The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 20

Was that what had happened to MacCrae, she wondered, too many angles of loyalty?

Pigs were butchered, the cries of slaughter haunting her till she escaped to the river. When she returned, the communal house had been hung with lanterns. They were seated in a place of honor next to the chief. He talked about how expensive it must be to send a letter from America, especially St. Louis, and Helen didn't know what else to do but agree. "I know young girls get distracted," Ho Tung said, "but how can she forget where she comes from?"

Women swayed under trays of food, delicacies such as glutinous rice, sweet boiled rice cakes, shredded pork with bamboo shoots. Toasts were drunk with fermented rice alcohol. Darrow spent long hours with a translator to figure out what they should contribute. Finally it was decided beer for the adults and ice cream for the children.

During the afternoon of the festival day, a decorated plow was taken to the communal rice paddy outside the village and a ceremonial furrow plowed. Later, the villagers gathered at the community house for the ritual enactment of the rice harvest, a fertility rite with four G.o.ddesses chosen from the village girls to represent Phap Van, the cloud; Phap Vu, the rain; Phap Loi, the thunder; and Phap Dien, the lightning.

Work was forgotten; paddies lay untended. The women wore their best clothing.

Unmarried girls washed their hair in perfumed water and wore it long and dark down their backs. Platters of food were there for the taking; at almost any hour one could find a crowd of people busy at some game. Darrow's arm healed well enough to get rid of the sling, and he and Helen photographed boat races, kite flying contests, rice cooking and rice cake compet.i.tions, stick fighting, wrestling, and traditional dances.

"I love this," Darrow said. "We'll travel the world, do cultural layouts. Wildlife shots in Africa. No more wars."

"You promise?" she said, trying not to show how much she wanted the answer.

On the final night fireworks s.h.i.+mmered along the river, ribbons of light reflecting on the water as young couples escaped into the darkness. A leniency in behavior was allowed for the night, and Ho Tung laughed that many new marriages were celebrated shortly after the festival. He had urged Ngan to reconsider Minh's proposal. Helen saw the two walking awkwardly together along the river, Ngan frowning. But the chief shook his head. "Ngan refuses to settle down. She has caught the strange, unhappy-making new ideas."

The next morning at dawn, everything returned to its normal state--the women again hidden under their dark clothes and conical hats; the men bent under the weight of their plows. The paddies inhabited again, plaintive songs hanging in the air, the previous week as distant and separate as a dream. Helen dreamed of a third way for Darrow and her to exist other than Switzerland or the war--staying in the village for a full year until the next harvest.

She ignored the fact of Darrow's healed shoulder. But after her dismissal of Nichols, and all that he represented, Darrow went alone and spent his days at the USAID compound. He had already absented himself from the place. Something barely started, already ended.

As she walked back from bathing at the river one morning, Linh appeared on the road, and her heart sank. "You've come back," she said when they were within speaking distance of each other. She held out her hand and touched his arm. "I've been dreading this day."

NINE.

Tiens Fairies Linh had taken a picture of Helen with him while he was gone, had stared and of Helen with him while he was gone, had stared and dreamed over it often during the whole long month, an impossibly long time to keep away, but he had forced himself. When he first caught a glimpse of her on the dirt road, he was struck by how she had filled out, how her skin had bronzed. She looked younger, a flushness in her figure he had not seen before. But as he came closer her face went downward and hardened as she recognized him, and he froze.

"Darrow said it was time to go."

"I know." She fell into step beside him, back to the village.

He was a fool, he berated himself. Wasting so much dreaming.

The afternoon Linh had delivered Helen into Darrow's arms, he was a tired man. delivered Helen into Darrow's arms, he was a tired man.

After he took his leave of them, stowing his camera gear in the USAID compound, he dressed in the plain clothes of a farmer and hiked down a dirt road. Outside the village, he climbed down the bank of the river to an isolated gra.s.sy spot, took off his clothes, and went for a swim.

The gra.s.s along the bank was plush and long; it fell in swaths one direction and then another, like a hand-mown lawn. The spot reminded him of the place Mai used to lure him to during their school days to sing to him.

The water cooled his body, the solitude a deep plea sure. A relief simply not to have to speak. In his earlier life, he had lived so much in his imagination, writing in notebooks, that it was now a constant strain to keep his mind directed out into the world, trying to understand others more than himself, to rewrite his thoughts into a foreign tongue.

