The Map of Lost Memories (17 page)

Irritably, she thought back on the previous evening. After returning from the Chinese district, she had tried to keep Simone with her. Irene was hoping she could wear Simone down into admitting the real reason why she hadn’t told Irene about her plan to meet up with Louis, but she had not been able to stop Simone from retreating to her room. Taking up a post in the hotel salon behind the day’s
newspaper, Irene eventually observed Louis arrive from his dinner with Murat Stanić, and a few minutes later, as soon as she entered the upstairs corridor, she knew that he had gone to Simone’s room. She could hear Simone shouting at him for leaving her all alone to explain things to Irene.

At the sound of her name, Irene grew still, but as if Simone sensed her nearby, her voice dropped, and Irene heard nothing more. She went back to her own room, troubled. She could do no more than guess at what Simone and Louis were to one another. Old flames, if what the reporter on the docks had shouted was true. But what did that mean now? The only connection Irene was sure of was that they were both from Siem Reap and had grown up around Angkor Wat. Lying in bed, she could easily imagine the claim Louis must already be staking as Simone told him about the lost temple.

Now, even the morning air was making her uneasy, lank with a gauze from poppies stewing in the opium factories on the river. Irene watched the Hindus setting up their stalls so they could spend another day selling tobacco, and the dozen or so Europeans at the tables around her, all dressed in white as if they were the chorus in some colonial Greek tragedy. After the commotion at the docks the previous day, she had steeled herself for another intrusion by the pushier of the two reporters, or perhaps a gendarme assigned to keep an eye on her. Instead, she was sitting out in the open, completely unobserved, and this made her uncomfortable, as if something were being plotted behind her back at the police station.

Irene knew she was being paranoid, but she’d been thrown off balance by the past twenty-four hours. She and Simone should have been on their way to Cambodia. Instead, she had the entire empty day ahead of her. She could try to track down Marc Rafferty, but she still wasn’t sure why she wanted to see him. To find out what she was up against, or was that an excuse because she had been attracted to him in Shanghai? If the latter, she could not afford the distraction. She was annoyed with herself, for letting her emotions override practical need, and she decided, as she finished breakfast, that the most productive thing she could do was shop. She had sorted through the wardrobe she’d brought with her and had not found a single item appropriate for dinner with Louis. He needed to understand,
with no room for discussion, that she was in charge. She had long ago discovered that wearing the right dress was one of the easiest ways for a woman to take control of a situation.

The Rue Catinat, she knew, was Saigon’s equivalent of the Rue de la Paix, the most fashionable of Parisian shopping districts. Walking beneath the branches of tamarind trees, heavy with brown pods, she studied windows rich with Delphos tea gowns, strings of Venetian beads, and opera capes of gold lamé. But none of it felt right to her. It all seemed intended to distance a woman from the Orient, where alleys between the marble façades of jewelry and fur shops displayed brass gods and Tonkinese embroidery. The darkened interiors of these side lanes were hung with red paper lanterns that made them resemble small temples. Irene’s intention was not to isolate herself from this real Indochina. She wanted to appear as if she belonged to it—deserving of the part of it that would soon belong to her. Finally, she entered one of the shops and hoped that the proprietress would understand her request.

The imperious, slouch-bosomed Frenchwoman in charge of the boutique did not. She insisted that Irene try on the requisite white of the tropics—flared skirts with hems to the ground, daring skirts with hems that quivered at the knee—but they all made her feel like a character in a nursery rhyme, as if she should have been tending a flock of sheep. The madame then pulled out every color of the rainbow, and Irene hated them all, especially the “à la mode” Kelly green. “I look like a wealthy leprechaun,” she said, frustrated. “Madame, you are not listening to me. I want something Asiatic. If you don’t have anything like this, tell me and I can try somewhere else.”

Equally frustrated but unwilling to spurn a sale, the madame ordered her Chinese shopgirl into the back room. The girl scuttled out with a tumble of smoky black silk and unfurled it on the counter. The moment Irene saw the ice-blue beads, fire-polished glass the exact color of her eyes, sewn into the mandarin collar, she knew she had found what she wanted.

