Part 20 (1/2)
Was that what had happened to MacCrae, she wondered, too many angles of loyalty?
Pigs were butchered, the cries of slaughter haunting her till she escaped to the river. When she returned, the communal house had been hung with lanterns. They were seated in a place of honor next to the chief. He talked about how expensive it must be to send a letter from America, especially St. Louis, and Helen didn't know what else to do but agree. ”I know young girls get distracted,” Ho Tung said, ”but how can she forget where she comes from?”
Women swayed under trays of food, delicacies such as glutinous rice, sweet boiled rice cakes, shredded pork with bamboo shoots. Toasts were drunk with fermented rice alcohol. Darrow spent long hours with a translator to figure out what they should contribute. Finally it was decided beer for the adults and ice cream for the children.
During the afternoon of the festival day, a decorated plow was taken to the communal rice paddy outside the village and a ceremonial furrow plowed. Later, the villagers gathered at the community house for the ritual enactment of the rice harvest, a fertility rite with four G.o.ddesses chosen from the village girls to represent Phap Van, the cloud; Phap Vu, the rain; Phap Loi, the thunder; and Phap Dien, the lightning.
Work was forgotten; paddies lay untended. The women wore their best clothing.
Unmarried girls washed their hair in perfumed water and wore it long and dark down their backs. Platters of food were there for the taking; at almost any hour one could find a crowd of people busy at some game. Darrow's arm healed well enough to get rid of the sling, and he and Helen photographed boat races, kite flying contests, rice cooking and rice cake compet.i.tions, stick fighting, wrestling, and traditional dances.
”I love this,” Darrow said. ”We'll travel the world, do cultural layouts. Wildlife shots in Africa. No more wars.”
”You promise?” she said, trying not to show how much she wanted the answer.
On the final night fireworks s.h.i.+mmered along the river, ribbons of light reflecting on the water as young couples escaped into the darkness. A leniency in behavior was allowed for the night, and Ho Tung laughed that many new marriages were celebrated shortly after the festival. He had urged Ngan to reconsider Minh's proposal. Helen saw the two walking awkwardly together along the river, Ngan frowning. But the chief shook his head. ”Ngan refuses to settle down. She has caught the strange, unhappy-making new ideas.”
The next morning at dawn, everything returned to its normal state--the women again hidden under their dark clothes and conical hats; the men bent under the weight of their plows. The paddies inhabited again, plaintive songs hanging in the air, the previous week as distant and separate as a dream. Helen dreamed of a third way for Darrow and her to exist other than Switzerland or the war--staying in the village for a full year until the next harvest.
She ignored the fact of Darrow's healed shoulder. But after her dismissal of Nichols, and all that he represented, Darrow went alone and spent his days at the USAID compound. He had already absented himself from the place. Something barely started, already ended.
As she walked back from bathing at the river one morning, Linh appeared on the road, and her heart sank. ”You've come back,” she said when they were within speaking distance of each other. She held out her hand and touched his arm. ”I've been dreading this day.”
NINE.
Tiens Fairies Linh had taken a picture of Helen with him while he was gone, had stared and of Helen with him while he was gone, had stared and dreamed over it often during the whole long month, an impossibly long time to keep away, but he had forced himself. When he first caught a glimpse of her on the dirt road, he was struck by how she had filled out, how her skin had bronzed. She looked younger, a flushness in her figure he had not seen before. But as he came closer her face went downward and hardened as she recognized him, and he froze.
”Darrow said it was time to go.”
”I know.” She fell into step beside him, back to the village.
He was a fool, he berated himself. Wasting so much dreaming.
The afternoon Linh had delivered Helen into Darrow's arms, he was a tired man. delivered Helen into Darrow's arms, he was a tired man.
After he took his leave of them, stowing his camera gear in the USAID compound, he dressed in the plain clothes of a farmer and hiked down a dirt road. Outside the village, he climbed down the bank of the river to an isolated gra.s.sy spot, took off his clothes, and went for a swim.
The gra.s.s along the bank was plush and long; it fell in swaths one direction and then another, like a hand-mown lawn. The spot reminded him of the place Mai used to lure him to during their school days to sing to him.
The water cooled his body, the solitude a deep plea sure. A relief simply not to have to speak. In his earlier life, he had lived so much in his imagination, writing in notebooks, that it was now a constant strain to keep his mind directed out into the world, trying to understand others more than himself, to rewrite his thoughts into a foreign tongue.
After his swim, he climbed back up on the gra.s.sy bank, put his clothes on, and fell asleep under the trees.
The sound of children's laughter woke him in the late afternoon. Two young girls trawled the shallows for crayfish and shrimp for dinner. More interested in splas.h.i.+ng each other than in catching anything.
Linh sat up, startling the younger one so that she fell back and landed on her rump in the water.
”You scared us!” the older girl scolded.
”I'm sorry,” Linh said. ”Come closer here, and I'll give you a present.” The girls giggled and moved closer, and Linh handed them each a stick of Juicy Fruit gum.
The oldest girl had a smooth oval face like a polished river stone. Linh stroked her blue-black silken hair as she tore the first piece in half and handed it to her sister. She put the second piece in the waistband of her pants for safekeeping.
”Do you tell stories?” the younger girl asked.
”I.
used to.”
”Please, please,” the older girl said.
”There is one I've been thinking of,” he answered.
”A poor woodcutter's wife pa.s.ses away. He is very lonely, and in the market he sees a picture of a beautiful tien, tien, a fairy, whose image he falls in love with. He takes the a fairy, whose image he falls in love with. He takes the picture home and hangs it on his wall, and he talks to it at night, setting a bowl of rice and chopsticks in front of it at meal times.
”One day he comes home and his hut has been cleaned. There are delicious dishes prepared for him to eat. This happens every day with no sign of who is taking care of him. So the woodcutter decides to solve the mystery. He pretends to be going to work one morning and instead doubles back and peeks through a crack in the wall to find the fairy from the picture come to life. He rushes in and forces her to stay and marry him. As insurance, he locks the empty picture frame into a trunk. They live happily together and have three sons.
”The sons grow to adulthood and the woodcutter grows old, but the tien, tien, being being immortal, is as young as the day she stepped out of the picture. The villagers begin to gossip and finally the sons confront the father. When he tells them the truth, they refuse to believe him. Angry, the father unlocks the trunk and shows them the empty frame as proof, but still they scoff. When he leaves for work, the sons confront their mother, who denies it until they mention the frame. She begs them to show it to her, and when they do, she admits the truth and bids them farewell and returns inside the picture forever.”
”Does the tien come back?” the younger girl asked. come back?” the younger girl asked.
”Yes. Actually, there is a tien tien in your village right now.” in your village right now.”
”Yes?
Where?”
”Look for her. She has long golden hair.”
”Who are you?” the older girl asked.
”I'm the ghost of this tree, don't you recognize me?”
”No.”
”Every time you come by here, I know if you've been a good girl and caught fish for your mama.”
”We've been bad today. We played and caught no fish.”
Linh laughed. He reached in his pocket and took out a few coins. ”Tell Mama you found these lost on the road. So you don't get in trouble to night at least.”
The younger girl leaned over and touched him on the knee. ”You're a ghost?”
Linh nodded slowly, in his best guess at a ghostly demeanor.
”Will you be here tomorrow?” she asked.