The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 12

She noticed the tremor again in his hands as he lifted equipment. She was making a spectacle of herself, another Tick-Tock. She hated being the kind of woman to insist that a night together had meant something.

"You remember Linh," Darrow said.

Linh rose and nodded to her as she crossed the room to hold out her hand. Blinded with hurt, it was as if she were meeting him for the first time. He stood and took her hand awkwardly, and she noticed without thinking the scarred skin along one wrist. What had he done before becoming a photographer's a.s.sistant? It occurred to her that perhaps a woman wasn't supposed to shake hands with a Vietnamese man.

"I dropped some things off at the apartment. Just a thank-you for taking me along that day." Fool, idiot. Just get out of there.

"I saw." Darrow lit a cigarette and offered her one.

"Was the bedspread okay? I bought one for my hotel room. The one there was too depressing, and I figured why not get two for the price...." She couldn't stop talking, sounded ridiculous. She should die on the spot, of humiliation and bad judgment.

Silence in the room as he let her hang herself.

"It was fine. Linh, give us a minute."

"Sure." Linh, bowing even lower than he had the first time, not meeting her eyes, quickly left.

She felt stranded as the door closed behind him; she wanted to go out also, instead of staying and listening to what was coming. The lock shut so softly one only knew he was gone from the tap of his footsteps fading down the hallway.

Feigning interest, she walked over to the table by the window and was heartened to see the photo of herself on top of a pile of prints.

"Let me ask you one thing." Darrow said.

"What?"

"Did you really come halfway around the world to a war zone so you could play house with a married man?"

She pressed her fingers into the table, stared at the photograph of herself while she tried to gather her thoughts, arranged her face enough to carry herself out the room.

She picked up her photograph, crumpling it in her fist.

"Don't get me wrong," Darrow said. "I had a great time, but I'm just thinking of you."

She turned and looked at him. "You had me fooled."

"Why's that? Didn't you say you would never love someone like me? So what's it now? Our Lady of Doomed Loves?"

"You are a grade-A p.r.i.c.k."

Darrow sat on the bed with his legs crossed and took a long drag on his cigarette.

"Sad fact is, Helen, baby, I can't save you."

She slammed the door behind her, hating herself for the theatrics but grateful she had at least left before tears. Relief topped mortification. Plenty of time for that later. He was right--this wasn't what she had come for.

In the dim hallway, she leaned against the wall. Sick at the absurdity of the dress and lipstick, she swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. The balled-up picture fell to the ground. When she looked up, Linh stood there. He kneeled to pick up her photo, smoothed it on his knee, and held it out to her.

FIVE.

Chieu Hoi Open Arms Her bags remained packed in a neat pile in the middle of her hotel room, but the in a neat pile in the middle of her hotel room, but the days pa.s.sed by, one after another, and still Helen didn't leave.

She could not face returning home a failure. A mode of being so ingrained she did not even recognize it. Her mother had remarried a year after their father's death, a close family friend who had become widowed. As like their father as could be. When Helen cried before the wedding, in jealousy, in fear, in betrayal, her mother sat her down and gave her "the speech." The speech would start with the particulars of the situation and then boil up to the universal truism that failure was not an option. Ever. "This man will be a good husband and a good father to you two. End of subject."

When Michael and Helen were teenagers, they would hide on the beach and smoke pot and drink alcohol with friends and caricature their mother, her grim pragmatism, how she buried the second husband ten years later and declared that she was done with men. " 'Failure not an option,' she probably told him in bed," Helen said, thrilled by her rebellion.

A friend of hers, Reba, curly red hair spilling down her back, who had a crush on Michael, laughed so hard at the impersonation of their mother that liquid poured from her nose.

"She sounds like a monster."

"No," Helen answered. "She's just that way." It never occurred to her that there was anything wrong with such demands.

