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“Empty stomach teaches the knees to crawl.”
“No truth more convincing than the lies one tells oneself,” Tuyet retorted.
“I want my son to be a good man more than I want to be rich.”
If he wants you, it’s unwise to hurt his feelings by rejecting him
outright. You let him come around but don’t be nice to him. Don’t dress up. Make yourself unattractive. That should cool him off sooner or later. It’s better to let a man change his own mind about these things.”
His huge ears with the mangled ridges and lumps fascinated his servants. They whispered that such extraordinarily large lobes indicated longevity, someone not soon to leave this earth.
For decades, since the arrival of the first French diplomats, it had been a common practice for Frenchmen to order the wives or daughters of their Viet underlings to come to their beds.
An inch of time is an inch of gold. An inch of gold cannot buy an inch of time, but it can buy a feast divine.
second-generation Chinese immigrant, Yim Chu was one of the town’s top accountants. Since the early days of the colony, the French had been importing Indians and Chinese to manage their finances and trade, effectively keeping power, knowledge, and wealth out of the hands of the Viet. Thus, these “outside
Asians” had become the overseers of the colonized.
Tuyet’s bookish cousin was now
twenty-five: a strong, confident man, yet untouched by defeat and heartbreak. In a sudden leap of intuition, she saw a decade of sacrifices, sorrow, and exile awaiting him. Destiny was imprinted deeply. She saw it the way a river sensed the distant sea.
Saturday, September 24, 1945. Two nights after the French riot, Takeshi and Tuyet were safely back in Phan Thiet. As he had predicted, violence broke out in Saigon as Vietnamese groups retaliated. Under cover of darkness, well-armed bands rumored to be Binh Xuyen mafia, Cao Dai religious sectarians, as well as other rogue elements “eluded” the Japanese guards and invaded the Cité Héraud district of Saigon, also known as the Eurasian Quarter, inhabited by twenty thousand French, Europeans, and métis—mixed-race people. The gangs were reportedly loosely associated, united for the purpose of
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Cité Héraud Massacre.
After the Imperial Japanese Army’s High Command committed huge numbers of troops against the Viet Minh, thousands of disillusioned Japanese veterans deserted, deeming it dishonorable to join their erstwhile enemies to kill former allies. Many simply merged into the general population or somehow made their way home to Japan. Yet others went over to the Viet Minh to fight the British and French.
