The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 19

Monsoon showers came, and with it the percussion of water against the broad leaves of banana and rubber trees that lined the paths of the village. The heavy earth smell of rain. Drops pummeled against the thatched roof; rivulets curled down the inside corners of the walls.

In the afternoons they would lie in the darkness of their hut under the mosquito netting, wearing the thinnest of clothing, drenched in sweat. Darrow tracing a lazy finger along the damp of Helen's inner arm, her neck, down between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, along the hollow of her stomach.

"I'm taking you to Switzerland."

"Really? Why Switzerland?" she whispered, reluctant to break the moment with her voice.

"To a small inn on the tallest mountain. Dufourspitze. So high there's snow in summer. We'll burrow under a thick featherbed in front of a roaring fire, and we won't be able to remember we were ever so hot."

"Let's go now." A revelation that they could be together somewhere else in the world, somewhere there was no war.

"Soon."

Helen s.h.i.+fted, aware she had gone too close to the edge, their tacit agreement not to discuss the future. Although she herself didn't exactly want to leave, his hesitation goaded her. "I'd miss Ngan's cooking. How she tucks us up in the mosquito netting at night. How she listens to us making love each night." She paused. "We shouldn't be here, should we?"

"What do you mean?"

"In this country."

"No."

"Then why do we stay?"

"We want to know the end of the story."

"How will our story end, you think?"

Darrow frowned. "I was in Eastern Europe, covering the Hungarians who were fleeing their country before the Communists took over.

"At night it was below freezing, and Russians with machine guns patrolled the borderland. It's flat farmland out there, no landmarks. People got lost crossing the fields in the dark, walking for hours in circles, getting caught or dying of exposure. So the Austrian farmers on the other side of the border started building these bonfires in their fields that could be seen for miles. Night after night, until they had to burn up their crops to keep it going. If people could get far enough to spot the fires, they had a chance.

"At the time building those fires seemed like the best thing you could be doing in the world. Shedding a little light. Being there I felt my life was bigger than it had been before."

Evenings, Ho Tung would invite Darrow to join the village men. They'd sit in invite Darrow to join the village men. They'd sit in the communal house in the center of the hamlet to drink beer.

Helen tried to read by lamplight, but she found it impossible to concentrate on the words of the page, so abstract and distant compared to the moonlight through the trees outside or the thick sweetness of grapefruit and frangipani blossoms. She closed her book, blew out the lamp, and gazed into the night sky. Words superfluous. She had reached a point of absolute stillness in her life, empty of wanting. Nothing could be added that would not unbalance the perfection of the present.

She fretted over Darrow's words because she halfway believed them. The picture of Captain Tong had created headlines. It had opened eyes, made the old man's death not in vain. In Darrow's words, it had made her feel her life was bigger, more important than before. But to repeat that, Helen would have to be willing to go out again and again on missions. She longed to be in that chalet in Switzerland, almost willing to turn her back on the Captain Tongs of the world for it. What was wrong with a small, selfish life?

Ngan came in on the nights that Helen was alone, bringing a bowl of scented the nights that Helen was alone, bringing a bowl of scented water and a towel, insisting on sponging her down. When Helen at first refused, Ngan sulked until she reluctantly agreed.

The girl, only twenty, was already a widow with a small boy of two. She had bright, clear eyes and a high forehead, and Helen thought her quite pretty.

"Ngan, why no boyfriend?"

She giggled, squeezed water out of the sponge, let it run along Helen's arm. "No one interested."

"That's not what I hear." The other women in the village gossiped that a certain middle-aged farmer had proposed and been refused.

"Minh?" Ngan shuddered. "I study in Saigon one year. I want to be teacher. I learn more English."

"But no boyfriend?"

Ngan frowned, turned Helen onto her stomach, and made long strokes along her back. "Not farmer's wife. I go back to Saigon, back to study for teacher."

"No Minh?"

Ngan laid her head on Helen's back. "He is old and ugly. Smells like buffalo," she whispered, giggling, and Helen laughed.

"You want a young, handsome man?" She could feel Ngan's head nodding on her back.

"A good man, like your husband."

Helen did not correct her. "There's no one you like?"

"Linh."

Helen was silent for a moment. "Oh."

"His wife die. No family. No children."

Helen pulled the sheet around her and sat up. "He told you this?"

