The Map of Lost Memories (27 page)

He withdrew his trembling fingers from hers and lightly caressed her checked scarf as he whispered, “You have always been strong, Irene. You will recover from this too.”

Traces of a midnight chill clung to the warming air as she drew up a chair beside him. Together, they watched the first of the sunlight extinguish the gleam of the lamps in the sampans along the riverbank. She wanted to know why he had come, but there would be time to ask that later. They would have at least five days on the
Alouette
, depending on the rapids and the monsoon rains. Right now she just wanted to pretend that he was not dying. From the instant she boarded the steamer, she’d craved only this—for things between them to feel as they once had. “Simone is planning to sell the scrolls to start a new nationalist party in Cambodia,” she told him, as if she was curled up in the leather club chair in his study, coming to him as she so often had for the analysis that was the currency of their island nation.

Mr. Simms considered this revelation before asking, “What does she want for them?”

“The government’s coffers. Nothing less than the French Empire’s total humiliation.”

He chuckled. “I can’t say I was expecting to hear that.”

Mr. Simms was never amused when he felt threatened, and his humor lightened Irene’s spirits. “What
were
you expecting? She’s the most irrational person I’ve ever met. She takes pills as if they’re candy. Most of the time she’s a liability.”

“I know all of that, Irene.” This was said with unexpected compassion.

“You know?” Although Irene had considered this possibility, it still
made no sense. “Then why include her in this? Do you also know that I was nearly killed by her madman of a husband?”

“I was right about you. I knew that if anyone could do it, you could.”

“Do what?”

“Get her away from him. It was only a matter of time before he completely destroyed her, but what could I do? She would never have believed that I cared about her welfare. Then this opportunity came along.”

“Why
do
you care?”

“Good Lord, after what she’s been through, she still wants a revolution. The girl puts me to shame. And I thought bringing all of us back together one last time was ambitious.”

Irene glanced up and saw the wind pushing at wisps of his thinning hair, revealing the translucent, age-mottled skin beneath. Although his attention had wandered beyond the railing, he did not seem to see the flotilla of Cambodians paddling past in crude dugout canoes. She had no experience with cancer. She did not know what it took from a man at this stage, or how it seized his mind.

“Who is
all of us
?” she asked, reluctantly. “What do you mean?”

“Us?” he asked. He seemed confused, searching Irene’s face as if he did not recognize her.

A rash of panic warmed Irene’s skin. She could force herself to bear Mr. Simms’s physical decay. He was thin and small-boned, with a bantam physique. His body had never been a part of his power. But his mind. He was not just smart, he was razor sharp. If his infirmity took his mind, it would take away everything she understood about him. Everything she loved about him.

“Mr. Simms,” she said, tentatively.

He coughed, a withered hawking. “I’m sorry, my dear. My thoughts, they stray so easily these days.” Hoarsely, he asked, “How is Marc?”

The mist was breaking apart, but despite the rising sun and porcelain blue sky, there was no color on the river. “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”

“There was a time when it seemed for the best, keeping the two of you separate. You were each such a different part of my life,” he answered, sounding in control of his thoughts once again. “I remember after your
mother died. I have never seen a man so grief-stricken as your father was. And then he asked for my help to raise you. Me, of all people. I suppose he knew he could trust me, after the business of your mother’s kidnapping. And if something were to happen to him, you had no other family.” Fumbling with the top button of his coat, Mr. Simms said, “He had to be sure that someone would take care of you.”

“Let me.” Irene leaned in to help with the button, noticing the loose, crepelike skin of his throat.

“I didn’t understand then why I agreed to be your guardian, but I have come to believe that few men understand anything they are doing while it is happening. That is what deathbeds are for—reflection. And that’s why I can see my reasons so clearly now. After so many mistakes, you were the chance to do something right in my life. Unfortunately, I realized too late the harm I was doing to Marc.” His voice slowed and trailed off.

Irene wasn’t sure if she was ready to hear Mr. Simms confess the damage he had done to his son, so instead she asked, “Why do you want me to know about Marc now?”

Along the shore, manufacture was giving way to nature as factories were replaced by lean-to shacks on lanky stilts that grew like reeds out of the embankments. Mr. Simms’s eyes dipped with a flock of white birds as they swerved over the river. “My son deserves happiness. And you, my dear, have always given me such great happiness.”