“It was made for a
fête costumée
, what you English call a masquerade ball,” the madame said with censure, while Irene drew the curtain on the
dressing area. “My customer changed her mind once she tried it on. As you will see, it is not suitable for a European.”

The costume was not a dress, although the tunic and trousers could be mistaken for one, especially at night. It was a variation on the traditional outfit worn by Annamite women. Instead of long, tight sleeves, the fabric formed caps over Irene’s shoulders, like the petals of a lotus bud. The tunic hem fell to her calves and was slit up the sides to a pair of Chinese button knots at the hips, exposing the flow of the trousers with each step she took. As she turned away from the mirror and stepped out of the dressing area, the madame’s face bore the kind of disapproval Irene had hoped to see.

This was the sort of outfit that could not be worn by the matronly Western women who frequented this store. It was made for an Oriental woman, or for Irene, whose body was slender and lithe. It gave superiority to its wearer, but only if she wore it with grace. Irene did. This would be Louis Lafont’s first disadvantage. “It’s perfect,” she said.

“It fits you well enough,” conceded the madame, grudgingly.

Irene had the costume sent to the hotel, and as she left the shop, she ignored the solicitations of passing rickshaw drivers as she made her way up the Rue Catinat toward Boulevard Norodom. She walked quickly into the whipping tropical wind, in an attempt to fend off the anxiety that was building as the time to meet with Louis approached. Around her, gusts bowed the high branches of plane trees, bougainvillea petals blew against the pocked walls, and the sky began to fade with the daylight darkness that comes right before a storm. As she reached Notre Dame Square across from the post office, she looked up to see dragonflies circling the cathedral spires, streaming under a pair of skyward crosses.

Then came a dying of the wind, trapping a stillness beneath the black mantle of the clouds. The first raindrop fell onto her forearm, a bead of water so heavy it felt as if it would leave a bruise. She began running toward the post office. It was only a dozen yards away, but by the time she reached the awning above its front steps, she was soaking wet. As she
stood in the shelter waiting out the storm, the air was drenched with the muddling smell of soggy leaves and creosote. It was as if she could feel the slick scallops of mold accumulating beneath eaves, the woolen rot eating away at foundations of the city. Louis Lafont, of all people to have become involved. How easily he could ruin everything.

When Irene arrived at the Continental Hotel at eight, Simone and Louis were not yet there. As she followed the waiter across the open terrace, a red-faced colonial with a handlebar mustache tipped his head in appreciation while his beefy wife, wearing a puffed satin gown, pretended not to notice. Irene’s weakened confidence was bolstered by this evidence that her costume was a success.

Seated at a table near the wrought-iron railing that parted the terrace from the street, she ordered a double whiskey to further shore herself up. Down the sidewalk a pack of coolies milled about, gangly limbs draped over the uptilted shafts of their rickshaws. Native boys hovered on corners, waving newssheets at Europeans arriving at the restaurants, and gnarled men in black robes sauntered by, idly hawking stone Buddhas. An evening wind had scooped the worst of the heat out of the city, and the air was now limpid and almost cool. Beneath the potted palms that surrounded the tables, incense burned in shallow clay dishes. The mild fragrance reminded Irene of the Khmer wing at the Brooke Museum, and at this memory she felt a twinge of nostalgia for how straightforward her life had once been. As she spotted Louis crossing the square, she raised her glass and gulped.

His long stride was quick and purposeful. He wore a linen evening suit, cut to his trim frame and carefully pressed in a way that Irene did not associate with scholars, who usually had more important matters than their appearances on their minds. “Good evening, Mademoiselle Blum,” he said.

“Please, call me Irene.”

He scanned the terrace. “Simone is not here?”

“I thought she would be coming with you.”

Absently, Louis reached for a chair. “Then you haven’t seen her today?”

“Do you think something happened at the police station?” Irene asked, as the fear of what Simone might have revealed to the authorities pushed its way forward again. “Surely we’d know if she’d been detained.”

Louis’s features were narrow and sharply defined, giving his expression an intensity that made her edgy as his eyes moved from the blue beads of her costume to the solemn set of her mouth. She realized that he was unaffected by how she was dressed. Nor was he distracted by her hair drawn back to emphasize her high cheekbones, or the black crystal earrings she had selected for the way they outlined the curve of her neck. “Would they have any reason to detain her?” he asked.

