Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

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 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 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 shirt 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 milky-clear 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 buttoned 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.”

“We need to catch the last bus. Tomorrow night we will be eating a steaming bowl of bun cha.”

Thao let out a small laugh of relief and placed her hand on his thigh. He picked up her hand and held it clasped between his own two, then dropped it.

“I can try to get a singing job when I fill out again.”

“Don’t worry, Sister. I’ll make sure you are safe. For Mai’s sake.”

Thao positioned herself in the doorway, in the most flattering light. “You get lonely for her?”

“War distracts me.”

“Plenty of babies are born in the war. Haven’t you noticed?”

Linh stood outside holding the small girl in his arms. He tried to still the shaking of his hands. Thao had never been like this before, and he knew that desperation made her throw herself at him in this way. Still, it sickened him. He looked off into the thicket of palms and wished he were back in the hamlet in An Giang.

Darrow had begun to radio Linh after three weeks, but Linh answered that he had business in Saigon and needed an additional week. After his arrival, the festival over, Darrow readied his plans to leave while Helen’s mood turned darker and darker.

As a farewell, the village chief, Ho Tung, suggested a sightseeing trip. “You must see this, the heart of the province. Strangers do not know this.” Two flat-bottomed pole boats appeared. Helen, Darrow, Linh, Ho Tung, and a couple of villagers to guide the boats made up the party. Helen sat in the forward position, her face turned away in brooding contemplation of the surroundings.

At first they went along various branches of the Mekong and Bassac. The rivers changed from green to red to brown, filled with the heavy alluvial silt brought down from the mountains. The boats angled next to seemingly impenetrable walls of water palm, and then one of the boatmen would edge the nose of the canoe into a crevice, push aside some vines, and suddenly they were traveling a thin ribbon of canal no wider than the canoe itself. The chief explained that only the locals could navigate here, the tides so unpredictable that four feet of water might drop down to mud within hours, stranding a boat.

The palms on each side brushed against the passengers, knocking Helen’s hat off. The air was close and thick, filled with insects.

“Flies bothering you, love?” Darrow called good-naturedly, knowing her furor, feeling more comfortable in the knowledge that she was, after all, just like other women.

They passed lone thatched huts that fronted the water, doorways filled with chickens scratching in the dirt, naked babies, and old people pulling on pipes. The peasants here lived by harvesting fruit and flowers from deep inside the jungle and got around by boat. Travel on foot was impossible.

Everywhere they stopped, children and women rushed up to stare at the white faces.

Helen finished handing out the full bag of candy they brought long before they reached their destination, an island in the middle of a wide part of the Mekong made by two tributaries joining and depositing silt.

“The rivers in the delta change direction, get bigger or dry up. Land is created and then taken away. Everything always in a state of change,” Ho Tung said.

“You look tired, Linh,” Darrow said, grinning. Indeed, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his thinness had turned sharp. “Was she at least pretty?”