The Lotus Eaters: A Novel

by Tatjana Soli

  Now the building stood hushed. Had it been abandoned on account of an American woman living there? And if so, where had the families gone in this city that was now as isolated and cut off as a quarantined ship on the high seas? These people had been their friends, had shared meals with them. Helen was godmother to five children. And yet the fear destroyed all of those bonds.

  Although it was daybreak, the sky hung sullen with low clouds. Helen walked over to the red-shaded lamp and turned it off, intending sleep. Until these last few days the lamp had been invisible in its everydayness, but now she noticed the shade bleached to dull terra-cotta, like blood imperfectly washed out, the fabric so brittle she could poke her finger through it. It had simply outlasted its time. But the gloom unnerved her, and she turned the light back on.

  Their belongings had been sent to Japan weeks ago, when the first news of President Thieu abandoning the Central Highlands came, the cities so familiar to Helen disappearing--Kontum, Pleiku, and Ban Me Thuot.

  The rooms had the empty, threadbare feeling of that first night she had come there with Darrow. But it had long ceased to be his. Linh and Helen had shared so many memories in those rooms, they had excised the curse that she had feared was on the place. But now it was slipping away from them also. Already it felt as if the apartment, the city, the country, was in the throes of forgetting them.

  Helen undressed, body stiff and aching, and she swabbed at the nail marks on her arms and the bruise at her temple. Because she had refused stitches, there would be a scar near the hairline. This worry over a small vanity would make Linh smile, but perhaps that was how one remained sane. She pulled on her new red kimono, the only piece of clothing she still had other than what she wore, but the joy she had taken in it was already gone without him to appreciate it. Now it was simply a covering, and she walked past the mirror, not wanting to confront herself in it. The rooms felt thick with ghosts, and she realized that she had hardly ever been there alone. Linh always filled them with life, banishing any spirits to the corners.

  She pictured him at that moment out on the dawn-pink sea. Probably not sleeping, although he had slept only fitfully through the night. Had he forgiven her? He must know that she was coming shortly. A simple matter of days, photographing the new victors of the city, then being booted out. What was going through his mind? What would he miss the most about his home-land? Of course she knew. She was his country; she was what he would miss until they were back together.

  Helen frowned and looked at the map on the wall. Linh understood. Once one took a picture like Captain Tong shooting the old man, one inevitably started down the road of taking more and more. Bloated with self-importance, with the illusion of mission. One stayed at first for glory, then excitement, then later it was pure endurance and proficiency; one couldn't imagine doing anything else. But there was something more, hard to put her finger on--one felt a camaraderie in war, an urgency of connection impossible to duplicate in regular life. She felt more human when life was on the edge.

  It had never been that way for Linh. Something kept him aloof, safe, but he understood her addiction. Allowed it but also kept her from going too far. Like she was doing now. She ran her fingers down the map--Quang Tri, Hue, Danang, Quang Ngai, Qui Nhon--each name recalling a past, each name a time of year and a military assignment, defeat, or victory. But now each name was being erased, exploration in reverse, the map becoming instead more and more empty, filled with great white expanses of loss.

  Her mind, again, became a treacherous, circling thing.

  A water glass full of vodka in order to sleep; she hoped she would pass out before reaching the bottom. Her mind skipped and jumped, a needle on a worn record, and she pulled down one of Darrow's old books to calm herself, a dip in the stream of a dog-eared passage:

  The temple of Angkor... making him forget all the fatigues of the journey... such as would be experienced on finding a verdant oasis in the sandy desert... as if by enchantment... transported from barbarism to civilization, from profound darkness to light.

  She had never understood Darrow's obsession with Angkor; it had seemed strangely indulgent and romantic given his character. She fell asleep with the book in her hands, her question unanswered.

  Hours later, Helen woke, panicked she had missed something. She stumbled onto her feet and dressed in the clothes from the day before. At the door she hesitated, not afraid, yet the outside seemed newly forbidding. One fell in love with geography through people, and when the people were gone, the most beloved place turned cool and impersonal.

