only eight stories high. Even given the European penchant for designating the floor above the ground floor the first floor, this building was several short of the eleven I had been looking for.
I almost gave up on the spot. Even if the article was right and Madame Nhu was living in Paris, how many hundreds of buildings could boast a view of the Eiffel Tower? She could be a mile away and still see it. The tower was the only thing that stuck up in such a low-lying city. Just as I raised my gaze to the skyline to curse the aesthetics of the most beautiful city in the world, I had a crazy thought. I jumped onto a nearby bench and looked around. Such a low city simply did not have many eleven-story buildingsâespecially not this section of Paris. I just had to walk until I found one.
I had gone about a block when I saw them: three matching buildings, a mid-century mistake, near the Seine side of the avenue de Suffren. They were all concrete and right angles gone wrong. Nomatterâthe sight of them dazzled me, for each stood a glorious twelve floors high. At the first one, I found a small bundle of a woman in a housecoat sweeping the steps. I approached her tentatively with an âexcusez moiâ and proceeded to ask, as tactfully as I could, whether there was an old Vietnamese lady who lived in her building on the eleventh floor. She paused just long enough to point to the building next door. âI think you are looking for the woman in number 24,â she said with a little smile and a shake of her head. Maybe I was paranoid, but she seemed to be laughing at me.
She wouldnât have been the first to doubt me. When I confided to my graduate school advisor that I was thinking of pursuing the Dragon Lady, she had given me a patronizing smileâI assumed because, like everyone else, she thought Madame Nhu was simply too frivolous a topic. It took me longer to understand that my advisor, who had lived in Saigon through Madame Nhuâs reign and seen school friends arrested by the South Vietnamese police, didnât think Madame Nhu was a subject worth revisiting.
But I was close now. Buoyed by something like confidence, or maybe naive optimism, I buzzed the concierge at 24 avenue de Suffren, and when she appeared, I grinned broadly at her. After sheâd let me in, I slid a thin blue envelope inscribed with Madame Ngo Dinh Nhuâs name across the front desk.
âIs she expecting something?â the concierge inquired dully. She was less than polite without being exactly rude, but I didnât care. She had confirmed that Madame Nhu lived upstairs.
âPlease just make sure she gets this,â I replied sweetly. Inside the envelope was a carefully worded note requesting an interview and one of the embossed calling cards Iâd had made up in case I needed to make myself look professional. Tomorrow, Madame Nhu would know exactly who I was. As I walked back toward the Metro, I was already running through everything I would say when she called: how I would like to get her story right, how I hoped to fill in the gaps of history, and how I dared to think that we might redeem a little bit of the Dragon Ladyâs legacy. It never occurred to me that she might have plans of her own.
CHAPTER 2
Forgotten Graves
N O ONE HAD HEARD FROM Madame Nhu since the summer of 1986âthe summer her parents, Tran Van Chuong and Tran Thi Nam Tran, had been murdered.
Madame Nhuâs parents had been well known in diplomatic circles, even briefly famous when they publicly disowned their Dragon Lady daughter in 1963. In Vietnam, the Chuong couple had enjoyed an illustrious pedigree: Chuong was a large landowner and the first Vietnamese lawyer to get a French degree; his wife, Nam Tran, was related to the royal family and had been born a princess. They had lived a grand life in Vietnam before the war, with twenty servants waiting on them hand and foot. Madame Chuong clung to a sense of regal entitlement even in
I almost gave up on the spot. Even if the article was right and Madame Nhu was living in Paris, how many hundreds of buildings could boast a view of the Eiffel Tower? She could be a mile away and still see it. The tower was the only thing that stuck up in such a low-lying city. Just as I raised my gaze to the skyline to curse the aesthetics of the most beautiful city in the world, I had a crazy thought. I jumped onto a nearby bench and looked around. Such a low city simply did not have many eleven-story buildingsâespecially not this section of Paris. I just had to walk until I found one.
I had gone about a block when I saw them: three matching buildings, a mid-century mistake, near the Seine side of the avenue de Suffren. They were all concrete and right angles gone wrong. Nomatterâthe sight of them dazzled me, for each stood a glorious twelve floors high. At the first one, I found a small bundle of a woman in a housecoat sweeping the steps. I approached her tentatively with an âexcusez moiâ and proceeded to ask, as tactfully as I could, whether there was an old Vietnamese lady who lived in her building on the eleventh floor. She paused just long enough to point to the building next door. âI think you are looking for the woman in number 24,â she said with a little smile and a shake of her head. Maybe I was paranoid, but she seemed to be laughing at me.
She wouldnât have been the first to doubt me. When I confided to my graduate school advisor that I was thinking of pursuing the Dragon Lady, she had given me a patronizing smileâI assumed because, like everyone else, she thought Madame Nhu was simply too frivolous a topic. It took me longer to understand that my advisor, who had lived in Saigon through Madame Nhuâs reign and seen school friends arrested by the South Vietnamese police, didnât think Madame Nhu was a subject worth revisiting.
But I was close now. Buoyed by something like confidence, or maybe naive optimism, I buzzed the concierge at 24 avenue de Suffren, and when she appeared, I grinned broadly at her. After sheâd let me in, I slid a thin blue envelope inscribed with Madame Ngo Dinh Nhuâs name across the front desk.
âIs she expecting something?â the concierge inquired dully. She was less than polite without being exactly rude, but I didnât care. She had confirmed that Madame Nhu lived upstairs.
âPlease just make sure she gets this,â I replied sweetly. Inside the envelope was a carefully worded note requesting an interview and one of the embossed calling cards Iâd had made up in case I needed to make myself look professional. Tomorrow, Madame Nhu would know exactly who I was. As I walked back toward the Metro, I was already running through everything I would say when she called: how I would like to get her story right, how I hoped to fill in the gaps of history, and how I dared to think that we might redeem a little bit of the Dragon Ladyâs legacy. It never occurred to me that she might have plans of her own.
CHAPTER 2
Forgotten Graves
N O ONE HAD HEARD FROM Madame Nhu since the summer of 1986âthe summer her parents, Tran Van Chuong and Tran Thi Nam Tran, had been murdered.
Madame Nhuâs parents had been well known in diplomatic circles, even briefly famous when they publicly disowned their Dragon Lady daughter in 1963. In Vietnam, the Chuong couple had enjoyed an illustrious pedigree: Chuong was a large landowner and the first Vietnamese lawyer to get a French degree; his wife, Nam Tran, was related to the royal family and had been born a princess. They had lived a grand life in Vietnam before the war, with twenty servants waiting on them hand and foot. Madame Chuong clung to a sense of regal entitlement even in
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