Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

What did she herself take? What did she have to show for ten years of devotion? A kimono, cameras, a few old photos of a life now gone?

Farther away from the docks, the pull of the traffic lessened. People eddied around her as if she were a rock in a stream. Her body ached, spent and tired. She tried to flag down a cyclo, but all had been commandeered by families to haul away house hold belongings. So she began the long walk home. It was only ten o’clock in the morning.

By the time she walked through her own building’s door, she felt as if she had been up for days, not hours. It had taken her twice the usual time to retrace her way home. On the first step of the stairway, the boy, Chuong, stood, his eyes big at the sight of her. He was one of the few plump street children, actually bordering on fat, and Helen felt chagrined that it was her money that led to his overindulgence in food. His red-striped T-shirt pulled tight across his belly.

As she opened her mouth to speak, they both heard a loud thud overhead as if something heavy had been dropped. They looked at the ceiling, but there was no further noise.

“Where did you disappear to?” Helen asked. “You’ve been gone for days.”

“Many important things. This morning soldiers come to building. Looking for good American things to steal. I tell them everything already stolen. Just old Vietnamese man dying upstairs. They go away.”

“Good,” Helen said, fear feathering along her back, a quick shiver. Just as likely Chuong had led them to the building in order to “liberate” her things. She no longer trusted the boy, and now it was simply a matter of figuring out how dangerous he was. “You did good.”

The boy held his ground on the bottom step like a cranky landlord.

“Oh… I’ll pay you now.” Helen pulled out a thick roll of piastres, as soft and crinkled as tissue. As they lost value each day, it took more and more paper, small, tumbling stacks, to get anything done. “Here. This will buy as much as your old salary.”

The boy looked at the bills in her extended hand, unimpressed, licked his index finger and smoothed his eyebrows. “Very bad soldiers. Kill anyone who lie to them.”

Helen took the rest of the bills out of her bag, paying out again as much. The piastres were almost all gone, but she figured they would be worthless to her soon anyway.

“Very good. You not number-one liar like other Americans.”

Helen did not bring up the delicate matter that she was paying him even though he had not been there for days. To save face, she should press him on the point, but she had lost her will. For his part, he showed none of the gratitude he had when she first helped him, years ago. Now she received only a smirk. Before she could ask him to commandeer a cyclo for them, Chuong jumped off the step and brushed past her, out the door.

Inside her apartment, the air was blue with the opulent scent of incense. Linh sat stiffly in a chair by the window. He never turned his head at her arrivals, and she always felt a small disappointment at this indifference.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked.

“Did you get your pictures?”

“Sure.” She put her arms around his neck. “I got them.” Instead of sweat and ointment, his skin smelled of soap. “Were you up?”

“Better. A shower and some packing.”

She knelt next to his chair and stared out at the flutter of red blossoms in the heavy, wet wind. The twisting gray branches bent under the corpulent flamboyant flowers, crowded so tightly not a hint of green leaf was visible.

“The rains are early this year,” Linh said. “The tree is blooming early.”

“The same time as last year. And the year before.”

“It seems early,” he said.

“I wish we could stay in this room and never leave it,” Helen said.

A gun lay on the floor next to the wall-the source of the sound she had heard in the stairwell. But she wouldn’t ask, just as Linh didn’t press if she got the boat evacuation shots. The usual delicate dance they did around the truth. Her truth was she longed to hide in this room, become invisible. As if the flimsy papered walls and thin door could save them. Out on the streets, without her camera, she felt vulnerable. No one knew of her panic attacks. What internal price she paid for exposure. Preferable to be shot through a door or curtain and to have the source of death anonymous and to die in privacy and alone.

Helen went to the table and mechanically labeled the rolls of film she had taken the day before. Nothing extraordinary. Or rather the extraordinary had become ordinary. Linh had repacked the film cases much better than she. On top lay a folded white shirt, as perfect as in a store display. When she saw the hopefulness of the neatly creased folds, a fresh shirt to begin a new life, she had to turn away. And then it took over as if steel had entered her bones. Everything, including love and fear, squeezed out of her body, and all that was left was determination.

“Chuong told me about the soldiers,” she said.

“What soldiers?”

“They came in downstairs. He sent them away.”

“No soldiers came. I watched from the window since you left.”

Helen nodded, still surprised at her own naïveté. “Were you going to guard the apartment?” she asked, pointing her chin toward the weapon.

Linh studied the gun as if seeing it for the first time. “If they came, I planned to kill myself.”

Helen sucked in her breath. No matter how long she had been in Vietnam, she still took things lightly, like an American. Linh’s quick acceptance of the worst case reminded her that it was not as hard to be brave with the promise of helicopters waiting to whisk you to safety, to home.

“We’re going now.”

She gave Linh the last two shots of morphine, hoping it would last till the embassy and American doctors could give him more. She put on her smock, retied a scarf over her hair.

As she picked up the two cases, the corner of one gave out, spilling out film rolls. The cases were worn and battered, the cardboard corners turned mushy. Helen had patched them with electrical tape, the only thing that didn’t disintegrate in the humidity. “Just a minute,” she said, running to get more tape and wrap the corner.

“Why don’t you get a new case?” Linh’s face set in impatience. The case was just another example of her difficult ways, her willfulness that was putting them both in danger. Yet he knew if he pushed at all, like a high-strung horse, she would balk.

“I know. I will,” Helen said, using a knife to cut the last tail of tape off. Like everything else, it had been provisional, meant only to last out her time there, but like everything else, the provisional had become permanent. Linh slung their tote over his good shoulder. She locked the thin wood door of the apartment, leaving the lamp with the red shade burning, and hurried down the stairs, but Linh took the steps slowly, stopping briefly on each landing. By the time she reached the stairwell, the journey before them had changed as in a fairy tale, grown difficult beyond imagining.

Outside, they plunged into a stream of people and were carried along. The ruttish noise deafening. Families argued over which direction to go, children cried, dogs barked, and on top of it all was the impatient blaring of horns as vehicles tried to force their way through. Far in the background, like the steady thrum of a heart, the sound of bombs exploding. The image of a bloodthirsty army approaching closer and closer made each person jog instead of walk, push instead of wait. Like a fix, Helen ached to pick up her camera and start shooting. What was the point of living through history if you didn’t record it?

Linh walked steadily, but his limp was more pronounced with his weakness, and there was a pallor to his face, his skin wet with a sweat that didn’t dry. Helen took a deep breath to keep her panic down, her mind calm. The biggest part of her job as a photographer to make the minute calculations between getting the picture and getting killed, a skill that she took refuge in, honed into instinct. Yet she had ignored her instincts, following the embassy’s assurance that things would unravel slowly. Cutting that timeline in half had still been too lenient. Yesterday, when she had been told the city wouldn’t be lost, that all Americans and dependents would get out in time, she should have run to the airport.