"The Lotus Eaters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Soli Tatjana)

ELEVEN. Bao Chi

Journalist

On the morning Helen was to go out on patrol with Olsen, she woke and packed, ready for Linh to pick her up at three-thirty in the morning. She opened the door to a soft knock.

“I have a problem,” Linh said, standing there. “Family. Sister-in-law, her baby has croup. She is new to Saigon. I must help her find a doctor.” He had never talked of family before, and she was surprised.

“Sure. Can I help?”

“No. Can you go without me?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

Darrow struggled out of bed in the darkness behind her. “What’s wrong?”

Helen picked up her camera bags. “Linh can’t go.”

Darrow rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses. “Come with me instead to My Tho this afternoon.”

“I promised to cover this. Besides, I’ll be with my old buddies, Captain Olsen’s unit. I haven’t seen him since the Captain Tong pictures.” She felt confident that she could handle herself and also a small excitement proving she could go it alone. Now that it had been decided that they would leave soon, these final missions took on a feeling of nostalgia.

Darrow frowned and looked at Linh. “You sure you can’t go with her?”

“I’m fine.” She resented his treating her like she wasn’t competent enough to go alone and now was more determined than ever. Besides, giving him some of his own medicine might make things move faster to leaving.

After Linh left, Darrow sat in the bed and watched her pack the additional equipment she would have to carry alone. “Don’t go,” he said.

“You’re being silly.”

“For me.” He hadn’t intended it, but now it was a kind of test.

A test she wouldn’t take. “Remember asking why the people supposed to love us the most are the ones who try to stop us doing what we love?”

He had met his match and didn’t much care for it.

Problems plagued the assignment immediately. At Bien Hoa, one helicopter after another was diverted or canceled so that she didn’t make it to the small village where Captain Olsen’s unit was stationed until late afternoon.

The village hugged the edge of the jungle; it had been evacuated and bombed the month before. Nothing remained but piles of rubble and stone, a few freestanding walls pocked with bullet holes. From the first soldier she encountered, she heard more bad news-Captain Olsen had a recurrence of malaria and had been evacuated five days before. No one had bothered to inform her. His replacement, Captain Horner, fresh out of officer’s training, had been in-country only two weeks.

Samuels came around the corner of a wall. “I heard chow and our good-luck charm had arrived. Need any leeches burned off those pretty ankles?”

Helen hugged him, glad to see a friendly face. “How’s it going?”

Samuels wagged his head toward the soldier standing next to her. “He fill you in? Hornblower. Already lost three men since he’s been here. An idiot.”

Helen tried to ignore the shiver climbing up her back. The first chink in her confidence. Her smile filled with doubt. Should she have listened to Darrow?

“We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get us all killed. Bastard. Think about turning around and catching that ride out. Come back when Olsen’s here.”

“Then you won’t have anyone to complain to.” She wished it hadn’t been Samuels in front of her; otherwise, she might have jumped back on the helicopter.

“Be careful is all I’m saying. Work us some magic like you did last time.”

“I could do with some myself.”

A patrol was coming in along a path, and at its middle was a scraggly, lanklimbed man who towered over the others, sweating profusely and swearing.

“That,” Samuels said, putting his arm around her, “is our leader.”

The captain walked straight up to Helen as if she were one more obstacle to be overcome before the long day was accomplished.

“Meet my girlfriend, Captain,” Samuels said.

Horner had a long, thin neck with a prominent Adam’s apple that jerked as he swallowed. “I guess you’re the reporter I’m supposed to allow.”

Helen slapped Samuels’s arm off. “That’s right.”

“They just told me Adams.”

“Not a very complete description.” She already felt weary of the coming fight.

He puckered his face as if he had bitten something sour. “I guess they really do start you at the bottom. Second-rate soldiers and women reporters.”

Helen was too distracted by what Samuels had said to take full offense. Everything told her that she had made a mistake not turning around and leaving.

“You’ll have to keep up on your own. And no fraternizing with the men.”

“Who am I supposed to talk to, then?”

“You’re a photographer. Why d’you need to talk?” He turned his face slightly to spit, then walked away.

“Told you,” Samuels said. “A charmer. You still have time to leave.”

Helen dropped her pack. “It’ll torture him more if I stay.”

