The Lotus Eaters: A Novel

by Tatjana Soli

  "VC," Tong screamed at the Americans.

  Helen was on automatic, shooting f/8 at 250, everything inside her shut down, no fumbling, just cold, clear, and mechanical. She didn't realize for the first moment--face behind the viewfinder, vision constricted--that now Tong was shouting and flailing his arms in her direction. He strode over and stood a few feet away from her, aiming his gun straight at her forehead. She fell backward, still in a crouch, framed the muzzle and his apoplectic face above it in the viewfinder, the gold incisors flashing in the sun, and kept shooting. Captain Tong, bent in half, waved the gun wildly in one hand, screamed, and the other Vietnamese soldiers ran over to form a half circle of menace behind him.

  She heard Captain Olsen's voice, a long-forgotten presence, behind her, yelling back at Captain Tong, each in a different language, neither understanding the other.

  On a high, Helen kept shooting for what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than a minute. Captain Olsen, still behind her, still yelling over her head, took out his own gun. At that signal the American soldiers jumped up and formed behind him. Olsen took several steps forward, and in one bear-like swipe of his arm knocked the revolver out of Tong's hand. The screaming continued, Helen kept shooting, frozen to the camera--the tendons in Tong's neck bulging, his face purpled. The film ended, nothing to do but remain frozen on her knees, camera to her eye, afraid to move. If she removed the protection of the camera's body so that it no longer shielded her face, she was sure she would be killed. In the far distance, the blowing of a water buffalo could be heard, which meant that Tong had finally quieted. He kicked at the dirt in front of Helen, sending dust flying into her face, spat at her, and turned away.

  "Mother of Christ," Olsen said, grabbing Helen by both arms, dragging her back. "Are you crazy? Trying to get us fucking killed? By our allies?"

  All she could think was how unafraid she felt. How gloriously unafraid. "That old grandfather was not VC."

  "Radio for a helicopter now!" Olsen screamed to the radioman. "You are out of here."

  "I didn't do anything wrong." She was thrilled by what she had just done, and it was inconceivable that she would be dismissed.

  "Everyone, move out front."

  Away from the Vietnamese soldiers and Tong, Olsen calmed down. "I thought I'd lost you."

  "It's not fair to send me out."

  "Look, he's a slimy little bastard. But he's our bastard. You made him lose face. I can't vouch that they won't stage a little 'accident' to get you."

  Helen sat on the ground and held her head in her hands. Suddenly thirst was killing her. "Can I have a little water?"

  Olsen slapped his thigh. "I don't want my guys getting killed defending you."

  "Fine. Okay. Water." The idea of going, against her will, didn't seem quite as bad as a moment before. She had film to develop.

  "Look, you're one crazy bao chi, okay? You can come back out with me some other time."

  "Put it in writing."

  "I know." He laughed. "I know you will."

  Despite the heat, Helen shivered, the skin on her arms full of goose bumps, as the helicopter flew her back to Tan Son Nhut. So drained from the patrol and her sleepless night that the danger of the incident with Tong still seemed unreal. Her fatigues were mud-encrusted and smelled; her hair a knotted ponytail; she was proud of herself.

  The crew chief gave her a thumbs-up and passed her a flask, and she took a long drink of whiskey, drank it down like water, only the good burning sensation down her throat registering. They flew high above the jungle canopy, out of reach of danger, and Helen wished the flight would never end, that they would never have to come down and touch earth again.

  When she got out of the helicopter, Robert was waiting for her in a taxi. "Tell me everything. Olsen already radioed the incident in. I'm writing the story while the photos are developed. The package needs to be couriered to Hong Kong ASAP. The censors will never transmit it out."

  She stood in the darkroom, the size of a closet, bumping her head on shelves filled with plastic chemical bottles, watching Arnie, the wire's office manager, develop the film. He said it was too important to let her or the assistants do it. Arnie was potbellied and married, his wife and kids back home in London. The office's assortment of freelancers were his misfit orphans. He had spent a lot of time explaining composition technique to Helen.

