The Silk Merchant's Daughter (20 page)

Nicole and Duong walked from the highlands, where wild rhododendrons in the north-west gave way to the lower hills. There, monkeys, bats and flying squirrels leapt through the air while giant ferns reached for the sky. Where the dwarf bamboo sprouted up they had to watch out for yellow marsh water. If she hadn’t felt so scared it would have been beautiful.

She was hungry too and, beneath what seemed like perpetual clouds, they ate dry biscuits and drank only the smallest amount of water. Hour after hour, she suspected he might be about to attack her and as they lay beneath a canopy of white blossom she longed to be wandering free in the streets of Hanoi. She could not think ahead, but kept one eye on the trio of vultures following their progress and the other eye on him, hoping all the time that the awful birds would not soon be swooping for their prey.

At least it wasn’t too hot; it could only have been about twenty-five degrees. When they eventually padded over a deep carpet of lush grass on the edge of a clearing and reached bamboo fencing, they had been walking for nearly a week. Luckily the monsoon rains were a little way off or the whole week would have been hell. Her heart lifted as a silver pheasant rose from the undergrowth, its long white tail as elegant as any bird she’d seen. It looked as if they’d reached the outskirts of a village so at least there might be a chance of a bowl of rice and some kind of bed for the night. But as they drew closer and none of the usual signs of village life appeared, she
began to work out that this was no ordinary village. Closer still, she saw guards with rifles placed at intervals. The place was eerily silent. She stopped walking and the man prodded her in the back.

‘Re-education camp,’ he said.

Nicole had heard of these dreadful places, but had never believed the rumours. Now it looked like they might have been true all along. They were allowed entrance by the guards and, as she drew closer, the bleak appearance of the camp sent a chill right through her. From her months with the troupe she knew re-education was used as a means of revenge, repression and indoctrination. Thousands had been imprisoned with neither charge nor trial. And here the thin grey prisoners’ faces betrayed the awful truth. This was where French soldiers and wealthy Vietnamese mandarin families were brainwashed into obedience: men, women and children too. Forced to show gratitude for the harsh treatment meted out to them, they were also made to plead guilty to their so-called crimes. Most looked barely alive.

‘Those who do not comply are sent to a reprisal camp,’ the man said and smiled, clearly enjoying her unease. ‘Much worse.’

Nicole’s throat tightened. Was he going to leave her here? As he walked her through the camp, she tried to catch the eye of a shackled Frenchwoman, but the empty eyes conveyed a loss more terrible than the loss of mere physical freedom.

‘Why am I here?’

‘I told you. I am taking you to Trần.’

She gasped. ‘Surely he’s not a prisoner?’

The man laughed and pointed to the other side of a clearing where a Vietminh was inspecting a line of gaunt French prisoners.

‘He is
cán-bộ
. In charge of re-education.’

Her scalp pricked with apprehension. ‘A political cadre?’

She watched as Trần called out one of the men from the line. The man held out a hand in front of himself as if to guide his steps, but he stumbled, and by the look of his blackened face, it seemed as if he might have been blinded. Trần stepped forward and she hoped he was going to help the man; instead he handed a rifle to a woman standing in the line. Nicole watched as Trần spoke to the woman and then pointed at the man. The woman shook her head. He pulled a small boy from the line who couldn’t have been more than five or six. The woman screamed and, hearing her voice, the man shouted out.

Nicole took a step forward but her companion pulled her back.

The reality of what happened next came crashing down on her. She searched for some clue in Trần’s face, watching in horror as he snatched the rifle back and called a guard who brought out two small bamboo cages. Nicole’s temples began to throb as one of the cages was put over the woman’s head and secured with rope. A plank of wood was attached to either side of the cage, pressing down on her shoulders. They did exactly the same to the young child. Nicole lost all sense of accurate time. It seemed to be taking so long, yet at the same time it was already over. Sickened by the naked fear in the child’s wide eyes as he was led away, she took in the weeping woman and the blind man on his knees, pleading in French.

‘Why?’

‘The father has refused to become a new man. He is a reactionary who has violated camp rules.’

‘But why punish his wife and children?’

The man shrugged.