That night, Horner ordered plastic ponchos strung in a triangle against the crumbling wall so that Helen was “protected” from the rest of the soldiers. She lay down in the darkness, wearing full uniform and boots. Stars pulsed overhead like the small spots of fire she remembered from bonfires on summer nights along the beach back home. After the hamlet, the night sounds-screech of birds deep in the jungle and hum of insects-felt familiar and soothing. The two sides were not fighting the same war. For the Vietnamese, everything was known, was home, even if they came from the north. For the Americans, even the sounds before going to sleep were strange and menacing.

The thought nagged at her that she had missed an opportunity with Darrow, insisting on going alone. But he took it for granted that she would give up anything for him. Unlike him, she hadn’t been in Vietnam too long; she had barely started.

The plastic liner squeaked, and a man rolled in underneath it. “Shhh!”

Helen squinted, unable to make out a face but recognizing the voice. “Samuels, get out.”

“A little Laos heaven? Or how ’bout a sip of dago red?”

“No thanks.” A rotten smell came from him; they had been out for days, while she had showered that morning.

“Talk to me. Tell me about the big lovely world.”

“If Hornblower finds you here, he’ll can me.”

“He’s snoring away. And I have a lookout.”

“Not a good idea.” She was indulging him like a child, but it was too dangerous.

“So good to see you again… you have no idea. Just to touch something soft.” He reached out and placed his hand on her stomach.

“If you don’t leave when I count to three, I’ll scream. Wake them all up.”

He withdrew his hand. “Just remember this. I go to sleep every night dreaming about lying next to you in that foxhole. That’s as close to a woman as I’ve been in a while.”

“My heart breaks. Good night, Samuels,” she said loudly, and he was gone in another squeak of plastic. In the dark, she heard chuckles all around.

At dawn they broke camp and walked, single file, along a narrow dirt road; tree trunks and leaves and vines and bushes on each side so dense they formed a solid wall, curving overhead, forming a shadowed tunnel.

Samuels avoided her all morning, walking point, while Helen trudged behind Captain Horner. If possible, the captain’s face seemed even thinner and bonier than the day before. When he spoke to her, the sight of his Adam’s apple made him seem oddly vulnerable.

Now that she had exiled herself from Samuels and the other men, Horner seemed to have a change of heart and was anxious to include her on the mission, bring her to see his side of things. “This area is a major trade route for supplies from the north. We’re supposed to figure out where they are and then bring in airpower.”

“Sounds tough.” She wondered if he was too green to know that he was being sent out as bait to see what was in the area.

“I don’t get asked for my opinion on operations, you know?”

“Sorry.”

“My goal is to get all these guys back to base in five days.”

“Gotcha.”

His profile was to her, and she saw his Adam’s apple go up and down, twice, before he spoke. “I didn’t mean for those men to die.”

Helen looked up in surprise, but Horner’s small, stony eyes revealed nothing, and it seemed as if the words had not come from him. “Understood,” she said.

“But you don’t write. I mean, you’re only a photographer?”

Horner enforced strict discipline on the men. No talking, five feet between each man, fire only when fired upon. Despite herself, she was impressed. They walked for two days in deep backcountry, not encountering another human being. Later, Helen would remember the patrol with the haziness of hallucination, the silence so complete it made one’s ears ring. If one stood still, one could hear an undercurrent, a hum, to the forest, even the sound of water on leaves, trees dripping moisture as if they were perspiring.

Giant teak trunks blocked the sun, and the vegetation lay thick and snarled below; unseen animals crashed away through the brush while birds screamed overhead. A russet-colored dust floated in the air. The ground a springy compost that left behind perfect footprints; Helen thought of Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail. During the heat of the day, the air was so hot and thick it tasted green on the tongue, like swallowing a pond.

It was not Helen’s job to keep track of where she was, only to follow the man in front of her, and so the days became a series of rutted paths climbed, narrow grassy valleys traversed, rocky dry streambeds to be crossed. In the morning, they woke to a thick fog that reduced visibility to the end of one’s arm, muffling sound so that their voices seemed to have been snatched away. By noon, the sun burned away the fog. In a clearing, with blue sky overhead, the light emerged, harsh and chalky and forbidding.

