I was pregnant when I met him. A Frenchman’s child, I told him. A general. It was more than enough to keep a junior officer at arm’s length. But still I smiled at him and he came to the noodle shop for his lunch. I was in my early forties by then but I was blessed with good skin and a youthful face. I often claimed to be in my late twenties. The French had no idea how old we were. We were a different species.
Our head of clandestine operations had pointed him out to me. The Frenchman was tall, good looking. But, more importantly, he was a courier. He had his pouch with him all the time and, in the daytime, an armed aide. We spoke, me with my poor French. My bashfulness. I knew how to flirt by then. Knew what effect I had on a man. And then, one day just before he left for Saigon, I took his hand and put it on my belly.
‘What the …?’ he said.
‘It’s a pillow,’ I told him. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you. I wear it to keep away the soldiers. A terrible thing happened to me once. So this is what I do to stay safe. Nobody else knows. Only you. I really want you to know. I hope you don’t mind.’
It always worked. It was a big ego boost to the men who had little success with women. And I could tell he was new at this romance game. In no time at all we were together. Of a night, my round pregnancy pillow sat comically on the chair beside the bed. We laughed about the fact that I’d been pregnant to that scoundrel of a general for three years without a break. He thought it was a lovely story. That I was lovely. He was wild for me. I told him that he was the first man I had volunteered myself to. Such a confession tends to make a man stupid and careless.
He’d returned from Paris that particularly important night. He came straight to my room. He was still in uniform. He was carrying a briefcase. I’d been through his pouches before but I had the feeling this was something much more important. I produced a bottle of champagne and told him a West African member of the French legion had given it to me one day as he was about to board the ferry. I thought he must have stolen it so I didn’t feel guilty to have brought it home. I’d saved it for a special day. I honestly believed this was it. We drank. The excitement of the day. The heat. The exhaustion of love. He fell asleep. I knew it was a sleep deeper than any he’d ever known.
By the time he woke, the briefcase was locked and the papers seemingly untouched, and I was still naked beside him. But he was late. An Aeronavale was waiting to take him to Vietnam. Everything rested on the contents of that briefcase. Everything.
‘Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle.’
Daeng was stirred from her reverie. A dark shape loomed in front of her, a silhouette against the lights at the riverside and a rising moon.
‘Mon capitaine,’ she replied.
‘One of thousands, I don’t doubt,’ he said.
‘I’m impressed that you found me,’ said Daeng.
‘When the wolf scents blood …’
‘I’m not bleeding, monsieur.’
‘Oh, yes you are. You may not admit it. Not yet. But you have been bleeding for many decades. You are still bleeding for all my brothers you led to their deaths.’
‘And who’s bleeding for all my brothers and sisters?’ she asked.
The Frenchman took two paces towards her. She could make out the outline of a stick or a bar in his hand. He lifted it and rested it on his shoulder. It seemed heavy. Iron, perhaps. Madame Daeng had no doubt whatsoever what he intended to do with it.
‘Two hundred of your kind are not worth one Frenchman,’ he said.
Daeng laughed.
‘That’s the attitude that made you so popular in the colonies, my captain. The attitude that lost you Dien Bien Phu. Or is that a touchy subject?’
‘We did not lose that battle.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘The history books would have it otherwise.’
‘It was the Americans and the British who lost it.’
‘No it wasn’t. It was arrogance. You assumed you’d have air support from the Allies so your generals dug in to a non-defendable position. They knew for sure their old friends would get them out of yet another mess.’
‘I’m not here to have this conversation with you.’
‘Yes you are. This is one of those “get it all out in the open” murders my husband hates so much. If you’d wanted me dead without any exchanges you’d have crept up behind me and cracked my skull in two. You have things to say. Perhaps you want to hear my confession before you dispatch me. You want to justify my death with some sort of righteousness. Well, you’re in the wrong place.’
He took another pace forward. He had it in mind to strike her. She distracted him.
‘How many others know?’ she asked.
He stopped.
‘Know what?’
‘That it was you who lost them the battle.’
‘I … what are you talking about?’
‘Oh, do stop it. Surely you aren’t still denying it after all these years? Do you want me to remind you? You’d attended the meeting in London. Winston Churchill had categorically refused to give your troops any aerial support in Vietnam. You were the harbinger of that bad news. You carried the documents. You were flown directly to Bangkok and from there the shuttle to Pakse. You should have taken a night flight to Saigon but you refused. You said it was too dangerous to fly at night relying on instruments. You said your cargo was too valuable to lose. But all that was a lie. Your real reason was that you wanted to come to me. To spend the night with your little native girl.’
‘I never did such a thing.’
He shifted uneasily. It was the first indication that he wasn’t completely in control of his emotions.
‘You were head over heels in love with me,’ she said. ‘You told me so many times. You-’
‘Silence!’
‘You’d arranged travel documents. You’d bought me a little cottage in Provence.’
‘You …’
He was one metre from her, the bar raised. He was close enough for her to see the blood vessels in his eyes, to hear the rasp of his breath. But she leaned back on the swing, her feet firmly on the ground and she smiled. And whether it was the memory of that smile or merely a desire to prolong this execution — dreamed of for a lifetime — he hesitated.
‘When did you realize it was me?’ she asked, her voice still calm, her smile still held out in front of her like a shield.
Tears appeared in the old man’s eyes. He lowered the metal bar.
‘I fought it,’ he said. ‘I considered every other possibility. There were others at that meeting in London. There could have been a spy. It wasn’t necessarily me. It wasn’t necessarily you. And so, with this colossal doubt inside me, I set out to find who else could have leaked the information. Nobody suspected me. My name never came up in the endless debates. I was trusted. I was even promoted after it all. I was given more and more responsibility. But still I doubted myself. And, one by one, I eliminated every other possibility until there was only you.’
‘You poor man.’
‘The weight of the secret became a tumour and it is ready to kill me. That’s why I’m here. You are the reason I had a miserable life. You are the reason I shall die without a family. But all I ask in return for this wretchedness is that you answer one question.’
‘And I know what that is.’
‘Are you so clever? What is the question, my little whore?’
She pushed back with her feet a little more and leaned forward.