  _______

  At the presidential palace, she took out her camera and framed the columns of Soviet tanks slowly grinding their way down Hong Thap Tu Street. Fencing them in the box of her viewfinder calmed her. They turned up Thong Nhut Boulevard, pulling up bits of the broken street in their tracks and slapping them back down like mah-jongg tiles.

  As a tank approached the front gates, Helen's camera stuck. She pulled back and forth on the lever, but nothing happened. Jammed. She yanked the strap off her neck as the sound of crunched metal could be heard, clamped the camera between her knees and pulled out a lens for the second body, but by the time she had it ready, the tank had rolled over the gingerbread gate with a hollow tearing of metal. Later, she found out that there had been offers to open the gates, but the NVA insisted on breaking them down. Showmen. She cursed, the camera dropping from her knees, clattering on the pavement. Kneeling on the ground, she rubbed the lens with a tissue to see if it had been scratched. She looked up just in time to see the unfurling from the balcony of the huge red flag with the gold star of the North.

  Within hours, once the Saigonese realized that their city would not be bombed, that the rumored bloodbath would not occur, people came out and tentatively waved and clapped at the passing North Vietnamese soldiers. If she knew anything about the place, it was how quickly it switched allegiances, a fickle paramour, and yet in spite of herself she felt betrayed.

  Walking down the street, she was surprised to see noodle shops already reopened. At one, she spotted incongruous white-blond hair and recognized the new Matt, the young reporter she had run into the day before, slurping a bowl with a group of NVA. He had a day's-old beard and wore the same black T-shirt she'd seen him in last time. When he saw her, he motioned her over.

  "I've got a scoop for you this time. Check these boys out, Helen. We're having a picnic."

  A group of five young soldiers looked up at her and giggled. They were young and skinny in their loose, mustard-colored uniforms, unsophisticated compared to the jaded, sleek SVA. They reminded Helen of polite and well-mannered country children. She wished her boy soldier would reappear, blowing his bubble gum. Most had never been in a city before, and Saigon, even in its present disheveled state, was a marvel of riches. The new rulers got lost on the way to the palace and had to stop their tanks and ask a frightened civilian for directions.

  "Get this. They think ceiling fans are head choppers." Matt laughed, his mouth full of noodles, his hand making small hacking motions against the side of his neck. "Choppy, choppy those bastards, huh?" he said, elbowing a soldier.

  The fear was too fresh for Helen to sit down next to these men and slurp noodles. Matt was a fool, but he had the advantage of no history. "I've got to get some more shots," she said.

  "Hey, wait, I think I've talked them into giving me a tank ride. You could take pictures of me."

  "Maybe next time," she said, walking away.

  "What next time?" he yelled.

  In the next few days the Communists did not take over the city simply because they did not know how. But given they had already won an impossible victory, no one doubted they would soon learn.

  The Saigonese quickly regained their confidence when they met these naive soldiers and began to ply them with the same cheap watches and fake goods they had pawned off on new G.I.'s. Secretly they wondered to themselves what they had been so afraid of. The most obvious hardship of the takeover on Tu Do was t
he absence of prostitutes, not allowed under Uncle Ho's rules of clean living.

  Soon jokes were traveling the city about the new bo dois, how they used a modern toilet to wash rice and were outraged when they pushed the handle and their food disappeared.

  Helen went up and down the streets taking pictures of shopkeepers tearing down their American signs, crowbarring off neon and metal, and replacing them with hastily made Vietnamese ones. A Vietnamese man stood on top of a swaying ladder, pounding at a neon tube sign that read BUCK'S BAR

  , with a picture of a naked girl in a cowboy hat with a lasso that moved up and down her body in red and green loops. His calves were thin and ropey, his feet in their sandals calloused, the toenails thick and yellow. A life of hard work could be seen in those legs. She filled the frame with his body, the sign behind him a blur. Glass fell in small, tinkling chips like snow, and he brushed the splinters off his cheeks and shoulders and pounded harder till the whole thing fell in the street; his face drawn with pain like he was beating a favorite child. When he saw the camera, he scowled and almost lost his balance, waving Helen off.