Although their attention was strained, constantly on the lookout for an ambush or mines, the silence, as palpable as the sunlight, made them dreamy. Helen found long stretches of time when her mind was empty, her thoughts ceased; her present and immediate future and even her past, all receded. As free as she had ever felt in her life. The illusion grew within her that she had always been in this forest. At times it seemed as if they were the only human beings left on the earth, and it was simply a fantasy to think that cities like Saigon or, for that matter, Los Angeles existed.

Two nights after the incident with Samuels, Helen dropped off a pack of cigarettes on his bedroll. The next morning, she found a small pyramid of canned peaches on her pack. Samuels moved back in formation so that he walked in front of Helen again, taking back his role of big brother.

“You stay right behind me. I’m charmed. No mine is going to get me.”

On the fifth morning they reached their objective, a small plateau overlooking a valley with a village below. The relief on Horner’s face made Helen start to like the man. When they opened radio contact, they got orders to abandon their patrol and move as quickly as possible to the main road and head north. A convoy would pick them up en route and join them to two companies that had run into heavy NVA fire.

They fanned out and moved quickly down the gentle grass slope, their long, loose strides stirring up hundreds of greenish yellow grasshoppers that jumped waist-high in their path. Helen felt like the prow of a ship, grass brushing her thighs, flecks of green-gold insect life like the spray of water from a bow. The sun fell in heavy, flat planks, smothering sound, the great silence of the forest extending to the valley so that she felt they had been bewitched. Nature hushed and waiting for a misstep on their part to yawn awake.

They reached the rice paddies bordering the village. As far as they could see in any direction, no human being visible, their enchantment continued. The surface of the paddies feathered in the imperceptible breeze.

“Let’s have three men go through the paddies,” Horner said.

The men looked down or away. They weren’t returning to base but were heading to combat; no one wanted the extra danger of the paddy. The men had told Helen that Horner ordered the men who had died to scout a paddy after a villager confessed it was mined.

“Who wants to volunteer?” Horner again asked, and the men, again, remained silent.

Helen felt sick to her stomach, the calm of the last week gone. For the first time in the five days, she desperately needed Linh or Darrow.

Finally Samuels coughed. “Captain, we need to meet up with the convoy. Why don’t we skirt the paddy and village to reach the road quicker?”

“Negative. We will finish the original mission.”

Samuels took a deep breath, and Helen wanted to reach out a cautionary arm but didn’t.

“With all due respect, sir. An empty paddy in the middle of the day is a live one.”

Two of the men shook their heads and began to hand off extra equipment.

Horner nodded, satisfied. “We’ll need one more,” he said, staring down at his map.

“Oh, fuck it,” Samuels said, and threw off his equipment.

Helen crouched down and took a picture of the three men standing at the edge of the paddy. She got one picture of Samuels knee-deep in water, turning to give the other two a thumbs-up with his dragon-tattooed arm.

Ten minutes later she heard the shrill whistling of a mortar shell from the village. They all ducked, but Helen looked in time to see the explosion of water all around Samuels. The other two men in the paddy splashed through the water, reaching him as shells burst at their old positions. They all ran to the shelter of a paddy dike.

“Shit!” Horner yelled. He flattened on the ground, and when he saw Helen rise to take a shot, he screamed, “Down!” After a few minutes, the shelling stopped. The three men in the paddy scuttled back across the water and scrambled up the bank, collapsing next to Helen.

Samuels was panting. “Not a scratch.”

The men chuckled and spread out, gulped water from their canteens.

Figuring she had enough shots, Helen took off her lens and put the camera away, intending to have a smoke.

“That was close,” one of them said.

“Everyone’s okay,” Horner said.

“No thanks to you, stupid motherfucker,” Samuels said and glared up at Horner.

Horner scanned the village with his binoculars but said nothing. The other two soldiers remained silent. The air tense, Helen almost wished another mortar would fire just to distract them.

“Goddamn West Point asshole,” Samuels continued.

“Did you make it to the other side of the paddy?” Horner asked sadly.

Samuels blew air out through his lips in a slow hiss, the fight knocked out of him.

“No, I don’t think you did.” Horner looked tired but kindly, like a father urging his son to finish a necessary task. “Go back across.”