In her effort to prove that she could survive in Saigon and function without prove that she could survive in Saigon and function without Darrow's help, she befriended other journalists in town, went to official briefings, took the rickety blue-and-white Renault taxis out to Tan Son Nhut to photograph American and Vietnamese soldiers back from operations. She and Robert joined official army junkets that flew journalists out in transport C-130s to write and take pictures of scarred land and dead soldiers hours after the action ended. Robert was content doing his job, writing up his stories, but she found the whole process frustrating. Her pictures were no different from those of a dozen other freelancers selling photos to the wire services for fifteen dollars a picture.

The journalists were in a questionable fraternity while out in the field, squabbling and arguing among themselves, each sensing the unease of the situation. No getting around the ghoulishness of pouncing on tragedy with hungry eyes, s.n.a.t.c.hing it away, glorying in its taking even among the most sympathetic: "I got an incredible shot of a dead soldier/woman/child. A real tearjerker." Afterward, film shot, they sat on the returning plane with a kind of postcoital shame, turning away from each other.

In terms of the present moment, they were despicable to the soldiers, to the victims, to even themselves. In the face of real tragedy, they were unreal, vultures; they were all about getting product. In their worst moments, each of them feared being a kind of macabre Hollywood, and it was only in terms of the future that they regained their dignity, became dubious heroes. The moment ended, about to be lost, but the one who captured it on film gave both subject and photographer a kind of disposable immortality.

The wires sent her to cover human-interest stories--hospitals, charities, orphans, widows--but when she opened the paper and saw combat shots by Darrow as well as others, she knew that she was being sidelined. Of course, the truth of the war existed everywhere--battle and combat only a part of the whole--but her truth pulled at her from out on the battlefields. With her failure out in the field part of the public record, she didn't know how to start again.

Another month pa.s.sed; she grew more restless. Only skimming the surface of the land and the war, returning to her safe bed every night. The reporters that were satisfied at this level were like archaeologists piecing together fragments and guessing at the truth of something long since disappeared. She felt like a fake. She kept going on the afterbattle junkets with Robert, embarra.s.sed for them both, needing the drinks at the Continental bar each night.

At dinner with Robert, she tried to explain her dissatisfaction. Ever since the night she left with Darrow, Robert remained aloof, as if there were some irony that he alone was privy to. She understood he needed to save face. She had acted badly, and there was probably no fixing it. Outwardly they still joked and flirted, but they both understood that things had changed between them.

"Is it enough?" she said. "These pictures don't feel like enough."

Robert shrugged, bored and disappointed. A cruel thought ran through his mind that at least nurses didn't bring their work with them. "You're too earnest now."

"Sorry," she said, realizing her mistake confiding in him. She changed the subject by ordering another drink, but he wasn't fooled.

"The only way to get the picture you're talking about is to get so close you become part of it."

But instead of deflecting her, his words gave her an idea. Now she went hunting at the air bases for stories. To go around official channels, see what was really going on, she copped rides alone on transport helicopters dropping rations and ammunition at distant firebases. Since there was no ostensible story, no combat, there was no restriction on her movements, either. Whenever possible, she tried to visit Special Forces camps in the hope of running into someone who had known her brother. There were men at the outposts half-naked in the heat, bodies coated by the inescapable dust and dirt that caused small boils on the skin, eyes wild from the isolation and the threat of danger. A few refused to talk with her, simply watched from the edges of the camp like feral dogs, but most were glad for the company. She sat and shared cigarettes, took their pictures, and talked while the chopper unloaded. In between the most ba.n.a.l questions-- What's your What's your name? Where're you from? How long you here for? --she caught glimpses of what she --she caught glimpses of what she wanted.

At one landing base high in the foothills, the pilot decided to put up for the night.

Pleased, she didn't bother mentioning that it was against regulations for her, a woman, to spend the night out in the field. Inside the small sandbag-and-wood structure with the unmistakable barn smell of marijuana, Helen was introduced to a former Special Forces officer, Frank MacCrae, wearing an ap.r.o.n and cooking a vat of chili over a makes.h.i.+ft fire pit. At forty-five, he was considerably older than the other men, and unlike them he was at home there. He had lived in Vietnam more than seven years, spoke the language fluently, lived out in the villages.

