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

TWELVE. A Map of the Earth

Months passed. Robert’s assignment was up; he was being promoted and sent to Los Angeles as bureau chief. When he invited Helen for a last lunch, they sat at the patio tables of the Cercle Sportif as shy as young lovers with unfinished business. Helen pretended to sun herself, tilting her face and closing her eyes. Although she always enjoyed his company, she wanted to know nothing about his relationship with Annick, which had been going on for the last few months. Annick had indicated that the relationship was less than satisfactory. Out at the pool, the daughters of wealthy South Vietnamese families sunned in French bikinis and ordered drinks from waiters who had been there since the colonial era.

Robert’s white shirt and khaki pants were freshly pressed, his face shaven and smooth. And yet there were circles under his eyes and a cowlick that wouldn’t settle over his forehead. Something vaguely dissipated about him, as if the tropics had finally had their way. He had aged a decade in the year and a half Helen had known him.

“If ever there was a revolution,” Robert said, “it should start here, don’t you think? Hopefully that waiter over there is a VC operative, a nephew of Uncle Ho.”

“How can you leave all this?” She was teasing but also curious. Reporters were beginning to consider Vietnam a must-have on their résumés.

“I’ve had more than enough of this place. Two years is a lifetime in Saigon.” He looked at her and smirked. “When’re you taking off?”

“Soon…” Her hand fluttered toward the pool, the city beyond, before running out of force and dropping back in her lap. Darrow had delayed their departure three times, and the fourth date of departure was still up in the air. “If things would settle down… it’s been one crisis after another.”

He felt bad for needling her, so clear to him the one-sidedness of the thing with Darrow. “You’re both coming to my going-away party?”

“Do we ever miss a party?” The truth was if Darrow wasn’t on assignment, then he was buried in a crowd of people, either at other people’s houses or at impromptu get-togethers at the Cholon apartment. They were never alone anymore; no doubt he intended the buffer to keep him safe from her nagging.

“Annick and I didn’t work out. It’s easier this way. Hope that doesn’t change your mind about coming.” Robert stood up. “I’d better get back to the grindstone.”

Helen pushed back her chair to get up. “What happened?”

“She’s a crazy one. Another war casualty. But it’s ungentlemanly to kiss and tell… Stay and enjoy your coffee.”

She sat back and shaded her eyes to look up at him. “That’s too bad, but I’ve missed you. You haven’t had any time for me. I’m almost a lady of leisure now. Feature work. I’ve been sticking close in.”

He wondered if part of his attraction to her simply had to do with being rejected, but now that the possibility was long past, he thought himself probably lucky. “I worry about you. I’ve kept my mouth shut because it’ll sound like sour grapes,” Robert said. “With Darrow, the war’s different. I’ve seen it in other guys. He can’t let it go. He’s searching for more than a picture when he goes out, do you understand?”

Helen picked up her coffee cup and held it in mid air, then set it back down without taking a sip. “What are you saying?”

“He’s taking risks he doesn’t have to take anymore to get a cover,” Robert said.

“You’re wrong. He wanted to leave for Angkor awhile ago.”

“For your sake, I hope I am.”

“Anyway, we’re leaving here right after you. He’s got a replacement coming.”

“But do you think he’ll stay away? A man like him living in a house with a wife and a dog, taking the garbage out Monday nights?”

Helen shook her head. “There are other things to do. Stories that don’t involve war, like the Angkor piece.”

“His choice?”

“Our choice. We both want this.”

Robert sighed. “So why have you stopped going out?”

Helen shrugged. Since Samuels, she had not ventured into the field, making excuses to Gary, which he all too readily accepted. Samuels’s picture had gotten a lot of play and had been copied for numerous articles. Each plane of new soldiers coming off the planes at Tan Son Nhut a weight on her. “I’m taking a break. You know-do no harm.”

“Just don’t let him take you down with him.” He bent to kiss her cheek, but she turned her face and kissed him on the mouth.

“Don’t worry about me,” she whispered. “I’ll save both of us.”

But days passed each other in a succession of delays and excuses, fights and lies. As if Robert’s words, spoken aloud, had taken on a truth of their own. Darrow bewitched, enchanted, and nothing Helen could do.

As one of their last assignments, Gary had arranged for them to cover a Red Cross center for children. Darrow went there for a week while Helen made arrangements for their trip back to the States. The day he finally took her, she noticed a strange excitement in him.

The courtyard, a converted villa, was filled with the “healthy” ones, children merely missing limbs but who could still sit or crawl or hobble about. They threaded their way around children sitting in the fine white dust of the yard; Helen watched as a small boy picked up a fallen red bougainvillea flower and popped it in his mouth.

Inside, the unlucky were hidden away-the ones paralyzed by mortar fragments or burned from napalm or white phosphorous, flesh and muscle melted away.

“I was walking through the wards when I caught sight of Lan. You’ll know when you meet her. What I’m thinking is narrow the focus to one child and stay with her through the entire rehab so that people get caught up in her story.”