The other men shifted, but Horner held up his hand. “Just Samuels.”

No movement except for the scanning of Horner’s binoculars over the paddy.

“No,” Samuels said.

Horner sighed and put down the glasses. He brushed a dried weed off his shirt. “That’s an order.”

In a burst of energy, Samuels was on his feet, his revolver unholstered. “You go.”

Horner’s skin went red; he seemed more offended than frightened. “You’re looking at a court-martial, mister, unless you put that thing down,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. When Samuels didn’t move, he leaned forward. “Now, I said.”

“It’s not even loaded, you stupid fuck.” Before Horner could get close, Samuels turned the gun at his own head, grimaced, and fired. Everyone crouched for a minute, unable to comprehend what had happened.

As they laid him out, Horner got on the radio, ordering an immediate medevac. Helen knelt down next to the corpsman.

Samuels’s helmet was still on, and as the medic pulled off the compress wrapped under his nose to his neck, a wave of black passed over Helen’s eyes. The forehead, the eyes, the nose, all of it was the old Samuels, but the lower jaw was missing. Blood poured in luxuriant gushes down his chest. The entire crescent of his upper teeth was laid bare; she quickly turned away. The corpsman grabbed a large body compress and pressed it up into the hole beneath the nose.

“Hold this down tight, okay?”

Helen nodded and held, breath gone, pressure behind her eyes as if she were going to pass out.

“Don’t press on the neck,” the corpsman yelled as he punctured the skin, creating a trache hole. “You’ll block his breathing passage.”

Helen followed orders instinctually. She looked into Samuels’s eyes, and his look said he couldn’t believe in the reality of what had happened, either. She leaned down to his ear. “Don’t you give up on me.”

A few minutes later his body went into convulsions, the torso bouncing as if an electric current pulsed through him, legs stretched out and trembling, arms reaching, throwing Helen and the corpsman off.

“I need help to hold him down!”

One of the solders came, knelt on the other side of Samuels, and pinned his arms. The medic couldn’t give morphine because it was a head wound. After a minute, Samuels’s body relaxed, the tension loosened. His eyes, which had been wild and fierce with pain, now flattened out. When she looked into his eyes, his gaze was cool and impersonal, a great distance and solitude in them.

The medic wrapped an elastic bandage around the compress and over the helmet. “No need taking it off and having things spill out.”

Helen moved off, hands covered in blood. She didn’t want to dig out her bandanna from her camera bag, smearing blood on her equipment. Too afraid of snipers to get water from the paddy, she settled for wiping her hands on her pants. Horner sat on a rock alone, face crumpled and worn, years of training all unraveled in minutes.

When she returned to Samuels, she concentrated on his tanned arms, still perfect, the dragon tattoo still wrapped around the muscled left forearm. She took his hand and held it to her.

When they placed him in the helicopter, Helen got on also. “I don’t want him to be alone.”

The corpsman squeezed her shoulder. “He’s not going to make it, okay? Nothing you can do either way to change that.”

At the field hospital, stretcher bearers ran Samuels into the tent. An hour passed. The noise of the planes and jeeps, the rushing of the medical staff, unreal after the silence of the forest.

Finally a nurse came out to have a cigarette and offered one to her. “Honey, you need to clean up.”

Helen wiped her hands against her pants and felt the dry crustiness of them.

“Over there,” the nurse said. “The supply building. Hot water and soap, a cot to lie down in. You need it.”

“Samuels?” Helen said, barely able to mumble the words, her mouth dry, tongue thick.

“Oh, sorry, honey. Didn’t make it to the operating table. Somebody should have told you.”

Helen nodded her head. Before, there had been this small, shiny thing inside her that kept her immune from what was happening, and now she knew it had only been her ignorance, and she felt herself falling into a deep, dark place.

“Come on,” the woman said. “Let’s get you cleaned up and fed.”

After the nurse went back on duty, Helen returned to the supply building. Inside, it was hot, close, and dim, the only light from a row of exposed lightbulbs at the front of the building and the cracks of light through the rough, uneven seams of the metal walls. Racks of metal shelving stood eight feet tall, piled with supplies as tight as the stacks in a library. The air smelled of cardboard and plastic. As promised, a small cot was made up in one of the rows.