  She made her way to the wire service offices, where Gary was camped out, a skeleton crew transmitting stories throughout the morning.

  "Where've you been? Beating up some NVA? Or joining Uncle Ho's army? War's over, Helen!" Tanner said.

  "Thought I'd hang out with you."

  Gary walked over to her. "Your credentials were pulled a week ago. You officially don't work here. You're supposed to be gone with Linh."

  "Fine. I'll go. And take my pictures with me over to AP or UPI."

  "Don't be that way. Let's see them."

  "Am I back in?" She held the camera bag just out of his reach, teasing.

  Gary hesitated, then laughed. "Just be careful. It's weird out there."

  "It's Alice in Wonderland time out there," Tanner said.

  She developed her own film, and Gary sent out all the prints because they might be among the last to go out. Her byline would be on the majority of the pictures of the takeover, her name joined with the crumbling city's last hours. At last her stamp on a part of history. Everyone was waiting for the inevitable--communications lines to be cut. That was when the victors would show their true hand.

  Early evening, the machines fluttered and went dead at last. A ripple of fear traveled the office.

  "That's it, people. Vietnam is closed for business. Let's go to dinner."

  A mixed group of nationalities among the dozen journalists dining on the roof of the Caravelle Hotel. Tanner raised his glass to Helen in a private toast. Although they had never liked each other, there was a mutual respect for time served. Waiters in white coats carried food out from the restaurant as if it were just another night. The Westerners were surprised that the place was still operating but remained quiet in front of the staff, as if bringing up the war were in bad taste. The maitre d' stopped by their table and politely informed Gary that this was the last night they would remain open. They could not put the bill on account but had to pay by check or cash. Before dessert, the waiters had disappeared. Gary and a French writer rummaged in the abandoned kitchen for ice cream. The final bill never came.

  After dinner, they "liberated" cigars and drinks from the now self-serve bar. Helen was lying on a lounge chair, drinking a glass of champagne and looking up at the stars.

  The young Matt came and sat next to her.

  "You should've hung around yesterday. I scored a lid off them," Matt said.

  Helen knew he was a liar but didn't care. At this late date, personal preferences were a nicety. Should she start thinking other wars? South America? What would Linh think?

  Matt's hair was back in a ponytail, and he wore a fresh tie-dye shirt with a peace symbol on the chest. He looked almost presentable for an antiwar protester. He lifted Helen's wrist and looked at the Montagnard bracelet. "Where'd you get that?"

  "Years ago from a Special Forces guy. Before you ever took your first picture." She lifted her chin toward his shirt. "You actually wear that to cover combat?"

  "Sure. It's a disguise."

  "It's working. You don't look like a photographer."

  "I totally dig this old-guard, ballbuster stuff." Matt chuckled and refilled her champagne glass as it dangled in her hand, but she remained reclined, looking up at the stars. "And my mentor, old Tanner, with his Graham Greene vices and his Marine crap, too funny. It's like you all read the same book."

  "Isn't it amazing," she said.

  "What?" he asked.

  "The quiet. No planes, no artillery. I never knew the city any other way." A wave of nostalgia and history and failure overwhelmed her, and she drank down her glass.

  Matt poured her another and signaled to Tanner over her head. "So did the bracelet bring you luck?"

  Helen shrugged. "I'm still here. Is that luck?"

  Tanner came and sat down at her feet. "Tucked your VC partner safely away and now you're ready to play with us, huh?"

  "The two Matts have a proposition for you."

  She looked at the young man more closely. A boyish face, unlined and unknowing, a long thin nose with the sunburned skin peeling. He licked his lips, which were thick and pouting and didn't match the rest of his face, and she realized he was wired up on speed. "Proposition away."

