The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 41

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. the war, and she was tired.

Helen had not slept long in the dead gra.s.s of the emba.s.sy 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 appet.i.te that could be fed only on more war.

Somehow, Linh and she had eked out a happy life here. They had come back 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, b.u.mped 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 a.s.signments 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 cla.s.sified 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 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 s.h.i.+p on the high seas? These people had been their friends, had shared meals with them. Helen was G.o.dmother 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 j.a.pan 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 st.i.tches, 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, banis.h.i.+ng 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 she was what 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 a.s.signment, 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 gla.s.s full of vodka in order to sleep; she hoped she would pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage: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.

As a tank approached the front gates, Helen's camera stuck. She pulled back and forth on the lever, but nothing happened. Jammed. She yanked the strap off her neck as the sound of crunched metal could be heard, clamped the camera between her knees and pulled out a lens for the second body, but by the time she had it ready, the tank had rolled over the gingerbread gate with a hollow tearing of metal. Later, she found out that there had been offers to open the gates, but the NVA insisted on breaking them down.

Showmen. She cursed, the camera dropping from her knees, clattering on the pavement.

Kneeling on the ground, she rubbed the lens with a tissue to see if it had been scratched.

She looked up just in time to see the unfurling from the balcony of the huge red flag with the gold star of the North.

Within hours, once the Saigonese realized that their city would not be bombed, Saigonese realized that their city would not be bombed, that the rumored bloodbath would not occur, people came out and tentatively waved and clapped at the pa.s.sing North Vietnamese soldiers. If she knew anything about the place, it was how quickly it switched allegiances, a fickle paramour, and yet in spite of herself she felt betrayed.

Walking down the street, she was surprised to see noodle shops already reopened.

At one, she spotted incongruous white-blond hair and recognized the new Matt, the young reporter she had run into the day before, slurping a bowl with a group of NVA. He had a day's-old beard and wore the same black T-s.h.i.+rt she'd seen him in last time. When he saw her, he motioned her over.

"I've got a scoop for you this time. Check these boys out, Helen. We're having a picnic."

A group of five young soldiers looked up at her and giggled. They were young and skinny in their loose, mustard-colored uniforms, unsophisticated compared to the jaded, sleek SVA. They reminded Helen of polite and well-mannered country children.

She wished her boy soldier would reappear, blowing his bubble gum. Most had never been in a city before, and Saigon, even in its present disheveled state, was a marvel of riches. The new rulers got lost on the way to the palace and had to stop their tanks and ask a frightened civilian for directions.

"Get this. They think ceiling fans are head choppers." Matt laughed, his mouth full of noodles, his hand making small hacking motions against the side of his neck.

"Choppy, choppy those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, huh?" he said, elbowing a soldier.

The fear was too fresh for Helen to sit down next to these men and slurp noodles.

Matt was a fool, but he had the advantage of no history. "I've got to get some more shots," she said.

"Hey, wait, I think I've talked them into giving me a tank ride. You could take pictures of me."

"Maybe next time," she said, walking away.

"What next time?" he yelled.

In the next few days the Communists did not take over the city simply because days the Communists did not take over the city simply because they did not know how. But given they had already won an impossible victory, no one doubted they would soon learn.

The Saigonese quickly regained their confidence when they met these naive soldiers and began to ply them with the same cheap watches and fake goods they had p.a.w.ned off on new G.I.'s. Secretly they wondered to themselves what they had been so afraid of. The most obvious hards.h.i.+p of the takeover on Tu Do was the absence of prost.i.tutes, not allowed under Uncle Ho's rules of clean living.

Soon jokes were traveling the city about the new bo dois bo dois, how they used a modern toilet to wash rice and were outraged when they pushed the handle and their food disappeared.

Helen went up and down the streets taking pictures of shopkeepers tearing down their American signs, crowbarring off neon and metal, and replacing them with hastily made Vietnamese ones. A Vietnamese man stood on top of a swaying ladder, pounding at a neon tube sign that read BUCK'S BAR , with a picture of a naked girl in a cowboy hat with a la.s.so that moved up and down her body in red and green loops. His calves were thin and ropey, his feet in their sandals calloused, the toenails thick and yellow. A life of hard work could be seen in those legs. She filled the frame with his body, the sign behind him a blur. Gla.s.s fell in small, tinkling chips like snow, and he brushed the splinters off his cheeks and shoulders and pounded harder till the whole thing fell in the street; his face drawn with pain like he was beating a favorite child. When he saw the camera, he scowled and almost lost his balance, waving Helen off.

She made her way to the wire service offices, where Gary was camped out, a skeleton crew transmitting stories throughout the morning.

"Where've you been? Beating up some NVA? Or joining Uncle Ho's army? War's over, Helen!" Tanner said.

"Thought I'd hang out with you."

Gary walked over to her. "Your credentials were pulled a week ago. You officially don't work here. You're supposed to be gone with Linh."

"Fine. I'll go. And take my pictures with me over to AP or UPI."

"Don't be that way. Let's see them."

