The Lotus Eaters: A Novel

by Tatjana Soli

  On the tenth day they received a click-hiss on the radio, a signal an NVA convoy would be passing within hours. They set up positions in the bush with a clear view of a wide dirt path that crossed a quick-moving river. The sound of the water concealed them against accidental noise.

  Linh and Helen cut branches to create a tripod inside a large bush, then hid the camera and zoom lens with leaves. Linh attached a cable release for the shutter. "When they come, no movement. No framing. We have to be lucky. If your hands shake, no problem."

  She listened and did what Linh told her without question. Enacting a ritual to summon a spirit, conjuring an enemy that had for the most part remained invisible and otherworldly. Beyond belief that such a force could be made up of individual people, and she wondered if it was the same for the North Vietnamese--did they fear the magic of the Americans, with their planes and bombs? Their endless machines. Each time the Americans came across fresh footprints of rubber sandals, they stared at them with a kind of queasy awe. The only tangible evidence of the enemy's existence so far was dead bodies, but strangely, the dead were somehow less, did not match the fear and terror they inspired, much like one could not imagine flight from the evidence of a dead bird on the ground.

  Hours passed that held the weight of days. Ten feet away, Helen heard the click-hiss of the radio again as the Lurp nodded up and down the line and then shut it off. More hours, with only a minimum of movement. The day overcast and cooler, a thin fog curled at the top of the mountains, and the first enemy soldier materialized on the path without a noise.

  How young they seemed.

  Barely out of boyhood in their shabby khaki uniforms, thin so that their pants, rolled up, revealed the large knobs of knees. The AKs strapped across their chests looked too big for them to handle, children playing war with their fathers' guns. Their faces so serious and yet they moved with the energy of teenagers, confident in their steps. When the first soldiers came to the river, they stopped and scanned it up and down, but they were at the narrowest and slowest-flowing part--the Lurps made sure of that before setting up positions--and Helen pressed down on the cable release over and over, hoping that just by sheer numbers she would come up with a usable frame, the click of the camera inaudible over the gravelly sound of the running water.

  The first soldiers waded in their rubber sandals halfway across the river, the rushing water reaching waist-high so that they had to raise their weapons. Behind the point guard, soldiers came with heavy loads strapped onto bicycles, a bamboo pole across the handlebar and another from the seat of the bike for steering. One of them said something to a soldier in the stream, and the young man again scanned the river up and down and shrugged.

  The bicycles shuddered in the river, the rushing water tugging against the canvas bags, forcing the drivers to cross quickly, almost at a jog because the power of the current would tire them, soaking the bags heavy and making their jobs harder. More than fifty bicycles passed in an hour.

  Next came a kind of crude wagon balanced on four fat rubber tires. Two soldiers directed it, one front and one back. Halfway across the river, a front tire caught on something underwater, and the force of the soldier pushing from the back made it go in deeper, splaying the wagon sideways so it was at a forty-five-degree angle to the bank. The two soldiers tried to straighten it, then back it up, but the vehicle wouldn't budge.

  Now the soldiers closest to the Americans stopped on their side of the riverbank, laid their bikes down and slipped off their packs, and waded into the water to free the wagon. It took eight men to get it moving, and when they reached the other side, the steep bank was too slippery, and the wheels couldn't gain traction. An order was given to cut down poles to create a ramp.

  Five soldiers, including one young boy, took out small hatchets shaped like half-moons and began combing through the surrounding brush. Four of them moved upstream, away from the Americans, but the young boy moved downstream, straight toward them.

  Helen held her breath and moved her head in time to see one of the Lurps nearest her pull the pin out of a grenade and then the boy soldier was near them, but he was not looking for a pole. He seemed glad to stop marching, and he looked up at the sky and down the stream and reached in his pocket, pulling out something white that he quickly stuck in his mouth, and as he began to chew, Helen realized it was gum, and the surprise made her smile. An order was barked from one of the soldiers holding the wagon in the stream, and the boy soldier veered directly toward Helen and Linh, seeing the easy lure of their cut branches. He reached for one of the poles holding the camera, bringing his right hand with the hatchet up. When the pole came away in his hand, he found himself looking eye to eye with Linh. The boy soldier's eyes grew big, and his chest inhaled a yell when his vision caught the movement of Helen's hand on the cable, and his eyes grew larger.

