“Many important things. This morning soldiers come to building. Looking for good American things to steal. I tell them everything already stolen. Just old Vietnamese man dying upstairs. They go away.”
“Good,” Helen said, fear feathering along her back, a quick shiver. Just as likely Chuong had led them to the building in order to “liberate” her things. She no longer trusted the boy, and now it was simply a matter of figuring out how dangerous he was. “You did good.”
The boy held his ground on the bottom step like a cranky landlord.
“Oh… I’ll pay you now.” Helen pulled out a thick roll of piastres, as soft and crinkled as tissue. As they lost value each day, it took more and more paper, small, tumbling stacks, to get anything done. “Here. This will buy as much as your old salary.”
The boy looked at the bills in her extended hand, unimpressed, licked his index finger and smoothed his eyebrows. “Very bad soldiers. Kill anyone who lie to them.”
Helen took the rest of the bills out of her bag, paying out again as much. The piastres were almost all gone, but she figured they would be worthless to her soon anyway.
“Very good. You not number-one liar like other Americans.”
Helen did not bring up the delicate matter that she was paying him even though he had not been there for days. To save face, she should press him on the point, but she had lost her will. For his part, he showed none of the gratitude he had when she first helped him, years ago. Now she received only a smirk. Before she could ask him to commandeer a cyclo for them, Chuong jumped off the step and brushed past her, out the door.
Inside her apartment, the air was blue with the opulent scent of incense. Linh sat stiffly in a chair by the window. He never turned his head at her arrivals, and she always felt a small disappointment at this indifference.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked.
“Did you get your pictures?”
“Sure.” She put her arms around his neck. “I got them.” Instead of sweat and ointment, his skin smelled of soap. “Were you up?”
“Better. A shower and some packing.”
She knelt next to his chair and stared out at the flutter of red blossoms in the heavy, wet wind. The twisting gray branches bent under the corpulent flamboyant flowers, crowded so tightly not a hint of green leaf was visible.
“The rains are early this year,” Linh said. “The tree is blooming early.”
“The same time as last year. And the year before.”
“It seems early,” he said.
“I wish we could stay in this room and never leave it,” Helen said.
A gun lay on the floor next to the wall-the source of the sound she had heard in the stairwell. But she wouldn’t ask, just as Linh didn’t press if she got the boat evacuation shots. The usual delicate dance they did around the truth. Her truth was she longed to hide in this room, become invisible. As if the flimsy papered walls and thin door could save them. Out on the streets, without her camera, she felt vulnerable. No one knew of her panic attacks. What internal price she paid for exposure. Preferable to be shot through a door or curtain and to have the source of death anonymous and to die in privacy and alone.
Helen went to the table and mechanically labeled the rolls of film she had taken the day before. Nothing extraordinary. Or rather the extraordinary had become ordinary. Linh had repacked the film cases much better than she. On top lay a folded white shirt, as perfect as in a store display. When she saw the hopefulness of the neatly creased folds, a fresh shirt to begin a new life, she had to turn away. And then it took over as if steel had entered her bones. Everything, including love and fear, squeezed out of her body, and all that was left was determination.
“Chuong told me about the soldiers,” she said.
“What soldiers?”
“They came in downstairs. He sent them away.”
“No soldiers came. I watched from the window since you left.”
Helen nodded, still surprised at her own naivete. “Were you going to guard the apartment?” she asked, pointing her chin toward the weapon.
Linh studied the gun as if seeing it for the first time. “If they came, I planned to kill myself.”
Helen sucked in her breath. No matter how long she had been in Vietnam, she still took things lightly, like an American. Linh’s quick acceptance of the worst case reminded her that it was not as hard to be brave with the promise of helicopters waiting to whisk you to safety, to home.
“We’re going now.”
She gave Linh the last two shots of morphine, hoping it would last till the embassy and American doctors could give him more. She put on her smock, retied a scarf over her hair.
As she picked up the two cases, the corner of one gave out, spilling out film rolls. The cases were worn and battered, the cardboard corners turned mushy. Helen had patched them with electrical tape, the only thing that didn’t disintegrate in the humidity. “Just a minute,” she said, running to get more tape and wrap the corner.
“Why don’t you get a new case?” Linh’s face set in impatience. The case was just another example of her difficult ways, her willfulness that was putting them both in danger. Yet he knew if he pushed at all, like a high-strung horse, she would balk.
“I know. I will,” Helen said, using a knife to cut the last tail of tape off. Like everything else, it had been provisional, meant only to last out her time there, but like everything else, the provisional had become permanent. Linh slung their tote over his good shoulder. She locked the thin wood door of the apartment, leaving the lamp with the red shade burning, and hurried down the stairs, but Linh took the steps slowly, stopping briefly on each landing. By the time she reached the stairwell, the journey before them had changed as in a fairy tale, grown difficult beyond imagining.
Outside, they plunged into a stream of people and were carried along. The ruttish noise deafening. Families argued over which direction to go, children cried, dogs barked, and on top of it all was the impatient blaring of horns as vehicles tried to force their way through. Far in the background, like the steady thrum of a heart, the sound of bombs exploding. The image of a bloodthirsty army approaching closer and closer made each person jog instead of walk, push instead of wait. Like a fix, Helen ached to pick up her camera and start shooting. What was the point of living through history if you didn’t record it?
Linh walked steadily, but his limp was more pronounced with his weakness, and there was a pallor to his face, his skin wet with a sweat that didn’t dry. Helen took a deep breath to keep her panic down, her mind calm. The biggest part of her job as a photographer to make the minute calculations between getting the picture and getting killed, a skill that she took refuge in, honed into instinct. Yet she had ignored her instincts, following the embassy’s assurance that things would unravel slowly. Cutting that timeline in half had still been too lenient. Yesterday, when she had been told the city wouldn’t be lost, that all Americans and dependents would get out in time, she should have run to the airport.
Down Tan Da, a street usually full of restaurants, metal bars were pulled across all the doors and windows.
Hard to walk close to the buildings because of the mounds of garbage, hard to walk in the street without being run down. Helen moved ahead of Linh, navigating the easiest path through the debris that littered the street. Broken glass crunched underfoot. People dropped or abandoned things as they went. Clothes everywhere, plastic bags bulging with house hold goods, pieces of furniture and old rusted bicycles, a sewing machine and a frayed bedroll.
Helen guided him to the wall of a building, and Linh crouched, holding his side, and took deep breaths, huffing out air through his open mouth. She watched him suffer and hated herself more each minute.
“You okay?” she asked.
“More air.”
She felt his drenched shirt.
“Give me the bag.”