Darrow walked quickly, pulling Helen along by the arm. They entered a long, low-ceilinged room that was hot, like the dark insides of an oven, crowded with beds, two children in each one, sardine-style, head to feet. The sheets smelled of sweat and urine. One harried nurse, a Scotswoman with a sunken face and wide, maternal hips, was in charge of thirty children. The more fortunate ones had family who brought food and cleaned them; the others languished in institutional neglect. Lan was a single-leg amputee flown in from a free-fire zone west of Danang.

Darrow led Helen to a small cot by the shuttered window. He crouched down and spoke softly. “How’s my sweetheart?”

A small mound stirred under a grayed cotton sheet and a delicate face peered out. The girl had enormous eyes and perfect almond skin, hair pulled back by a white lace headband, and thin gold hoops that accented her petal-like ears.

“Won’t donations pour in for this face?” He smiled like a proud father.

Helen tried to see the girl in front of her, but no matter how lovely she was, Darrow saw something more than the child in front of him.

“I’m thinking we stay until enough donations are collected so she can make the trip to America with us. Document the prosthetics, rehab, the whole thing.”

Helen sat down on the dirty floor between the filled cots and pulled out a bag of candy. “That could take at least another month or two. Or more.”

“But this can make a difference.”

“So why don’t we pay for her plane ticket?”

Darrow shook his head. “No, no. Don’t you see? We’ll collect enough to send dozens of kids.”

“So you’re going to make her your poster child? Delay her rehabilitation?”

“What’s another month? I want to accomplish something tangible, and here’s my chance.”

The girl rocked herself over to lean against Darrow’s chest, her wiry, twiglike arms supporting all her weight. When she saw the bag of candy, she lunged across his knees and snatched it, scratching Helen’s hand.

“Hey!”

Darrow laughed as Lan tore the cellophane and greedily unwrapped the candies, stuffing them in her mouth. The boy sharing her cot whimpered, holding out an unsteady arm.

“She’s wild as a stray,” Darrow said. He unwrapped a caramel and handed it to the boy.

“Do you think it’s wise… singling out one child?” Helen asked.

He grimaced. “I know the power of pictures.” Darrow held Lan’s chin. “Some Iowa mother is going to fall in love with that face while she’s feeding her family eggs and toast for breakfast. She’s going to send ten, twenty dollars.”

Helen got to her feet. “Let’s take some pictures.”

After several hours, they had finished for the day and packed up. A Vietnamese woman approached with a bamboo basket of food and spoke to Lan. She looked Helen over carefully.

“Is that her mother?” Helen asked.

“No. Linh’s sister-in-law, Thao. I paid for her to care for Lan.”

The words flew out of her mouth before she could think. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little too involved?”

Darrow stiffened. “This is one of the perks of the job. Being in a position to act.”

“So why don’t we all go to the States now?”

She had become like all the others, like his wife. He had worried when she went out alone on missions, but having her underfoot was worse, and now the jealousy. “We need to draw it out a bit for publicity. Then we’ll have a story to work on in California. Maybe we’ll end up helping a lot more kids. You can’t be against that?”

“Of course not.” He had pitted her against an orphaned child. How could she not look bad in the comparison? But if they were staying till every last orphan was tidied away, well…

When Darrow lifted his bags to leave, Lan let out a howl. He sat back down, and she clung to his chest. They rocked together while he hummed a song. But as soon as he tried to move away, she whimpered.

“I come back tomorrow, okay?” Darrow said. Slowly, the girl strained up and gave him a small kiss on the cheek.

Helen bent down to hug the girl, smelling the stale sweat and sour milk. Small sores from the dirt and heat had erupted on her face and neck. The girl looked deep into Helen’s eyes, took a breath, and wailed, bringing the slow-moving nurse over.

“She’s a temperamental one, that girl,” the nurse said.

“She’ll get used to the idea we’re coming back. Let’s go.”

Helen was relieved to be back out in the courtyard, breathing fresh air. The afternoon sun flooded the yard with cleansing light. The smell of grilled meat over the brazier of a street vendor on the sidewalk outside made her light-headed with hunger.

“Let’s eat.”

Over a cold beer and grilled pork, Helen couldn’t help probing the new situation like a toothache. “She’s an orphan?”

Darrow took another bite, then wiped his mouth. “In effect. The family’s too poor to come this far. As far as they’re concerned, she’s just a girl.”

“You’ve probably got plenty of footage already. We could finish in California.”

Darrow turned and signaled for another dish. “I want to show her full… progress. We’ll do other assignments in the meantime.”

“I thought…”

He stopped and looked at her. He understood the fear, and he also understood, as she didn’t, that she would get over it. He reached across the table and took her hand as the Vietnamese at the nearby tables tittered. “Hey, time is on our side now.”

Helen looked across the street to the center’s walls, blinding, its aspect dull and impassive and unyielding.

Thao went home that night tired of the brattish girl she tended, filled with the certainty that the American woman was the reason she could not get Linh’s affections. His duty was to marry her. It was not an unusual thing during the war for such unions of convenience. Linh appeared lost to her, and she could be a good wife, saving his money, caring for him, while he watched over her and her children.