Irene had to give him credit. Even Mr. Simms could be diverted to a degree by a pretty dress. She studied Louis’s angular face, trying to determine if he knew the truth about Roger’s death. But his thoughts were inscrutable as he raised his hand to summon the waiter and ordered a Dubonnet for himself and another whiskey for Irene. When she didn’t answer, he continued, “Would your worry have anything to do with this temple you think is hidden in the jungles of Stung Treng?”

Irene’s hunch was right, Simone
had
done it—given away Irene’s secret with complete disregard for her feelings. “I find it interesting that she told you about the temple, but she didn’t say a word to me about your meeting us in Saigon.” She paused as their drinks arrived, served by a man whose open-topped turban revealed his oiled black hair tied into a Psyche knot. “Why is that, do you suppose?”

“She must have known how you’d respond.”

“What do you mean?”

“She told me how upset you became in Cholon yesterday. You don’t want me coming with you. I understand, naturally. If this had been my discovery, I wouldn’t want to share it either. But it’s too late, Simone’s already told me. I plan to be there if and when you find this temple.”

His presumption was infuriating. “The scrolls are not—”

“Scrolls?” Louis sounded stunned.

“She didn’t tell—”

“What scrolls?”

“I thought—” Irene glanced around, flustered, and caught sight of Simone coming past the far side of the theater into Garnier Square, a sailor hooked on each arm. Her silver dress shivered with glacial strands of crystal beads. Her jeweled headband formed a fallen halo around her hair, and her boots flashed their polished buckles. As she shed the sailors, Louis leaned forward, drawn by the tether of her approach. Though his eyes were on Simone, he said to Irene, “I am going to want to know all about these scrolls of yours before the night is through.”

Simone did not look like a woman who had spent the day at a police station being questioned about her husband’s murder. She cast a haughty gaze around the terrace before settling it on Louis and declaring, “I met the most wonderful Yugoslavian couple down from Shanghai at the gaming tables. They invited me to go dancing with them later at the Cascades. You’d better be on your best behavior, or I’ll join them.”

Louis was already up and holding out a chair for her. “I’ve ordered a bottle of Moët.”

Simone smiled. “That’s an admirable start.”

With the informality that comes from a lifetime of knowing a person, he reached out to smooth a tendril of hair that had come loose from her headband, but she pulled away and snapped at Irene. “Do you know what the
commissaire
had the nerve to say to me?
A snake is powerless without its fangs
. As if I have done nothing for the cause. As if I was a puppet. As if I was not as capable as Roger—no,
more
capable—of leading the revolution.”

“Forget about that,” Louis said. “It’s in the past. Simone, why didn’t you mention the scrolls to me?”

“You told him?” Simone asked Irene, astonished.

Irene felt sickened by her sloppiness in assuming Louis knew. “I thought you’d already—”

“Of course not.” Simone was offended. “I saved that for you.”

“What’s going on?” Louis asked.

Simone grasped the bottle of champagne, poured a glass, and raised it.
“We’re going to change history,” she laughed. “We’re going to
make
history.”

Louis looked at Irene, waiting for an explanation. In any other circumstance, this would have been a thrill, telling Louis Lafont, assistant curator of the Conservation d’Angkor, that she had information about the location of the history of the ancient Khmer. She should have been the one lifting a glass of champagne to toast, but all she could think was: Two against one, them against me.

“It’s taken all of my willpower not to tell you everything, Louis. And you know how little willpower I have. But now! Oh, Irene, I knew you’d see things my way.” Eagerly Simone told Louis, “Irene’s father found a diary. It belonged to a missionary. There’s a map, Louis, a map to a temple up near Stung Treng. He saw it—”

“Your father?” Louis asked Irene.

Irene shook her head. She was trying to corral her thoughts, but she couldn’t concentrate amid the noise of clattering silverware and the whine of an addict peddling a matted tiger pelt just beyond the railing. Behind it all, the restaurant’s orchestra scored the night with a tango whose fiery pace was meant for a much later hour.