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  IN THE FABLED EAST

  Adam Lewis Schroder

  Copyright © 2010 by Adam Lewis Schroeder

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

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  Douglas & McIntyre

  An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.

  2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201

  Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7

  www.douglas-mcintyre.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Schroeder, Adam Lewis, 1972–

  In the fabled east : a novel / Adam Lewis Schroeder.

  ISBN 978-1-55365-464-3

  Editing by Barbara Berson

  Jacket and text design by Jessica Sullivan

  Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

  Printed on acid-free paper that is forest friendly

  (100% post-consumer recycled paper) and has been processed chlorine free

  We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada

  Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province

  of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit

  and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry

  Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

  For my parents.

  IN THE FABLED EAST

  Contents

  THE FABLE OF THE SPRING OF IMMORTALITY

  MARSEILLES CUTTHROATS

  MONSIEUR HENRI LEDALLIC

  HER PHOTOGRAPH

  A BOY WITH WATER IN HIS MOUTH

  A SAD PAST AND A BRIGHT FUTURE

  THE RUBBING OF A LAMP

  A DETECTIVE FOR THE REPUBLIC

  AN ORPHAN MAKES HER WAY IN THE WORLD

  STRANGLER QUINN

  EVERY PARISIAN’S NIGHTMARE

  THE COURTYARD AT THE CONTINENTAL

  THE ONE HUNDRED WOUNDS

  FARMERS

  AN INTERLUDE IN THE SULTANA’S PALACE

  THE LEDGER AT LEIT TUHK

  SHIT MIXED WITH ORANGES

  ADDRESSING THE EASTERN IMMORTALITY FABLE

  THE KEMMARAT RAPIDS

  IF THE FANTASTIC CAN SET OUR HEART SRACING

  THE LAST OF PARIS

  THE RUINED TEMPLE

  THE PALACE AT LUANG-PRABANG

  INTO THE UNPACIFIED REGIONS

  LORD TIGER

  ENJOYING HAPPINESS AFTER OTHERS

  YOUR SPIRIT WILL RECLINE THERE

  PUT TO DEATH IN THE MOST OBSCENE WAYS BY THE GRATEFUL NATIVES

  A FAMILY’S WEALTH IS NOT ITS JARS

  THE DYING PARATROOPER

  THE CHURCH AT ST. AUBIN-SUR-SEULLES

  GIRLS, OLD LADIES

  THE WHITE WOMAN

  BARAKA RUNS OUT VERY SUDDENLY

  AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

  AN UNEXPECTED DEPARTURE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THE FABLE OF THE

  SPRING OF IMMORTALITY

  as told by the Sadet.

  ONCE a rich man was so miserly that he chose to live in the forest apart from other families. Leaving on a hunt, he told his son, “Watch over my jar while I am away, for it is our family’s wealth.” But the son fell ill with fever so that monkeys were able to enter the house and take great sport in rolling the precious jar out the door.

  Because he was blustering and loud the rich man was a poor hunter and caught nothing, and so returned home in a rage, and was so angry when he discovered the jar stolen that he dragged his poor son into the forest and raised his knife. Because he was pure of heart the boy’s last words were not “I do not wish to die” but “I wish that no one would die.” Then his father left the little body unburned and unburied so that wild beasts would devour it. But instead the Spirit of the Water caused a spring to gush from the boy’s mouth.

  That night the rich man’s relations, hurrying to invite him to a feast, took their rest beside the spring. They were surprised, for in all their years of travel they had never seen one in that place. They were no less surprised when they stumbled across the murdered boy as they made camp. They could no longer recognize him as their nephew, so they agreed that they would make no funeral but simply burn the little body in the morning.

  They boiled water from the spring. They threw in their dried fish, and then the most surprising event of all occurred: live fishes leaped from the kettle! The water of the spring, the relatives suspected, was rife with spirits. They splashed water on the murdered boy and he sat up and through his mutilated lips described what his father had done.

  The enraged travellers raced through the night to find the rich man. Hearing their cries, he ran out of his house—but because he was blustering and loud, he blundered into a tiger’s jaws, and afterward this tiger su¤ered incurable diarrhea.

  Meanwhile the son discovered the jar where the monkeys had abandoned it, and with this recovered wealth he founded a village below the spring. Of course the rich man should have known that a family’s wealth is not its jars but its children.

  MARSEILLES

  CUTTHROATS

  Pierre Lazarie.

  WHITE people do not travel to Indo-China for their health, nor for prestige nor even for anything so straightforward as happiness; men come to make their fortunes.

  Wishing to amass capital both intellectual and monetary, I arranged to sail in January 1936 from Marseilles for Saigon. Standing at the rail of the Felix Roussel on the morning of departure, I watched the crane swing a pallet of luggage aboard, the blue-sweatered men on our afterdeck holding up gloved hands to intercept it. I watched with some anxiety, really, since the pallet likely contained the trunk that itself contained the nine linen suits that had unburdened me of my governmental allowance at a stroke. Circling seagulls squawked as though the pallet were made of herring.

  —Your mother insisted, Marguerite said, that you planned this trip even before it all happened!

