Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

“Meet us in the morning.”

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 friendship 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. “Damn 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 classic VC-style execution.”

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

“That was easy. The snatch 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 shit 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 passed 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 canals 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?”

Under Heaven

The day was a 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.