Helen put her equipment underneath the cot, then stretched out. She rolled onto her side, dragging her muddy boots across the blanket, too tired to take them off. Her arms and legs and chest trembled so that she had to clench her teeth as if against cold, and yet her skin was bathed in sweat. Beyond tears. She longed for something, anything, even physical pain, to provide a diversion.

“ Adams.”

She did not know how much time had passed, but she woke to the sound of a helicopter coming in. The flights had been constant, the radioed battle that Horner’s unit was joining, the wounded piling in. She prayed that Horner had delayed the unit but knew he wouldn’t. Just as he wouldn’t take blame for breaking Samuels. Although now he would die in shame, Samuels had simply chosen the method of his suicide. Horner’s way would have earned him a metal for bravery. It sickened her. She heard a soldier calling her name again. This was her ride to rejoin the company.

She rolled off the cot and crawled on her hands and knees farther into the rows till she reached the farthest, darkest corner. She sat on the floor balled up, with her back against a box, her knees drawn into her chest, her forehead resting on them.

“ Adams! Where the hell is she?”

The door opened, and her name echoed against the thin metallic walls. Helen breathed in, held her breath until she could feel her pulse throbbing. The door slammed shut.

“Where did the girl photographer go?”

Helen rolled down on her side, the ground cool and smelling of moisture like a damp basement. She tucked her fist under her chin. When she closed her eyes, she saw Samuels as he had been next to her under the plastic partition, and then she fell asleep.

Hours later, she left the supply building and searched out the air controller.

“We couldn’t find you for the supply run.”

“I’ve got enough film, and I need to send it out. When’s the next flight to Danang?” She held her breath, the lie so obvious.

He looked at his clipboard, bored. “Cargo flight at sunset.”

“I’ll be in the mess tent.”

She sat on a bench and stared at the table. She stood at the LZ half an hour before the plane was ready to take off. She had already boarded when a soldier ran up with her camera bags that she had left behind, forgotten, in the supply building.

When Helen returned to Saigon, she was relieved to find Darrow and Linh on an assignment in Cam Ranh Bay. In the apartment, she continued her hiding, camped under the mint green bedspread, trying to forget what had happened, including her own humiliating part in it. A pain throbbed behind her eyes-she could not put Samuels out of her mind, his death like a disease inside her. The more she thought about it, the less she understood what had happened or whom to blame.

The film in the bags was an accusation; if she could not figure out Samuels’s intention, she couldn’t in good conscience broadcast the photos, so instead of mourning the loss of her friend, she had to act as judge on his actions. Obviously Horner had been in the wrong, had demoralized his men, but Samuels was a veteran of two tours. He should have been able to deal with Horner easily. Had he just been showing off, a terrible, stupid accident? Or had Samuels snapped? Had the waste and stupidity up to that moment finally done him in?

There were worse alternatives to consider. Had the lines begun to blur so much that Samuels simply didn’t care whether there was a bullet in the chamber or not?

In exasperation, Gary came to pick up the film himself, and she reluctantly let it go because to make an issue of it would be to convict Samuels. An assistant would develop the rolls. Gary took one look at Helen and called a doctor. He promised to return after the film was processed.

When the doctor examined her, he shook his head. “Exhaustion. Post-stress.”

“You’re my doctor, right? Call it vitamin deficiency.”

The sheets were dirty; she hadn’t changed them in weeks, too busy for normal life. Gingerly Gary sat on the edge of the bed. “What happened, honey bunny?” He didn’t want to be responsible for his star girl photographer going down and that becoming the story.

Helen shook her head. How could she not betray Samuels and still let the photos go out? “I don’t think the film’s any good.”

“They’re great shots. You just need to rest, okay?”

She leaned over, her eyes slipping away from him. “I don’t know what happened. Out there.” She knew what had happened inside, Samuels’s frustration. But hadn’t he really meant it as a dare, a bit of drama, a boyish prank?

The room was hot, and Gary ’s forehead beaded with sweat. “Why do you stay here? I pay you a lot better than living here.”

“It’s the real Vietnam.”

