The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 22

They were escorted to a jeep as the village men were herded into the center of the hamlet at gunpoint. Their women clattered loud and angrily like birds disturbed in their roost. Harsh, unfamiliar sounds awakened the children, who began wailing. A helicopter hovered over the road, floodlights bathing the tops of trees in an eerie dust of light, the noise deafening.

"I don't think we should leave Linh," Helen said.

"He'll be okay," Darrow said.

When they reached the USAID compound, the courtyard glowed in the ghostly sulfer light. In the center, resting in a pool of rust-colored blood, were the trussed bodies of Nichols and his young mistress. Their arms and legs had been bound with wire; bodies mutilated either before or after being executed with one bullet, neatly in the back of each head.

Darrow slammed his good hand down on the hood of the jeep when he saw them, then cradled it in his bad one. The officers came over, concerned at the outburst, but he shook his head. Helen moved off. The violence after such a peaceful time jolted her. She felt as raw as she had after the last convoy mission; time had done nothing to buffer that.

The sight of the girl an apparition. No places of safety in this country, just temporary escapes. Khue, who had lost one thing after another--home, parents, village--now lost her life. Not even so small a thing as her tooth could be mended. After a few minutes, Darrow went about the rote gestures of putting film in camera and took pictures of the bodies. Who would want such pictures?

Inside the villa, the black-and-white tile floor was muddied from the boots of the soldiers. Sanders sat on a sofa, being questioned. "Everyone liked him."

"Hardly," Helen blurted out. The officer looked up, and Sanders blushed.

Helen and Darrow were led to two rooms, but didn't bother with the pretense, entering only one. They lay down on the French carved wooden bed, fully dressed, unable to sleep. For the first time in more than a month, they didn't touch, each lost in thought. Their time in the village not simply over, but undone. All of it, including why they had unquestioningly accepted it, a delusion.

Finally Helen turned to him. "What do you think?"

"As in who?"

"You said the region was safe."

"I said it was overseen by the Hoa Hao. Whatever happens, it's under their sanction. They must have allowed it."

In the morning, Helen took no plea sure from the hot running water in the sink but longed for the cool green of the river. Linh did not show up. She remembered the women gossiping about Khue. Whose side were they on? The captain in charge of the investigation drove them back to the village for statements before they were flown out.

As they approached the village, the rice paddies were empty, as they had been during the festival. The hamlet appeared smaller and meaner from inside the jeep. Helen could hardly remember her joy at having been out in the paddies; it seemed so indulgent.

Now her actions simply seemed childish. Even their hut, while they packed up their equipment, seemed alien. In the center square, men, women, and children had been herded together, and squatted in the dirt in the full, hot sun.

As Helen walked by, she recognized individuals and nodded to them, but no look of recognition or greeting was returned. Faces stared out, sullen and closed. Even Ho Tung turned his back on them. The villagers feared showing friends.h.i.+p with the Americans in front of the Vietnamese military or spies for the VC. They knew better than to expect help from either side.

Then Helen saw Ngan, her face bruised, her clothes bloodied. Helen cried out her name and moved toward her, but the girl shuddered and slunk back into the crowd.

The American colonel sat at a table set up under the shade of the trees. His face was dark red from sunburn, cheeks and forehead pocked with small heat blisters. He kept pulling out a small tube of ointment and dabbing at them. When he saw Darrow and Helen, he put the tube in his pocket. "d.a.m.n things itch, driving me crazy. So... how long have you two been staying here?"

"Over a month," Darrow said.

"And it didn't come to your attention that you were in a VC hotbed?"

"Jerry Nichols... invited me to stay here. So it hadn't come to his attention, either."

"There were no VC here," Helen said.

"That was a cla.s.sic VC-style execution."

"How do you know it came from here?" Darrow asked.

"That was easy. The s.n.a.t.c.h he had living with him in the compound--strictly against the rules--she was an undercover VC operative from here."

"Where did you get that piece of s.h.i.+t information?" Darrow said.

"Interrogation of one of the villagers." He ruffled through some papers. "Actually, the girl who worked for you."

"Ngan?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Who got that out of her? The South Vietnamese?"

"They're in charge of interrogations. Your man was present."

"That's ridiculous."

The colonel cupped his chin in his hand and winced. "What I find ridiculous is that two reporters didn't notice anything suspicious all this time."

Darrow walked off.

"Khue, your operative, was a child. Nichols should have been arrested."

