Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

The wind died down to a whisper outside as he blew into the hurricane shade, extinguishing the light. In the darkness, he missed Mr. Bao already. A silly man, a petty crook, but not a particularly evil one. His sin was not to understand the meaning of the weight of a woman in a man’s arms.

Linh opened the door and walked out onto the moonlight-scarred path, but now he was a less free man than when he came.

April 30, 1975

It was late in the war, and she was tired.

Helen had not slept long in the dead grass of the embassy compound. The night before she had grabbed only a few hours while keeping her vigil over Linh. If the Communists were going to kill her, it might as well be while she slept in her own bed.

By the time she reached Cholon, she walked like a sleepwalker-inside the crooked building through the now smashed Buddha door, up the rickety, cedar-smelling stairs that had lasted another ten years since the time she doubted they would carry her weight. The end had arrived with a sputter, and although she had prayed for an end to the evils of war, now that it had arrived she couldn’t deny being strangely brokenhearted. Like a snake swallowing its own tail, war created an appetite that could be fed only on more war.

Somehow, Linh and she had eked out a happy life here. They had come back from the hamlet married, but Linh insisted for their safety on keeping it quiet. Too, there were professional repercussions, although quite a few American men had married Vietnamese women. In fairness, they felt they had to tell Gary, in case it came out. He, ever the diplomat, broke into a huge smile that could have meant anything. “There’s a certain poetry to it, that’s for sure.” He took them out for a fancy dinner. But the person who was really joyous was Annick. The war had begun to take its toll on her. Gossip was that she took opium more frequently, and her pale skin and thin frame suggested its truth. In her store, she gave Helen a beautiful gold-and-pearl choker.

“I can’t accept this.”

“It is my wedding gift. Because finally something true has come out of this war. I predict you will be very happy.”

And they were. Even as the war moved from the front to the back pages, bumped by the antiwar protests back home, Helen played wife, decorating their apartment, taking long meals with Linh, learning the city from the inside. Their time together was rich and precious. They continued covering the war, although the assignments were fewer and fewer, which suited them for a while. In America people had seemingly forgotten that soldiers in Vietnam were still fighting and still dying. And then came the drawdowns. Dwindling American troop numbers. Even less of a call for war photos. They covered the humanitarian crises caused by the country being at war so long. The effects of the defoliants on agriculture. Food shortages and lack of schools. In 1973, as the U.S. military pulled out, they classified their service dogs as surplus equipment and had them euthanized, claiming they were too dangerous to go back home. A few soldiers got in trouble trying to smuggle their dogs back to the States. Political stories in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia began to take precedence, and they traveled with the news. Gary even talked of moving the bureau offices to Singapore, but then a flare-up in military action caused everyone to scurry back to Saigon. Helen hoped that some kind of compromise would be reached, a permanent division of the country so that they could stay. But Linh knew they all had underestimated the North.

Now the building stood hushed. Had it been abandoned on account of an American woman living there? And if so, where had the families gone in this city that was now as isolated and cut off as a quarantined ship on the high seas? These people had been their friends, had shared meals with them. Helen was godmother to five children. And yet the fear destroyed all of those bonds.

Although it was daybreak, the sky hung sullen with low clouds. Helen walked over to the red-shaded lamp and turned it off, intending sleep. Until these last few days the lamp had been invisible in its everydayness, but now she noticed the shade bleached to dull terra-cotta, like blood imperfectly washed out, the fabric so brittle she could poke her finger through it. It had simply outlasted its time. But the gloom unnerved her, and she turned the light back on.

Their belongings had been sent to Japan weeks ago, when the first news of President Thieu abandoning the Central Highlands came, the cities so familiar to Helen disappearing-Kontum, Pleiku, and Ban Me Thuot.

The rooms had the empty, threadbare feeling of that first night she had come there with Darrow. But it had long ceased to be his. Linh and Helen had shared so many memories in those rooms, they had excised the curse that she had feared was on the place. But now it was slipping away from them also. Already it felt as if the apartment, the city, the country, was in the throes of forgetting them.

Helen undressed, body stiff and aching, and she swabbed at the nail marks on her arms and the bruise at her temple. Because she had refused stitches, there would be a scar near the hairline. This worry over a small vanity would make Linh smile, but perhaps that was how one remained sane. She pulled on her new red kimono, the only piece of clothing she still had other than what she wore, but the joy she had taken in it was already gone without him to appreciate it. Now it was simply a covering, and she walked past the mirror, not wanting to confront herself in it. The rooms felt thick with ghosts, and she realized that she had hardly ever been there alone. Linh always filled them with life, banishing any spirits to the corners.

She pictured him at that moment out on the dawn-pink sea. Probably not sleeping, although he had slept only fitfully through the night. Had he forgiven her? He must know that she was coming shortly. A simple matter of days, photographing the new victors of the city, then being booted out. What was going through his mind? What would he miss the most about his home-land? Of course she knew. She was his country; she was what he would miss until they were back together.

Helen frowned and looked at the map on the wall. Linh understood. Once one took a picture like Captain Tong shooting the old man, one inevitably started down the road of taking more and more. Bloated with self-importance, with the illusion of mission. One stayed at first for glory, then excitement, then later it was pure endurance and proficiency; one couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But there was something more, hard to put her finger on-one felt a camaraderie in war, an urgency of connection impossible to duplicate in regular life. She felt more human when life was on the edge.

It had never been that way for Linh. Something kept him aloof, safe, but he understood her addiction. Allowed it but also kept her from going too far. Like she was doing now. She ran her fingers down the map-Quang Tri, Hue, Danang, Quang Ngai, Qui Nhon-each name recalling a past, each name a time of year and a military assignment, defeat, or victory. But now each name was being erased, exploration in reverse, the map becoming instead more and more empty, filled with great white expanses of loss.

Her mind, again, became a treacherous, circling thing.

A water glass full of vodka in order to sleep; she hoped she would pass out before reaching the bottom. Her mind skipped and jumped, a needle on a worn record, and she pulled down one of Darrow’s old books to calm herself, a dip in the stream of a dog-eared passage:

The temple of Angkor… making him forget all the fatigues of the journey… such as would be experienced on finding a verdant oasis in the sandy desert… as if by enchantment… transported from barbarism to civilization, from profound darkness to light.