The Lotus Eaters: A Novel (27 page)

"Darrow said it was time to go."

"I know." She fell into step beside him, back to the village.

He was a fool, he berated himself. Wasting so much dreaming.

The afternoon Linh had
delivered Helen into Darrow's arms, he was a tired man. After he took his leave of them, stowing his camera gear in the USAID compound, he dressed in the plain clothes of a farmer and hiked down a dirt road. Outside the village, he climbed down the bank of the river to an isolated grassy spot, took off his clothes, and went for a swim.

The grass along the bank was plush and long; it fell in swaths one direction and then another, like a hand-mown lawn. The spot reminded him of the place Mai used to lure him to during their school days to sing to him.

The water cooled his body, the solitude a deep plea sure. A relief simply not to have to speak. In his earlier life, he had lived so much in his imagination, writing in notebooks, that it was now a constant strain to keep his mind directed out into the world, trying to understand others more than himself, to rewrite his thoughts into a foreign tongue.

After his swim, he climbed back up on the grassy bank, put his clothes on, and fell asleep under the trees.

The sound of children's laughter woke him in the late afternoon. Two young girls trawled the shallows for crayfish and shrimp for dinner. More interested in splashing each other than in catching anything.

Linh sat up, startling the younger one so that she fell back and landed on her rump in the water.

"You scared us!" the older girl scolded.

"I'm sorry," Linh said. "Come closer here, and I'll give you a present." The girls giggled and moved closer, and Linh handed them each a stick of Juicy Fruit gum.

The oldest girl had a smooth oval face like a polished river stone. Linh stroked her blue-black silken hair as she tore the first piece in half and handed it to her sister. She put the second piece in the waistband of her pants for safekeeping.

"Do you tell stories?" the younger girl asked.

"I used to."

"Please, please," the older girl said.

"There is one I've been thinking of," he answered.

"A poor woodcutter's wife passes away. He is very lonely, and in the market he sees a picture of a beautiful
tien,
a fairy, whose image he falls in love with. He takes the picture home and hangs it on his wall, and he talks to it at night, setting a bowl of rice and chopsticks in front of it at meal times
.

"One day he comes home and his hut has been cleaned. There are delicious dishes prepared for him to eat. This happens every day with no sign of who is taking care of him. So the woodcutter decides to solve the mystery. He pretends to be going to work one morning and instead doubles back and peeks through a crack in the wall to find the fairy from the picture come to life. He rushes in and forces her to stay and marry him. As insurance, he locks the empty picture frame into a trunk. They live happily together and have three sons
.

"The sons grow to adulthood and the woodcutter grows old, but the
tien,
being immortal, is as young as the day she stepped out of the picture. The villagers begin to gossip and finally the sons confront the father. When he tells them the truth, they refuse to believe him. Angry, the father unlocks the trunk and shows them the empty frame as proof, but still they scoff. When he leaves for work, the sons confront their mother, who denies it until they mention the frame. She begs them to show it to her, and when they do, she admits the truth and bids them farewell and returns inside the picture forever."

"Does the
tien
come back?" the younger girl asked.

"Yes. Actually, there is a
tien
in your village right now."

"Yes? Where?"

"Look for her. She has long golden hair."

"Who are you?" the older girl asked.

"I'm the ghost of this tree, don't you recognize me?"

"No."

"Every time you come by here, I know if you've been a good girl and caught fish for your mama."

"We've been bad today. We played and caught no fish."

Linh laughed. He reached in his pocket and took out a few coins. "Tell Mama you found these lost on the road. So you don't get in trouble to night at least."

The younger girl leaned over and touched him on the knee. "You're a ghost?"

Linh nodded slowly, in his best guess at a ghostly demeanor.

"Will you be here tomorrow?" she asked.

"I'll always be here. You just might not be able to see me."

At sunset, Linh lay
back on the long, cool grass of the bank and inhaled the heavy scent of grapefruit blossoms in the evening air. He closed his eyes, remembering the smell of Mai's hair after she washed it, adding a few drops of citrus oil to the rinse so that at night the fragrance permeated their bed when she lay down, making the room a dark grove in which to find her.