"Actually, we have a report on you. From yesterday. Your hostility toward the victim."

"Don't even try to go there," Helen said, getting up.

Linh caught up with them as they walked to the jeep. He looked pale, unsure that his papers would be powerful enough against this craziness. As they pa.s.sed the villagers, Ngan broke through the guards and ran to them, clinging to Linh's waist.

"What did they do to you?" Helen said.

Vietnamese guards ran at them with guns pointed.

Ngan talked quickly, eyes wide in fear, spittle on her lips. Linh took her hands and spoke in her ear as he led her back.

When they were in the jeep on the way to the helicopter, Helen turned to him.

"What did she say?"

"She wanted us to take her. She says she is not VC. They hit her till she said it to stop the beating. I could do nothing."

"Who did the executions?"

"Nichols was not liked. Villagers say Khue with baby, and he refused to marry her. He only tell her later about American wife. He threw her out with no more money.

To save face, they are killed. Making it look like VC takes shame away."

"Shouldn't we go back and tell them the truth?" Helen asked. "Linh can report the beating."

Darrow leaned in close to her. "Don't ever put Linh at risk. Americans can get out of prison. If they put him away, there's nothing we can do. The South Vietnamese have their confession, and they'll stick by it."

"What about Ngan?" Helen said.

Darrow turned away.

The helicopter rose to tree level, and Helen tried to pick out their hut from the surrounding ones. Brokenhearted to leave, but especially with the villagers' fates uncertain. Impossible to find their hut, the thatched roofs quickly blending together, and soon they were too high even to be sure which hamlet was theirs among the infinite ca.n.a.ls and rivers. Soon even the villages were indistinguishable from the dense vegetation and trees, the pattern of rice paddies making the view identical in every direction, the land closing up and becoming impenetrable once more.

The pilot turned around and yelled over his engine. "Want to go have a little fun?"

TEN.

Thien Ha Under Heaven The day was a perfect jewel, and long after Linh would remember it as the perfect jewel, and long after Linh would remember it as the happiest day of his life. Neither too hot nor too cold. The sky a soft azure, unmarred by a single cloud; the white sand of the beach on fire in the sunlight. The helicopter pilot flipped off the switch for radio contact, hooked a sharp right, and came in low over the palm trees, creating a wind that raised the sand into small whorls, chopped the waves into emeralds at the ocean's edge.

Half an hour later, Helen, Darrow, Linh, and the helicopter crew were seated in a beachside cafe in Vung Tau, the old Cap St. Jacques, drinking "33" beer and eating cracked crab. The proprietor, thrilled by his dollar-laden clients, had two tables with large blue-and-white striped umbrellas dragged out onto the sand. For the occasion, he even ran a greasy towel over the oilcloth tabletop. When they ordered more beer, a small boy dug around in a trash can filled with ice that housed both the bottles and that day's catch.

As the meal went on, orange-pink splintered sh.e.l.ls formed a jagged reef around the table.

After lunch Darrow set up a chess set and played Linh while the helicopter crew ran touch football on the beach, recruiting the local boys, who kept running off with the ball. One of the men turned on AFVN radio.Maintenance of the M16 in the field is affected by conditions. In the upper alt.i.tudes only a light lube should be applied, thin and often, especially often. Down in the delta, areas with plenty of water, be extra careful that your lubrication does not get contaminated. Take care of your weapon and your weapon will take care of you....If you leave Vietnam on emergency-leave orders...

"Turn that d.a.m.n thing off!" the pilot yelled. "Can't you see we're on vacation here?"

And, indeed, the relaxed faces of the people on the beach, the wet breeze and the lethargic waves, made the war seem somewhere far away. When Helen left to walk on the beach, Linh moved his knight so that his king was exposed.

"Hey, you can't toss the game!" Darrow said.

"Sorry, I can't concentrate."

Darrow looked around and spotted the pilot stretched out on three chairs.

"Billings, you're up."

The pilot mock sighed, opened a fresh "33," and sat down at the table. Linh stepped over the reef of crab sh.e.l.ls and made his way to the surf where Helen stood. They watched fishermen, their skin a dark, sun-cured teak, tug nets of beating fish up on the sand.