“There was a moment when he seemed confused,” Irene said. “Seconds later, he was fine. But in those few seconds, I felt a flash of dread, as if everything I knew about myself had gone missing.”

Squinting at the silhouette of Irene’s body in the sun-framed doorway of his cabin, Marc rolled onto his side on his narrow bunk. “I’ve been down to check the hold. He brought a crate full of medicine with him. Morphine and laudanum. Bricks of Chinese pastes. There’s an entire box of needles, enough to stock a small hospital. Or better yet, sedate all of northeast Cambodia while we hunt for this temple. It’s a wonder he can even speak coherently.”

Irene sat on the side of the bed. “He is the last person who knew me as a child, as a daughter. Once he dies, that part of my life will disappear.”

“I can’t say I will be sorry when
that
part of my life is gone,” Marc said.

The shutters were closed, and through their slats, daylight carved the floor into a chessboard of warped wood planks. Overhead the fan negotiated with the musty air. Marc’s expression grew hard, as if he were waiting for her rebuke. But Irene simply asked, “Was he really that miserable of a father to you?”

“He had moments when he could be kind enough, if that’s what you need to hear.”

The rhythmic pulse of the steamer felt to Irene like the beating of her own heart. “I need to hear the truth.”

“The truth?” he whispered, sitting forward and drawing her into the warmth of his chest, wrapping his arms around her, containing her so that there could be no space between her body and his, no room for his words to stir desolately between them. “I figure Henry spent three to four months out of every year in Shanghai, and in that time, he would see me once or twice, at the most. I would be invited to his house for dinner, and he would ask me about school and my mother. Then, one visit when I was seventeen, he asked if I wanted to work for him. I did, I couldn’t help myself. I scarcely knew him, but he was my father, and I wanted to please him. I took on odd jobs at first, easy work, but gradually he gave me assignments he would trust to no one else.”

“What kinds of assignments?” Irene asked.

“They don’t matter. Or I should say, only one of them still matters. Eventually, Henry asked me to set up some burglaries.” Marc said this with force, as if he were about to share something that he had kept a secret for too long. “The targets were specific, city officials
and
Communists. He was selling guns to the nationalists as well as to the French navy at that time. This was not unusual for him. Henry was willing to negotiate with anyone, and he was aware that conflict is good for business. I think in a way he
enjoyed
putting his interests at risk. He always wanted more than money. He liked a challenge, even if he had to create it for himself. Even
if it meant peddling weapons to the opposition. But there had been some double-crossing behind his back, price-fixing and then reselling at a profit. He decided to make a statement. Make it known that he was in charge. Let his enemies know that no matter how invulnerable they felt, they had nowhere to hide, not even in their own homes.”

Marc was sweating now, and the dampness seeped through Irene’s blouse as he confessed, “This all made sense to me then. I was his son, and I was a son of Shanghai, so naturally it made sense. It took years for me to realize that other cities aren’t like this one. Corrupt, yes, a city can’t function if it’s not corrupt on some level. But there are degrees of corruption, and Shanghai sets the bar. The burglaries worked. The right people took heed. The Shanghailanders are well-versed in warnings, and they knew what his next step would be. He would cut them off completely. These men, these profiteers, they couldn’t afford to be cut off by Henry Simms. Around this time he sent me to Formosa to do a job any one of his lackeys could have done. While I was gone my house was broken into, and my wife was shot. ‘A tragic accident,’ the
Post
called it.” His voice was rough. “Murder is not an accident. I knew it was retaliation.”

“And you think it was Mr. Simms’s fault?”

“What kind of man brings his son into a world where something like that can happen?”

“He’s sorry,” Irene said.

“I understand what you want. You want me to forget the man I know. You want me to replace him with the man you know.” Marc trailed his finger along the sun-browned skin beneath the open collar of her blouse. “I can become a different person, Irene. I’m ready to try. But I can’t change who he was to me. I’m not sure that I even want to. And my fear is that you won’t be able to live with that version of him as a part of your life.”