“Who the hell cares? Didn’t you notice? The real ’ Nam is a shit hole.” Gary kicked at a pillow on the floor. Bad enough to witness all the military casualties, but now his reporters were falling apart. Every day he lived with the guilt, sending them out, knowing the dangers, the scars it would leave either way. Pretending, pretending, his cowboy talk that none of it was so bad, that they’d be okay if they took precautions. And here was his girl getting all messed up.

“Why’s the place good enough to die for, then?”

“That’s real philosophical and deep and all, but I got my own problems. Look, sweetie, I don’t know when’s a good time to tell you, so here it is. The new assistant was rushed and used too much heat drying the negatives. The emulsion melted.”

The shock that the whole thing had been destroyed stunned her. “All of them?” Despite her doubt about releasing them, now the news knocked the wind out of her. It was clear now that she would never have sat on the photos. Samuels betrayed again, now by being forgotten.

“Of course not. About half. But listen, the ones left were good enough for another cover. And your fee doubled, too, so not so bad, huh?”

He was a sly one; she suspected he had tricked her into realizing how valuable they were.

“My fee just tripled. And I want my byline on each picture.” She rolled back onto the bed, appalled with this small, hard ambition inside her. “What about the one with Samuels standing at the edge of the paddy?”

“Tripled, didn’t I say that? I’ll have to check on the name, greedy girl. Your soldier’s the cover boy.” He was relieved by her voracity. That bit of ruthlessness would serve her well and meant that all this bed rest was just theatrics.

“No, you didn’t say.”

“Of course,” Gary said, running his hand up and down the bedspread, “knowing the outcome of the battle… well, he’s immortalized.”

She closed her eyes, weighing the decision. “Even if he shot himself?”

Gary paused, relieved now that he had found out the cause of her behavior. “I didn’t even hear that.”

“Are you that cynical?”

He glanced at her, a small, wan smile, then got up and moved away. “Man, it’s boiling in here. What I am is a guy with a constant deadline. Samuelson-”

“Samuels.”

“Whatever. Was a brave soldier-I have testimonials. You don’t know what happened for sure. Things go on out there that can’t be judged by the standards of ordinary life, little girl.”

Even if Gary knew exactly what had happened, it would make no difference.

“Give this a thought. Fly to Washington and present a print of this Samuels to his parents, or girlfriend, wife, what ever he’s got. That would be great coverage.”

She shook her head. “I’m through.”

“That’s why you had your fee tripled? What you need is rest.” He paced the room, sweating and wiping his forehead with a paper napkin. “How about me sending some meals over from Grival’s.”

“You can’t buy me,” she said into her blanket, but they both knew he had won.

“It’s on the expense account, okay? And you’ll get your byline.”

“I don’t care.”

He studied her for a moment. “Even if the guy did flip out for a second-which I’m officially denying-what about all the times he’s a hero and no one is handy with a camera? He’s a brave SOB in my book just for being out there in Vietnam, another name for Hell.” He picked up his pack to leave.

“At the field hospital-”

“I’ll tell you something I shouldn’t. I rescued Darrow out there in Angkor. Don’t ever let him know. Hiding in the rocks. Flipped out, man. Scared of his shadow. I’m not sure what would have happened if Linh hadn’t shown up.” An exaggeration, of course, but one for a good cause.

Helen had never heard this version of their time at Angkor; all she knew was Darrow’s obsession with going back there.

“Be one of my best photographers. The job won’t betray you. I love Darrow, but he’s headed in a bad direction again-the thing with Tanner was dumb. I’m relying on you and Linh to pull him through.”

But Gary was wrong. Already the job had betrayed her. Or she had betrayed it, had fulfilled MacCrae’s prophecy, and become part of their movie. Young boys like Michael would see that picture of Samuels and follow in the footsteps of a man who rolled the dice with his life.

When Gary left, Helen got out of bed, dressed, and took up life again. At dinner with Annick, she sipped at a martini, so icy it went down like water. The smoothness of the tablecloth, the ice in their water glasses, the laughter at the tables around them, soothed her. A man across the room nodded, and she smiled back. The waiter brought them a complimentary round of drinks.

“You’re strange to night,” Annick said, and lit a cigarette.

Helen noticed the smudge of lipstick on Annick’s glass as she moved it away from her lips, the pristine cleanness of the china (nothing in the field could be made that clean), the rustle of a woman’s dress as she passed by.

“I was a coward.”

