The Lotus Eaters: A Novel by Tatjana Soli Page A

like a thread through the eye of a needle, and her body went rigid. The beating rotors and the screaming of the engine so loud, the Marines shouting unintelligible boarding instructions that she didn't have time to explain to Linh. His eyes fluttered half-closed. A young man from one of the wires stood next to them, going out on the same flight.
    The Marines signaled their group to move out, and they crouched and ran under the hot rotor wind. At the helicopter door, Helen grabbed the young newsman's arm.
    "Get these to someone from Life on board the ship."
    "Sure. But why?"
    "I'm going out on a later flight." Until the words fell out of her mouth, she hadn't accepted that she had made room for this possibility.
    The Marine started heaving the film bags on, the tape coming loose and hanging off like party streamers. "Hurry up, people. Ma'am, get on."
    Helen backed away. Her stomach heaved, sick in soul.
    "Look after him," she yelled to the stranger. "His name is Nguyen Pran Linh. He works for Life . Get him a doctor immediately."
    Linh looked up confused, not comprehending Helen wasn't boarding. When he did, he struggled back out of the helicopter. "You can't--"
    "Stop him!" Helen screamed, backing away, blood pounding in her ears, sick that she was capable of betraying again. The Marine and the young man forced Linh back inside and buckled him in. She watched as, weak as a child, he was strapped into the webbing, saw his head slump to the side, and was relieved he had passed out. She ran to the helicopter, crouched inside, begged a pen and scribbled a quick few lines on paper. She put his papers and the note inside a plastic bag, tied it with a string around his neck, the same way she had handled the personal effects of countless soldiers.
    In front of the waiting men, Helen bent and put her lips to Linh's forehead and closed her eyes. "Forgive me. Em ye'u anh . I love you."
    Back out on the landing pad, the wind whipped her hair and dug grit into her skin, but the pain came as a relief.
    The Marine stood next to her. "Get on the next helicopter out. Everyone here is not going to leave."
    "What about them?" she said, shrugging her shoulder at the great filled lawn below.
    "Better a live dog than a dead lion. And they eat dogs in 'Nam."
    The helicopter's door closed, and the Marine crouched and guided Helen back to the doorway, and he shook his head as she made her way back down the stairs.
    Helen stood on the lawn and watched the dark bulk of the machine hover in midair for a moment, the red lights on its side its only indicator. Because of the danger of being fired on, the pilots took off in the dark and used projector lights on the roof only for the last fifteen feet or so of the landings.
    A mistake, she thought to herself, a mistake not to be on that helicopter. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Her insides tingling electric as if there were bubbles running through her blood.
    As much as she had prepared herself for this moment, she was at a loss. What was she looking for? What did she think she could accomplish? If she had not found it yet, what were the chances that a few more days would change that? She had always assumed that her life would end inside the war, that the war itself would be her eternal present, as it was for Darrow and for her brother. The possibility of time going on, her memories growing dim, the photographs of the battles turning from life into history terrified her.
    Blood had been shed by one side; blood had been shed by the other. What did it mean?
    The helicopter swayed and the nose dipped, a bubble of shuddering metal and glass, and then it glided off across the nearby tops of buildings. Safe. Tiny and fragile as an insect in the night sky. Helen felt bereft, betraying Linh, and all she could hope for was the cushion of delirium before he realized what she had done.
    The Vietnamese on the grounds of the compound grumbled about the length of the wait, complaining that the Americans were not telling them