Ngan smiled and nodded. She stood up to throw the contents of the bowl outside in the bushes. "No woman friends, either. Very proper."

Helen feigned a yawn. "I'll go to sleep now."

The girl left the room, but not before Helen took new note of the straightness of her back, the small and delicate curve of her feet.

Alone, her breath slow and deep, she meditated on the tragedy of Linh's family. and deep, she meditated on the tragedy of Linh's family.

If one's meaning came from being a brick in the wall, what did it mean to have no one?

To be unmoored? What did it mean in Vietnam not to be part of any family? Was that the answer to the sadness she sensed in him? The answer to his devotion to Darrow? Half asleep, she waited to hear Darrow's footsteps, waited for him to take off his clothes, to part the white netting surrounding their bed and close the folds behind him, for his lips to find her. A husband in every way that mattered.

Perfect stillness and perfect communion, and yet she struggled to stay in the present of her happiness, thoughts returning again and again to the puzzle of Linh. Of course, there was what had happened with the convoy in Pleiku. She probed that like a sore tooth, testing the impact of her mistake. But also, this news from Ngan. Was it true that he had lost family? What of Darrow's sanguine att.i.tude to his possibly being a spy?

Where had he gone off to now while she was camping out in this village backwater?

Darrow. She suspected that even if she closed her eyes to the evils of the Captain Tongs of the world to live her insulated happiness in a chalet in Switzerland, it was a fool's choice because Darrow had already decided long before he met her.

The wariness of the villagers grew to friendliness--Darrow and Helen enfolded villagers grew to friendliness--Darrow and Helen enfolded within the life of the village. Grain by grain, Helen's restlessness fell away; she became part of Linh's brick wall. A madness to consider going back into battle. But as Darrow's arm strengthened, she noted he again listened to AFVN on the radio and read what ever newspapers he could cadge from the USAID compound.

Each morning and evening, Helen joined the women to bathe in the river, in an area upstream of the hamlet part.i.tioned off with cotton sheets. The women disrobed under the soft greenish light filtered through trees leaning over the bank. They slowly soaped while talking, the beautiful smooth bodies of the teenage girls next to the sinewy dark limbs of the old women. Many of the married women stood with jutting bellies while they nursed babies at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Ngan now kept far from Helen during bathing. The girl had been shy around her ever since their talk, and Helen guessed that she regretted her revelation. Two small girls stood naked in the shallows, was.h.i.+ng themselves while watching Helen. She called to them, but they ran away.

Helen handed out coveted bars of Ivory soap as gifts and created a sensation when she pulled out a razor and sat on a rock to shave her legs.

She had regained some of the weight she had lost out in the field. She slept long hours, a deep and dreamless sleep fed by the rich life around her.

Twice a week Helen and Darrow went to the USAID house quartered in an old and Darrow went to the USAID house quartered in an old French colonial building in the neighboring town, for both the American food and the conversation. Nichols had just retired from active military duty and now thrived on projects to increase agricultural productivity. He was in charge of building storage houses for fertilizers, pesticides, and improved grain for planting. Rumors were that he loved the lifestyle, including his young Vietnamese mistress, too much to leave.

The longer Helen stayed in the village, the more she made excuses to not visit the USAID house. She felt awkward in front of the Vietnamese servants, who were treated poorly by the American men. Darrow seemed oblivious; or rather, he chose not to notice.

He happily listened to music and drank scotch while scouring the magazines and newspapers.

Nichols and Sanders were loud, both in their conversation and the music they played. Helen s.h.i.+vered in the cold gale of air-conditioning. The platesize steaks grilled on the barbecue and the endless c.o.c.ktails made Helen feel dull. At first, she brought a towel with her for the civilizing effect of a hot shower, but as weeks pa.s.sed, she found she preferred the river.

During the long evenings, she watched Nichols's mistress in the background, the one whom the village women gossiped about. Only fifteen, the girl's family had disowned her because of the liaison but had just bought another parcel of land with money she sent.

She received more spending money in a week from Nichols than her father could earn from farming in a year. Nichols didn't include her during the meal--like a stray, the girl stayed in the background, along the edge of their evening.

"Why don't you ask her to join us?" Helen asked, poking at a baked russet potato imported from the States.

Nichols turned and eyed the girl walking down the hallway in her unstable high heels. "Khue? She's happier on her own. Getting some time off."

"I bet." Helen cut at her meat with a large saw of a steak knife.

