Forbidden Love

Did you know that Marguerite Duras, the French writer who spent her childhood in colonial Indochina, began an affair with a 27 year old son of a Chinese landowner when she was 15 years old? She would sneak away from her boarding school in Saigon to spend evenings in his bachelor's quarters in the city's Chinatown. Apparently this scandalous affair served as raw material for her 1984 novel, "The Lover".

As documented in an article in the NY Times of 30 April, it is still possible to retrace some of her narrative in Vietnam. The author retraced many of the lovers' steps in Saigon and the surrounding areas. I thought it was interesting that he found a photograph in the Chua Huong pagoda of the Chinese man and the woman he eventually married. Apparently the parents of the Chinese man forbid him to marry Duras. The author of the article writes: "Was there regret in his eyes? Years after their affair, he phoned Duras in Paris to tell her he would never stop loving her for the rest of her life. Perhaps that is why his wife, in her photo, looks so uncomfortable, so unloved".

How interesting that he would still love her, unseen, after so many years. And that as a result, his wife would be forever unloved.

I have not read "The Lover". Perhaps I should.