When they sat down to dinner--a dozen soldiers, the pilot, and Helen--Frank was quiet at first, drinking down beer after beer in a few gulps, appraising her. The chili had a bright layer of orange oil on top, and the native hot pepper made her lips burn and then go numb. When Helen complimented him and asked for seconds, he flushed with plea sure and brought out a bottle of wine he had been saving. "I was keeping it for when we have a boar to roast, but what the h.e.l.l." He eyed her cameras. "Nice. I used to have a good Nikon but banged it up... Miss my picture-taking days. So now they're sending girl reporters?"

"Not willingly," she said. "They didn't send me. I snuck out here on my own."

"How long you been in-country?"

"Two months."

"Two months. Oh, baby." He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, his white T-s.h.i.+rt freckled with reddish chili spots. "You came too late."

"How's that?" The heat of the chili beaded her forehead with sweat, and she wiped it with a napkin. That was her fear, that she had missed the biggest part of the war already. Her stomach started to churn.

"The good ol' days are gone."

"Oh, not this again," one of the soldiers said.

"See... we were just learning how to do business here, but they screwed it all up.

It's easier to send soldiers, easier to throw money at corrupt leaders who'll play ball with us. Easier for us to just take the d.a.m.n thing over."

"Did you know my brother, Michael Adams? He was here two years ago; died last year. Plain of Reeds area." A deep burble rose from her stomach, and she regretted taking the second bowl of chili.

"Not familiar with. Who was his captain?"

"Wagner, I think? Project Delta?"

"It's a small world up here. Didn't get to meet him. A d.a.m.n shame." Frank smiled as Helen's eyes watered, a belch escaped. "Not used to good home cookin'?"

The pilot, bored, got up and signaled the others to go over to another table for a game of poker.

Helen felt as if she would explode. "The report was just the generic 'Died a Hero'

stuff."

Frank examined the ceiling and blew smoke rings. "Our government is creating a show. All that s.h.i.+t years ago about Diem being the Winston Churchill of Southeast Asia.

Did the English riot in the streets against Churchill? Did he imprison or kill his opposition? That was all a PR campaign courtesy of Life Life magazine." magazine."

"Maybe Diem tricked us."

Frank shook his head, gently at first and then harder. "No! No, no, no. Everyone knew he was a crook from the get-go. That's why they chose him."

"So why?" She stood, clinching her bowels. She'd have to make a run for the out house in the dark.

"Now you're going!" He banged down all four feet of the chair on the floor and clapped his hands. "Start thinking like a reporter about your own side, too. Why aren't you satisfied with the pabulum they fed you about your brother? Friends of mine started poking around--it was not appreciated. Got stonewalled, their stories weren't considered credible, they were rea.s.signed back to the States. Visas and military pa.s.ses revoked. I'm impressed if nothing else by the single-mindedness of the enemy. I can't take their hate personally."

"You aren't one of those conspiracy-theory crazies?"

"Just remember," he yelled as she ran outside, "where there's smoke, there's usually a bale of marijuana close-by."

She groped her way in the darkness, and she didn't know which was worse--her stomach or the fear of sniper fire. When she came back, they talked several more hours into the night, Frank so full of information that Helen wished she had a recorder on because she simply couldn't absorb it all. Finally he stood and stretched. "Bye, sweetheart. I'm out tomorrow for a five-day patrol."

"Take me with you," she said.

"No way, baby girl." He leaned down close to Helen's ear, and she smelled chili and beer on his breath. "They want you to be part of their movie, don't ever forget it."

"Please let me go with you." She blushed. After all, she was the girl with The The Quiet American under her bed. under her bed.

He went off to a corner of the room and came back with a small st.i.tched bracelet.

He motioned her to stick out her wrist. "Here. It's from the Yards. Good people. Now you're one of us."

"That means no."

"Can I ask you you a favor?" Frank asked. "A smell of your hair?" a favor?" Frank asked. "A smell of your hair?"

She nodded, and felt a scratch of whispers and a peck on her cheekbone.

"I want to know what's really going on."

