the Lotus Eaters

by Tatjana Soli

  She glared at him. "Maybe he's just a cyclo driver trying to make a living." She reached over and pinched Robert's arm.

  "Ouch! That hurt!"

  She giggled, not as naive as Robert thought she was but playing the part. "Stop making fun of me." The truth was Saigon was dirty and sad and tawdry, and the catastrophic poverty of the people made her weak with homesickness. She found the Vietnamese people's acceptance and struggle to survive terrifying, and she wondered again what the United States wanted with such a backward country.

  "Helen, nothing is ever simple here." He guessed she was shrewder than she played, but he appreciated her tact. He was tired of the hard-eyed local women who tallied their company by the half hour.

  A few blocks away from the restaurant, the traffic bottled to a stop. A snarl of cars, trucks, carts, motorcycles, and bicycles. Standing still, the air turned an exhaust-tinted blue around them. The delay caused by an overturned cart ahead. Its load of fowl--ducks, geese, swallows--spread across the street in various stages of agony. Loose, downy feathers floated into the puddles until, waterlogged, they sank underneath, creating a cloudy soup. A group of Chinese men argued in loud voices. The birds inside the bamboo cages had toppled into the street. They quacked and honked in fright. Many of the birds had been trussed and hung upside down on the sides of the cart, left alive for freshness. Now many of these were half-crushed but still alive, flapping broken wings or struggling with snapped legs and backs. The owner of the cart pulled out a half-moon hatchet and began to lop their heads off. Dirty, orange-beaked heads were thrown into a burlap sack. A thin ribbon of bright red joined the muddy river of water running down the middle of the street. The cyclo drivers looked on, no intention of moving till the road was cleared.

  "I can't watch this," Helen said. Since she arrived a few weeks ago she had made an effort to avoid the ugliness in the city and now it was unavoidable, blocking her path.

  "Okay, we can make a run for it. The restaurant is only a street away." The rain lightened to a heavy drizzle, and Helen stood in the road looking at the mess of wet feathers and blood, shivering, waiting as Robert paid the fare. A dog watched from an alley and made a sudden run past Helen, swooping down and grabbing a duck. Helen saw the white underside of its belly in his mouth as the dog sped past with his prize, an old man in pursuit with a broom. Splashing up water and mud, the dog paid with one wallop to his rear end before he disappeared around the corner with his prize. The man who caused the cart to overturn agreed to buy all the birds, and the final detail of the price was being negotiated. The uninjured ducks in the cages quacked madly as the owner made a grab for them, dashed their heads on the ground, and used the hatchet, tossing the bodies into a box.

  Helen ran over and motioned with her hand not to kill them. She pulled dollars out of her purse and handed them to the old man, who grinned at her and bobbed his head.

  Robert came up to her. "What're you doing?"

  "I want him to set them free."

  "What do you think the odds are for a freed duck in Vietnam?" The ridiculousness of the situation made him feel protective of her. Maybe he could love such a woman. She would never last here long.

  "He understood me. He'll take them to the country or something."

  Suddenly the rain started full force again. Robert grabbed her hand, and they ran, laughing.

  "One of those ducks will probably be on your plate by the time we order," he said.

  _______

  They arrived at the restaurant and were forced to stand in the doorway by a grim-faced maitre d' who demanded towels be brought from the kitchen for them to dry off. He stood in front of them, arms folded across his chest, tapping his foot as they waited. Helen looked down and saw he wore women's shiny black patent-leather shoes.

  Robert took Helen's elbow and led her to a large table of reporters at the far end of the room. When the men at the table saw Helen, conversation stopped. Helen's wet hair fell in stringy strands; her dress had turned the dark blue of midnight. Some of the faces looked stony, others outright hostile. A few were bemused. The lack of welcome was palpable.

  "You look like a goddess risen from the sea," Gary said.

  "Did you swim here from the States?"

  "Everyone, this is Helen Adams. She's a freelancer just arrived a week ago," Robert said.

  "So now the girls are coming. Can't be much of a war after all." "Quick work, Robert. What do you do? Wait for all the pretty ones to deplane at Tan Son Nhut?"