As they walked along the surf, a boy ran by, and when he was within feet of Helen, he reached down his arm and splashed her with water. She stopped and looked down at her soaked capri pants, then at the boy. She cupped her hand in the warm water and splashed him back with twice as big a spray. His eyebrows shot up in surprise, and he stood still and gave a loud belly laugh. Then began a tag game in earnest, Helen and the boy joined by his friends, running through the knee-high waves, catching each other in ropes of water. At one point, Helen was clutching Linh inside a ring of the boys who circled the two of them, pressed them in, splas.h.i.+ng them with water, circling around and around. Helen had a sudden vision of her long-ago dream of the Vietnamese children when she had first arrived in Saigon, how threatening she had found them as they circled around her and Michael. Perhaps she had read the dream wrong, and they weren't menacing at all. After fifteen minutes, the novelty of the American woman wore off, and the boys retreated to a food stall. Helen stood drenched beside Linh.

"I'll tell you the truth, I hated it here when I first came. It was strange and frightening. But this time in the village... despite everything, this place moves me."

"I'm pleased."

"Since we're wet, let's swim out to that buoy," she said.

"I.

can't."

"Come on. What if I get a cramp? You'll need to save me."

Linh looked down at the water slapping over his knees but said nothing.

"What?"

"I cannot swim."

Helen sensed his embarra.s.sment and took his hand. "Then you're in luck, because I taught swimming every summer during high school."

They walked together along the sand, away from the crowds, coming across dead jellyfish whose purple translucent flesh reeked in the sun. At a deserted stretch, they entered the water that had only a hint of oily coolness. Helen showed Linh how to hold his breath underwater, to float on his back, to move his arms for the b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke and the sidestroke.

She touched him, hand against hand, arm against chest, trunk against back, with a kind professionalism, like a nurse with a patient. Linh dunked his head underwater again, opened his eyes wide to allow the sting of salt, the excuse for tears. No one had touched him, except in the most incidental way--Helen's hug, the brush of strangers--since he had lost his family. He had numbed himself to the absence, but this strange baptism woke each part of him to a fresh agony. He dunked his head again, held his breath till his lungs threatened to buckle, surfaced to the shattering of light, spluttering, the far-off laughter of playing children.

Helen put her hand on his arm. "Are you okay?"

Linh shook his head. They walked out of the water and stood in the sand.

"Don't worry. It doesn't come all at once. You'll get the hang of it."

"Why do you dream to photograph the Ho Chi Minh trail?" he asked her.

"I did." Helen shook out her hair. "I still do. Not for the same reasons anymore."

She brushed sand off her arms. "I'm beginning to admire them. Their fierce will. Do you understand someone better when you've sat down and eaten a bowl of rice with them?"

The sun spun low in the sky, turning the South China Sea into a long liquid field of bronze.

"I thought of you all the time in the village. You should have been there with us,"

Helen said. "I felt it, the thing you talked about, being a brick in the wall."

With those words, Linh knew without a doubt he loved her. He barely remembered walking up the sand to the cafe, how they stood shoulder to shoulder, how her hair dried to the color of light straw.

As they approached, Darrow stretched his arms over his head, smiling at them even as he cast a troubled glance down the beach. All Linh could see was the radiance of Helen's face as she gazed at Darrow.

"I only have that fierce will for those I love," she said under her breath to Linh. "I need to get him away from here."

Years later Linh would wish that there had been some sign that this moment was the perfect one, balanced on the edge of changing, that the three of them would never again be together and as happy as they were then. But even if he had known, how did one hold time? Instead, there was a shout from one of the crewmen: "Ice cream!" and Helen grabbed Linh's hand as they hurried through the white powdery sand, stumbling, laughing, blind.

The three of them returned to the war that had brought them together, but the returned to the war that had brought them together, but the war itself had changed. Saigon with it.

Helen and Linh went out to photograph the refugees crowded into the new slums overwhelming the city. The faces they met were weary--bones pressing against skin, hollow-cheeked, eyes sunken and stony from hards.h.i.+p--looking away, not into the camera. An indication the enemy was winning?

Life in the city remained as schizophrenic as ever: Each night Helen waded through dozens of quickly mimeographed invitations to dinners at posh restaurants and c.o.c.ktail receptions at the emba.s.sies. As the war grew larger, the social life of the city expanded with it. They attended the official functions dutifully, knowing that nothing of interest would come out of it beside the line about winning the war.

Darrow and Helen returned a couple, and they now took their place in the expat life of journalists and adventurers. Many came from ambition, as Darrow had claimed, but just as many came to escape what ever bound them to home--jobs, family, boredom.