  "You're catching on, damn it!"

  The pictures were properly framed and shot, a whole sequence from alive to dead villager, and then a muzzle below the outraged face of Captain Tong, the end of the gun pointed straight at the camera and the person behind it.

  Looking at the pictures, Helen broke out in shivers again, seeing what had been invisible before, a devouring shade as if a cloud had passed before the sun--the mystery she was chasing, the one she'd glimpsed at MacCrae's funeral. Now she understood what he'd said to her that night: that the mystery came in its own language to each person, and you had to decipher it on your own. She had been so scared at the moment she might as well have been blind.

  "Too bad," Arnie said. "This kind of work under pressure. Incredible. So good they're probably going to throw you out of the country, and I'll lose another promising photographer."

  "They're good?" The tension in her body unspooling fast now.

  "I wouldn't have believed it without seeing them. But I talked to the office in New York, who said if they were half as good as they sounded, they'd think over offering you a full-time job with the wire service."

  "Are they half as good?" Part of the dread those last few months had been the fear that she was incapable of doing what she had come for, that she would be found lacking. As a freelancer, she could stay out as long as it took to get a shot. Captain Tong had just happened, her actions unpremeditated. Now would she feel the pressure to take such risks again and again?

  "Two hundred percent as good. I might even have to give you a raise to thirty per shot. Don't get greedy."

  She frowned. "They can't throw me out now, can they?"

  "They can. They've done it to others."

  "Okay." That was enough for now.

  "I agreed to share the pics with Life. If that's okay by you. They can print the whole series in next week's issue. That philistine, Gary, pays a bit more than we do. You can actually survive on what they pay."

  Helen nodded, unhearing, and left the darkroom for the office's tepid air-conditioning and lumpy couch. She stretched out and plunged into a dreamless sleep.

  That night Helen met Robert in the bar of the hotel. He was a little bit amazed and a little bit delighted but mostly afraid for her.

  The tables were crowded, spilling out along the sidewalk. The city's electricity had gone out, and the room was lit by oil lamps, opening out onto the dark street. After her night out in the rain, the city felt luxurious even in the dark in a way no city had ever felt before. Waiters floated between the tables with small flashlights. Everything seemed uniquely fine. She felt at ease, perfectly in the moment. The danger of the incident with Tong faded into the background, and all that was left was her shining invincibility.

  A bottle of champagne appeared, and the old Vietnamese bartender in his white coat opened it with great ceremony, nestling it in a bucket on the corner of the bar. Robert and she toasted, and at her insistence, the bartender joined them for a glass. Ed and some of the other journalists came by and stopped to congratulate her.

  Matt Tanner came and stood behind her. He was a recent ex-Marine who had re-upped so many times the joke was that the Marines had finally thrown him out. The rumor was that he simply loved war too much and brought his bloodlust along with him to journalism. He was always competitive when another reporter did well, as if they were stealing his chance at glory. When he was jealous and drunk, which he was at present, his face thinned to an even more wolflike aspect.

  "Nice little publicity stunt this morning. Who'd you pay to snap the pics, huh?"

  "Get lost, Tanner," Robert said, standing up.
>
  "G.I. Jane, eh? Nice angle."

  "Maybe you should take a break from trampling over other people's backs to get the story first," Helen said.

  "Nice talking to you," Robert said to him. "Sorry you have to go."

  Tanner squinted at Robert, deciding if he was in the mood for a brawl. "All I'd like to know is who she had to screw this time."

  "Why?" Helen said. "Do you want his number?"

  "That's enough," Robert said.

  "We all know you're not getting it from Bobby here," Tanner said, and stalked out of the bar.

  Robert sat back down on the bar stool, emptied his glass, and poured another.

  "I wish the Marines would take him back," Helen said.