Annick blew away a stream of smoke and shrugged. “You made it back to Saigon. The only victory that counts.” She looked over her shoulder at the man. “I think he likes you.”

“Maybe I should call him over.” Helen pointed her chin in the man’s direction. “A whirlwind romance. We’ll get married, and he’ll take me home to meet his mother. Why not?”

“You’re drunk.”

“That’s the problem. I can’t get drunk. I’d need elephant tranquilizer to bring me down.”

Annick finished her drink and started on the new one. “But maybe you should marry him. All anyone can gossip about is Darrow’s wife coming to town.”

Helen set down her glass, sobered.

“She came for a surprise visit. Waiting for him in his room at the hotel. Word is that rumors made their way back home about a certain loose female photographer.”

This mythical wife existed in a time and space so far away from the crooked apartment that Helen had been able to ignore the situation. Darrow himself gave the marriage such little credence that she couldn’t grasp the reality of the wife’s sudden presence in Saigon. But here it was, or rather, here the wife was, pushing herself into a place she didn’t belong. Helen felt the scruples of her old life. If she had meet Darrow back home, the fact of his marriage would have kept her from seeing him, but the thousands of miles, the nature of the war, had seduced her, made life back home strange and unfathomable.

“You shouldn’t care. He loves you, not her.”

The idea of being the other woman so ridiculous. Compared to what she had just witnessed, wasn’t Darrow right, wasn’t this small and unimportant? She wanted her life to be clean and right; to have things of her own. This must be the first thing to change. Helen leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What should I do? Go home?”

“A woman’s never the most important thing to a man like him. You are fighting over scraps. Why not just take your pictures?”

Helen waved her hand as if shooing off an annoying insect.

“Then stop,” Annick said. “You’ve proved yourself.”

“The more I go out there the less I know why. But there are moments… when I feel this is what I’m alive for.”

“So take a little vacation to Singapore. A break.” Annick stubbed out her cigarette. “Other people make a whole life out of avoiding pain.” The waiter brought a bowl of fruit; Annick smiled up at him extravagantly till he left. “Distracting themselves.”

Helen smiled at her open flirtation. “What about you? I know how you distract yourself.”

Now Annick sat up and her demeanor became as businesslike as in the shop. “Speaking of-would you mind if I saw Robert?”

A stab of possessiveness, but Helen dismissed it. Of course, life had to go on, and it was no one’s fault that she had messed up her own. “Someone should be happy in Saigon.”

“Don’t be silly. This is a small place; we have to reuse each other. You think he’s an innocent, but you’re wrong. He sees through you and Darrow. He’s like me; he knows this war means nothing. Maybe a change would do us both good. Maybe living in New Orleans would be fun.”

That night Helen lay in bed, restless. After the drinks with Annick, she had hoped to fall asleep quickly, but each time she closed her eyes the image of Samuels haunted her. She regretted things. Crazy thoughts, made more powerful because of their lack of logic. What she had done or failed to do. The arrival of Darrow’s wife presaged a change, but to what? She fell into a fitful sleep, and again she had the dream; children approached and circled her, pressing in, circling around and around, touching, but when she tried to speak with them, they turned away.

After midnight footsteps on the stairs woke her, a key in the lock, and now that the change was close she wished he had stayed away longer.

Darrow felt his way into the dark room. “You awake?”

“Yes.”

He flipped on the red-shaded lamp. “I was hoping you were here.” He sat on the bed. “I drove straight in from Bien Hoa, screw the curfew.”

In his arms, she let herself be still a minute, feel protected for the barest fraction of time. He smelled of sweat, dirt, and the fecund reek from being in the field. It repulsed and made her hold him tighter. His body strong, but he was no different from Samuels, the vulnerability of flesh.

“Your wife’s in town. At your hotel room.”

He let go of her. “Not now.”

“Wasn’t my choice.”

“How do you know?”

“As in, have I seen her? No.”

Darrow pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “She threatened something about coming.”

Helen moved away and pulled the sheet up around herself. “You didn’t mention me… no.” He had let it come to this, having her here. Helen’s feelings were suddenly clear. “I had my own little religious experience out there this last time. Maybe you didn’t tell her about us for a reason. I need something of my own. Not you. It never was. You and I were just a diversion.”