‘What’s going to happen to them?’

‘They will be made to stand in the river for twenty-four hours.’

She couldn’t keep the shock from her voice. ‘The water is freezing. They’ll drown.’

The man shrugged again. ‘Come. Let us join Trần.’

Nicole folded her arms around herself, hardly believing Trần could have ordered this. The memory of nearly drowning in the Perfume River came back sharply. The terrible pressure, the booming sound of the river. Feeling as if her legs were made of stone, she forced herself to move. Now, more than at any other time, she wished she could simply return to her old life. When she reached Trần she could not keep the dismay from her voice. ‘I don’t understand. Why hurt the child?’

He flicked a lock of hair away and wiped the moisture from his brow. ‘You saw those cages?’

She nodded.

‘Those cages belong to the French. They have used them for decades. On men, women and children. Now let them get a taste of their own medicine.’

She stared at him, trying to find the man she had known. How had he become so cruel? He returned her gaze and she remembered his gentleness with Yvette, but she could also see that his eyes, once so passionate about the cause, now seemed pitiless.

‘What?’ he said.

She shook her head slowly.

‘Remember, Nicole. I said there would come a time when you would have to choose.’

Her jaw stiffened. ‘I thought I had chosen.’

‘It is a choice that has to be reaffirmed.’

‘I’ve been with the theatre troupe for six months. If you don’t believe me now, you never will.’

‘We shall see.’

Devastated by what she had seen, she knew she was on shaky ground, but decided the only way was to brave it out.
She threw back her shoulders and spoke in a calm voice. ‘I am true to the cause, Trần.’

He beckoned a group of his Vietnamese guards to come over. ‘We have many hundreds of French hostages now and gaining more every day. You can be useful to us.’

‘Doing what?’

The men gathered round and nodded to each other.

‘You will soon see.’

‘Tell me now, Trần.’

‘Very well. You are to join the
Bordel Mobile de Campagne.
’

‘A mobile field brothel? You aren’t serious.’ She almost laughed.

‘We need information. You are French.’

He smiled, and she reeled at the look in his eyes.

‘You mean it?’

He glanced at the other men and one or two of them smirked. ‘I think it’s amusing, especially as it was your own father who, not so long ago, brought over hundreds of black girls from Africa to service the French.’

‘Not my father.’

‘Defending him now?’

She recalled seeing her father with one of those black women and blinked away the image. Lisa had mentioned Giraud’s involvement too. Is that what her father had been doing? Procuring prostitutes with Giraud?

‘It is the truth,’ Trần said and smiled again.

‘I won’t do it.’

‘It has been decided. Now come. I will show you where you are to sleep. Tomorrow you will be cleaned up and taken to where you will volunteer for your task. Here is the clothing you will wear when you reach the French post. And remember, we shall know if you betray us.’

For the first part of the night Nicole could not prevent her thoughts from churning. How naive to have thought she could keep the two halves of her life separate. Of course she’d had to choose. Of course. But horrified by Trần’s behaviour, she now felt that she’d picked the wrong side. It was as if the war had let loose a slew of monsters, and she couldn’t be sure if the brothel was a test or a trick. They were sending her into French-held territory, where she might divulge information about Vietnamese locations to save her own skin, and yet she was a wanted person, and that meant the French must surely imprison her. Trần had to know that.

She tensed as she listened to the sounds of snoring rising from the tent next to hers, though it wasn’t much of a cover, simply tarpaulin flung over four or five bamboo stakes. She crawled out of her tent, then glanced about, her breathing shallow. Lit only by a weak moon in an overcast sky, mist slid between the tents. Even the guards on duty had fallen asleep, but when she saw a dark figure her heart almost stopped.

An owl hooted. She jumped. The man came closer and she saw it was Trần. He stepped forward, put a finger to his lips and motioned to her to follow him as he crept round the bamboo fence behind the tents, testing for a stake that had not been firmly hammered into the ground. Every step seemed deafening, the leaves and twigs echoing as they crunched underfoot. Though she saw no one else awake as they stalked the perimeter, her imagination ran wild as she thought she saw and heard things that were not really there.