Nichols squinted, his skin flus.h.i.+ng a darker red. "You said she had a sharp tongue."

"Actually," said Darrow, "what I said was that she was too sharp for you."

Nichols looked at him for a moment, weighing things, and then deciding to take it as a joke, broke into a barking laugh. "That's it. That's what you said, all right." He puddled ketchup and A.1 on his plate.

The room fell silent. Sanders, his food untouched, cleared his throat. He had lost a lot of weight since Helen and Darrow arrived in the village. They guessed he had developed a pipe habit. "You must be dying to get back to the life in Saigon."

"Not really," Helen answered.

"I'm ready to test this arm," Darrow said. "Send someone down as soon as a message comes from my a.s.sistant."

"You contacted Linh?" She felt betrayed not only that Darrow had been plotting his return all along, but also at her own feelings of panic at the prospect of going back.

Why had he chosen this public setting to announce his intentions?

Nichols smiled. "Oh, boy, did I cause trouble?"

"They've already replaced me on a couple of a.s.signments," Darrow said. "Pretty soon I'll be taking pictures of supermarket openings in Amarillo."

"What I wouldn't give to be in Saigon," Nichols said, swallowing a small bite of meat and daintily licking his lips.

"Looks like you're doing fine here," Darrow said, nodding his head in the direction the girl had gone. He intended the jab at Helen, his declaration at her possessiveness.

"Sanders gets the pipes, and I get the poon." Nichols looked in the direction the girl had gone. "But there would be so many more goodies to choose from in Saigon."

Helen excused herself and went down the hallway. She hated these men and hated Darrow when he was with them. This was her last visit. She applied her lipstick in the mirror, readying her excuse to leave.

When Khue came out of a room, she was startled, as if caught. Up close, the girl looked even younger. Pointing at the lipstick, she smiled, revealing a front tooth with a large chip. Helen motioned for her to try it. Self-consciously, Khue closed her lips and applied the color.

Why didn't Nichols take her to get the tooth fixed? Infuriated, Helen decided to take the girl to a dentist herself. Khue studied the rose sheen on her lips with great seriousness; too sad and wise for such a young girl. Forget the dentist, the girl needed to be taken away from there, put into a school. How would Helen manage that?

Khue handed back the lipstick, but Helen patted the girl's fingers around the tube.

"For you." When the two of them entered the living room, Nichols was sprawled out on a lounge, drunk. He took one look at Khue and yelled, "Come over here! Come now!"

A small, throbbing vein appeared along Khue's temple, visible as she stepped forward.

"Leave her be--" Darrow said, noticing that Helen had not come to sit next to him but remained standing.

Nichols grabbed Khue by the hip and pulled her down on his lap, wiping her mouth with his sleeve. "You look like a wh.o.r.e, honey. No good. Look like a little wh.o.r.e with that stuff on." He patted her cheek. "That's my girl. My good, clean girl."

Helen turned around and walked out.

"What's wrong? I just don't want you showing her bad ways," Nichols yelled.

Outside on the dirt driveway, Darrow stumbled getting his shoes back on. "We walking home?" home?"

Helen marched down the road without a word. The darkness and the warm air were a relief.

"You mad at me?"

"Not at you. No... Yes. Why didn't you say anything?"

"If you're choosy, you're not going to have too many friends out here."

"I'm never going back there."

"Fine. But you're punis.h.i.+ng the girl, too."

Helen slowed, shaking pebbles from her sandals. Darrow laughed and grabbed her arm. "What's funny?" she asked.

"What a puritan you were, how self-righteous. How outraged. I had no idea."

Helen said nothing.

"I lost that capacity some time back. But I admire it."

"You're ridiculing me. And you didn't tell me your plans to go back to work." As she said it she knew her outrage on Khue's behalf had also been for herself.

"That's the thing, I didn't want it official," Darrow said, suddenly serious. "All good things and all bad things come to an end."

Preparations for the summer festival frenzied the village, and Helen and festival frenzied the village, and Helen and Darrow were invited to take part. Ho Tung knew their plans to leave but insisted they stay through the celebrations.

Helen had been thrown out of her stillness. All she could think was that she was losing something she wanted. But she couldn't tell Darrow what it came down to--them or the war, no longer both. Apparent to her that she could no longer go through a village from the outside, as before. Impossible to cover the war with such conflicting loyalties.