That night, she invited him over for dinner. With the money she earned for Lan, she had bought a new smock and pants, new pillows for the apartment. She had never known such luxury. Thao and Mai had come from simple peasant stock; strong, healthy girls, Mai the beauty, Thao the brains.

She arranged for a neighbor to take the girl for the evening. The baby slept. She wouldn’t wait Linh out any longer, what ever visions he had for himself. He was a man, after all, and she knew how to deal with a man.

When Linh arrived, the apartment was filled with smells of food cooking. It was uncharacteristically quiet.

“Where are the children?” His main reason for visiting was the joy he got playing with them.

“With neighbors. The baby sleeps.”

Linh sat down. When Thao came out, his throat caught at the transformation: her hair oiled, face powdered, a pale pink smock of silk.

“You look beautiful,” he said. What he meant was that she looked like Mai. She smiled and poured him a rice brandy she had bought for the occasion.

“What is all this?”

“Nothing. A thanks for all you have done for us.”

The evening proceeded, Thao a perfect hostess, plying him with alcohol, serving his favorite crab and asparagus soup, heaping his plate with food, asking intelligent and flattering questions about his work. When the dinner was finished, she had him sit on the new cushions she had bought for the Western-style sofa that came with the apartment.

“I’m tired. Drunk,” he said.

“Let me massage your neck,” she said, and turned him away from her, lowered the lights, and began kneading into the muscles of his neck. “Lots of tension.”

Afterward, they sat side by side and sipped tea. In the dimness, Linh looked over, and his heart skipped at the image of Mai. Although he knew better, he couldn’t hold out against Thao, all these months of her seduction. He stroked her arm. But later, when she was naked and lying spread out on the bedding, when he felt his hardness begin, it felt like a desecration of Mai’s memory. What type of a weak man was he? He pulled away from her, head hidden in hands in confusion and disgust. Thao got up, slammed a cup in the sink, went to check on the baby.

Weeks passed, and the agreed-upon time to leave drew further and further away as they approached it. Darrow, swept into the pull of the war, gave terse answers when Helen questioned him.

In desperation she accepted an assignment to go with him and Linh into the field. Four other reporters were joining them to Quang Ngai province. Darrow almost always chose to work alone, hated the “junkets,” but he accepted this situation. To Helen, it proved Robert right in guessing Darrow’s desire to cover anything, indiscriminately.

It wasn’t until they had already boarded the cargo plane for the first leg up to Danang that they realized one of the four was Tanner. As soon as he noticed Darrow, he came over, cracking a tight smile over his small, yellowish teeth. He held out his large hand. “Let’s forget that other day.”

Darrow paused, then clasped the man’s hand. “What other day?”

Tanner nodded his long, narrow head. “That’s it, man. The war’s bad enough, we don’t need to fight each other.”

The journalists divided up between two companies. Helen was irritated to see that Tanner had joined theirs; his presence would only grate at Darrow. Bad luck. The companies had orders to sweep three hamlets and meet back at base camp if they didn’t encounter resistance.

When they met the commanding officer, Captain Molina, a slight, dark-complexioned, humorless man, he told them his company had been ambushed the day before, although it had sustained no casualties. The coolness of his report belied the tension visible in the troops. Helen saw spooked faces; the eyes of the soldiers hard and distrustful. Jumpy. Hot and without sleep, walking around with fingers tight on the triggers of their weapons. Linh’s presence created a stirring, soldiers growling low to each other, casting long, stony looks. Molina went to talk with his NCO and returned.

“He can’t come along,” he said, pointing his thumb at Linh.

Darrow stretched his arms overhead, then bent to retie his bootlaces. “Do you have any moleskin you can spare? I think I’ve got the beginning of a blister.”

Molina took off his helmet and wiped his face. “Sure.”

Darrow untied the laces and began to pull off the boot. “He’s accredited, and he’s been my assistant for the last four years. I can’t do my job without him.”

Molina moved closer. “The men are a little wired after yesterday. Thing is, I can’t guarantee his safety.”

“Can I quote you? Their commanding officer?” Darrow pulled off his boot and his sock. “Besides, who speaks enough Vietnamese to question these villagers?”

Tanner had come up and stood listening. “Listen, Molina, these guys are okay,” he said. “They’ll make your little company look like heroes.” The captain went back to talk with his men.

They waited in the shade of a large granite boulder, drinking warm sodas someone had scrounged up. Darrow nodded at Tanner. Linh stood to the side. “Too much, huh?” Darrow said, rolling his eyes. “Too much. What kind of captain admits he can’t control his men?” Fifteen minutes later, Molina came back saying they reluctantly agreed.

“Linh’s the best scout you could hope to find.”

Molina grimaced. “He gets it first if he leads us into an ambush.”

After he walked away, Helen tugged on Darrow’s arm. “This feels bad. We should get out of here.”

“You’re skittish.”

The soldiers moved out single file along the narrow trail of crushed shell that wound through the high sand dunes. Tanner walked point singing, “ ‘Hi, ho. Hi, ho. It’s off to work we go,’ ” making the soldiers around him snicker. Midmorning, the temperature climbed over a hundred, the sky a low, gloomy, saline white. The soldiers wore flak jackets open over bare chests. Under their helmets, they wore bandannas to keep sweat out of their eyes.