  "Funny." Robert made introductions around the table. "And that's Nguyen Pran Linh down there. He's the poor bastard who has to help that scruffy-looking guy at the end, the famous Sam Darrow. More commonly known as Mr. Vietnam. Either the bravest man here or the most nearsighted."

  The table broke up in laughter and catcalls. The awkwardness lingered.

  "Don't you usually bring nurses, Robert?"

  Darrow rose from the end of the table, unfolding his long legs from under the low-set table. His skin was tanned, his graying brown hair curling long around his ears. His hands smoothed out the rumpled shirt he wore. The furrow between his eyes, though, was not dislike. He just couldn't stand the sight of another shiny, young, innocent face landing in the war, especially a female one, and he was irritated with Robert for bringing her. Still, she looked pitiful and wet, already tumbled by the war, and he wasn't going to let the boys go after her. He gave a short bow, his assessing, hawklike eyes behind his glasses making her self-conscious.

  "Excuse the poor welcome," Darrow said. He looked down at the table and picked at his napkin, then continued. "Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships."

  "Watch out, Robert. Incoming."

  Gary laughed too loud and turned away. "Where are my lobster dumplings? Get the waiter."

  "I propose a toast to the newcomer," Darrow said. "Welcome to our splendid little war."

  "Getting less splendid and little by the day," Robert said. He sensed his mistake in bringing her there.

  Darrow raised his hand to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, and Helen noticed a long burled scar running from his wrist up to his elbow, the raised tissue lighter than the rest of his arm. He lifted his glass and spoke in a mock oratory:

  "And catching sight of Helen moving along the ramparts,

  They murmured one to another, gentle, winged words:

  'Who on earth could blame them?' "

  "My God," Ed, a straw-haired man with a large nose, said. "Do you have crib notes in your egg rolls or what?"

  "Now he's showing off. Making us all look like illiterates."

  "Fellows," Darrow said, "most of you are illiterates."

  Everyone laughed, the tension broke, and Helen sat down. Darrow had okayed her presence. Gary passed a shot of scotch to her to join the toast. She picked up the glass and emptied it in one gulp. The table erupted in cheers.

  "You flatter me," she said. "But I'm afraid you've got the wrong Helen." She knew he had taken pity on her, but she wouldn't accept it.

  The white-coated waiter brought a platter of dumplings, filling her plate.

  The effect of her arrival over, the conversation resumed its jagged course. "So I'm out in Tay Ninh," Jack, an Irishman from Boston said. "And I have my interpreter ask the village elder how he thinks the new leader is doing. He says Diem is very good." Grunts and half-hearted chuckles around the table.

  "Oh man, looks like we're winning the hearts and minds, huh?" Ed said.

  "So I tell him Diem was a bad man and was overthrown two years ago," Jack continued. "He asks very cautiously who the new leader is."

  "You should have said Uncle Ho."

  "Only name anyone recognizes anymore."

  "So I said to him Ky was in power," Jack said.

  "What does he say?"

  " 'Ky very good.' "

  Guffaws and groans. "So much for the domino theory. The people don't care which way it goes. No one cares except the Americans."

  "The French would make a deal with H
o himself as long as they could keep their plantations and their cocktail hour. Just go off and be collective somewhere else, s'il vous plait."

  Helen stopped eating. She wanted simply to observe and hold her tongue, but she couldn't. "I don't agree."

  "What's that, sweetheart?" Ed said, eyes narrowing.

  "That the people don't care. They cared in Korea. Everyone wants to be free."

  "What do you think, Linh? Our mysterious conduit to the north."

  Linh looked up from his plate. "I think this rice is very good." The table burst out in laughter and when it died down, he continued as if he had not noticed the interruption. "Many people in this country haven't had such good rice in years."

  "Our Marxist Confucian mascot. 'Let them eat rice,' " Jack said.

  "I'm sorry, but what do you know about Korea?" Darrow asked. "You're just a baby now. You could have been prom queen last year in high school."

  Maybe, after all, she would not escape the night unscathed. "My father died there. Nineteen fifty Chosin. My brother was in Special Forces. He died in the Plain of Reeds last year."