The
Alouette
was a modest-size river steamer, and after dinner that night, the crew shifted tables and chairs to convert the dining room into a salon. Moroccan sailors in fiery West Indies bandannas played backgammon on the baize tops of folding game tables, and military officers drank cognac
and smoked Dominican cigars. Retreating to a chaise in the corner, Simone produced Roger’s memoir from a bag and studied its loose pages. She scribbled notes in a tablet like a dutiful schoolgirl, while on the far side of the room, Louis and Marc fell into conversation, discussing timber hitches versus bowlines. Marc had been reading Irene’s copy of
The Art of Travel
, and he wanted to know more about whirling to start a fire and bivouacking in wet weather. “In Shanghai I knew the back alleys to avoid,” he told Louis, “and every two-bit hatchet man with a derringer inside his coat pocket. But I wouldn’t last a day in the jungle.”

Irene could have joined the men, but reluctance held her back. Dinner had been awkward. They had waited for Mr. Simms, who did not come. Halfway through the meal, Irene sent a steward to check on him, and the steward informed her that he was sleeping. In his absence, Simone prattled on about her revolution. Louis, meanwhile, seemed to have decided that the best way to deal with Simone was to ignore her. Added to this, Marc was unusually quiet, and when Louis invited him for cigarettes and digestifs after dinner, he accepted quickly. Irene suspected that he needed some distance from her, and instinct told her to let him be for a while.

As she watched him talk with Louis about the expedition, admiring the way he was making her world his own, she was aware of an ache growing within her. It was true, what Marc had said. She did not want her own memories of Mr. Simms tainted by his. Needing air, she went outside and walked along the deck until she was beyond the voices in the makeshift salon. Her thoughts swayed with the motion of the water. Eventually, passengers and crew began to return to their cabins, everyone on the same deck, except for the Cambodians confined to the level below, since the steamer was too small to be divided into classes. Unsure if she would be welcome in Marc’s cabin tonight, Irene made her way around the deck so she could pass Mr. Simms’s door. It was open.

Propped on his side, his head resting on the concave surface of a lacquer pillow, Mr. Simms lay on his bed. A lantern hung in one corner of the dim room, and Irene was able to see a pipe on a tray that matched the pillow. Its stem was made of black-stained bamboo, and its white metal mount was inlaid with green stones. The tray also contained an opium kit, the needle arranged beside an ivory opium paste container carved with
herons, their wings spread in flight. There was a bowl scraper and a dish for collecting ashes, and inside the glass cone of a spirit lamp, a wick flicked the air with its spur of heat. The cabin smelled of the Chinese districts in Shanghai and Saigon, of
fumeries
awash in the odors of burnt molasses and old men.

A woman sat on a straight-backed chair beside Mr. Simms. Irene tensed as she recognized the sage green, ankle-strap shoes. She was the Cambodian who had been with Murat Stanić at her hotel’s terrace restaurant in Phnom Penh.

“Who are you?” Irene asked, remaining just inside the doorway.

“My name is Clothilde.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I take care of Henry.”

At the sound of his name, Mr. Simms attempted to speak, but his words slurred into silence. His eyes, although open, saw nothing beyond the pall of his intoxication. His chin was still rough with stubble, and this upset Irene. He was not a bum. He was a mandarin, wearing a padded robe of Qing silk, patterned with waves of gold thread. She said, “You’re not doing a very good job. He hasn’t even been shaved today. Are you a nurse?”

Clothilde appeared to be in her late twenties, close to Irene’s age. She wore a simple but expensive blouse and trousers, and on the ring finger of her right hand, an enormous emerald that could not be ignored. She smiled a spare, polite smile. “He can tell you all about me tomorrow, after he’s had a chance to rest.”

Irene could not admit to this stranger how afraid she was that Mr. Simms might die in the night. How worried she was about everything she might not have the chance to know. “I want you to tell me all about you right now.”

Clothilde bobbed her chin toward the end of the bed. It was only then that Irene noticed Simone on the floor, lying on a sheet, flat on her back. Dressed in a long white nightgown, with her eyes closed and her arms at her sides, she looked as if she had been laid out in a funeral parlor for viewing. Unable to picture Simone trekking day after arduous day
through the jungle, Irene felt weary from the burden the other woman had become.