The first hamlet contained fifty adults. The huts clustered at the base of a chiseled limestone cliff next to the ocean. The villagers seemed friendly enough; they smiled and went through the charade of carrying on as if the soldiers were not there. A thorough search yielded nothing, and the soldiers got ready to move out again.

Linh and Helen entered a hut at the urging of an old woman who waved them in. The room was small and dark, filled from floor to ceiling with paper flowers. Rows of reds and yellows and white lined up. Linh hesitated, wiping his face. “She makes these,” he said, “for celebrations, for altars.”

The old woman spoke in a low mumble to Linh.

“What is she saying?” Helen asked.

“She’s afraid the soldiers will burn the village. She has a year of work inside. All on its way to be sold in Danang.”

“Tell her we’re on our way out.”

As they gathered on the edge of the hamlet, bunched up in a group, sipping from their canteens in the smoldering heat, lighting cigarettes, a mortar whistled down between the palms. Everyone dove, but when they rose, four men on the left side of the tree were dead, while two others crawled along the ground.

When they heard the strike, Helen and Linh pitched themselves against a sand dune next to the old woman’s house. All the fear that Helen thought she had recovered from came back tenfold. Her legs useless, acid in her throat. Darrow ran over, cameras hitting against his chest in his hurry. He put his hand on the back of her head. “You okay?”

She nodded.

“Linh, take care of her.”

Darrow was gone back through the smoke.

Captain Molina ordered the casualties pulled down the road, and called in air power. Helen watched as he held the radio receiver, his face wet and tight. She saw the tremor in his hand as he handed the receiver down to the radio operator.

The helicopters would come in from the west, forcing the fleeing VC toward the ocean, where the other companies would block their escape north and south. A young boy, Costello, had frag wounds to both legs, his skin peppered with black holes. Darrow and Tanner together pulled him along with the other wounded to the road. As the shock wore off, the kid trembled but made no sound.

Helen felt nauseous from the heat and the blood and the noise, but she picked up her camera and focused through the viewfinder. Molina stood over the boy, his face a mottled red, his lips tight and pulled back from his teeth. In the viewfinder, framed, he had a terrible kind of power. Helen framed a shot of him on the radio handset while the operator crouched next to him, fingers stuffed in his ears at the sound of another mortar, face clenched, reluctantly attached by the umbilical of the cord. Molina waved his arm and brought it down hard on his thigh as if he could will the helicopter’s appearance, oblivious to the flames snaking their way up a thatched roof behind him, oblivious to the comatose boy at his feet. If he had taken any more notice of Costello, he might have shot him.

Helen put down the camera, puzzled, when she saw blackened, fluttering shapes in the air like dark butterflies. The sight of his injured legs mesmerized Costello; Helen grabbed a plastic field poncho and draped it over his lower body.

“Let me see them,” Costello said.

“You’re not hurt that bad,” the medic said.

But Costello was past hearing.

“You’ll be okay,” Helen said. She said the words by rote, as if comforting a child, but she felt angry at his squeamishness when there were dead bodies yards away. There was a sense of release in the coldness she felt, her lack of concern for the man. She didn’t want his name and rank, or his picture. She wanted to forget him the moment he was on that helicopter.

Within minutes assault helicopters flew overhead and sprayed bullets and bombs over the village. An inferno, the fire created a hot wind that fed upon itself, heat upon heat, until Helen felt each breath she took scorched her lungs.

Linh pointed, and Helen again noticed a swarm of black fluttering shapes that looked like swallows or bats rising above the old woman’s hut. “Her flowers.”

Helen remembered when her father returned from duty in Italy. How he had brought her a red tin of amoretti. How he took the waxy wrapping as she ate each cookie, lit a match beneath it and smiled as it flew skyward like a spirit, to her screams of delight.

Although they watched the hut burn to cinders, the old woman was nowhere in sight.

The action seemed to be mostly over, and so it was a shock when a dozen men burst out of a tunnel opening at the edge of the village, the heat from the burning hut above the entrance roasting them in the tunnel, parts of their clothing curling off their backs in flame. They ran down the beach to reach the water, wanting to plunge in the wetness and stop the burning, but the running alerted the soldiers, who opened fire.

Linh yelled, but Darrow grabbed him. “No!” He pointed to Helen. “Stay between him and the soldiers.” She held Linh’s shoulder, felt the quivering of his muscles.

“They’re villagers, not VC,” he said.

Darrow ran down through the sound of the automatic weapons’ fire. So much smoke and the deafening pound of the helicopters-it was impossible to make out clearly what had happened.

Fifteen minutes later, the helicopters gone, the beach was strewn with bodies on the sand and down into the surf. An eerie quiet except for the keening cries of the village women who had a view of the beach. The mood of the soldiers had turned murderous. They went back again and again to the bodies of the dead men, as if they feared they would resurrect. Tanner took pictures, moving bodies with his foot into more graphic positions. “Don’t think this one is running anywhere,” he said to a soldier, who glared down, bayonet pointed.