  "I'm your friend. It's none of my business about you and Darrow. But you have to be careful. Tanner is a competitor. Not like me, too scared to leave Saigon and the official junkets. There's going to be sore feelings if you don't sweeten up."

  "You're smart enough not to need the attention."

  Robert stiffened. "You don't have to throw me a bone."

  Helen drank down her glass and looked into the bottom as if she might find answers down there. "If I was a guy, you wouldn't tell me to worry about sore feelings."

  "If you were a guy, I'd tell you to punch him out. But I'll tell you the truth, I probably wouldn't have bought this bottle of champagne, either."

  Helen laughed. This charade of light flirtation was necessary for both of them. "Can I admit something? Just between us? This feels good."

  "Enjoy it. You earned it. But be prepared."

  "What for?"

  "For what comes next."

  In the morning her pictures and story headlined across a dozen front pages worldwide. Life magazine bought the series of photos and planned to use one as the cover for the following week; the contributor's notes touted her as their first woman combat photographer for the Vietnam war.

  She stared at her name in print with a feeling of relief that now she could stay on, no longer a joke. Six months before, no one would have believed her capable of this. Her only background a high school photography class and some work on the college newspaper taking pictures of football games. In a way, she had not believed it herself, but now she felt a sense of belonging to a fraternity, even if it was one that wasn't sure it wanted her. As time went on, she would find herself welcomed and ignored in equal mea sure.

  The nerve that she had hit was not the atrocity of the killing of the old man, which was a routine horror, nor the evidence that the SVA had run amok and was alienating the civilian population. Not even the angle that America was supporting dubious allies. Her plea sure started to chip away as she realized they were using Captain Tong threatening a woman photographer, an American civilian, to sensationalize the story. Her being a woman was the story.

  The South Vietnamese government immediately protested to the American embassy, saying that the incident had been faked. Captain Tong denied Helen's version, calling her a spy, although he couldn't explain why Americans would be discrediting their own allies, but the pictures and the testimony of Captain Olsen were ample verification. The company's mission was aborted because of the publicity alerting the VC of their movements. Olsen cabled her congratulations and said the company celebrated with brandy and cigars back in the safety of the base camp. There was even a movement under way to have an LZ named in her honor. Not Scanlon's.

  That night she turned down Robert's invitation for dinner with the boys and spent the evening walking alone through the streets of Saigon. The adrenaline high of events now turning into a low of confusion. She had proved to herself what she hadn't known before: that under the right circumstances she could be brave. An unknown gift, strange and random, like the ability to play an instrument or be good at a sport. But the memory of the old man poisoned her. His balding head; the sagging, dark eyes; the thin, sinewy legs splayed out. She felt guilt that, outside of his village, she was the only one to mourn his death; an arrogant thought, perhaps, but he had already slipped into the realm of statistic. Maybe now was the time to leave, to night, without a single good-bye.

  She could see the potential for the war to undo her. There was hardly any way the incident could have turned out better, ways without number for it to have turned worse.

  The street barbers closed up shop along the sidewalks, taking down the mirrors and shelves hung on the outside of building walls. Food smells made her stomach growl; she had not eaten since breakfast. Ducking down awkwardly at a soup stall, she pointed at what she wanted. The old man smiled and soon a large crowd stood watching her, giggling at the sight of a Westerner, a woman no less, squatting on the street and eating with chopsticks and ladle-style spoon. The official health brochures warned against eating the street food, but Helen was tired of obeying rules, tired of being frightened. This night she was immune. She slurped her soup the same way the Vietnamese man next to her was doing.

  Finished with her soup, she rose to the claps of a few Vietnamese around her, impressed that she had eaten the whole bowl. She bowed and made her way back to the hotel.

  In the lead article about Captain Tong, Scanlon being killed by a land mine while on patrol had been mentioned only in passing; his death was not newsworthy enough in the war. But, of course, his death was the only thing that day that mattered. The old villager's death was another tragedy of unnewsworthy proportion. She consoled herself with the thought that the pictures were graphic enough to shake people up, stop them being complacent about what was happening, and if that meant the war would end sooner, those two deaths weren't in vain. As she hoped, with less and less confidence each day, that Michael's had not been in vain. Too much waste to bear.