He inhaled with a deep gulp. "I'm a sucker for beautiful hair." He sighed. "I'll never admit I told you this. My little present for you, so you can sleep better to night.

Didn't know your brother, but I knew Wagner's unit went in to a.s.sa.s.sinate some local chieftain along the Laos border. They were dropped into this mud hole, didn't know that the dry area on the map became a lake at the wrong time of the year, heavy and thick like quicksand, and they were stuck; when the bullets started flying they realized they had been ambushed; sitting ducks, the whole unit wiped out minutes off the plane. Crying shame. s.h.i.+t like that doesn't happen to us."

"Take me tomorrow," she said.

"I'll sleep on it. Be up at five."

But when she woke up at five the next morning, MacCrae had already left camp.

"So what's he involved in?" she asked, trying not to show her disappointment.

"What isn't he involved in is a better question," a soldier answered with a laugh.

"Frank and The Cause."

She handed the soldier one of her Leicas. "Tell him he owes me. Tell him to use it and bring me back pictures."

Frank was right in one way: The knowledge about Michael's death released her one way: The knowledge about Michael's death released her as knowing the worst can. Although it was as horrific as anything she imagined, she no longer had to imagine. But she was just as unwilling to leave as before; the mystery of what drew men like MacCrae to risk everything was bigger than Michael's death.

She rode out with the helicopter pilots high over the land of the delta south of the helicopter pilots high over the land of the delta south of Saigon, trailing over the endless paddy fields that reflected up at them like broken pieces of a mirror. The dull green of choking jungle and sinewy-limbed mangrove swamp contrasting with the light green of the new rice; the land only rarely broken by signs of human habitation--small cl.u.s.ters of thatched roofs or an occasional one of red tile. From above, the land appeared empty and peaceful, only farmers bent in the paddies or orchards. She sat like a tourist, enthralled by the dirty green and reddish brown rivers, slow and thick-moving like veins pumping life into the land.

It felt safe looking down from high in the air, protected by the metal of the machine and the speed of its movement. The confidence of the pilots infected her. Many of them were her own age, some as young as her brother.

She went out on dozens of runs, routine and without contact. A fact of war that in both combat and photography there were great stretches of nothing, boredom, and the only thing left to contemplate was the land itself that had brought them there. For a time she was content to commune with the mystery of it. But once she relaxed to the fact of nonevent, of safety, curiosity began gnawing at her again.

On each a.s.signment, she would question soldiers about what they had seen of Vietnam. Their answers were strangely resistant.

Mostly, their worlds were sealed by perimeter wire and bunkers, bounded by the luxuries of C-rations, sodas, cigarettes. They lived in a universe limited to their weaponry and machinery, their chain of command, and so in the most fundamental sense it did not matter in which country they fought. They were immune except to the most basic facts of topography and weather. Vietnam was not mysterious to them, not the history or the land or the yellow faces. Uncovering the secret of place was considered nonessential. The mystery that held them was their own survival, the beauty and inscrutability of battle, the s.h.i.+ning failure of death. To them, Vietnam was nothing more or less than what they purchased during R&R in the bars and the streets of Saigon and Danang. It was generally concluded a secret not worth knowing. Helen concluded that coming to Vietnam was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

The first time she rode in a guns.h.i.+p, sitting behind the gunner in the open door of rode in a guns.h.i.+p, sitting behind the gunner in the open door of the fuselage, the wind howling like a hurricane through the interior as they dropped through the air in a combat-landing spiral, she grabbed the webbed walls for support, but all the fearlessness she had gained from the transport flights vanished. She made bargains: If she survived this one flight, she was done and would go home. Or at least stay in Saigon and cover vaccine drives.

The gunner pointed his big gloved hand down, and she saw an enemy fighter appear from out of the tree line. He bent down on one knee and aimed his BAR rifle at their plane. It would be a miracle if he could down a chopper with it. Helen couldn't hear the high scream of bullets, but quarter-sized holes appeared in the sides of the plane, splinters of sunlight like angry eyes. He had managed to hit them.