Darrow’s forehead creased, his head bent down as he walked over. “That’s enough. Women are watching up there.”

Tanner turned and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get jealous, Sam. You’re not the only photographer in Vietnam.”

A few of the soldiers glared at Linh as he moved along the beach with Helen. “How come he didn’t warn us?” they asked over and over.

“Because he didn’t know. He’s on our side,” Darrow said.

When the first medevac landed, Darrow joined Helen and Linh. “Let’s take this one out. We’ve got enough.”

Tanner stayed with the company.

As they walked by villagers placed under guard, Helen felt their eyes on her. The women clutched their children against their bodies, away from the guns. “Why aren’t they releasing them?”

“Interrogation. Can’t ask a dead man if he’s VC.”

“Maybe we should stay,” Helen said.

“The company’s out of control. More Tanner’s style anyway.”

Scared herself, Helen didn’t have the heart to argue. Later, she would regret giving up so easily and leaving. The change in herself proved by how little she thought of the villagers’ fate, how uneasy she was around her own soldiers. They flew to the field hospital and unloaded Costello, who floated on a large pillow of morphine, oblivious to their good-byes. The trip back to Saigon was a gloomy one.

That night, as she prepared to take a shower, she noticed the ends of her hair were stiff. When she brought the tips to her nose, they smelled singed. After staying under the shower so long the water ran cold, she came out of the bathroom in her underwear and bra, hair dripping, and sat on the bedspread beside Darrow. He was stretched out, eyes closed.

“You’re dripping on the bedspread,” he said.

“I don’t care.”

He opened his eyes. “Let’s see Lan tomorrow.”

Helen bent her head down. How could she admit what she felt all afternoon coming home? Still as clear as after they lifted off from that beach-the photograph wasn’t enough. Helped no one. Soldiers still died, civilians suffered, nothing alleviated in the smallest amount by the fact that a shutter had opened and shut, that light had struck grains on emulsion, that patterns of light and dark would preserve their misery. No defense at all against the evil that had been perpetrated. Out on the beach that day, it had all been failure. Even the best picture would be forgotten, the page flipped.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Helen whispered, apologizing to the pillow, unable to meet his eyes.

Darrow covered her body with his. “That’s the first thing that goes. Belief. You’re better off without it.”

Hard facts were difficult to come by-twisted and manipulated by each mouth they passed through according to need or whim. Buried deep in newspapers or government reports, perceived facts had no effect on truth. Rumor, though, caught fire, flew as fast as the events themselves. Lived on in the minds of the listeners, haunting them.

They had been back in Saigon only hours when the first stories about Molina’s company began to circulate.

The official version was that a female VC climbed out of a tunnel and opened fire with an AK-47 on the soldiers, although no weapon or bullets were found, although after the initial attack, not a single American soldier was killed or even wounded by bullets.

Another version was that a village woman who had witnessed her husband gunned down on the beach below pulled out an old French-made hand revolver. Was it to kill herself or to kill the Americans? The soldiers panicked, opened fire, killing all the fleeing women and children. Later, said revolver was examined and found to be rusted out and empty of bullets.

Another, darker story was that Molina cracked, frustrated by the casualties and the defiance of the women, and ordered the soldiers to fire on them. The next day, on patrol, Molina walked point and stepped on a Claymore, killed, neatly ending any interrogation.

Whatever the truth, Tanner made the front page of a dozen newspapers documenting it. His pictures backed up military claims that VC and VC sympathizers had been gunned down in battle. Darrow threw the paper across the room.

“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Helen said.

“It doesn’t matter. I should have… been doing my job, not-”

“Babysitting me?”

“I was distracted. I can’t afford to be.”

The battles dragged on. Tay Ninh turned into Bong Son, which turned into An Thi.

At night, Darrow edged closer to Helen in the dark of the bedroom, the wind through the leaves of the flamboyant lulling like the sound of the ocean.

“What do you say, Helen, we delay leaving till next month. Get up to the DMZ one more time. I’ve heard things are going on in Qui Nhon and in the A Shau.”

Nothing.

“California will still be there a few months from now, huh? We’ll go with a few more covers under our belt.”

Later, Helen often thought about why she remained silent. Their love a riddle she couldn’t explain, only that Darrow coming of his own volition was the only way. Otherwise, she would be forcing him; unbearable, especially when it was obvious to everyone that she had lost the stomach for the work while he was so clearly born to it.

So he pretended he would leave, and she pretended that she believed him, and each knew the other was telling an untruth.

Days passed, each a lure that Darrow went out and followed; Helen again took the human-interest assignments she had previously scorned. The radius of her pursuits circling tighter and tighter, with the apartment in Cholon eventually the only place she was absolutely at ease.