He found the loose spikes he had been searching for and lifted them clear of the earth, then ran his fingertips across her lips. ‘Go now, Nicole. Tomorrow they will look for you. You must get far away and quickly.’

The loose spikes gave her little space, but maybe enough to push through on her belly. Did he really mean to let her go?
What if it was a trap? The thought stuck. She’d have her back to him. He had a gun. Surely he wasn’t about to risk his own reputation?

‘Hurry,’ he said and gave her a little push. ‘Crouch down. Steal through.’

He would say he’d shot her while she was trying to escape. At any moment she’d hear the shot.

‘Why did that man bring me here?’ she hissed.

‘The party suspect betrayal by mixed-race members. Now there are reprisals. You are not safe with the troupe. I had to get you away. Take this.’ He handed her a compass and her hands were shaking as she took it. ‘Head south. There are some French clothes in this bag.’

She took the bag, and his voice, already low, dropped further. ‘Make haste. Do not stop. Do not sleep.’

She thought of her antique purse with the photograph of Mark inside it. ‘I need to get my purse.’

‘No time.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

He stepped away. ‘I care for you, Nicole, very much. I always have. I will come for you when it is over.’

Over the following days Nicole moved as quickly as she was able, creeping over perilous land, often losing her footing and sliding into steep wet ditches. Cold and wet, she learnt to scramble out and grew better at picking her way through jungle and swamp. She found ways to sneak across mountain streams, and begged for food in the tiny villages where some of the people were friendly.

Each time the sound of her footsteps set off a troupe of howling monkeys she paused in fear. She never knew who might be following, nor who she might encounter, but worked out that her only chance was to make it back to Hanoi. If it was
a chance at all. Never had home seemed more appealing, and when she found herself longing to see it again, the image of it comforted her. As she walked she thought of Lisa, who had always been so solidly on her side.

A memory came back of the time they’d lived in Huế and she’d been in the garden with Lisa. It had been early and as the sun came up she’d watched it paint the edges of the trees with a frill of pink light. The breeze filtered through the garden and she’d felt uplifted. A little bit of heaven that didn’t happen every day.

‘Here I can still feel the voice of God in the sound of the wind,’ Lisa had said, ‘and his spirit in the endless sky.’

Nicole had joined in. ‘Here I can still smell the fragrance of lotus blossom and imagine the lotus ponds and the little frogs leaping and splashing.’

Lisa hugged her. ‘How poetic we are today. Let’s take a little walk and then I’ll give you the most beautiful French plait of any girl in your class.’

The memory faded and now Nicole thought about Trần. It was not a comforting thought at all. Had his behaviour been a masquerade? Yet those people he punished? No deception there. She had to force herself to stop thinking and concentrate on getting home.

Home. She thought of it all the time, and even when her eyelids were bitten and so swollen with dirt she could barely see, she stumbled on. Her waterlogged boots fell apart and the sores on her legs became infected, yet despite the savage pain she continued to walk. Winded by fear each time she heard signs of life, she took refuge inside bamboo thickets or behind liana-cloaked trees, only stopping to rest when she could go no further.

One day while gazing down at the little dykes and paddy fields she noticed woodsmoke and saw the roofs of a ruined
village still smouldering. She crossed a stream and, closer up, spotted a French soldier dragging a woman from where she’d been hiding. Horrible, horrible sight. Still in her nightclothes, the woman had long chestnut hair, lighter than was usual, and must once have been pretty. She stumbled and fell backwards to the ground, then reached out her thin arms, pleading and begging as the soldier pulled her to her feet again. Nicole closed her eyes, unable to witness what was coming. But when she heard the woman’s scream, she forced herself to look. The screaming stopped quickly. The woman’s face had grown rigid. She must have known what the soldier was going to do and was not about to give him the pleasure of her fear. She repeatedly spat in his face as he pushed her against a hut, lifted her nightdress and raped her. Then he shot her in the head. Blood. So much blood. Heartsick, Nicole doubled over. The woman had been somebody’s wife, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s mother. How could men do it? She felt the rage crushing her chest and at that moment she hated men. All men. She wanted to slit their throats, and worse, in revenge for what had taken place.