Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

“I want to apologize-” she began.

“I got a message through the radio-Darrow’s helicopter was shot down in the Ca Mau area. Darrow is fine.”

She felt the ground swaying underneath her at the possibility of something happening to him. “He’s okay?”

Linh turned away, the expression on her face too painful. He had seen that expression in Mai’s face and taken it for granted. “He said only scratches.”

When the trucks began to load, he stood, hefted the pack of equipment onto his back, and walked over to her. They boarded without another word to each other. Now she couldn’t remember why she had placed such importance on the mission; she resented the time it would take to complete. If only they would call it off, she could take the next flight out. She had badly lost face with Linh and didn’t know how to make it up.

The trucks grinded through their gears as they climbed into the mountains along muddy, hairpin-turn roads. The wall of trees and plants on each side provided a thick screen that could have shielded any number of snipers. Sometimes a hole in the foliage allowed a sight line twenty or thirty feet into the jungle, sunlight filtering through the dense overhead canopy, turning individual shafts of light the color of honey.

Linh reached out to touch small white flowers clinging to the trunks of trees as they passed. The trucks climbed sullenly up the red dirt road, engines drowning out every sound, the only movement the bouncing, swaying bodies of the soldiers. Some of them turned outward and squinted into the jungle, fingering the clips of their machine guns, the rings of their hand grenades. Others simply stared at the floor of the truck bed or closed their eyes or prayed, resigned and unconcerned, weapons splayed under their feet. Plenty of time for fear when the trucks stopped. But Helen was hardly aware of her surroundings, barely noticed the jungle or the soldiers, wondering if it was true that Darrow was unhurt. What if she got hurt now, before she saw him?

They reached a straight part of the road that leveled out, a slight depression muddied with the remaining trickle of a steam struggling across it. The abandoned trucks, noses buried in jungle, impeded their way.

Engines were cut and clips slammed home; the new silence rang in Helen’s ears. She ducked at the shriek of a bird, and the soldiers in the truck snickered. Odds were good that the enemy had long since departed, but still they moved forward with slow, deliberate steps.

The first thing was the vinegary sweet meatlike stench. An elemental imprint on the brain one recognized without knowing why. The instinct was to run, but instead the soldiers crawled forward, and Helen reluctantly followed. Clouds of birds and insects flew up as they neared. The ground littered with the detritus of battle-ammunition casings, a destroyed radio, hastily moved sandbags, bloodied bandages; weapons stolen.

A swarm of translucent orange-winged insects rose up, a kind of locust, and underneath Helen saw a flash of strawberry blond that she at first mistook for a clump of flowers. Two thick, loglike shapes covered with leaves, and going closer, she saw they were the bloated legs of a body. And then a few feet farther the lucky bush hat. Two soldiers rolled the remains into a rubber poncho, but the body did not move away in one piece. She turned away and vomited.

“That’s what you get, bringing women out here.”

She rinsed her mouth with water from her canteen and let the tears dry on her face as she pulled the lens cap off the camera. Most of the scenes too horrific to be used, but she took the pictures anyway because she had to keep her hands and her mind occupied. The promises of leaving replayed themselves in her mind. In this place filled with death, it was impossible to believe that Darrow remained unhurt. She wanted to go to Linh and be reassured all over again, but she couldn’t get him away from the other soldiers.

So she turned to the work. During their days wandering Saigon, Helen hadn’t known more than loading the camera and shooting, centering the images so they could be cropped, but Linh taught her how to extract the meaning out of a shot. It seemed impossible to concentrate on light, shutter speed, and aperture in the middle of combat or even in its aftermath, but those were the peculiar requirements of the job. Now the distance of technique saved her.

He had told her to picture the image being formed; the idea of light going through the lens, striking the translucent emulsion, staining it dark. The more light, the longer the length of time, the darker the stain. Those areas most saturated by light-by intensity and duration-called latent images. No turning back, only advancing frame by frame by frame. All the grays had to be sorted out, lights and darks contrasted, even if it meant making them up. She saw that even pictures that purported the truth involved a great deal of discretion and taste and choice, that subject matter and angle and intent were as involved in image-making as they were in the military briefings.

After the area had been searched, Linh stood apart looking down a gully along the side of the road. Helen went to stand near him, hoping he would say something more about Darrow, but when he remained silent she squinted into the gully. “What is it?”

“Look at those white flowers. Everywhere on this hill. I noticed them while we were in the trucks.”

Not understanding such callousness, she stared hard at his profile for a minute. “How did you know the rescue convoy would be attacked?”

“You mean do I have ‘spy’ knowledge? Do I have a secret phone to Viet Cong headquarters? Medlock knew it was a death mission. He had no choice. When the NVA leave a few alive, it is to lure more in. Guerilla tactics. I was a soldier once.”

The Vietnamese troopers complained about having to load the bodies onto the truck. Sergeant Medlock and another officer argued with them. Voices grew pitched and strident. Finally the Americans, even though there were fewer of them, loaded alone, and then the Vietnamese grudgingly helped. By the time all the bodies were on the truck, tension was high.

Helen took a shot of the back of the loaded truck with its inert human cargo like a sculpture from a circle of the Inferno. She knelt and framed the truck like a mountain, the focus sharp on the tread of the tires, the matching tread of the boots of the dead. The darkness of the surrounding jungle and the light on the road made it seem the most forlorn spot in the world.

“Man, let’s blow this place,” one of the soldiers said.

The trucks rumbled back to life. Helen rode in a jeep with Medlock while Linh rode with the Vietnamese soldiers in the trucks.

When they arrived back at base camp, the Americans went into the mess tent to eat while the bodies were loaded into helicopters for transport back to Saigon. Helen didn’t know what else to do, so she followed the officers and stood in line for hamburgers and more fruit cocktail. She sat at table and spooned peaches into her mouth although they tasted obscene to her.

“Did you see the price of the new radios they’re selling down at the PX?”

“It’s easier to buy radios and trade them for cigarettes. Sell them on the black market and make a fortune.”

“I’ll start my retirement fund right in Saigon,” Medlock joked from down the table.

“Next time I’m in town, I’m going to load up on chocolate.”

A pause, a moment of panic because Helen did not hear half their words, so lost was she in the memory of the strawberry-haired soldier’s chocolate, but then Medlock asked if anyone had caught the football scores from the paper. The world went on.

When Linh came inside, Helen was drinking coffee. “Can I talk with you?”

She felt exhausted and not up to dealing with him. Their relationship was wearing on both of them. She sighed but didn’t want to make matters worse. “Can it wait?”