Robert threw his “Light at the End of My Tunnel” party at the broken-down Hotel Royale. The restaurant and bar were colonial-period shabby, in keeping with the party’s theme. Robert walked through the palm-lined lobby in the white wool uniform and pith helmet of a French military commander. People overflowed the lobby, standing on the steps and out on the sidewalk, sipping champagne while a band played fox-trots and tangos in the overhead ballroom. A street boy, small and fast, reached his hand up like a periscope over the platters, stuffing his mouth with what ever he grabbed before it could be taken away. A crippled war veteran leaned against the building, his left leg missing, and sipped at a glass of champagne someone had handed him.

In the cab going over, Darrow hummed show tunes. Helen had borrowed a long, cream-colored gown with a large black silk rose pinned at the chest. “Nice,” he said, uninterested. He had reluctantly put a suit on, and he sat in the backseat of the small car, knees to his chest, looking crushed and miserable.

They walked up the steps to where Robert stood in the doorway. “The luckiest man in Vietnam,” Robert shouted and raised his glass. “Beware, I might try to steal her away to night.”

Darrow smiled a strained, polite smile. “Do it while I get drinks,” he said, and made a quick escape into the crowd.

“As cheerful as always,” Robert said.

“He’s tired.”

More and more people arrived, cars jamming traffic for a block all around.

“How many people did you invite?”

“Oh, five hundred, give or take. Everyone I’ve ever met in this country. But I don’t recognize half the faces here, so I think it’s taken on a life of its own. Appropriate for a war with a life of its own.”

Annick had been right-she had underestimated him. “You’re leaving in style.”

“Leave with me.”

Helen smiled and looked down. For a moment she thought he mocked her, but he understood how shabby her situation was. Besides, there was no sport in it, like shooting fish in a barrel. “Is Annick here?”

“With her new beau. She’s not one to hold a grudge, especially at the mention of a party.”

“No, she isn’t. That’s part of her loveliness.”

“Such a pretty dress and such a sad face.” Robert drew himself up and put his hand across his chest. “Marry me.”

“You’re drunk.”

“That’s right. That’s the way men like me screw up the courage to ask for what they want. After the fact, when it’s too late.”

“It is too late, isn’t it?” She bit her lip. “You’d fall down dead if I accepted.”

Robert burst out laughing and drank down his glass. “Of course I would. That’s what’s so delicious about you. You think like a man. No, I need a sweet, marrying type who loves me and stays out of war zones.”

“That’s not me,” Helen said, smiling, stung by his words. “What’re you going to do with all of that peace?”

Robert shook his head. “I’m more in love the more you pull away.”

Darrow walked between them, balancing three full champagne glasses. “Who’s pulling away?”

“I am, if I’m lucky. All I care about is my departure time,” Robert said. He winked at her and poked his finger at Darrow’s chest. “You know what they say-‘Old reporters don’t fade away, they transfer to lesser bureaus.’ ”

“Don’t give me that. Los Angeles is a kick up.”

Robert drank down his glass in one gulp. “Not if you want to be where the action is. Not if you consider the work a calling.” His sudden earnestness made all three fall silent. Although it was obvious Darrow didn’t think much of him, Robert respected and disliked the man in equal mea sure.

Darrow shrugged. “Say no.”

“Oh, baby, that’s where you and I differ. I’m twenty-nine months, five days too long in this hellhole.” The one thing Robert knew for sure was Darrow’s stringing Helen along was shameful.

“We’re leaving soon.” Darrow looked down at his feet.

Robert raised his eyebrows and looked from him to Helen. She seemed equally surprised. “That’s great. Really. I’m two hundred bucks poorer, but what the hell.”

“You bet on us?” Helen said. “Against us?”

“I’m a reporter. I took the odds.”

Helen wandered the dining room and found Annick at a table of Americans from the embassy. A large, beefy-faced guy with curly black hair protested as Helen pulled her away to the bar to have a drink alone.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Annick looked back at the man, who never took his eyes off her. “Two champagnes.”

“How long have you been seeing this one?”

“This one is the one.”

“You said that last time. Isn’t it bad form to bring him to Robert’s party?” Annick wore a long, beaded red gown that sparkled as she moved. Now she pushed away from the bar and began to sway to the music. “Look around. All the good men are either leaving or dying. What difference can it possibly make?”

“What if you end up alone?”

“I was married and ended up alone. Everyone leaves. Robert, Sam, and you. It makes me too sad.”

“Then find someone.”

Annick turned a tough, appraising look on her; the businesswoman face at the shop was the real her. “You count on the future too much. Tonight, just dance.”

“Go get your beau.” Helen laughed, pointing to the man at the table, his lips pressed together in a frown.

“He hates to dance. And he’s jealous. If I dance with another man, it will be a bad night.”

“Then let’s you and me,” Helen said, pulling her toward the dance floor.

“You’re fou. Crazy.”

“Now you’ve convinced me.”

Out on the dance floor, the two women danced to cheers from the surrounding tables. Helen led, and they both stumbled, doubled over laughing so they could hardly stand. Slowly they worked out the rhythm for a box step.

Helen floated to the music, her mind on the silly spectacle of herself and Annick, a huge surge of relief not to worry and want. She was glad she hadn’t drunk much champagne, that this was pure joy she felt. As Annick spun in a circle away from her, sparkling, Helen thought she was perhaps right, this was the only possible escape from the war.

