The Lotus Eaters: A Novel (38 page)

"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.

"I'll miss you," she said.

As Linh walked away, a soldier was arguing with the doorman, and Helen was distracted by his loud voice. When she looked back to the spot where Linh had stood, it was empty. But as the cab pulled up to take her bags, he reappeared.

"Everything's fixed. I can come see you off."

They rode in silence. Again he offered no explanation for his change in plans, and Helen, hurt that he had not wanted to see her off, now wondered why he had changed his mind.

As the plane rose steeply on takeoff, the passengers remained quiet, but as it swung out over the South China Sea applause broke out. Helen was the only one not smiling. Below on the dark sea, squid boats floated like carnivals, bright with light.

After Helen left Saigon
, Linh sat alone in the crooked apartment. No sister-in-law, no children. When he had turned down Thao's proposal of marriage, she had promptly set her sights on a mechanic and was now living on the other side of town with him and the children. Linh still sent them money.

Linh had stood helpless at the gate of the plane; he had broken his own discipline and confused her by his actions. In his weakness he asked Helen for something to remember her by, but it was too late. All she had was a gold scarf around her neck that was brand-new and not hers yet, but she took it off and handed it to him. Now he held it to his nose, but there was no scent of her on it. Slowly he twisted it and wrapped it tight around one wrist, when someone knocked at the door. He did not want to answer, did not want to endure Mr. Bao at this moment, but to continue to avoid him would be worse. He opened the door.

Mr. Bao walked through the room, now needing a wooden cane, taking in each object although only the bare furniture remained. "Now it seems I must come to you. It's been months since we've talked."