  My fiancée wore the tight-fitting green jacket she’d bought especially for the jaunt, its collar so liberally ruffled that her head looked as though it were emerging from the maw of a carnivorous plant. But the colour did complement her red hair rather nicely, and I noticed a number of men look up from their cabin assignments to assess her calves at the very least. Myself, I still wore the brown serge suit of my recently passed student days, as Marseilles’ climate in January is less than tropical.

  —I started dreaming of it five years ago! I said. That’s no great revelation.

  —She said their lives are di¤erent enough, with the housekeeper and the rest all gone, but you carry on unperturbed. Is there really no money?

  —What does that matter? I’m going to make enough.

  —Well, in her opinion you’re so naive you’re as likely to be knifed by a busboy at a cafeteria as you are to find these battlefields you go on about.

  —Do we have to discuss my mother? I sail in five minutes.

  —She says your head’s so far in the ether you’ll address all your letters to your father—but this legal business has unbalanced her. Hadn’t you at least imagined travelling in First Class?

  Upon my father’s death we’d learned that he’d sired another family long before meeting Maman, and the legal business had upset her and my sisters to near-hysteria. Marguerite too, apparently, though she’d said nothing on the train down from Paris.

  —Until the will was read, yes, I
said. I thought I’d be going First Class.

  She put a gentle hand on mine. She wore the same white gloves she’d bought the previous winter, though the material was beginning to pill; I’d mail her a new pair for her birthday in April. I flickered my eyelashes at her until she threw her arms around my neck.

  —You looked so handsome when you tried on that white suit. I meant to ask, do they drive on the same side of the road as here?

  —It’s not a British colony!

  —I just worry you’ll look the wrong way and get run down. I’m not the one worried about the busboy at the cafeteria! But when you put on one of those suits you’ll get your confidence, I know it. When does everybody change clothes?

  —Once we’re into the Indian Ocean, I expect.

  The crane had finished its work and the blue-sweatered men hurried down the gangway. The ship’s whistle sounded. We told each other again that we’d write every day, that it would seem as though we weren’t apart at all, then we kissed again and again. She tasted saltier in Marseilles and I wondered if I did too.

  —Another year or two, I said, and you’ll be Madame Lazarie.

  Her eyes were quite red.

  —Give the tigers a pat on the head, she whispered.

  I squeezed her hand once more, kissed her, then turned and walked toward the bow. The deck was so rife with breathless embraces one might’ve thought it was New Year’s Eve at a honeymoon resort. A biting wind rose o¤ the water so I fastened the top button of my jacket. I would not look back at Marguerite; I would have a drink. The ship’s whistle sounded again and all around me ruddy-cheeked women sobbed afresh.

  I strode into the Second Class saloon to discover a quartet of cadaverous card-sharps already resplendent in white suits, their broad white sun helmets shimmering on the benches. Already! In my brown serge I’d stand out like a chimney sweep at a garden party, so I sought out the barman.

  —Where is the chief steward? I asked.

  —Just now he could be anywhere.

  —I need the trunk I sent below!

  —I don’t imagine you’ll be able to get near that until we’re well underway, sir.

  A man in pinstripes nudged my elbow.

  —Ridiculous, he said.

  His blond moustache was bedecked with beer foam. With a wayward eyebrow he indicated the quartet in white as they smugly studied their cards.

  —It certainly is uncouth to play with unescorted women still aboard, I agreed.

  —It’s those get-ups that are ridiculous—ten-to-one they took their quinine as though we were already at Colombo! Newcomer yourself? I’ll let you in on a secret: those are their only suits, and the families pawned the silver services to be rid of them.

  —They’re not old China hands? I took them for game hunters!

  —They’re Marseilles cutthroats hired to ride herd over the coolies—rubber or co¤ee or tea or timber, coolies are all the same stripe. And even if they were sunburnt and coughing betel nut I’d certify these ones had never set foot in Saigon, son, for we know each other there, and by way of example—if I’m not boring you?

  —No, no. And another for my friend, I told the barman.

  —Much obliged. In the corner, with his hand on that fellow’s neck? He was up in the First Class saloon the last time out but, ah, there were inquiries into expenses, that’s all a conscientious man ever hears these days, so he’s gone from secretary at the Regency of Indo-China to under-secretary at the Vice-Regency of Cochin-China, you see the distinction, yes?

  —What’s he, then, a sort of copyist?

  —A white man for a copyist—that is extremely funny, son, considering that the Yellows throttle each other for a post like that. But now that I look around—ah, that’s refreshing, and you ought to have one yourself while the barrel’s fresh—now, excepting those louts I can say that I’m acquainted with every man here. Starting at the back, there’s Public Works, Court of Appeal, Chamber of Commerce, Commercial Port with the scar on the forehead, Bank of Indo-China, Military Port, Bank of Indo-China again—those boys with magazines are all Bank of Indo-China, and at the long table they’re all from the consulates. That Dane, the little fellow, I swear every fever makes him an inch shorter, it’s quite hilarious!

  —And yourself?

  He raised his eyebrows over the rim of his glass then came up with a snort, wiping his moustache clean with his bottom lip.