The first sign something was wrong: the band coming to a ragged stop, stranding the dancers on the floor. Angry yells. Helen recognized Darrow’s voice. As she made her way through the crowd, she saw Tanner first but could not make out his words. Darrow stood quietly across from him while Robert stepped between the men, trying to lead Tanner away. Instead, he jerked out of Robert’s grip, lurching forward and again saying something she couldn’t hear.

Darrow made a single forward motion, right fist connecting with Tanner’s face, knocking him onto his back. Cartoonish. Uncertain laughs came from the crowd, and Helen saw a smear of blood under Tanner’s nose as he shook his head. He sat relaxed on the floor, dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief someone handed him. When he spoke, his voice was low and reasonable, as if he were discussing politics over brandy.

“Screw you, Darrow… just as dead with or without my pictures.”

“My problem is you.”

Tanner stood up unsteadily. Men approached to restrain him, but he shook them off. “I’m done here.” He wiped his bloodied mouth and looked at his hand. “Quang Ngai. I’m supposed to interfere with a bunch of wackedout Marines? They were VC in the tunnels. What if they killed one of our guys?”

Darrow leaned against the wall, rubbing his hand. “Gunning down women and children.”

“We’re not the morality police out there. Especially you, huh? As long as you have the wife and kiddie back home, the piece of ass over here, it’s all okay, huh?”

Darrow lunged. It took Robert and three other men to drag him outside. Although Darrow and Helen had been together openly for more than a year now, the spoken words unleashed something. She felt looks from some of the men, stares from wives and girlfriends.

“Forget Tanner,” Robert said. “He’s a shit. You’ve given him wet dreams even taking him seriously.”

“I’m sorry,” Darrow said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Come back in. It’s still early,” Robert said.

“Not for me.”

Helen searched for Annick to say good-bye. At the end of the bar she spotted quivering red sparkles. When she got closer, Annick was crying.

“What’s wrong?” Helen said.

Annick shrugged. “It’s all coming apart.” “What is?” “Everything. The war is ending.” “Where’s… your guy?”

Annick tossed her head, annoyed. “He’s nothing.”

“I thought he was the one.”

“Only the war is the one.”

Darrow and Helen drove back home in silence. Helen hung up her borrowed dress, turned on the red-shaded lamp. They went to bed, lay side by side, not touching or talking, then rolled away from each other in sleep.

In the middle of the night, Helen awakened to the rumble of thunder, the sound of rain on the roof. From long habit, she hurriedly got up to put bowls under the regular leaks in the ceiling. Back in bed, she listened to the drops of water plink first against metal, then against water. Darrow rose and stood at the window, smoking.

“I guess you don’t care we might drown in a puddle in our sleep,” she said.

“Damned thing is he’s right.”

She stared at the water stain on the ceiling. “Who?”

“That SOB Tanner.”

“About?”

“What pisses me off is seeing myself in him.”

Helen sat up, knees folded beneath her chin. “You’re nothing like him.”

Darrow came to the bed and sat down. “I’ve been here too long. I hear something going down in Can Tho or Pleiku, I have to be the first one there.”

“That’s your job.”

“I’ve been leading you along, too.” He took hold of her arm, stroking the skin at her wrist. “I don’t mean to.”

“Don’t leave because of me,” she said.

Darrow shook his head. “Let’s take our trip to Cambodia. I want to see the apsaras again. I had dreams there…”

Lying in his arms, she realized Darrow spoke with other people’s words. Words she wanted to hear but that were not necessarily the same as the truth. He created himself like a collage, bits and pieces that she would never come to the bottom of.

“I’m ready to leave with you,” he said.

She had dreamed the words so long that she barely made sense of them, but she tried to convince herself that the long siege was over. He loved her after all, and now they could go home.

When he left early that morning, she was still sleeping.

It was this way in Vietnam during the war-sometimes Darrow felt all powerful, felt he could ride fate like a flying carpet, like a helicopter, will it to do his bidding. Other times fate reminded him that he was only a toy, blown this way and that, swept away or destroyed on a whim.

The difficult decision made, Darrow felt lighter than he had in years. Helen equaled life to him, and he would let all this go and follow her, follow life out of this place. As scheduled, he joined the crew of a gunship, spent the morning flying in Tay Ninh province along the Cambodian border, photographing a cross-border black-market operation. It was a good morning, a good helicopter. He felt in his element. The pilot flew contour, almost touching the tops of trees, what they called “map of the earth” flying. Hostile forces could hear the plane but didn’t have time to draw a bead on it in the dense canopy jungle.

The pilot, Captain Anderson, was in his midtwenties, a big puppyish kid with a constant grin, unable to hide his plea sure in flying. Sunlight glinted off his blond, buzz-cut hair. Darrow smiled, and the sobering thought occurred to him that he was almost old enough to have a son that age. Where had the time gone?

After doing an aerial recon, Anderson got orders to drop in on a couple of forward firebases in the Parrot’s Beak. Isolated, the area was considered bandit country, riddled with VC and NVA positions. The night before, bases were attacked, and now enemy bodies, strung up in the perimeter wire, bloated in the hot sun as trophies.

