There was a sort of upside down racism in Paris those days. The French military had recruited thousands of Chinese for the war effort, and most of them had been killed in battle: ravaged by Spanish flu or just left to die slowly from neglect and hunger. They were expendable and soon forgotten. Their story would never have been released by the government but the bolshie French press got wind of it and exposed the disgrace in its national newspapers. The government had no choice but to apologize and thank the Chinese for their contribution to the Allies’ victory over the Germans.

As I had an Asian face I got a lot of looks of remorse during that period. Those “we’re sorry for what we did to you” looks. The looks never became words or actions, but I did get the odd smiles from pretty ladies in white. It was May and la mode of spring was the tennis look. The temperature was taking its time to catch up to the season. Hundreds of inappropriately dressed people sat shivering at their tables or walking briskly along the boulevard. Three ladies at the table beside me were cradling their coffee cups to keep their fingers warm. I smiled at them. They looked at one another before smiling back. As I was no slave to fashion, I wore mittens and a muffler.

I’d arrived in Paris on a steamer in 1924 at the age of twenty. Unlike the other Asians on board, I didn’t have to shovel coal or stagger from the galley to the state rooms with trays of canapés and champagne buckets. I had a ticket. My cabin was small but comfortable. I was in the enviable position of having a sponsor who had taken it upon herself to turn me from a shoeless waif into a young man of letters. Madam Le Saux, more commonly known as Loulou, had first met me at a temple in Savanaketh. I had been dumped there at the age of ten by an uncaring relative who instructed me to learn all I could, then disappeared from my life. I learned everything the monks had to teach and read the French books in the small library over and over again. By the age of twelve I was bored.

Madam Loulou arrived one day in a yellow Peugot with a driver in a cap. She was tall and slim but for her midriff, where fat had gathered unkindly. She reminded me of a python I’d once seen digesting a pig. Hers was the first French I’d heard spoken by a native speaker. My initial reaction was amazement at how clever she was to have mastered such a difficult language. Her face was so heavily cased in makeup it took some time for her expressions to match her words.

“Does anybody here speak French?” she called out. Her voice was manly, crumbly at the edges.