After his swim, he climbed back up on the gra.s.sy bank, put his clothes on, and fell asleep under the trees.

The sound of children's laughter woke him in the late afternoon. Two young girls trawled the shallows for crayfish and shrimp for dinner. More interested in splas.h.i.+ng each other than in catching anything.

Linh sat up, startling the younger one so that she fell back and landed on her rump in the water.

"You scared us!" the older girl scolded.

"I'm sorry," Linh said. "Come closer here, and I'll give you a present." The girls giggled and moved closer, and Linh handed them each a stick of Juicy Fruit gum.

The oldest girl had a smooth oval face like a polished river stone. Linh stroked her blue-black silken hair as she tore the first piece in half and handed it to her sister. She put the second piece in the waistband of her pants for safekeeping.

"Do you tell stories?" the younger girl asked.

"I.

used to."

"Please, please," the older girl said.

"There is one I've been thinking of," he answered.

"A poor woodcutter's wife pa.s.ses away. He is very lonely, and in the market he sees a picture of a beautiful tien, tien, a fairy, whose image he falls in love with. He takes the a fairy, whose image he falls in love with. He takes the picture home and hangs it on his wall, and he talks to it at night, setting a bowl of rice and chopsticks in front of it at meal times.

"One day he comes home and his hut has been cleaned. There are delicious dishes prepared for him to eat. This happens every day with no sign of who is taking care of him. So the woodcutter decides to solve the mystery. He pretends to be going to work one morning and instead doubles back and peeks through a crack in the wall to find the fairy from the picture come to life. He rushes in and forces her to stay and marry him. As insurance, he locks the empty picture frame into a trunk. They live happily together and have three sons.

"The sons grow to adulthood and the woodcutter grows old, but the tien, tien, being being immortal, is as young as the day she stepped out of the picture. The villagers begin to gossip and finally the sons confront the father. When he tells them the truth, they refuse to believe him. Angry, the father unlocks the trunk and shows them the empty frame as proof, but still they scoff. When he leaves for work, the sons confront their mother, who denies it until they mention the frame. She begs them to show it to her, and when they do, she admits the truth and bids them farewell and returns inside the picture forever."

"Does the tien come back?" the younger girl asked. come back?" the younger girl asked.

"Yes. Actually, there is a tien tien in your village right now." in your village right now."

"Yes?

Where?"

"Look for her. She has long golden hair."

"Who are you?" the older girl asked.

"I'm the ghost of this tree, don't you recognize me?"

"No."

"Every time you come by here, I know if you've been a good girl and caught fish for your mama."

"We've been bad today. We played and caught no fish."

Linh laughed. He reached in his pocket and took out a few coins. "Tell Mama you found these lost on the road. So you don't get in trouble to night at least."

The younger girl leaned over and touched him on the knee. "You're a ghost?"

Linh nodded slowly, in his best guess at a ghostly demeanor.

"Will you be here tomorrow?" she asked.

"I'll always be here. You just might not be able to see me."

At sunset, Linh lay back on the long, cool gra.s.s of the bank and inhaled the back on the long, cool gra.s.s of the bank and inhaled the heavy scent of grapefruit blossoms in the evening air. He closed his eyes, remembering the smell of Mai's hair after she washed it, adding a few drops of citrus oil to the rinse so that at night the fragrance permeated their bed when she lay down, making the room a dark grove in which to find her.

He rationed himself only one thought of her each day; otherwise he would not be able to go on. He h.o.a.rded his memories like other men did cigarettes or chocolates.

Today was the third anniversary of her death, the period of official mourning over, but he felt he had lost her a hundred years ago and only yesterday. He panicked at times, unable to remember a detail of her face as clearly as before. Worried about the thousand small memories of body that had already vanished from his recollection. Time like a chemical pus.h.i.+ng a print too far, a fog overcoming the detail. It pained him that he relied on a few poor photographs of her more and more; everything that made him love her absent from the pictures. The images felt disloyal, as if he were dreaming over a stranger.

The next morning he rose at dawn, again washed in the river, then set off toward Can Tho, hoping to b.u.m rides there for his trip north.

Once he arrived, Linh went to a dirty outdoor cafe and sat at Mr. Bao's table. He went to a dirty outdoor cafe and sat at Mr. Bao's table. He had last seen Bao a little more than a month ago, yet he had put on the weight of a year.

"What took you so long?" Mr. Bao said.

"It took time to leave."

