Silk Roads by Axel Madsen

Author:Axel Madsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504008549
Publisher: Firebrand Technologies

PART TWO

Chapter 13

The Challenge

Clara and André left for Saigon in January 1925. They were in third class this time, segregated by sex—six women passengers in one cabin, six men to another. Moments of intimacy were snatched under the stars by crawling into one of the lifeboats. When they were alone they talked about the journalistic enterprise lying ahead and the three books André was to write—books sure to be set in the Asia they both loved and feared.

The women in Clara’s cabin were the wives of noncommissioned officers returning to garrisons they already knew and preferred to any town in France. When they talked about the Annamese, the running theme was make sure they do what you tell them. Several of the women had small children, who woke each other up crying in the clammy night. If André resented anything besides the proximity of sweating and snoring males, it was the way the crew made them know they were in third class.

Maurice Sainte-Rose was a fellow passenger who became a friend. When Andre spent long hours reading in a deck chair, Clara often strolled the deck with the soft-voiced young man whose father was French and mother Vietnamese. As they talked, she sensed how deeply the humiliations of being Eurasian had scarred him. It was perhaps more difficult to be of mixed race than to be Jewish. Maurice’s family was wealthy, and Clara believed him when he said he had lost or spent all his money in France. “My mother must not find out that I travel third class,” he told her. “Before Saigon I’ll change to first class.” Clara didn’t tell him that André and she planned to do the same thing, that they, too, wanted to blur their footprints.

The voyage was long and boring. It was hard even to spend money in third class. In the Strait of Bab el Mandeb they decided to do something positively silly. They would spend the three thousand francs still in their possession on a party for their fellow passengers. They got hold of a gramophone, bought a case of champagne from the steward, and in the third class dining room saw the men take off their jackets and the tight skirted ladies try the black bottom before everybody linked hands and executed an old fashioned farandole.

“We’re gonna win,” Clara cried, flying past André.

They drank, danced, and sweated. When the music stopped, André climbed on a table to declaim a few verses from a Maurice Magre reader, the only book of poems he had found in the shipboard library. The guests demanded silence. They were curious. The Malrauxs were a funny couple.

André read a poem in which sensuousness and Oriental mysticism blended with symbolist subtlety. The guests seemed fascinated by the rhythm of his voice. When he was through and jumped down, no one started to rewind the gramophone. Some stayed and had another drink, others went to their cabins.

Clara and André went arm in arm out on deck. They were going to make a success of their lives.

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