He rationed himself only one thought of her each day; otherwise he would not be able to go on. He hoarded his memories like other men did cigarettes or chocolates.

Today was the third anniversary of her death, the period of official mourning over, but he felt he had lost her a hundred years ago and only yesterday. He panicked at times, unable to remember a detail of her face as clearly as before. Worried about the thousand small memories of body that had already vanished from his recollection. Time like a chemical pushing a print too far, a fog overcoming the detail. It pained him that he relied on a few poor photographs of her more and more; everything that made him love her absent from the pictures. The images felt disloyal, as if he were dreaming over a stranger.

The next morning he rose at dawn, again washed in the river, then set off toward Can Tho, hoping to bum rides there for his trip north.

Once he arrived, Linh
went to a dirty outdoor cafe and sat at Mr. Bao's table. He had last seen Bao a little more than a month ago, yet he had put on the weight of a year.

"What took you so long?" Mr. Bao said.

"It took time to leave."

"There hasn't been anything as good as the Captain Tong piece since last we talked."

Linh lit a cigarette.

"Why aren't they with you?"

"Darrow is wounded. And they don't go where I direct; it's the other way around."

"You are their friend. Lead with sugar."

Linh hated Mr. Bao's stupid Confucian sayings, his peasant cunning. These were the kinds of drones the party was filling itself with.

Mr. Bao changed tack. "How is your wife's family?"

"I don't know. I imagine not so good, since they got in touch with me."

Mr. Bao nodded. "You must go do your duty to them. The same as your duty to your country."

Linh's anger flared. "What does your duty have to do with selling opium?"

Mr. Bao cracked a thin smile. "You forget your place."

"Darrow and Helen are in the village. Learning of Vietnam. I think this is a good thing."

"Agreed. Next time I see you, I have a shopping list: Wonder Bread, cigarettes, and maybe brandy this time."

Linh skirted his family's
village, or what remained of it, never having returned since the night they were taken from him. His wife's sister, Thao, lived in a neighboring hamlet. As soon as they arrived in Saigon, her husband had been caught and inducted into the army; without an income she had been forced to return to the country. After she hadn't heard from her husband in more than a year, she had contacted Linh.

He didn't tell her that casualties among SVA soldiers were high. Officers threw poorly trained recruits into dangerous missions to please their American advisers while staying far away from any action themselves.

"Why does no one tell me if he's alive or dead?" she said. Always the practical one, not as beautiful or talented as her sister, Thao had made more out of less. "How can I remarry otherwise?"

She said that her husband's company had been patrolling the Iron Triangle region when last seen. The joke was that the main harvest of the area was mines; Linh guessed the body had been overlooked. After the false peace of An Giang, where he had left Darrow and Helen, the destruction in this area depressed Linh. Paddies choked in weeds. Starving water buffalo with washboard sides. He watched families bundling belongings, turning their backs on ancestral grounds. Clogged roads. Refugees formed an unrelenting river that poured into the coastal cities of Nha Trang, Danang, and Saigon. He was sorry he had acted so poorly with Mr. Bao.

Thao's village was in
the process of being dismantled--huts torn down piece by piece and carted away to someplace with more luck. Some villagers packing to leave; others squatting among the ruins of their homes. The week before they had been subjected to a cordon-and-search, uncovering a substantial weapons cache under one hut, a large supply of rice under another. The huts and bunkers with supplies had been blown up, destroying their livelihood but sparing the people.

Thao's hut was still standing. Inside, she sat on the ground, haggard, her eyes red. She had two children, a girl of four, a boy still suckling at her breast. When Linh appeared in the doorway, Thao looked up at him, no surprise on her face.

"Good, you are here. We can still honor Mai's death anniversary."

"Are you okay?"

"We are alive, but for what?"

He put his arm around her shoulders. The shape of her face, the way she placed her hand on his, brought back with an ache his wife's absence.