"There hasn't been anything as good as the Captain Tong piece since last we talked."

Linh lit a cigarette.

"Why aren't they with you?"

"Darrow is wounded. And they don't go where I direct; it's the other way around."

"You are their friend. Lead with sugar."

Linh hated Mr. Bao's stupid Confucian sayings, his peasant cunning. These were the kinds of drones the party was filling itself with.

Mr. Bao changed tack. "How is your wife's family?"

"I don't know. I imagine not so good, since they got in touch with me."

Mr. Bao nodded. "You must go do your duty to them. The same as your duty to your country."

Linh's anger flared. "What does your duty have to do with selling opium?"

Mr. Bao cracked a thin smile. "You forget your place."

"Darrow and Helen are in the village. Learning of Vietnam. I think this is a good thing."

"Agreed. Next time I see you, I have a shopping list: Wonder Bread, cigarettes, and maybe brandy this time."

Linh skirted his family's village, or what remained of it, never having returned village, or what remained of it, never having returned since the night they were taken from him. His wife's sister, Thao, lived in a neighboring hamlet. As soon as they arrived in Saigon, her husband had been caught and inducted into the army; without an income she had been forced to return to the country. After she hadn't heard from her husband in more than a year, she had contacted Linh.

He didn't tell her that casualties among SVA soldiers were high. Officers threw poorly trained recruits into dangerous missions to please their American advisers while staying far away from any action themselves.

"Why does no one tell me if he's alive or dead?" she said. Always the practical one, not as beautiful or talented as her sister, Thao had made more out of less. "How can I remarry otherwise?"

She said that her husband's company had been patrolling the Iron Triangle region when last seen. The joke was that the main harvest of the area was mines; Linh guessed the body had been overlooked. After the false peace of An Giang, where he had left Darrow and Helen, the destruction in this area depressed Linh. Paddies choked in weeds.

Starving water buffalo with washboard sides. He watched families bundling belongings, turning their backs on ancestral grounds. Clogged roads. Refugees formed an unrelenting river that poured into the coastal cities of Nha Trang, Danang, and Saigon. He was sorry he had acted so poorly with Mr. Bao.

Thao's village was in the process of being dismantled--huts torn down piece by the process of being dismantled--huts torn down piece by piece and carted away to someplace with more luck. Some villagers packing to leave; others squatting among the ruins of their homes. The week before they had been subjected to a cordon-and-search, uncovering a substantial weapons cache under one hut, a large supply of rice under another. The huts and bunkers with supplies had been blown up, destroying their livelihood but sparing the people.

Thao's hut was still standing. Inside, she sat on the ground, haggard, her eyes red.

She had two children, a girl of four, a boy still suckling at her breast. When Linh appeared in the doorway, Thao looked up at him, no surprise on her face.

"Good, you are here. We can still honor Mai's death anniversary."

"Are you okay?"

"We are alive, but for what?"

He put his arm around her shoulders. The shape of her face, the way she placed her hand on his, brought back with an ache his wife's absence.

"I'm ashamed," Thao cried. "Here you are, and I have no rice, no vegetables, not even incense to honor my sister."

"Get your things. We're leaving."

"For where?"

"I'm going to get a place for you in Saigon. I can look after you and the children better there."

She bowed her head. The baby had fallen away from the breast. Linh saw the nipple, raw and callused. From the thinness of the baby, he guessed she was going dry.

"How can you afford to take us in?"

"Americans pay well."

Thao handed the baby to the girl but left her s.h.i.+rt open. "You were always more practical than your brothers. Cling to the winners in war."

"We'll get doctors and medicine in Saigon," he continued. "We can buy milk."

She looked down at her breast, pressing it with a fingertip till a drop of milkyclear liquid formed. "I've eaten nothing for days."

This sudden contact with the world of women confused Linh; Thao's likeness to Mai inflaming him. He turned away so that she would not notice the heat in his face, as if she could sense the cramped, shaming tingle in his body. "Things will get better now."

She swayed as she got to her feet and spoke sharply to the girl, ordering her to ready the baby. She looked at Linh as she b.u.t.toned her blouse. "So you think he's dead?"

"If he is alive, he will find us in Saigon."

Thao gathered yellowed photographs of her and Mai's parents from the altar, a few chipped porcelain bowls, a jade hair comb, putting them in a basket.

"If he is dead," she said, shoving in clothes, "Mai would want us to marry."