The Lotus Eaters: A Novel (50 page)

"Too dangerous."

"Otherwise... the obvious choice... a dead woman reporter would demoralize the Americans."

"Think of something else." He had let Mai down; he would not let harm come to Helen. "Let me talk with headquarters."

"Headquarters doesn't know who you are. Think I'm a fool? Those are your choices. Prove you're not led by your pants. And you've had your bit of fun, too. Tell me, what is she like in bed?"

Linh laughed and drank down his glass. Mr. Bao had already been suspicious about him before this, so the marriage was neither good nor bad. But he was wrong about Linh. He had changed in the intervening years, had become what he wasn't before: a soldier. "Pour us another, and I'll tell you things. Her eyes."

Outside the wind howled so that the thatch of the hut rustled and whispered.

"Forget eyes. Tell me about her breasts. I knew when I saw you with her scarf that time." Mr. Bao laughed. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt from the heat of the drinks and the heat of the lantern in the small room.

"It was so obvious?" He knew how Mr. Bao's mind worked; he would rather find a dishonest route than an easier, straightforward one. He would rather steal a dollar than be given it. Like so many of the Communists, he did not particularly love his country or his people, but he used the system so he could steal from them. "Milky white breasts of a goddess. What else?"

Mr. Bao sighed now and became businesslike, forehead and neck glistening with sweat. "We might convince her to come over to our cause. Help get stories sympathetic to us. But it doesn't explain why you married her." Mr. Bao poured another round, but this time his hand was slower and unsteady with the bottle, leaving a small ring of spilled liquid around one of the glasses.

"Maybe I did it for love," Linh said. The truth was far, far more intoxicating and dangerous than any amount of brandy, and his heart beat hard against his chest at the released words.

Mr. Bao paused, his glass against his lips, as if considering this possibility. "That... would be the worst thing."

Stupidly, now that the outrageous truth had been told, he wanted to insist upon it. "Why? I mean, if it was true."

Mr. Bao looked at him now, the alcohol held in check, his reptilian eyes dark and cold. "A greedy man, a corrupt man, a man filled with lust, that's understandable. That can be accounted for. But you can never trust a man who falls in love with the enemy."

Linh stood and stretched, catlike. The brandy made the room seem to expand and contract as if it, too, were stretching, breathing, unsheathing its claws.

Mr. Bao reached out for Linh's arm and grabbed it. "I mean, how lost would a man have to be to do such a thing? Uncle's words: 'We are from the race of dragons and fairies.' "

Resolved, Linh jerked his arm free. He was a soldier. "We'll plan another trip to the Parrot's Beak next week then," he said, slowly moving back and forth in the small room, thumping his hand against the flat of his stomach. "Sufficiently risky area. She'll be captured for a week. Take pictures that are released to all the newspapers. Then she'll be released unharmed."

"Good," Mr. Bao said as he finished his glass.

"We'll divorce, and she'll go back to America. And then I'll start building a future for myself in the party--since there is no longer any choice," Linh said. "Maybe you can help me learn. Since no one knows who I am, right?"

"Young bull, huh?" Mr. Bao laughed.

"No one knows who I am to protect you. I can't report on your activities."

"True," Bao said thoughtfully.

"Don't you have unmarried daughters? I'll be in need of a new wife."

Mr. Bao was silent.

"Wasn't the youngest a real beauty? Or no? Am I wrong?"

"Yen is beautiful," Mr. Bao conceded.

Linh walked around the table and stood behind Mr. Bao's chair. Yes, he was a soldier now. A soldier did what he had to do to survive. As he reached inside his pocket and pulled out the coil of wire, wrapping it across each palm, the wooden ends tucked in closed fists, Linh was surprised at how thin Mr. Bao's hair was on top. Not even hair at all, really, more like the memory of hair. An old man already, ready for death.