  —I keep books at the opium factory on rue Paul-Blanchy!

  He said it as though I’d be able to see in my mind’s eye this undreamt-of thoroughfare some ten thousand kilometres distant. He hunted through his pockets.

  —My name’s Pierre Lazarie, I told him.

  —Marcel Coderre. Delightful to meet you.

  I swallowed the anxious saliva pooling beneath my tongue.

  —Monsieur Coderre, well, I’d like to be prepared, mentally speaking. Might you give me some idea how many tigers I’m likely to come across, say, in the first month?

  He looked up from his pocket watch with a slack-jawed smile.

  —In Saigon?

  —Certainly, yes, in Saigon.

  —Be serious, how could each of these fellows get to their bank each morning if the streets were full of tigers? We’re underway now, you see, the pilings are going past, so it’s time to put stories for boys away!

  —Ah! I must have imagined the protectorates less developed! I see, yes.

  I gulped the rest of my beer.

  —Even in the wilderness they never appear during the day, that’s scientific fact!

  Yet even as he chastised me my belly felt warmer, my head lighter, and generally speaking I was feeling extremely comfortable in the Second Class saloon.

  —What’s your line, anyway? he was saying. Write for a magazine?

  —Oriental Studies, I said. Just received my baccalaureate! You must have seen the Colonial Exhibition in Paris in ’31?

  His foamy moustache shook dismissively.

  —That is a shame, I said, because once I cast eyes on those stones from Angkor my heart was no longer my own. Our field doesn’t much concern itself with the present-day Orient, of course, so much as with the old cultures, the Khmer, Cham, even the Moï and all the rest who’re still up in the hills. I’m preparing a book on Annamese generals prior to French involvement, specifically the Tay Son brothers’ capture of Saigon in 1776, though in the meantime, and provided office work well enough, I’ll draw my pay from the Immigration Department. But perhaps a modern study of Ly Thuong Kiet and the rest has already appeared in your part of the world?

  —Look me in the eye, will you? No, I suppose not. Still, you talk as though you’d had eleven pipes already!

  Evening found me still in the saloon, though I’d moved to the card table where I persisted in educating myself, though my every question—where does one do one’s marketing? take one’s collars to be starched?—was met with dumbfounded looks, as though I’d asked whether the bakery were the place to find bread or the cathedral communion. My friend of rue Paul-Blanchy dropped his cards abruptly upon their faces and I dragged the pot into my pile—a chap who, prior to the voyage, had only played Mouche on weekends with his grandparents!

  —Now I’m not so green as to imagine your opium to be illegal out there, I said, but considering the civilizing mission we’ve officially undertaken, isn’t it counterintuitive to happily manufacture the stu¤?

  Coderre wet the end of his cigar.

  —Well, despite what you may have read in your tour brochure, son, Indo-China is not a church fête. We are not interested in playing with these people. The colony exists to turn a profit, yes? The colony exists so that the government at home can turn a profit and any business concern with a government contract can turn a profit and the government can make still more o¤ the taxes those concerns pay. There’s more dosh to be made out of taxing the stu¤ my outfit makes than there is from selling it wholesale, see, so why not give me the baccalaureate in Oriental Studies?

  The quarte
t in white, bound for tellers’ windows at the Indian & Australian Chartered Bank, chuckled and shifted cigarettes between their yellow knuckles. A steward on the dawn watch came around with a siphon and whisky.

  —Exactly, I said. Most people hear the word “academia” and imagine we wear white gloves whether it’s chemistry we’re researching or the Song of Roland, refinement at the expense of reality—well, I intend to change that. I want the story of Indo-China from the mouths of its people, not from dusty manuscripts penned by dusty old men! It was dust that brought my father to his end, you know, even if the doctors disagreed.

  —How’s that? asked the commercial traveller who’d gone bust an hour before.

  —Trigonometry professor. Used to climb a ladder, his equations were so long, and all that chalk dust! Came down with a fever, wasted away in front of us, which his doctor said was consistent with tuberculosis but where was the blood, then, the hemorrhaging? I knew it wasn’t TB, I knew that as a result of his career his lungs were blocks of calcite.

  —They do call it the White Death, smiled Coderre. Chalkwhite!

  —Call what? asked the commercial traveller.

  —Let the detective explain!

  —But even if my researches prove fruitless, I’m committed to earn some of this money you mention. Before she went ashore my fiancée advised me to do so in no uncertain terms. Mercenary, wasn’t she? No, I cannot claim to “care for others first and enjoy happiness after,” as Nguyen Trai suggested—

  —Get your fiancée to do that for you, purred one of the quartet.

  —Perhaps, I blustered, but it brings us to my real philosophy!

  —At last, muttered Coderre. The wait was killing me.

  —My ambition, my friends, is to love. Certainly, yes, I am a baccalaureate in Oriental Studies, a discipline which consumes me night and day, true; but it is also a means to an end—to win a reputation as well as a nest egg despite these lean economic times, and return before very long to my girl. For as Le Quy Don so aptly put it, “Verdant spring passes quickly, man ages rapidly like a bamboo shoot, and one should marry in good time.”