Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

“Come on,” she said.

“You weren’t supposed to come back.”

“I missed you too much.”

“Liar.”

“And Linh sent me a letter.”

“Don’t worry about Linh. He hasn’t been exactly mooning around. He’s my new star reporter.”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“Things have changed. Be careful. It’s getting uglier by the day.”

Linh and Helen went out on patrol in the Bong Son. She could not wait to leave the hot house of Saigon. Orders were delivered that she not shower with soap or shampoo, and not wear perfume. Ambushes had been discovered because the Vietnamese could smell the deodorized, scented Westerners from far away. That morning, in preparation, the platoon had purchased gallons of nuoc mam, fermented fish sauce, and amid laughter from Linh, they had smeared it all over the canvas parts of their gear and on their uniforms.

A nineteen-year-old PFC named Kirby slapped a big gob of it on Helen’s back and rubbed it around. “If you’ll allow me, ma’am.”

Helen acted the good sport even though the smell sickened her and she’d have to throw away her tailor-made uniform afterward-no number of washings would get rid of the odor. “Aren’t they going to be suspicious of a patch of jungle that reeks of fish sauce?” she asked. But she felt excited and alert for the first time in months, energized by the patrol; in her new confidence, the debilitating fear seemed vanished.

“Naw, after a few days we’ll just smell like any other gook.”

Helen looked to see if Linh had heard.

But instead of lessening, the odor of nuoc mam seemed to grow more rancid, more lingering. It rubbed off of the canvas and onto her skin, sank into her pores, until Helen was so overwhelmed it distracted her from the danger of walking patrol. Sweat reinvigorated the paste; it stuck in her throat and burned her eyes, permeated her hair like cigarette smoke until that, too, reeked.

Two days into the patrol they were deep in the jungle, hunkered down for the night under a canopy of umbrella trees. Hot meals and mail had been delivered earlier, and Kirby made his way over to Helen, who sat on a rock, staring at her serving of ham and beans.

“Not hungry?” he said. He had a slight frame and a sleepy expression; one could almost see the fear in him. “I’m hungry all the time.”

“The fish smell makes everything taste bad,” she said.

“If you’re hungry enough, it doesn’t matter.”

“Want mine?” They sat in silence for a minute. “Get any mail?” she asked.

“From my parents.”

“Miss home? I do.”

“I hear you loud and clear,” Kirby said, his face relaxed now as he settled back, resting his head in the crook of his arm, relieved at the shared acknowledgment of fear. “I dream of that plane ride home. Girls waiting to jump the war hero. People so grateful, they give me a parade. Life like one of those stupid commercials.”

“It’ll happen,” Helen said, stirring at her dinner that now seemed more, not less, revolting. “You’re one of the lucky ones.”

He looked at her and crinkled his nose. “You’re putting me on.”

“No. Trust me.” She did not want this new role, giving encouragement where it wasn’t particularly warranted. She did not like knowing in advance the poor odds for a scared boy with no heart for danger.

“I can’t exactly collect if you’re wrong,” he said.

She handed him her dinner. “You’ll be on that plane.”

Kirby studied her face for a moment and moved closer to her, and Helen smelled the strong odor of the nuoc mam mixed with something sweet like candy. He spoke in a low whisper.

“Can I tell you something personal?”

“Sure.”

His face tightened. “That dream before was just a wet dream. I know it’s not going to be like that. I worry…” He stopped talking for a moment and swallowed hard. “What if everything’s changed? What if my parents are ashamed? What if I lose an arm or leg and my girlfriend goes off with one of those guys who thinks the war is a crock?”

Now she was the one scared. “You’ll be lucky, lucky, lucky.”

The next morning a fresh gallon of nuoc mam was opened with orders to swab down once more. They reached a supply road that showed signs of recent travel and set up an ambush. The renewed strength of the fish smell made her queasy; she couldn’t get down her breakfast. She sought out Linh and together they curled behind a berm to wait. The lack of fear was a new experience, but she’d reached the point of being almost bored. After half an hour she decided to tie a handkerchief over her nose; she began to root around in her bag when a loud explosion went off to her left.

Her eyelids closed and behind them a bright flash exposed a pink-veined starfish shape. The vision had a floating calmness to it so that she did not want to immediately open her eyes.

The platoon around her rose to crouching positions, firing round after round into the surrounding jungle until the air was thick with the smell of fired weapons. The captain signaled for end fire, but it took another minute before the order was passed along, and another after that before the firing actually stopped. In the middle of the path they saw the body of a lone Viet Cong who had come up to the ambush and lobbed a single grenade.

“Put a hose in his mouth, he’d be one heck of a sprinkler, man,” Kirby said.

Their cover blown, the captain radioed for an extraction. Helen, her ears still ringing, moved to get up when she felt a dull pain. She pushed up onto her knees and her head swayed hard to the left; a gush of warm liquid wet her lap. She reached down and gingerly touched her abdomen as the medic looked over.

“Oh,” she said absentmindedly, as if she had misplaced something.

Compresses and bandages applied, she lay back in the dirt, aware of how quiet all the men were around her. She had felt so sure of her invincibility that day that it seemed a poor joke that she got injured. All the warnings she had heard over and over came into her head-the sight of a wounded woman demoralizing the men.

“I’m okay,” she said to the medic. “Just a scratch. Cocktail time.”

The morphine made its way through her limbs, cushioning and cottoning sensation. It frightened her to be so lucid about her surroundings and yet unable to care about the outcome. Her first time in-country she had been obsessed with getting hurt, but this time the possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. In her grief she had felt immune. The hard jarring of the stretcher into the helicopter registered as pain, but too far away to have anything to do with her. The last thing she saw as they lifted off was Kirby’s betrayed face. What kind of prophet couldn’t predict her own demise?

Linh squeezed her hand, spooled back her attention like a kite that kept straining away. “You okay?”

“Bad luck,” she said. “First time out.”

“Just a scratch, I think,” he said hopefully, but they both feared otherwise.

The initial surgery in the field hospital was a success, but that night she developed a fever, and by the next morning she was bleeding internally and was rushed back to surgery again, passing in and out of consciousness. All she remembered was waking up groggy in post-op, and the nurse shaking her head, saying it didn’t need to happen like that, the surgeons were butchers who weren’t used to operating on women. Later still, when she was more awake, the doctor came in and held her hand and said the hysterectomy had stopped the bleeding and saved her life; he wiped his face and said it had been a long night and then he left, and she was alone, listening to the clatter of incoming helicopters, the slow, labored breathing of the wounded in the beds around her.