Darrow and the pilot sat on the ground, their backs against sandbags, and ate C-rations, ignoring the fetid smell blowing in from the wire.

“I’m shy to say this, but you were the photographer when my dad served in Korea. You took his picture.”

“No kidding?”

“I swear it. Recognized the name right away.”

“That’s amazing. So he came home. And had you.”

“And five others. Wait till I tell him you were here.”

“That’ll be good. Very good.”

“Where you headin’ to after this?” Anderson asked.

“Heading home.” The words felt strange in his mouth, as if they had no connection to himself. After all these years, where was home? He felt at home right there, with this young man who could have been his son, but wasn’t.

The boy blew out a breath. “Home. You are one lucky-”

“Your father should be very proud. Do you miss home?” Darrow asked. In the bright sun, he thought the young captain’s face impossibly unlined, impossibly innocent. Had he ever been so young? Choked up, he pulled out a cigarette and offered one. Anderson took it but averted his eyes, and Darrow realized that he had missed that look, the toughness in the jaw, that the captain was boyish only in his joy of flying.

“I do and I don’t, you know?”

Darrow chuckled. “I’m there, guy.”

Anderson, egged on, sat up, nodding his head. “I mean, I’m in the groove here. Finally. I can do this. But there… it doesn’t make sense anymore. I don’t know if I trust it.”

“Me, either.”

“Then why you goin’?”

Darrow shrugged. “A woman. Couldn’t help myself.”

Anderson laughed out loud. “No shit? Well, good luck to you. You’re a braver man than me.” He took a long drag of his cigarette. “I’m supposed to be one of the best pilots. So they send me on all the tough stuff. Hero shit. So the chances of me eating it are better than if I was just a washout. How fucked up is that?”

“You don’t have to be the best pilot.”

Anderson laughed. “Wrong! I do, and they know it. Can’t help myself.” He thrust his hips lewdly. “Flying’s the only other thing I’ve ever been good at.”

The next day Anderson and Darrow were on their way to the firebase at Kontum.

The morning passed, uneventful, and Darrow spent the hours in a dreamlike mood, lulled by the closeness and speed of trees under his feet. Except for the earsplitting noise of the engines, it was a bird’s-eye view of the world, like boyhood dreams of flying before other dreams, dreams of war, had taken over.

He would take Helen to Angkor and show her the expression on one particular face. Serenity mixed with savagery. Only she could understand-the history of the place showed both a great lust and indifference for violence. And wasn’t that what they had become, Helen and he, interpreters of violence? A very twisted connoisseurship. They would sit on the warm stones in the evening, and he would whisper his greatest fears to her.

That the image betrayed one at last. It grieved and outraged, but ultimately it deadened. The first picture, or the fifth, or even the twenty-fifth still had an authority, but finally the repetition made the horror palatable. In the last few years, no matter how hard he tried, his pictures weren’t as powerful as before he had known this. Like an addict who had to keep upping the dose to maintain the same high, he found himself risking more and working harder for less return. He would never again be moved the way he was over that first picture of a dead World War II soldier. Was his own work perpetrating the same on those it came into contact with? A steady loss of impact until violence became meaningless? His ridiculous brawl with Tanner when in truth Tanner was the logical progeny of their profession. Maybe they deserved to be charged with war crimes, too.

He worried, as the trees sped by beneath his feet, that Helen did not believe he loved her other than by his leaving. But he would prove it to her in a hundred thousand ways.

They were flying over the Plei Trap Valley when Anderson, whom Darrow now imagined as his and Helen’s son, tapped him on the shoulder, yelling over the roar of the engine, the boyish grin absurd and comforting. “You okay?”

“Fine. The heat’s getting to me.”

“I got two wounded for emergency evac. We’re the only free ride around. Okay with you?” he asked eagerly, as if he were borrowing keys to his father’s car.

“Let’s go.” Darrow laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. He had gone a little deeper, and then not intending to, deeper still. Didn’t every man in every war believe that he would be the one to make it, to survive, to return home filled with tales? Darrow was no different. The unspoken truth of how each of them survived their time.

Minutes later they dropped into a combat spiral, and he felt the familiar wrenching of the stomach, the mouth going dry. And then a terrible shattering, as if the helicopter had been hit by lightning, smote by a giant hand instead of a rocket. Now the boy turned all warrior, face grim and masklike as they spiraled earthward; a tearing sound signaled the rear tail torn away. The green of the trees roared toward them with a sickening rush, and between the branches Darrow saw flashes of light. The smooth, brown warrior from the Lolei temple, the eyes wild. Reluctantly, Darrow lifted his now gravity-weighted head and looked at Anderson once more. Son. He took leave of him and looked out. A rush of green and then Helen’s face. The branches like arms reaching out. He calculated odds he had escaped from before as he heard the whooshing sound, the vacuum of air as the cockpit glass became as bright as a new sun. White knuckles and sunlight and her eyes. An infinity of green. Every shade of green in the world.