  Darrow refused to offer sympathy. "Half of this table is probably here out of curiosity," Darrow said. "The other half out of ambition. Of course it's not the excitement that draws us. We're in the business of war. The cool thing for us is that when this one's done, there's always another one--Middle East, Africa, Cambodia, Laos, Suez, Congo, Lebanon, Algeria. The war doesn't ever have to end for us."

  "You're just a starry-eyed mercenary, huh, Darrow?"

  A long silence followed, time enough for plates to be cleared and drinks poured, while Helen and Darrow stared at each other, then looked away, then looked back. The most arrogant man she had ever met; her face burned with anger.

  "Wrong. I was prom queen four years ago."

  Chortles and some hand claps. "Here, here."

  "Where you from?"

  "Raised in Southern California."

  Robert coughed, wanting to divert what ever was happening across the table. "What do you all think of the army's estimate that the war will be over in a year?"

  Darrow sipped at yet another drink. "It'll be over if we quit. Isn't anyone reading Uncle Ho and Uncle Giap? 'We'll keep on fighting if it takes a hundred years.' "

  "You don't believe that? No one fights a hundred years."

  "I absolutely believe that. You would, too, Ed, if you ever left your air-conditioned hotel room and slogged out in the jungle with us."

  "I'll leave the heroics for you. Framed your Pulitzer over your desk yet?"

  Darrow smirked, a shamed, lopsided smile. "Actually it was sent to my wife, so I've never seen it. I believe she hung it up in the john. She feels the check was the best part of the deal. Making up for my piddling salary."

  Chuckles around the table. "Cry me a river, Darrow."

  As curfew approached, the restaurant emptied; people hurried away with full glasses and bottles, promising to return them in the morning. The waiters pointedly stripped off tablecloths, turned over chairs. A bucket and a mop were propped at the door to the kitchen.

  Jack turned to Helen. "So, should we have come here in the first place, lass?"

  "To this restaurant?" She smiled. Laughter. "In the briefing today they said eighteen hundred men have died so far. Eighteen hundred, including my brother."

  "It's never too late, Prom Queen. Get out while the gettin's good," Darrow said.

  "So what about a country's manifest destiny? What woulda happened if America had never come?" Jack said.

  "We might all end up speaking Vietnamese someday?" Robert said. Laughter.

  "Vietnam's destiny has not been her own for a long time. What about the French?" Ed asked.

  "The French were on their way out," Robert said.

  "Only because Ho found something stronger than them," Darrow said. "If the French had never been in Vietnam, maybe he wouldn't have needed to unleash the genie from the bottle."

  "And what a genie she is."

  "Well, geniuses, we've figured out world politics for one night. I say we adjourn."

  "Fine."

  "Sounds good. Sports Club or the Pink?"

  Outside on the sidewalk, the men formed a large, boisterous circle, but Linh stood off to the side. He said his good nights and walked away alone. Helen watched his slight, solitary figure move away. No matter how they patted him on the back and bought him drinks, he would always be on the outside of this good-old-boys' club.

  Robert turned to Helen. "I need to go to the office. Is it all right if Jack takes you back to the hotel? I'll meet you back there in an hour or so for a nightcap?"

  "Sure," Helen said, disappointed the night for her was already over, conscious that she, too, was now being excluded from the boys' club.

  "I'll take her," Darrow said. He walked up and stood next to Robert, hands dug in his pockets, head hung down studying something on the sidewalk.

  "No, it's out of your way, I'm sure," Robert said.

  "Actually, I was... going that way."

  Robert looked straight at him, his usual deference blown. "Where?" he said. "You don't even know where she's staying."

  Darrow smiled. Everyone waited. "Everyone new stays at the Continental."

  "Jack said he would take her," Robert said.

  "I have a room there, too. Remember?"

  "I'll go with Sam," Helen said. She gave Robert a shrugging, apologetic look, as if the choice were out of her control. "Maybe I can win a few arguments by the time we reach the hotel."