“Where’s this coming from?” He was angry at how quickly she was willing to throw them away.

“That’s rich-you’re being jealous.”

Darrow stood and shoved a chair hard across the room. It made a heavy thud as it fell on its side. “A war is on, you notice? What the fuck do my marriage and your hurt feelings mean?”

“ ‘The cool thing for us, baby, is that when this war’s done, there’s always another one. The war doesn’t ever have to end for us.’ What would you do without the war as an excuse?”

“Ask me to leave her.”

“Very romantic, but impractical.”

Darrow kicked the door, and it bounced back into the wall. She flinched. The knob left a fist-size indentation in the wallpaper. “I’m ending this marriage now, regardless of if you’re here when I get back.” Her back was to him, and he stood in the door frame, catching his breath. “Be here when I get back.”

A military jeep roared past Darrow in the street. Three ARVN soldiers sat in the front, two squeezed in the passenger seat. They had just finished a good dinner, with ample quantities of beer, and insisted on driving him to his hotel so that less liberal-minded soldiers didn’t hassle him for being out past curfew. Apparent that if he didn’t oblige, they, in fact, would be the ones to hassle him. He got in and offered cigarettes all around. Satisfied, the soldiers forgot about him and gossiped among themselves. Darrow sat back in silence and smoked.

Helen was right, of course. He didn’t reveal himself, or rather the limited facts of biography never seemed important, always giving an arbitrary, confining version of the truth. He smiled in the darkness, realizing this was a liar’s rationale. His wife’s father owned the major newspaper that he had first worked for; he knew that fact led to surmises about his integrity. What it meant in reality was that he worked much harder to prove himself, that he had doggedly achieved on his own merits despite that.

But the withholding had started even earlier. He had never even told his wife about his name change. At the time, he had felt it gave him a foolish and vaguely embarrassing vanity, an adolescent stunt. Now too much time had passed for the truth; they had been married six years, even though he hadn’t spent more than a few weeks at a time with either her or the boy.

No, not telling his wife had involved something deeper that he wanted to hide. She fell in love with Sam Darrow, the famous war photographer, but he was still the insecure young man determined to create this mythic persona. When he told her the first time that he was leaving for the Middle East, she sobbed. Wanted him to move to features, take pictures of politicians and movie stars. Not understanding that the creation now demanded its due, demanded to be played out.

He sat her down on the chintz-covered sofa in the living room. The marriage a terrible mistake, he offered an immediate divorce-an annulment for her sake. But she insisted on waiting till after the baby. Which was the way she announced her pregnancy to him. Much to his father-in-law’s displeasure, he jumped when the offer to work for Life came, no longer beholden to the paper. He had been gone since; if it made her happy to stay married, he had seen no reason to inflict more suffering on the girl than he already had.

As the jeep swung through the empty streets, the night air blew cool and damp; he was still grimy from patrol but in no hurry to reach his destination. No other place he’d rather be than Saigon, no other life he would choose.

He hardly knew the woman waiting in the hotel room for him. He supposed she was a nice, loving girl and that her marriage to him had been a terrible disappointment. He blamed himself for weakness. There was another reason for his marriage that he hadn’t admitted to Helen, which had to do with his fear of not coming back; a kind of insurance policy at the time to leave someone behind, waiting for him. But this woman’s love had not weighted him down to either safety or caution.

The jeep stopped in front of the hotel, and Darrow climbed out. He tossed the rest of the pack of cigarettes to the driver and received a happy nod as the jeep sped away.

He felt a hazy discomfort, as slight as a sore muscle, afraid that changing the status quo, no matter how unsatisfactory, would jinx his luck. Helen’s love was difficult, took away his lightness, his fearlessness.

Sunlight, broken up and scattering itself as the leaves of the flamboyant tree moved in the wind outside the window. Helen hadn’t slept, reconciling herself to the future of things, and now at late morning, she still lay in bed, heavy, half awake.

She heard the key in the door, and then Darrow stood in the bedroom. Studying his face under half-closed eyes, she imagined she had summoned him with her dreams. The thought surprised her that she would never love anyone as much. His expression defiant as he pulled the wedding band off his finger and threw it across the floor. They both heard the hollow roll of it as it circled down into silence.