The Madwoman of Thu Duc – Part 4

The road was dry and we made good time.

“Your sister told me that you and Robert had a house in Saigon proper. And yet you don’t live there?” asked Etienne. We were waiting for the ferry to take the car across the Dong Ngai river.

The long drive would have been a good opportunity to tell him all about my life in Cochin China, to explain what a wonderful thing Robert had built here, what a clever man he’d been. In only eight years the plantation at Long Thanh had become one of the richest latex producers in the area. We had built a school and a church and even a pagoda for the workers. We had a clinic with a doctor who came in from Saigon twice a week, and a brand new set of living quarters for the tappers and the driers. And yes, we’d built a grand house in Saigon on the Rue Richaud. But I couldn’t speak. I didn’t dare. Such a war raged inside of me: a great battle between attraction and repulsion. It fed back on itself, like a centipede eating its own tail.

At the bank of the river, with a cool breeze coming off the water, I felt calmer and more able to push the torment aside.

“We do. A big house. But I don’t go there anymore. Not since Robert died.”

Etienne looked at me with a tender, solicitous expression. “Because it reminds you of him?”

“Perhaps,” I said, lying. “But the business needs constant supervision. You can’t just leave things and expect them to run smoothly on their own. Life here is just like nature. If you look away for even just one moment… the vines grow up and strangle everything.”

How could I begin to explain that I wasn’t that woman anymore? The one in the evening gown. The one sipping Kir Royale on the terrace at the race track. The one who sat, smile fixed into place, while the wives of the colons lounged in the shade at the Cercle Sportif gossiping about lazy servants and how cosmetics ruined in the heat.

And how could I tell him the truth? That I didn’t miss Robert. I wasn’t sane enough to miss him. I didn’t cry for him anymore. What I missed was clarity of mind. What I missed was the ability to sit for five minutes quietly without being assaulted by the visions and the voices and the fever. What I missed was falling asleep without the opium to help me do it.

“It sounds like a hard life for a woman, Claire. Isolated. Lonely…” he trailed off.

There wasn’t the slightest possibility of being able to tell this man the truth. Instead I shrugged and laughed it off. “I’m too busy to be lonely, ma frere.”

Once we’d crossed the river, I asked Quan to put the roof of the car down. The air would be cooler on the road to Long Thanh and the afternoon had become overcast.

Here there were no more rice paddies. Flanking both sides of the road, were the endless ordered forests of rubber trees.

“How long until we reach the plantation?” Etienne called above the whistling wind and the roar of the engine.

“We’re in it.”

He turned around in the seat and looked at the long, straight road that led back to Bien Hoa. “All of it?”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, all of it.”

“All this is Robert’s land?” There was incredulity in his voice.

“It was. Now it’s mine. This is Estella.”