  He grinned a smirky kind of smile as if he were letting her in on some great prank. "It's just a matter of time now before they kick us out, right? The excitement's finished here."

  "So?"

  "So... we'll leave before they kick us out. But our way. A little car trip through Cambodia, stop off in Phompers. The only Western journalists to get pictures of what's going down in the countryside. All the other reporters have been herded up in the French embassy."

  "Wow. That's pretty risky."

  "That's why we're inviting you along," Tanner said. "A bit of nostalgia. Our personal swan song."

  Tanner took risks, but she supposed he was most interested in saving his hide, vulture reputation notwithstanding. Matt had covered the Rangers in Hung Loc and gotten a good story out of it. Not so bad. Not so desperate.

  "Cambodia?" she said, staring at him. The oldest of seductions--falling under the spell of one clearly more innocent than oneself.

  "We go out through Thailand," Tanner said. Now that she seemed actually to be listening to them, he was straightened into considering his own proposition.

  "When?"

  "First thing in the morning."

  Darrow had won the Pulitzer before he got to Vietnam. But he continued on, his fame growing to legend status as he became associated with this small, problematic Southeast Asian bush war. Always he wanted to cover one more action. She told herself she was not as obsessed as Darrow. She was a professional, accessing a potential gig. Tanner was seasoned; he knew the risks; he was going. So if it was doable, was she simply too afraid to push out to the limits as Darrow had done? A total shutout of the media. A once-in-a-lifetime thing. That puritan instinct. How could she let them--the bad guys, the ones who wanted to do their dirty work in the dark--win, when it was nothing more than another car trip on her way out?

  As dinner broke up, Gary took her aside. "I heard what those two clowns are up to. You're not going with them?"

  She grimaced. "Of course not. What kind of fool do you take me for?"

  At noontime, they were already on Route 1, getting close to the border.

  Foreign employees at the wire services who had already abandoned the country left keys with directions to their cars, and the three had been able to take their pick. Nothing military because one couldn't be sure that isolated pockets of VC didn't still believe the war was on. They settled on a custom-painted pink station wagon with peace signs and the graffiti YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

  on the side. They would try to pass themselves off as hippies or smalltime drug smugglers--anything was better than being press if they were stopped.

  All three sat in the front seat and filled the back with scavenged tires fro
m other cars and cans of petrol. With their equipment on top of that, the car was filled to the roof and made it impossible to see out the rearview mirror. Starting at dawn, they had already stopped to repair three punctured tires. The car had no air-conditioning, so they rolled down the windows.

  The hot air battered Helen's face, her lips, turned her hair into sharp lashing wires, but it felt good being in motion and having a purpose. Her mind skated, full of dangerous curves and valleys, a grand adventure. Once she got to Thailand and flew to Linh, they would take some time off in California. There would always be other wars. All in the service of this excitement that was commensurate with the risk one took. At times she had the dispiriting notion of needing to remain constantly in flight, although after all these years, she was growing tired, never alighting in one place too long, never putting her full weight on the crust of the earth in case it gave way. Her job was to get pictures, but sometimes she forgot why.

  The countryside appeared empty. When they did pass villagers, there was more a look of surprise in their faces than anything else. Helen didn't know what she expected to see, nothing had changed--only the same barren fields and plots of banana trees and patches of scrub that had always been.

  Matt sat in the middle and rolled a joint, passing it back and forth among the three of them. He wore metallic blue-tinted sunglasses that reflected Helen's image back to her.

  "When did you first come here?" he asked.

  "Why're you wearing those glasses?" she asked.

  "You should have seen her. A schoolgirl practically wearing bobby socks," Tanner said.

  Matt took a deep drag on the joint and held his breath for a minute. "When?" he finally squeaked out, still holding smoke in his lungs.

  "We need to stop and eat," Tanner said.

  "I'm starving. What did you bring?" she said.

  "Whatever I could find. Some chips. Mangoes. C-rations," Matt said.

  "Who would bring C-rations?" Tanner yelled.

  "They'll keep," Matt said.