Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

On the street, the heat and sunlight stranded her again, but at least she could shuffle along the even ground. By the time she made her tortured way through the alley and onto the main thoroughfare where the soup stall was, her whole body was shaken by tremors of pain and fatigue.

The soup vendor recognized her, patted the empty stool, and made soup the way Helen liked, with plenty of chilies and soy sauce, but when she handed over the bowl, Helen hunched over, rocking, and could only shake her head.

The old woman studied her face for a moment, then barked out orders to her young nephew who worked for her. He took off at a run.

Half an hour later, the boy reappeared in a cab. Linh jumped out, leaving the back door hanging open, the driver unpaid, and ran behind the soup stall to where Helen was curled on a mat, under the shade of the vendor’s umbrella. Kneeling down, he placed his hand on her forehead.

“Are you okay?”

“Dizzy. I shouldn’t have gone down…”

“Can you sit up?”

Helen moved delicately, fearing she had ruptured something inside, the effort making her grind out her words as her forearms gave out, and she slipped back down, a black wave coming over her, threatening, then receding.

“Can you put your arms around my neck?”

Pulling herself up, she made the effort to concentrate on Linh’s face. She nodded. Lifting her as if she were broken, he carried her down the alley. Helen laid her head on his shoulder, her hair winding around his wrist.

The body, he knew, has a memory all its own. The shape of a baby in one’s arms will be imprinted forever, the cup of a lover’s chin. The weight of Helen in Linh’s arms broke his heart open. He wished the journey back to the apartment was ten times, a hundred times as long, wished that he could walk with the weight of her in his arms all day and all night and still keep walking. To repeat the journey of that night until it ended with a different outcome. He would gladly die walking for that, and he knew this desire was wrong, but kept looking down at her face.

With the snap of a grimy plastic sheet over the counter, the old woman declared her stall closed; she, the boy, and the cab driver, who shut off his car and took the keys, walked ahead, yelling at people to step aside. The boy was caught up in the drama; the old woman was scandalized; the cabdriver wanted to get paid. When they reached the building, the old woman opened the Buddha door and followed them up the two flights although her bad leg kept her from climbing any faster than Linh under his burden.

When he laid Helen down on the mint green bedspread, the old woman shooed him away and drew the curtain between the rooms, changing Helen’s clothes and washing her face. Men had no place there, even if this was one of those loose Western women.

Linh went to the door and paid off the driver, in his worry forgetting to tip until the driver reminded him. Half an hour later, the pain pills in effect and Helen resting, the old woman got up to leave. Linh offered her money, which she refused.

Helen turned her head, sleepy. “Cam on ba. Chao.” Thank you, Grandmother. Good-bye.

The old woman broke out into a black-toothed smile and asked Linh, “Co ay biet noi tieng Viet khong?” Can she speak Vietnamese?

“Da biet, nhung khong kha lam,” Helen answered. Yes, but not too well.

Grandmother shook her head in amazement and told her nephew to go run for some tea. “I have to read your fortune, daughter.”

Linh frowned. He wanted to be alone with his new feelings, not stuck with some superstitious old woman. “Not now. She’s tired. Anyway, she doesn’t believe in that hocus-pocus.”

“It’s okay,” Helen said. “Let her.”

Grandmother looked at him in triumph. “She might be a foreigner, but she is wiser than some who were born here.” She stared around the bedroom as she waited, and saw a plate on the dresser that held earrings and necklaces.

After the tea had been poured, Helen watched as the old woman took her cup and studied the insides, frowning, then went to the window and threw the contents into the courtyard below. “There is someone who loves you. You must be careful his love doesn’t cause this person harm.”

Helen, her mind drifting, said nothing.

“I told you it’s all nonsense,” Linh said. He turned to Grandmother. “Let’s give her some quiet to sleep now.”

“No, she’s right,” Helen said. “Maybe for Westerners their fortune is only clear after the fact. Backward.”

“This nonsense keeps this country backward.”

“Toi di.” I’m going. She glared at Linh. He was a tricky one, but she wasn’t afraid of him in spite of the rumors of powerful connections with both Viet Cong and the drug lord Bao.

“Xin loi ba,” Helen called. “Ten ba la gi?” What is your name?

“Thua, ten toi la Suong. Ba Suong.” Grandmother said something to Linh that Helen couldn’t understand, and he chuckled, exasperated, as he shepherded her out the door.

“What did she say?”

“She said she is Grandmother Suong, who will bring your pho every day so you won’t break your neck going down the stairs.”

Each day after that, true to her word, Grandmother made the journey down the alley and up the stairs herself; her nephew carried a lidded container of soup while she carried a newspaper sleeve of flowers she got from a niece who worked in the market. Everyone heard the story of the American woman who risked her life for a bowl of Suong’s pho, and no matter how long she took visiting, there would be a line of people waiting for her return. Business had never been better. Some fool had even started the rumor that the pho had a medicinal herb that returned fertility and that was why the American had wanted it so badly. Business was booming, so much so that she considered opening another stall a few blocks away to handle the overflow. Fate worked in mysterious ways.

She sat for a moment in the chair by the open window, her legs spread far apart in their loose pajamas, her calloused feet dusty in sandals. Helen and she exchanged the same few sentences that they shared, always receiving them as if new. Grandmother was insulted by tips above the price of the soup but was not averse to occasional gifts of packs of American cigarettes.

She fingered the necklaces on the plate on the dresser, holding them against her neck in the mirror. Once, when Helen was looking away, the old woman considered pocketing a thin gold chain, but at that moment Helen turned and offered her the necklace if she liked it. Perhaps this one was only American on the outside, Vietnamese on the inside, like people said. Grandmother quickly put the necklace down, almost ashamed. It was a reflex, mostly, a bad habit, taking advantage of foreigners.

On the days when Linh was away, Grandmother heated up water for a pot of tea, poured the cup, and allowed Helen to handle it. Each time she frowned over the contents, the fortune always the same.

“No, no, I want to know the future, not the past,” Helen said.

Grandmother nodded. “Will be.”

“But the man who loved me died.”

The old woman shrugged and got up to leave. “Is. Now.”

When Linh returned to the apartment and found Grandmother’s flowers, his face froze. He grabbed them up out of their vase and threw them out the window.

“What are you doing?” Helen asked.

“Makes me sneeze.”

Helen said nothing. The next day when Grandmother came, she stopped and stared at the scattered flowers on the courtyard brick. The day after, she brought yellow paper flowers, which Helen stuck in a bottle next to her bed. Linh spotted them as soon as he walked in. He grabbed the blossoms, crushing the paper, and then tossed them in the coal brazier and set them on fire with matches.