  Helen looked at him and knew that it was probably the end for all of them, but something in his face and gestures made her unafraid. Gently she raised her hand and ran her index finger lightly across her neck, more a statement of the situation they all found themselves in than a threat, and the boy soldier exhaled without a sound, stepped back, his eyes traveling again to Linh, who raised his own hand to cover his face, palm down, slowly dragging his hand down his features, fingertips finally grazing his chin, a mime to erase all that had been seen, and the boy soldier turned quickly at the new barked orders from the men soldiers in the stream, and again he looked at the river, squinting as the sun reflected off of it, motionless for a moment before he moved away, blowing a big, sugary bubble.

  Poles were cut and put under the wagon, and it tracked up the muddy bank. The last of the soldiers, including the boy, crossed, and then the clearing was empty, only footprints proving the whole thing had not been a dream.

  When they returned to Saigon they did not stop to shower or change but went straight to the magazine's darkroom and kicked out all the assistants.

  Gary got word of the pictures and left his apartment before curfew to spend the night at the office. "You're kidding, aren't you? How'd you do it?" He was grabbing at his collar around his neck as if there were a pressure there. With shock, Helen realized that in the last month his hair had turned white.

  "Are you okay?" she said.

  "I forbid you to take chances like that. Or at least, tell me first."

  Helen looked at him coolly. She had long suspected that Gary cared more than he let on, yet it was in the nature of the business that they all wanted to please him, that he created, subtly, the competitive drive and risk-taking that produced the pictures. "We were on our own time."

  "Do it again, you're fired."

  "And get five better offers the next day." She was beyond the point where he could make demands, unspoken that she would take the same risks anyway and simply sell to another magazine if need be. The pictures didn't matter anymore.

  "Don't make me go through losing another photographer," he said. And with that, she was chastened.

  "The pictures all go under a dual byline, okay? No one else in the darkroom till we finish. No one touches the negatives."

  "Let me have a peek, okay? At least the first contacts."

  "We'll see." She worried about the quality of the exposures, the dim light and the lack of aperture adjustment.

  "You're my top paid feature person now. Tell Linh I'm putting him on staff full-time."

  Helen nodded her head and gently closed the darkroom door behind her.

  Linh began with test clips. As Helen feared, the light had been too dim. Linh left the negatives in the developer longer to increase the contrast and sharpen the edges. His first test got better and better, but at the moment both of them thought the exposure perfect, fog developed over the shadows. "Too long," he said. "We'll shorten the next one."

  Helen sat on a stool in the dark, the red light on Linh as he moved back and forth. "What do you think?"

  He studied the next test negative, then turned the overhead light on. He handed it to Helen, and
the air went out of her when she saw the poor range of tone and the weak edge markings on the film. "It's not going to work. These are terrible."

  "We can fix it. We'll leave it in developer longer. Use two baths. I'll make it work."

  Helen chewed her nail. "How'd you learn to do all this?"

  "This is nothing. I used to work in the forest at night with only stars. I rinsed negatives by letting water run over the strips in the stream. Dried them by hanging them along small leaves."

  "Gary is making you staff photographer."

  Linh bowed his head a moment before he reached for the printing trays. "That's a great honor."

  "Honor, BS. He's afraid to lose you to a competitor. It means that they can transfer you out of the country if you want."

  "Yes."

  "Thank you for taking me out there. To see that. It was a dream. After doing this for me... I'm keeping my word. I'm going home."

  "Yes."

  "Come with me."

  Linh said nothing.

  "Robert will give you a good job."

  "I cannot."

  "Not even for me..." Helen said, more statement than question.

  "It is too much to ask."

