The Madwoman of Thu Duc – Part 8

We played a few hands of gin rummy on the terrace. At eight the wind foretelling an evening thunderstorm came up and, although it was cooler, the gusts threatened to blow the playing cards off the table.

I suggested that perhaps Etienne was tired after all his traveling and the heat, but the brandy had made him voluble. In truth, my desire for the opium pipe nagged at the edges of my resistance. Despite the drop in temperature and the breeze that whispered through the screened windows of the living room, sweat beaded my forehead. We sat opposite each other and I nursed my brandy, trying to hide the tremors in my hands.

“I noticed a photographic album on the desk in Robert’s study.”

“Yes! Would you like to see it?” I stood up on uncertain legs and went into the study to fetch it. “He bought one of those Brownie cameras the last time he was in France and became quite an avid amateur photographer. There’s a place down on Catinat Street that developed his film.”

Returning with the large black book, I handed it to Etienne. He had officer’s hands – white against the black fabric of the cover. As his fingers curled inward to open the book, a wave of dizziness took me but, as I went to sit back down, his hand caught my wrist. The gesture was so casual – so intimate and unconscious – it shocked me.

“Sit by me while I look at them. The pictures have no captions. You can explain what I’m looking at.”

My throat was dry, as if I had suddenly been entombed in salt or ice and I’d been drained of all moisture. I settled on the sofa at a little distance. He had forgotten he still held my wrist, his mind so taken up by the small, hazy images. It wasn’t until he had to turn the page that he released it.

“What is this?” he asked, pointing to a picture.

I peered at it. “Oh, that’s the funeral procession of a famous Chinese merchant. It was taken in Cholon – the Chinese market town very close to Saigon.”

“And this? How extraordinary! Look at the masks they’re wearing!”

I inhaled, then blinked to focus. “Yes… they are actors in a traditional opera. They travel around from place to place in caravans. A bit like gypsies in Europe.”

Etienne turned one of the broad cardboard pages. The wafted scent of hair oil mixed with a hint of sweat and caught in my lungs. He stared at the photographs, suddenly quiet. I glanced down and realized why.

It was a collection of images of the Moi tribe, which had territory just north of Bien Hoa. Many of the photographs were of women with bare breasts.

“The Moi,” I said, my voice hitching in the dryness of my throat. “They… well, they are natives and have different customs to the people in the towns. It’s a very complex society, very layered. A bit like ours in a way, but…different…”

“What are they doing…it looks like…”

“They’re dancing. They have ritual dances and drink a very strong wine made from rice. The cook will get you some, if you’d like…”

I could not finish. The need – the awful screaming need – flared up like a gasoline fed fire. I wanted him. God, but I wanted him: to press myself against him, to taste his skin, to graze my teeth against the side of his face, to feel his hands on me, to be devoured by him. And the despicable voice in my head – its whisper grew in volume. ‘He wants what you want. He’s a man: a man has needs, appetites, desires. He’s lonely. He misses his wife. You can pretend to be her; you can be his lost Elise. It’s what he wants…‘

The room swam around me as I stood up. The blood fed all the worst parts of me instead of those I needed. I clutched the arm of the sofa and waited for the dizziness to pass.

“What is the matter? Are you ill?”

“No, no. Just… ” I straightened up and attempted to laugh, but what emerged sounded tinny, unnatural. “Just tired I think. You will forgive me if I say goodnight and go to bed, won’t you?”

“Of course I will. Do you need me to call someone?”

He had stood and slipped a hand beneath my arm to steady me. I must have gone very pale indeed, because he wore an expression of deep concern.

But – Christ – his touch burned. The closeness of him.

I inched away, freeing myself from his solicitous contact. “Not at all,” I replied through clenched teeth. Trying, with every shred of reserve I had, to act like a rational human being. “I’ll…I’ll say good night then, Etienne.”

He step forward to kiss me on the cheek, the way any relative would, but I turned and pushed past him, feeling into the hallway and down the corridor to my room. Reaching it, I shut the door, locked it behind me, and crawled on my hands and knees to where my purse lay at the bottom of the bed. Mai had already laid out a tray with my pipe.

* * *

The thick, bitter vapours pulsed and writhed like a trapped, living thing in the depth of my lungs until I exhaled in a long, low sigh. Almost at once my body relaxed, melting into the soft feather mattress. I could not even find the will to undress, but lay there with my head propped up on a Chinese pillow, and kicked my shoes off. They thudded distantly, on someone else’s floor, in someone else’s house, in a world far away.

I felt the bruised skin of my waist glow like the numerals of a wristwatch in the dark. A circular marking of how the stars revolved around my sides. A distant rumble of thunder echoed in the timbers of the house and the rain began to soak the tiles above my head. Faintly, I remembered that the windows had been left open and the rain would come in. In my room, the breeze filtered through the screen, billowing the mosquito netting like clouds of smoke in the weak, bronze light of the oil lamp at my bedside.

I dozed, I dreamed. Of the rubber trees shaking in the storm, of their rich wet leaves sticking and slapping against one another. Of the earth drinking in the sky’s rich warm wine and taking it down into its endlessly deep belly, where the loam was dark and sweet with death.