time on the ship, Irene suspected that Simone would attempt to stop her from taking the scrolls out of Cambodia. Irene tried not to think about this, for when she did she felt guilty about lying to Simone.

As a tugboat nudged the
Lumière
toward its berth, Irene was joined on deck by Monsieur Boisselier. He leaned against the railing beside her and said, “I haven’t seen Madame Merlin all morning. I was hoping I would have a chance to say
au revoir
.”

Irene tapped the ash of her cigarette into the humid air. “I doubt she’s eager to disembark.” She nodded toward the wharf, where in front of the customs shed a thicket of colonials waited, nearly all of them dressed in white: jackets, trousers, and cork helmets reflecting in the sunlight. Vietnam’s native Annamites milled around them, and among these barefoot rickshaw men stood a French police officer in a drab brown uniform and two European men with black cameras, hanging back, no doubt, for a better
view. She said, “I’ve heard that reporters and a gendarme have been waiting since dawn.”

“I suppose this means everyone is watching her now.”

Irene felt sorry for Monsieur Boisselier, fidgeting with his watch, as pitiful as a beggar while he waited for the payment she had promised him. But his palpable concern gave her confidence that Roger had not told him about her temple, for if he knew, he would not need her money so badly. She reached into her map case for one of two envelopes she had put together earlier that morning. She handed it to him. It contained five hundred dollars. “Is that enough?”

As he counted the money, his expression showed that it was more than he had expected.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” she asked. “Anything at all.”

He gazed out toward the ocher buildings along the waterfront, punctuated by the jut of a steam crane into the white noon sky. Areca palms flanked the road, their fronds cutting welts of shadow into the sunlight on its paved surface. “This is only my opinion,” he said, “but when Roger Merlin spoke of his wife’s first love, I somehow had the feeling he was not speaking about a person.”

“What do you mean?”

Monsieur Boisselier ducked his head, perhaps afraid that she would think him a dotty old man. “It’s difficult to explain.” He tucked the packet of money into his coat pocket before she could change her mind and take it back. Then, as if he felt he owed her at least a bit more, he said, “Do you know of Marc Rafferty? I have heard that he’s here in Saigon. If you are looking for information, he’s your man. Perhaps he can tell you why Monsieur Merlin was having me watch his wife.”

As soon as Irene saw Simone striding toward her, cigarette in hand, a white orchid trailing through her upswept hair, she knew how they were going to do this. They were not going to skulk into Saigon. They were going to arrive with nothing to hide. All eyes were on Simone as she crossed the deck. The Chinese robe she wore over her black shirt and trousers gave her an air of royalty. It was impossible not to pay attention
to her, a flash of cobalt among the white, beige, and khaki traveling clothes of the other passengers. But it was more than the way she was dressed that caused people to watch her. They wanted to know what was going to happen the moment she stepped into Vietnam. Would she be accosted by the reporters and asked the question everyone wanted to know the answer to?
Do you know who killed your husband?
Would she be detained by the police? They were longing to break up the monotony of their own dull arrivals and, better yet, to see if Simone would be brought down a peg.

Inside the customs shed, a row of officials sat behind a counter processing documents. The tin roof radiated streaks of thick, rippling heat, and the men were soaked with sweat, their hands so damp that they used scraps of muslin to blot moisture from their fingers each time they picked up a pen or stamped a page. As the Oriental passengers, even those from first class, were plucked from the line to show proof of vaccinations to the port doctor, the eldest of the officials examined Simone’s paperwork. The skin around his eyes was furrowed, as if he had been squinting at visas in this gloomy light all his life. Irene watched him over Simone’s shoulder. The man seemed to be taking an unusually long time. Then, as if he were holding himself in check, he said, tersely, “So, here you are. Madame Merlin. Already a journalist has offered me a bribe to detain you so he might have the first interview. And it is my understanding that the
commissaire
himself has set aside his day for you. But do not take this to mean you are wanted here.”

Simone looked confused, as if she had genuinely expected a warm welcome.

“You
are
a traitor after all.”

It was such a bald attack. Irene glanced at the customs agents processing passports on either side. They were pretending that they were not listening, but the nearby passengers were not even trying to hide their interest. The exchange would certainly be dissected over absinthe frappés in the nightclubs that evening.

“And you,” Simone hissed so everyone could hear, “are a petty, powerless bureaucrat.”

A stately colonial standing in line behind Irene barked with laughter. It was now the official’s turn for bewilderment. He had not anticipated this defiant response. “I have power enough to keep you out of this country.”

Simone glared at the official. “People like you are the reason I joined the Communists. You are the reason the French are going to lose Indochina. How satisfying it will be, watching you scuttle back to Europe with your tail between your legs.”

Although Irene admired Simone’s gall, bravado was one thing and stupidity quite another. She stepped forward. “Regardless of what you thought of Roger Merlin, monsieur, he was her husband and he has been killed. Brutally killed. She is distraught. A gentleman like you, surely you can forgive—”

“Distraught!” Simone cried. “I’m not distraught. I’m insulted. How dare this puny man treat me like a pariah!”

The official was furious. He folded Simone’s paperwork and shoved it back to her. “Since I am merely a powerless bureaucrat, perhaps it would be best to leave you in the hands of the inspector. Come with me.”

“You can’t detain us,” Simone protested, refusing to follow. “This is my birthplace. What are you gaping at?” The woman Irene had called an Alsatian brood cow was grinning at Simone’s misfortune as one of the agents stamped her passport. “This is not a carnival. This is my life.”

Simone’s voice plunged dangerously, and Irene quickly saw that she was no longer feeling courageous. She was panicking, terrified of not being let in, of being exiled back to Shanghai. Irene took her by the elbow and ushered her after the official, into a hot cubicle of a room that contained only a bench running along one wall. The official stood in the center with his arms crossed over his chest. He said, “I will let you know when the inspector arrives. He should not be more than an hour or two.”