"I'm ashamed," Thao cried. "Here you are, and I have no rice, no vegetables, not even incense to honor my sister."

"Get your things. We're leaving."

"For where?"

"I'm going to get a place for you in Saigon. I can look after you and the children better there."

She bowed her head. The baby had fallen away from the breast. Linh saw the nipple, raw and callused. From the thinness of the baby, he guessed she was going dry.

"How can you afford to take us in?"

"Americans pay well."

Thao handed the baby to the girl but left her shirt open. "You were always more practical than your brothers. Cling to the winners in war."

"We'll get doctors and medicine in Saigon," he continued. "We can buy milk."

She looked down at her breast, pressing it with a fingertip till a drop of milky-clear liquid formed. "I've eaten nothing for days."

This sudden contact with the world of women confused Linh; Thao's likeness to Mai inflaming him. He turned away so that she would not notice the heat in his face, as if she could sense the cramped, shaming tingle in his body. "Things will get better now."

She swayed as she got to her feet and spoke sharply to the girl, ordering her to ready the baby. She looked at Linh as she buttoned her blouse. "So you think he's dead?"

"If he is alive, he will find us in Saigon."

Thao gathered yellowed photographs of her and Mai's parents from the altar, a few chipped porcelain bowls, a jade hair comb, putting them in a basket.

"If he is dead," she said, shoving in clothes, "Mai would want us to marry."

"We need to catch the last bus. Tomorrow night we will be eating a steaming bowl of
bun cha
."

Thao let out a small laugh of relief and placed her hand on his thigh. He picked up her hand and held it clasped between his own two, then dropped it.

"I can try to get a singing job when I fill out again."

"Don't worry, Sister. I'll make sure you are safe. For Mai's sake."

Thao positioned herself in the doorway, in the most flattering light. "You get lonely for her?"

"War distracts me."

"Plenty of babies are born in the war. Haven't you noticed?"

Linh stood outside holding the small girl in his arms. He tried to still the shaking of his hands. Thao had never been like this before, and he knew that desperation made her throw herself at him in this way. Still, it sickened him. He looked off into the thicket of palms and wished he were back in the hamlet in An Giang.

Darrow had begun to
radio Linh after three weeks, but Linh answered that he had business in Saigon and needed an additional week. After his arrival, the festival over, Darrow readied his plans to leave while Helen's mood turned darker and darker.

As a farewell, the village chief, Ho Tung, suggested a sightseeing trip. "You must see this, the heart of the province. Strangers do not know this." Two flat-bottomed pole boats appeared. Helen, Darrow, Linh, Ho Tung, and a couple of villagers to guide the boats made up the party. Helen sat in the forward position, her face turned away in brooding contemplation of the surroundings.

At first they went along various branches of the Mekong and Bassac. The rivers changed from green to red to brown, filled with the heavy alluvial silt brought down from the mountains. The boats angled next to seemingly impenetrable walls of water palm, and then one of the boatmen would edge the nose of the canoe into a crevice, push aside some vines, and suddenly they were traveling a thin ribbon of canal no wider than the canoe itself. The chief explained that only the locals could navigate here, the tides so unpredictable that four feet of water might drop down to mud within hours, stranding a boat.

The palms on each side brushed against the passengers, knocking Helen's hat off. The air was close and thick, filled with insects.

"Flies bothering you, love?" Darrow called good-naturedly, knowing her furor, feeling more comfortable in the knowledge that she was, after all, just like other women.

They passed lone thatched huts that fronted the water, doorways filled with chickens scratching in the dirt, naked babies, and old people pulling on pipes. The peasants here lived by harvesting fruit and flowers from deep inside the jungle and got around by boat. Travel on foot was impossible.

Everywhere they stopped, children and women rushed up to stare at the white faces.

Helen finished handing out the full bag of candy they brought long before they reached their destination, an island in the middle of a wide part of the Mekong made by two tributaries joining and depositing silt.