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By Root 388 0

have broken the chauffeur's heart. Men, believe me, are fragile in unexpected ways. Weak is another way of putting it. Madame's secretary, unlike the chauffeur, was often invited to the larger receptions and dinner dances held at the Governor-General's. Nothing intimate but still very lavish affairs that called for a silk dress and dyed-to-match high heels. During these occasions, the chauffeur sat out back on the steps leading up to the kitchen door and smoked his cigarettes one after another. When he stomped out their lit tips, we all knew that he was thinking of her, of who was resting his hands on the silk of her dress, on the small of her back. At least it is not Blériot, thought the chauffeur, as he peered inside the doorway to make sure that the chef's toque was still leaning into the heat of the stove.

That morning, from where the chauffeur stood all he could see was Chef Blériot returning from the market with four lackeys in tow. A prince and his entourage, thought the chauffeur. Well, the chauffeur more likely thought, a prick and his entourage. No matter, either way his dislike for Blériot was at that point no more or less than that of the others in the household staff. That morning the chauffeur was, in fact, more intrigued by the gardener's helper and his sudden jolt to life. The chauffeur saw the spot of white in the marigold bed. He saw it moving with an alertness, an uncharacteristic determination not to miss the moment, and he followed it and the old helper's gaze like the tracks of an animal. What the chauffeur saw, he stored away. He came to no hasty conclusions. He preferred to gather more facts. But in all honesty, the chauffeur did not even know what he was looking at or for. As for Blériot and me, we were that morning just two figures in the chauffeur's line of sight. Over the next few months, the chauffeur made it a point to see what the gardener's helper was seeing. He watched as the gardener's helper searched for the lopsided smile on my face. He watched as the gardener's helper correlated its appearance to that of Blériot's. He watched as the gardener's helper watered, at midnight, the jasmine vines that trailed up to the kitchen windows. He watched as the gardener's helper marked the end of the workday by the lights dimming one by one in the kitchen, by the bodies that departed, by the bodies that always stayed.

When I left the Governor-General's household, the chauffeur drove up behind me in Madame's automobile. its approaching headlights bore two dust-filled holes into the Saigon night.

"Hey, hey, where are you going?"

"Home," I said. If I had bothered to look up, I knew that I would have seen the chauffeur's head bobbing, barely above the steering wheel. Struggling for air, he always seemed to me.

"No, no. I meant where are you going to work now?"

"Why do you care?"

"Look, I'm sorry. She made me do it ... You, you don't know what it's like to hear her go on about that prick. It was as if she were holding a gun to my head, and each time she said 'Chef Blériot' she was pulling the trigger."

"A gun to your head?"

"I can't take it back. I want to, but I can't. You should have seen her. All powdered and rouged, and she smelled great. She smelled new. When was the last time you smelled something new? When was—"

"Are we done here?"

"No. Look, I'll get to the point. When I was in medical school—"

"What? When were you in medical school?"

"In Paris."

"Stop lying!"

"I'm not. When I was in medical school, I heard about treatments for your condition."

"Condition?"

"Yes, your condition. There are doctors ... there's been extensive research done in England and in America. can help you. "

"Never mind my condition. What is wrong with you?" I demanded to know. None of us in the household staff, not even my brother, knew what the chauffeur had studied while he was in France. We assumed it was poetry, as that was the only thing that he could do, besides driving, that could be called a skill.

"What do you mean, wrong' with me?" the chauffeur asked.

"Well, there must be something. Otherwise,