"Am I back in?" She held the camera bag just out of his reach, teasing.

Gary hesitated, then laughed. "Just be careful. It's weird out there."

"It's Alice in Wonderland time out there," Tanner said. time out there," Tanner said.

She developed her own film, and Gary sent out all the prints because they might be among the last to go out. Her byline would be on the majority of the pictures of the takeover, her name joined with the crumbling city's last hours. At last her stamp on a part of history. Everyone was waiting for the inevitable--communications lines to be cut. That was when the victors would show their true hand.

Early evening, the machines fluttered and went dead at last. A ripple of fear traveled the office.

"That's it, people. Vietnam is closed for business. Let's go to dinner."

A mixed group of nationalities among the dozen journalists dining on the roof of nationalities among the dozen journalists dining on the roof of the Caravelle Hotel. Tanner raised his gla.s.s to Helen in a private toast. Although they had never liked each other, there was a mutual respect for time served. Waiters in white coats carried food out from the restaurant as if it were just another night. The Westerners were surprised that the place was still operating but remained quiet in front of the staff, as if bringing up the war were in bad taste. The maitre d' stopped by their table and politely informed Gary that this was the last night they would remain open. They could not put the bill on account but had to pay by check or cash. Before dessert, the waiters had disappeared. Gary and a French writer rummaged in the abandoned kitchen for ice cream.

The final bill never came.

After dinner, they "liberated" cigars and drinks from the now self-serve bar. Helen was lying on a lounge chair, drinking a gla.s.s of champagne and looking up at the stars.

The young Matt came and sat next to her.

"You should've hung around yesterday. I scored a lid off them," Matt said.

Helen knew he was a liar but didn't care. At this late date, personal preferences were a nicety. Should she start thinking other wars? South America? What would Linh think?

Matt's hair was back in a ponytail, and he wore a fresh tie-dye s.h.i.+rt with a peace symbol on the chest. He looked almost presentable for an antiwar protester. He lifted Helen's wrist and looked at the Montagnard bracelet. "Where'd you get that?"

"Years ago from a Special Forces guy. Before you ever took your first picture."

She lifted her chin toward his s.h.i.+rt. "You actually wear that to cover combat?"

"Sure. It's a disguise."

"It's working. You don't look like a photographer."

"I totally dig this old-guard, ballbuster stuff." Matt chuckled and refilled her champagne gla.s.s as it dangled in her hand, but she remained reclined, looking up at the stars. "And my mentor, old Tanner, with his Graham Greene vices and his Marine c.r.a.p, too funny. It's like you all read the same book."

"Isn't it amazing," she said.

"What?"

he asked.

"The quiet. No planes, no artillery. I never knew the city any other way." A wave of nostalgia and history and failure overwhelmed her, and she drank down her gla.s.s.

Matt poured her another and signaled to Tanner over her head. "So did the bracelet bring you luck?"

Helen shrugged. "I'm still here. Is that luck?"

Tanner came and sat down at her feet. "Tucked your VC partner safely away and now you're ready to play with us, huh?"

"The two Matts have a proposition for you."

She looked at the young man more closely. A boyish face, unlined and unknowing, a long thin nose with the sunburned skin peeling. He licked his lips, which were thick and pouting and didn't match the rest of his face, and she realized he was wired up on speed. "Proposition away."

He grinned a smirky kind of smile as if he were letting her in on some great prank. "It's just a matter of time now before they kick us out, right? The excitement's finished here."

"So?"

"So... we'll leave before they kick us out. But our way. A little car trip through Cambodia, stop off in Phompers. The only Western journalists to get pictures of what's going down in the countryside. All the other reporters have been herded up in the French emba.s.sy."

"Wow. That's pretty risky."

"That's why we're inviting you along," Tanner said. "A bit of nostalgia. Our personal swan song."

Tanner took risks, but she supposed he was most interested in saving his hide, vulture reputation notwithstanding. Matt had covered the Rangers in Hung Loc and gotten a good story out of it. Not so bad. Not so desperate.

"Cambodia?" she said, staring at him. The oldest of seductions--falling under the spell of one clearly more innocent than oneself.

"We go out through Thailand," Tanner said. Now that she seemed actually to be listening to them, he was straightened into considering his own proposition.

"When?"

"First thing in the morning."

Darrow had won the Pulitzer before he got to Vietnam. But he continued on, his fame growing to legend status as he became a.s.sociated with this small, problematic Southeast Asian bush war. Always he wanted to cover one more action. She told herself she was not as obsessed as Darrow. She was a professional, accessing a potential gig.

Tanner was seasoned; he knew the risks; he was going. So if it was doable, was she simply too afraid to push out to the limits as Darrow had done? A total shutout of the media. A once-in-a-lifetime thing. That puritan instinct. How could she let them--the bad guys, the ones who wanted to do their dirty work in the dark--win, when it was nothing more than another car trip on her way out?

As dinner broke up, Gary took her aside. "I heard what those two clowns are up to. You're not going with them?"