  Hours later they printed the closeup shot of the boy soldier. Linh burned in highlights, and as he promised, the picture was decent in quality, extraordinary in subject. They handed the print to Gary, who stood at the door like a nurse waiting to carry off a newborn, forgetting Helen and Linh as soon as he collected his prize. They sat in the darkroom, door open, the red safelight a dull star. Both were tired and heavy-eyed but unwilling to leave.

  "We make a good team," she said.

  Linh smiled.

  "Will they hurt the boy when they see his picture? Will they think he's a traitor?"

  "No," Linh said. "He'll think fast like he did with us. He'll survive."

  "I felt good out there."

  "Go to California. It will be better there for you."

  She was hurt by his constant dismissal. "What about you?"

  "Nothing to worry about. With you gone, I will be the best photographer in Vietnam. Maybe I will marry Mai's sister. She need a husband for her children." He kept thinking of his debt to Darrow, how Helen's safety would have mattered to him more than anything else.

  Helen's back stiffened. "I had no idea."

  "It's a Vietnam tradition. To care for family," Linh said.

  "Darrow wanted you to be happy. Have a good life for him." Helen scrambled to her feet and turned on the overhead light. "I'm going to grab a couple of hours on the cot."

  "We got good pictures."

  "How can I top this? Go out on top, right?"

  Helen moved out of the apartment in Cholon, handing the keys over to Linh, and went back to the Continental, where she had started. The next morning, she made arrangements to fly home. She did not feel more or less grieved than before she went out with Linh in the field, but something had changed. She knew it and suspected that Linh knew it, and they did not speak of it but instead acted as if nothing had shifted between them.

  Late at night Helen stayed awake in her hotel room, sleep no longer a thing to be counted on, and she lay in bed, propped up by pillows, staring into darkness until she could see the patterns of the tiles on the wall, the blades of the fan above as they pushed against the heavy air. She stored a bottle of bourbon on her bedside table, and it slackened the thirst and loneliness she felt during those long hours, sure that there would be no knock on the door. Helen slowly trained herself to believe in Darrow's death. He had been her guide and mentor, as well as her lover, and she did not feel up to the challenge of the war without him.

  Was it the same for others? Like children, did they all wait for the reappearance of a loved one, death simply a word, the lack of a knock on a door? She knew better, had seen the two bags on top of the steep ravine, had watched them sway on poles on the shoulders of the living.

  And yet. The sight of the pale NVA soldiers had changed everything for her. Just when she thought there was nothing more but repeating herself, a whole other world, formerly invisible, appeared. No American had yet photographed the other side. As thrilling as exploring an unknown continent on a map. No one could understand except Darrow and MacCrae, who were gone. Only Linh, who now was determined to send her home. Frequently she dreamed of the boy soldier who had held their fate in his hands, who saved them and himself for another day, and how the Lurps sat, tensed, how one wet his index finger and marked it in the air, one down, like a sports score.

  Helen woke groggy in the morning, her room too hot, mouth sour with alcohol. Her room boy served her Vietnamese coffee, thick and sweet with condensed milk, out of a silver pot, laid down fresh rolls on a china plate with three small pots of jam--marmalade, strawberry, and guava--both knowing she used only marmalade. She slathered the bread with butter but used the orange sparingly so that the boy could take the two unused pots home with him each day. Why, just as she was leaving, did she finally feel at home?

  When Helen expressed the desire to see the crooked apartment one last time, Linh told her Thao had already moved in, that the whole building shook from the running of children up and down the stairs.

  "Good," Helen said. "Something to break the bad luck."

  After the remains from the crash site had been identified, Gary brought out Darrow's will stating he wished to be cremated in Vietnam, but his wife made an official complaint to the magazine, and they gave in to her wishes, shipping the body back to New York for burial.

  Helen, ready to fly out, felt all the original grief renew itself. She was nothing to Darrow. She begged Gary to read Darrow's letter over the phone to the wife, but the woman remained unswayed, convinced that he had not been in his right mind the last year. In the end, the body went to the States, and the staff had a Buddhist funeral with an empty casket, done frequently as the numbers of dead grew and recovery of bodies became more problematic.