Irene was exasperated. Roger was dead. She and Simone had paid their dues. Without even bothering to cajole the man, she held out the second envelope she had prepared.

He said, “I have already turned down one bribe today.”

“It can’t hurt to have a look.”

He raised his chin, refusing.

Irene opened the envelope herself. As she fanned the bills out, the official was unable to hide his interest. This was a small fortune—the amount she would have given Monsieur Boisselier, had he known to ask for it. She could see the man debating. Folding the money back into the envelope, she walked toward him. She slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket. Without a word, he left the room.

“What if it’s too late?” Simone asked, fussing with the trim on her robe. “What if this is too much for him?”

Irene was troubled by how easily Simone had fallen into a state of agitation, but there was no time to ask who
him
was or to calm her down. If the official’s anger had a chance to smolder, who knew how long he would keep them confined? “Come with me,” Irene said.

“Where?”

“Saigon.”

Taking Simone’s arm, Irene guided her back to the counter, where she smiled politely at a young English couple who had reached the head of the line. “Pardon me, but we weren’t quite finished.” She set Simone’s maroon-covered Union Française Indochine passport down in front of the offending official.

The man lowered his eyes. A bead of sweat slid down his cheek and dropped onto the paper, blurring the ink. Beyond the counter the shed swarmed with coolies, grunting with the effort of lifting and stacking luggage. The air smelled of sweat and cowhide. With measured slowness, the official pressed the black stamp into the page so hard that the approval was illegible.

Before he could retract his decision, Irene grabbed the passport and gave it to Simone. She waited for her own to be stamped, and then she followed after the red phoenix that rose up the back of Simone’s robe. As she watched Simone step into the margin of sunlight coming through the open door, a prickle of wet heat swooped over her skin—the quick, voluptuous fever that comes before a person faints.

This is it, she thought. The moment I enter this city, Cambodia is less than a day away.

——

Simone walked quickly past the mounds of hat cases, valises, and Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunks, heading for the fence that separated the customs yard from the waiting crowds. She wrapped her fingers around the timber slats and peered into the street. With relief she said, “There he is, right there.”

Simone spoke as if Irene should know what she was talking about. Methodically, Irene examined the crowd. Beyond the cluster of colonials, the border of half-naked rickshaw drivers shifted in expectation of fares to come. Farther out, drivers of Peugeots and Chevrolets smoked and chatted to one another. Irene did not recognize anyone. “Who?” she asked.

“Over there, by the woman in the red hat.”

Next to the matron, a man was leaning against the trunk of a plane tree. He was young, in his late twenties at the most, his body lean in a typical tropical suit. He was separated enough from the crowd so Irene could see that below the cuffs of his white pants, he wore heavy boots with thick soles more suited to the wilderness than to the city. “Who is he?”

Simone’s face was flushed. “Louis Lafont.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Simone laughed. “Really.”

The assistant curator of the Conservation d’Angkor, Louis Lafont was an expert on anastolysis, the process of dismantling a structure for study and then returning it to its original form. Without his work, Irene never would have understood the architectural techniques of the Khmer. “My God, what’s he doing here?”

“I asked him to meet me.”

Heat rose off the pavement, and in places the sunlight was so bright on the sidewalk that Irene expected to hear it sizzle. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What if he didn’t come, Irene? It would have been too embarrassing. You would have thought I was a fool.”

“Why?” But the moment she asked this, Irene recalled Monsieur Boisselier’s words about Simone’s first love. Then she immediately thought, No, too easy. If there was one thing she had learned in the last few weeks, it was that nothing about Simone was easy.

Oblivious to Irene’s question, Simone rushed out of the customs shed. The instant she emerged, her blue robe billowing, the two French reporters swung around in her direction. Louis saw her and darted through the snag of cars and rickshaws. Even before he reached her, he was holding out his arms. As she fell into them, the air clicked with a camera’s shutter.

“Lafont! Hey, Lafont, over here!” shouted the taller of the reporters, a swarthy man whose tone was as insolent as the tilt of his hat. “Is it true that you threatened Roger Merlin’s life when Madame Merlin broke off her engagement with you?”

Simone had mentioned nothing about being engaged, nor had she said a single thing about Louis Lafont the night she and Irene had confessed their lives to each other on the
Lumière
.

“Madame Merlin,” called the second reporter, using his compact bulk to push past the first. “Chiang Kai-shek himself has said you once told his wife you wanted to hire an assassin to kill your husband.” With an attitude as conciliatory as the other’s was impertinent, he asked, “Would you like to comment on this?”

“Who has not wanted to hire an assassin to kill my husband at some time or another, you unoriginal little …” Simone searched for just the right word and then spat it out with venom. “Hack!” Although the insult continued, it was muffled as Louis pressed Simone into the backseat of a silver and black sedan.

Cringing at Simone’s imprudence in rising to the reporters’ bait, Irene struggled against the congestion that was growing around the car. In her attempt to skirt it, she was caught in a flurry of sailors whose voices rang with accents from around the world. Red pom-poms flopped on their military caps as they scurried toward their ships near the barracks farther down the waterfront. Elbowing through them, trying to reach the sedan before the gendarme, whom she had spotted pushing past the two reporters, Irene started to panic. How were they going to slip into the jungle undetected with so many people watching them? Beyond a cluster of
nosy onlookers, she saw the gendarme shove a paper at Louis and heard Louis firmly declare, “The
commissaire
can wait until tomorrow. Madame Merlin needs her rest.”

Irene managed to get to the car and climb into the front passenger seat, beside an Annamite driver who already had the motor running. As she slammed the door shut, Louis said, “Tuan, take us to the hotel.”