  MacCrae's words never left her thoughts. They want you to be part of their movie, don't ever forget it. Their prescience haunted her, and if there was anyone she needed to talk to that night, it was him. Appropriate that he was now a ghost. Whatever victory she felt was cut neatly by the idea that her photos would be used for purposes she had not intended. She pictured MacCrae's face across the table that night. An even more grim possibility. Would discrediting the SVA allow them to bring in more American soldiers?

  The only tangible effect of her photos was the number of requests that came to cover Helen herself. Photo teams from the States wanted to go out and photograph her photographing the war. If she let that happen, she may as well go home because she'd be a spectacle. The journalist's cardinal sin of becoming the center of the story. It embarrassed her, and she had Arnie turn them all down. And then an offer came from Life that she couldn't turn down--staff photographer.

  When Arnie finally got clearance to offer her a full-time position with the wire service, she blushed. "Gary already made a big offer."

  "Yeah, I figured. Good for you. Hell, this is small potatoes here."

  "I'll miss you."

  "Tsk, tsk," Arnie said. "You should find a nice soldier to marry." Over the years, he had learned that each journalist had his own specific reasons for why he went into the battlefield. He guessed hers worked as well as anyone else's.

  She requested that her first assignment be to cover the Central Highlands and I Corps area, especially her brother's Special Forces unit. Gary promptly ignored her, and she learned the price of being bought.

  That night as she brushed her teeth, getting ready for bed, she heard a light rapping on the door. Her heart lifted, all the emotions of the week rushing out, hoping it was Darrow. She opened the door in her slip, but it was Linh standing there.

  "I didn't wake you?" he said, startled at the sight of her undressed.

  "No, no. Is everything all right?" Helen asked, looking behind him.

  "I'm going to work for you now."

  "What? What do you mean?"

  "Sam asks me to give you this." Linh handed her an envelope.

  "Come in. Sit down." She motioned him to a chair and tore open the envelope.

  Helen of a Thousand Ships,

  Congratulations! Even thou
gh you bumped me from a cover and almost got yourself killed in the bargain. Since you're determined to play the boys' game, at least accept a life preserver--Linh. He will be invaluable to you.

  Love,

  Darrow

  Linh stood by the window staring out. When she spoke to him, he kept his face turned away, and she guessed her slip embarrassed him. She put on a robe. Still he was pensive.

  "How do you feel about this?" she asked.

  "It's important to Sam that I work with you. I'm hoping you are strong. I am thinking this is going to be a very long war."

  SEVEN

  Hoi Chanh

  Defectors

  A week after the dinner where Linh was first introduced to Helen, he went to Darrow's hotel room and was surprised to see a picture of her on top of a stack of prints on the table. Darrow never joined his reporter friends with their Vietnamese bar girls at the various clubs. Linh knew about a few native women, including the one in Cambodia, but Darrow never openly had a girlfriend.

  Perhaps Darrow preferred Western women, but there, too, Linh had observed a fair number try to capture his attention with no success. Was he struggling to stay faithful to his wife back in America? He never talked of her in the way a man talks of the woman he loves. But then Linh himself had never spoken of Mai until she was gone.

  Which made the picture of the beautiful photographer all the more startling--a single bloom sprung up on a parched riverbed floor.

  Linh examined more closely, saw she was wearing a flak jacket and camouflage pants, that the palms behind her were water palm fronds. Darrow had not mentioned going out on a mission with her, and Linh felt a pang of betrayal at the omission. He had become possessive over Darrow's company, as well as his confidences.

  "Oh, you remember the freelancer from the States?" Darrow said, turning away, obviously irritated at Linh's attention and the necessity of explaining himself.

  "A very striking freelancer."

  "You're right. I've got to straighten myself out. Breaking my own rules."