  The procession began at the apartment in Cholon. Helen looked up at the window, hoping to see the sister-in-law and her children crowding the sill, but it remained empty. Was it possible that Linh had kept her away so memory would not change her mind about leaving? The Vietnamese in the procession wore traditional white scarves of mourning on their heads. Monks chanted and burned joss. They wound their way to downtown, stopped in the plaza next to the Marine Statue, beneath the office's windows.

  Helen was dry-eyed. Her head ached. At the plaza, Gary leaned against a tree, facing away from them, and all she could see was the curl of his shoulders, his newly white hair. But she wasn't able to comfort him. Weren't they all children, pretending tragedy when it was clear the danger they placed themselves in? Shouldn't they just damn well accept it? When they passed the Continental, the head bartender carried out a glass of Darrow's favorite scotch on a silver tray.

  At Mac Dinh Chi cemetery, Linh scattered a trail of uncooked rice and paper money. Clouds gathered and wind blew as a mat was unrolled at the gravesite. A plate of cracked crab flown in from Vung Tau, a bowl of rice, and the glass of scotch were laid out. Tangible things that Helen understood, compared to the generic funerals of flowers and coffins and organ music she had attended back home. A bundle of incense was lit and then it was over.

  The clouds darkened, the longed-for rain fell, and people scattered for any available shelter.

  Helen looked for Annick in the procession, but she had warned that she would not come. Too many funerals, she said. If she went to them all that's all she'd do. But Helen was leaving that night and wanted to say good-bye, so she walked, covering herself with the umbrella, moving through the flooding streets, skirting small moving streams of dirty water floating with trash. The rain kept falling, gray and hard, pounding the earth, and a gust of wind blew off the river, lifting the ribs of her umbrella inside out until she was gathering the rain rather than sheltering from it, and she let the umbrella fall on the road, knowing it would be picked up, repaired, and used within minutes. Each item reincarnated
countless times. One thing she had learned in Vietnam--that reincarnation was not only in the hereafter but also in the now. She continued on, rain pelting her, and reached the milliner's and stood under the awning, wiping water off her face. In the display window was a wedding dress she hoped had been created for some jilted bride and not her.

  Inside, the Vietnamese seamstresses sat on their accustomed rush seats, sewing away faster and with more concentration than usual. From outside, over the sound of rain, Helen had thought she heard talking and laughter, but inside, the store was as silent as a tomb. She stood at the counter, but Annick did not come out from the back where she usually hid out, smoked cigarettes, and drank wine. The seamstresses took no notice of Helen's presence, so she tapped the bell on the counter.

  At the sound, the older one stood. She wore the same black dress Helen had seen her in the first time and each subsequent time she came to the store, so that Helen was convinced that the madames owned seven identical black dresses, one for each day in order for the worn ones to be washed and starched and made ready. Her head pounding, Helen felt feverish as she stood, dripping water onto the floor. The elder madame mumbled to herself as she made her stiff, slow way to the counter, all the while looking down to study her suddenly idle fingers.

  "Bonjour, madame," Helen said, and the seamstress returned the greeting in her singsong French, more as a refrain than greeting, still without making eye contact.

  "Ou est Madame Annick?" Helen asked.

  The seamstress sighed. "Madame est parti."

  "Ou?" Where?

  The seamstress looked up, and her gaze startled Helen, the eyes the pale gray of cataract. "Elle est parti." The woman bent sideways under the counter, pulled out a small flat box tied in satin ribbon. Helen opened it and saw a card from Annick on top of a gold scarf. No good-byes. Bon voyage, ma chere.

  "Merci. Au revoir," the seamstress replied, and with a small curtsey she returned to her chair in obvious relief to again pick up her embroidery.

  At the hotel that evening, Linh apologized for not being able to take her to the airport. He made no attempt to give an excuse. He could not trust himself not to betray her departure. Beg her not to leave. They stood awkwardly at the hotel entrance.