"But," Mr. Bao continued, "she could never be given to a man who could not be trusted, a man who married the enemy. You know that, don't you? But--"

The air went out of his throat so fast that the sentence hung in the room, waiting to be finished. Mr. Bao's stubby hands raked the table, digging slivers of wood, then at last stretched out, relaxed. Afterward, Linh gently dumped him forward until his forehead rested against the table. A dark pool of blood shaped a halo around his head before it spread and encircled the lantern, the brandy bottle, and glasses. He picked up his own glass, shattering it against the stone floor.

Linh leaned against the wall and buried his shaking hands in his pockets. Yes, a soldier. Not fear but adrenaline. Mr. Bao looked like the old bureaucrat he was, taking a quick nap that he would never have allowed himself in real life. When Linh first learned of Bao's corruption--his percentages in drug and prostitution houses--he had despised him, but quickly he had seen its uses, how such a man would overlook lapses in others. In truth, Linh had grown, if not to like, at least to tolerate Mr. Bao. But no one would come looking for Linh if Mr. Bao disappeared; in the new coming order, old-time greed was an embarrassment. They had been two con men, and Linh had merely drawn the lucky card first.

The wind died down to a whisper outside as he blew into the hurricane shade, extinguishing the light. In the darkness, he missed Mr. Bao already. A silly man, a petty crook, but not a particularly evil one. His sin was not to understand the meaning of the weight of a woman in a man's arms.

Linh opened the door and walked out onto the moonlight-scarred path, but now he was a less free man than when he came.

NINETEEN
The Ocean of Milk

April 30, 1975

It was late in
the war, and she was tired.

Helen had not slept long in the dead grass of the embassy compound. The night before she had grabbed only a few hours while keeping her vigil over Linh. If the Communists were going to kill her, it might as well be while she slept in her own bed.

By the time she reached Cholon, she walked like a sleepwalker--inside the crooked building through the now smashed Buddha door, up the rickety, cedar-smelling stairs that had lasted another ten years since the time she doubted they would carry her weight. The end had arrived with a sputter, and although she had prayed for an end to the evils of war, now that it had arrived she couldn't deny being strangely brokenhearted. Like a snake swallowing its own tail, war created an appetite that could be fed only on more war.

Somehow, Linh and she
had eked out a happy life here. They had come back from the hamlet married, but Linh insisted for their safety on keeping it quiet. Too, there were professional repercussions, although quite a few American men had married Vietnamese women. In fairness, they felt they had to tell Gary, in case it came out. He, ever the diplomat, broke into a huge smile that could have meant anything. "There's a certain poetry to it, that's for sure." He took them out for a fancy dinner. But the person who was really joyous was Annick. The war had begun to take its toll on her. Gossip was that she took opium more frequently, and her pale skin and thin frame suggested its truth. In her store, she gave Helen a beautiful gold-and-pearl choker.

"I can't accept this."

"It is my wedding gift. Because finally something true has come out of this war. I predict you will be very happy."

And they were. Even as the war moved from the front to the back pages, bumped by the antiwar protests back home, Helen played wife, decorating their apartment, taking long meals with Linh, learning the city from the inside. Their time together was rich and precious. They continued covering the war, although the assignments were fewer and fewer, which suited them for a while. In America people had seemingly forgotten that soldiers in Vietnam were still fighting and still dying. And then came the drawdowns. Dwindling American troop numbers. Even less of a call for war photos. They covered the humanitarian crises caused by the country being at war so long. The effects of the defoliants on agriculture. Food shortages and lack of schools. In 1973, as the U.S. military pulled out, they classified their service dogs as surplus equipment and had them euthanized, claiming they were too dangerous to go back home. A few soldiers got in trouble trying to smuggle their dogs back to the States. Political stories in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia began to take precedence, and they traveled with the news. Gary even talked of moving the bureau offices to Singapore, but then a flare-up in military action caused everyone to scurry back to Saigon. Helen hoped that some kind of compromise would be reached, a permanent division of the country so that they could stay. But Linh knew they all had underestimated the North.

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.