Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

Nan Luc waited, conscious of the bracelet in her hand, a gift which meant everything. A gift which meant that her father could not possibly have been an American soldier passing through on an R and R weekend in Saigon.

‘In our country today every available hand is needed in the superhuman task of reconstruction,’ the director intoned. Nan Luc dropped her eyes. The streets of Ho Chi Minh City were flooded with unemployed ex-soldiers from the Cambodian War. And yet something, politeness or policy, demanded they should pretend there was work for all, building the new Vietnam. ‘I had given you an assignment to a military road-building brigade in the north,’ the director said curtly. ‘However…’ he paused, the colour in his face deepening with anger, ‘that order has been rescinded.’

Nan looked at him in astonishment. Who would, who could rescind an order from the director? ‘I am no longer assigned to the brigade?’ she said tentatively.

‘Evidently not,’ the director snapped. He was rising to his feet.

‘Pick up your things,’ the matron said.

Nan hurriedly scooped up the schoolgirl clothes.

‘You have been assigned to special duties,’ the director said. ‘Your orders will be given to you as soon as they are available.’ Nan Luc stood silent. For an Amerasian to avoid assignment to a work brigade was unknown. ‘One more thing,’ the director said, his mouth twisting. ‘Your grandmother requires you to visit her this afternoon at her apartment on the Avenue Giap. You are dismissed.’

Nan Luc felt the shock pass through her, threatening to spill the child’s clothes from her arms. Her grandmother? Living in a government apartment on Avenue Giap?

It was hot and Nan Luc had walked from the suburb of Cholon with her shoulder sack of possessions. She had never been in Avenue Giap before. Looking at number twenty-six now, she saw an old French apartment building with windows and porte cochere on a grand scale. And outside the house its own policeman in khakis and sun helmet patrolling the sidewalk.

As Nan Luc showed her pass and explained to the policeman the purpose of her visit, her real intention ran clearly through her mind. From this woman, Bernadette Hyn, who claimed to be her grandmother, Nan Luc would learn about her family. About her father.

She was announced by a houseboy formally in the old manner as Mademoiselle Nan Luc Hyn, and was perfunctorily kissed on each cheek by the woman who must be her grandmother. She found she was looking at a woman much younger than she expected, a woman dressed in European fashion, middle-aged certainly, but with that hard resistant handsomeness of the wives and mistresses of many South-East Asian leaders.

The apartment, Nan found immediately, played tricks with her sense of scale. She had been in no more than two or three private apartments in her life, single rooms mostly. Compared with this they were rabbit hutches. Here in her grandmother’s apartment the walls, hung with rich curtaining or decorated with European paintings, seemed almost to fall away as the huge room expanded before her eyes. Ivory figures covered the surfaces of old lacquered furniture. Delicate scroll caskets sat in window alcoves.

There were no grandmotherly reactions from Madame Hyn. She surveyed Nan Luc impatiently. ‘How dreadful those black pyjama outfits look on a girl. Oh, I know they’re considered ideologically sound but God be thanked I’m free to wear my own clothes.’ She walked away from Nan Luc as she talked. Then stopping in the middle of the room, she beckoned her closer. ‘I’m taking you in to meet Quatch,’ she said in a lowered voice.

Non-comprehension registered on the girl’s face.

‘Monsieur Quatch is my bel ami . He is also a provincial administrator. How else did you think you got a special assignment?’

‘It was suggested you had intervened on my behalf,’ Nan said. ‘That’s all I know.’

Bernadette smiled. ‘Your grandmother might not have a conscience but she has influence. Now come and meet Quatch before the girl prepares his opium pipe and he snores the afternoon away.’

Her arm was taken firmly and she was led into an even larger room, the open windows shuttered against the afternoon sun. She made out bamboo screens, a desk and a portly figure in a white suit seated behind it.

‘Monsieur Quatch,’ the older woman said in French, ‘allow me to present my granddaughter, Nan Luc.’

The man looked at her for a disconcertingly long time. In the silent room she could even hear his breathing. ‘As beautiful as her grandmother,’ his voice drawled in French.

‘Nan Luc wishes to thank you for your help.’

As she became accustomed to the darkness Nan Luc saw a round white-haired head lolling to one side, a small open mouth, and reddened lecherous eyes.

‘She has no reason to thank me,’ the mouth said.

‘I would wish to thank you all the same.’

A grunt came from the direction of the desk. Nan Luc searched for something to add but could find nothing. Her grandmother looked on with a faint smile.

The thin chimes of a clock broke a long silence. ‘Three o’clock.’ Quatch rose from behind the desk. ‘I have business to attend to.’

As he hurried out her grandmother’s smile broadened. ‘His opium pipe is the only business he has to attend to, cherie,’ she said in almost normal tones. ‘Now let us go to my study and talk.’

They mounted a polished wooden staircase to a small attic room looking down on the Avenue Giap. Below, Nan Luc could watch the traffic, heavily laden trucks canted at strange angles, carts drawn by men and a swarm of bicycles enclosing them.

‘Sit down, cherie,’ the grandmother said. ‘I have already ordered tea for us.’

‘Thank you, madame.’ Nan Luc sat in a high-backed chair beside a small brass-handled desk.

‘You must call me Bernadette,’ the other woman said. ‘I’m nothing more to you now. Formerly we Vietnamese treasured equally our past and our future. Our ancestors and our children. But no longer. To each other we are no longer part of a living family. We are acquaintances. We owe nothing, we ask nothing of each other.’

Nan Luc understood she was receiving the terms of the relationship. ‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘I am grateful for what you have done.’

Bernadette nodded her head dismissively. ‘After the Americans left,’ she said, ‘I came to the orphanage, did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘You were happy enough, it seemed to me,’ her grandmother said casually. ‘You were being fed, looked after. I saw no reason to take you away.’ She smiled. ‘And if I am to be more honest I had no wish to advertise my real age by acknowledging a six-year-old granddaughter. In Paris I had become the mistress of Monsieur Quatch, you see. Most of the war he spent as a sort of unofficial ambassador in Europe. His work collecting aid from our many European friends was invaluable to the cause.’

Tea was brought on a tray by a shy-eyed girl no older than Nan Luc herself. She disposed cups and a teapot on the table and withdrew, half bowing as if leaving the presence of royalty.

‘I must warn you that Quatch is not popular in some sections of the party,’ Bernadette went on. ‘Too French, too ambivalent politically. As a beneficiary of his influence you must take care. I think you understand.’

‘I understand,’ Nan Luc said. She had seen members of the orphanage staff fall from power.

Bernadette poured tea and handed Nan Luc a cup. ‘And stay clear of politics. Everybody’s days are numbered. My life could change overnight.’

‘What would you do then?’ Nan Luc asked.

Bernadette put a long slender finger to the side of her nose. ‘I have made adequate arrangements, cherie. For the future.’