Part 9 (1/2)
”Beautiful,” Helen said, tracing her hand along the panels.
”A lacquer artist lived here. When he couldn't pay his rent, the landlord demanded he make something of equal value.”
Helen looked at peac.o.c.ks perched atop rocks, elephants striding through bamboo, tigers crouched in palms, the great spreading of a bodhi tree, and pools of lotus blossom.
”It should be in a museum.”
”That's part of what I love here. Everything isn't locked away behind gla.s.s and key, you live with history as part of your life and not just on a field trip. The legend is that he worked on it a year. And when it was done, he ran away and was never heard from again.”
”Why?”
”It was during the war with the French. He couldn't make a living and marry his girl, so she married a soldier. I don't know if it's true or a folktale. But the door is real. A friend of mine lived here. I still keep the place.”
”I thought you had a room at the Continental.”
”That's the room that Life Life pays for. My official residence. This is my real life.” pays for. My official residence. This is my real life.”
Darrow opened the door and waited for her to move inside.
They walked up the shadowy stairs that leaned to the right for a few steps, then to the left, as if nailed together by someone who felt ocean swells under his feet. The wood felt light and hollow like balsa, the middle of the struts bending under the weight of each footfall with a small groan.
”Are you sure these are safe?”
”This is a very old building. They've held so far.”
In front of a thin, scuffed door, Darrow pulled out an old-fas.h.i.+oned bra.s.s skeleton key and turned the lock. ”This key only opens this door and a few thousand others in Cholon.”
Inside, he flipped on a small lamp with a red silk shade with beaded fringe that gently swished against his hand. The room smelled dusty and unused, like the stacks of an old library. He sneezed and walked to the window and opened it. The room was threadbare, furnished with only an old iron bed, an armoire, two wooden chairs, and a table. The only ornate decorations in the room were a large mirror in a scrolling gilt frame and the lamp.
”That's a very feminine touch,” Helen said, nodding at the red glow of the shade.
”Henry, the guy who rented this place, was involved with a Vietnamese girl. It looks like it's her taste. I let her take what she wanted, but she left this behind.”
”Where is Henry? Did he go home?”
”He was home. He was American, but he loved Vietnam. The war tore him up. I'll show you some of his work--he was on his way to becoming a h.e.l.l of a photographer.”
”Where is he?”
”Died two years ago covering an operation in the delta. Henry was reckless. I refused to go out with him on a.s.signments. But he knew the dangers. That's one lesson of etiquette you need to learn here--never ask what happened to someone. The answer is usually bad.”
”Not a very lucky apartment for its owners.”
”Not a very lucky country. Henry gave me a key. It's the one place I could escape when I needed.”
Helen went to the open window and leaned on the sill. She smelled dust and rain, heard people walking down the alley, the tinny sound of Vietnamese pop music from a transistor radio. ”Are you escaping now?” she asked.
”Trapped now is more like it.” And then, as if in answer, the room went dark.
”Great Electric of Saigon at it again.” Darrow groped his way to the table and lit a candle.
Up and down the dark street, the slow pulse of flames like fireflies appeared.
”Why did you bring me here?”
Darrow stood next to her, reticent, and stared out the window as if he were waiting for something to happen. He did not want to say it was because she had appeared scared s.h.i.+tless to night, woefully inadequate for what she had come to do. Neither did he want to admit he found her beautiful.
”You see the tree in front of the building? It's bare now, but in the spring it blooms large red flowers. Henry and his girl used to have parties each spring to celebrate the tree blooming. Very Tale of Genji Tale of Genji, very Asian.” Darrow chuckled to himself. ”Henry loved all that s.h.i.+t. Swore he'd never go back to the States. Said America scared him more than any war could.”
”What happened to the girl of the red lampshade?”
Darrow shrugged. ”I don't know. Disappeared. Found someone else. The local women don't have much choice once they start taking up with white men.” Darrow justified his own actions with the native women that if not him, they would offer themselves to someone else. He treated them kindly and then promptly forgot them. The grand, futile gestures of renunciation, fidelity, bored him; he had become a practical bourgeois in war time. ”There's something lovely here, yet even as we look, even as we have contact with it, we change it. So why are you going out with that blowhard, Robert?”
”How rude. We're friends.”
He poured two gla.s.ses of scotch from the armoire and handed her one. The gla.s.s was heavy, square, with a solid crystal bottom.
”Aren't these from the hotel bar?”
He grinned. ”Keep forgetting to return them.”
She sipped her drink in silence, listening to the outside sounds, the heaviness of the warm air moving through the room. He refilled their gla.s.ses and sat across from her.
”I like it here,” she said finally. What she didn't add was that it was the first time she'd felt safe since she'd arrived in-country.
”This is the real Vietnam. When I come here, my mind slows down.... I can imagine what is good about the place, what the people want to keep. The Continental and the Caravelle, the air-conditioning and room boys and ice cubes, make you forget where you are. The war groupies starting to descend. Restaurants and nightclubs booming, parties every night. Saigon is their Casablanca or Berlin. It's the scene now. All these daughters of the country-club set descending with their copy of Graham Greene under their arm... sorry for the speechifying, I'm drunk.”
Helen set down her gla.s.s on the floor. ”You're saying I shouldn't be here.”
”Should you?” His eyes took her in, coolly a.s.sessing. ”Don't ever believe that staying here won't change you.”
”Tell me what you really really think.” think.”
”I've hurt your feelings.”
”I had Robert take me to the dinner to night because I knew you would be there.”
Darrow raised his eyebrows. ”Should I be flattered?”
”All they've let me do so far is human-interest features--widows, orphans, wounded soldiers. I need someone to get me out in the field.”
He blinked, not wanting to admit his hurt feelings at how unromantic her reasons were. Usually the battle-weary reporter spiel worked. ”Only a handful of women are covering the war. None doing combat. It's too dangerous, too spooky out there. The men don't like it, either. It's hard work. It's hard for me. I'm forty years old, I look fifty, I feel sixty.”
”My brother wrote me a letter before he was killed. He said no matter what happened he couldn't regret coming. I needed to see for myself. And the only way to become famous is to cover combat, right? I dropped out of college because I was worried it would be over by the time I graduated.” Later, she would cringe at her cra.s.sness, but at the time it had seemed daring to reveal such an unflattering truth. How could she explain the years of being a tomboy, refusing dolls and dresses, always hanging out with the boys? Her father and Michael shared the idea of soldiering, and she had been left out. She cried when she had to stay in the kitchen with her mother, told to bake cookies. Michael's taunts as they went out shooting-- You can't come, you can't come You can't come, you can't come.
Darrow knelt in front of her. He liked her a little less now, so it made it easier to seduce her.