  The men, entertained, realized the sparring match was over with a clear winner. Ed grabbed at his heart in mock agony and staggered on the sidewalk. Robert bit his lips together; his face reddened. Jack clapped him on the back. "Come on, we'll drop you off, laddie."

  Two jeeps with drivers pulled up, and they piled in like frat boys going out on the town.

  "You two be careful now. The streets can be dangerous late at night." From inside one jeep, they heard, "Easy come, easy go, huh, Robert?" Laughter as the jeeps sped off.

  "Well, I've put us in the middle of a little scandal, I'm afraid," Darrow said.

  "We haven't done anything."

  "But we will."

  "We won't." Helen stood in front of the restaurant and looked up into his face. A paper lantern behind her cast a gold light on the edge of his high cheekbone, on his glasses so she couldn't see his eyes. "That was sudden," she said.

  "That's one of the keys to life here. Sudden and sublime. Sudden and awful. Everything distilled to its most intense. That's why we're all hooked."

  "You don't scare me. Tell me, does the great Sam Darrow always get the girl?"

  "He never got the girl. Why would he be here otherwise? The boy who can't talk learns to take pictures. Did you know you have blood on your dress?"

  Helen looked down and saw the spatters along the hem that hadn't been visible when the fabric was wet. Her face tightened at the memory. "The ducks... and a dog running by with a body in his mouth."

  Darrow bent and wiped at the fabric with a handkerchief but the blood had dried. "Can you walk in those things?" he said, pointing to her heels.

  "Sure."

  "I'd like to show you something. It isn't far."

  "I don't know... we should be getting back." She didn't feel nearly as bold alone with him as she had in front of the group. She was too lonely and homesick to trust herself being attracted to someone.

  "Come on. I don't bite."

  They walked down the narrow, crooked streets. Storekeepers had pulled down signs, mostly ones in French, a few in Vietnamese, and were replacing them with ones written in English. Skirting around vendors on the sidewalk, Helen and Darrow occasionally brushed shoulders.

  She didn't know if she liked him, but she saw a passion for the work and for the country that was missing in the others. "My presence wasn't appreciated to night," she said.

  "The boys?" Darrow said. "They're okay."

  "They don't want women here."
/>   "Wrong. They think you're a novelty. A fun toy. Wait and see what they act like when they consider you a threat."

  She felt his hand at the small of her back as she stepped around some packing crates. He hesitated, then asked what had happened to her brother.

  "The letter said he died a hero in a firefight. Sacrificed himself for his buddies. I loved my brother, but that doesn't sound like him."

  "That would be enough reason for most to stay away," Darrow said.

  "I took care of Michael while my mother worked. After Dad died. When he broke a toy, I'd glue it. Whenever he got in fights with the other boys, I'd defend him." She laughed. "I even gave him advice about the girl he had a crush on in junior high. I told him whenever he needed me, I'd always be there. And, of course, I wasn't. For the most important thing, I was nowhere near."

  Helen looked down at the bloody marks on her dress, frowning. "How could I bear to live out this small life of mine back home?"

  "You came too late. The good old days are all over."

  As they left the main thoroughfares, they turned left, then right, then left again. They doubled back and went forward, circled, until it seemed they had gone a very long way but not traveled far at all. Darrow leading her until she was so disoriented that her only compass was his arm in front of her. A new world, or an old world hidden, only half the stores lit by electricity, and then usually no more than a bare lightbulb swinging high on the ceiling, the rest dimly illuminated by kerosene lamps that flickered and made the rooms look alive. Many of the stores barely larger than closets, a mystery to figure out what they put up for sale in their crowded interiors. One sold paper--newspaper, writing paper, butcher paper. Another store sold twine. Still another, only scissors and knives. Food vendors crowded in portable stalls. The smells of spices she could not name blended with the sweet incense burning in the stores, all of it cloying the smell of diesel and sewage and the ever-present river.

  They came to the moon-shaped entrance of an alley that was flooded across from the rain. It narrowed to the dark throat of a path.

  "The streets are known by the guilds on them--noodle street, sail street, cotton street, coffin street. So if you want a driver to bring you here, say you want to go to the meeting place of silk street and lacquered bowl street."