(I)

 

I had thought I would be only one week away from Saigon, but it was nearly three weeks before I returned. In the first place it proved more difficult to get out of the Phat Diem area than it had been to get in. The road was cut between Nam Dinh and Hanoi and aerial transport could not be spared for one reporter who shouldn’t have been there anyway. Then when I reached Hanoi the correspondents had been flown up for briefing on the latest victory and the plane that took them back had no seat left for me. Pyle got away from Phat Diem the morning he arrived: he had fulfilled his mission-to speak to me about Phuong, and there was nothing to keep him. I left him asleep when the mortar-fire stopped at five-thirty and when I returned from a cup of coffee and some biscuits in the mess he wasn’t there. I assumed that he had gone for a stroll-after punting all the way down the river from Nam Dinh a few snipers would not have worried him; he was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he might cause others. On one occasion-but that was months later—I lost control and thrust his foot into it, into the pain I mean, and I remember how he turned away and looked at his stained shoe in perplexity and said, “I must get a shine before I see the Minister.” I knew then he was already forming his phrases in the style he had learnt from York Harding. Yet he was sincere in his way: it was coincidence that the sacrifices were all paid by others, until that final night under the bridge to Dakow.

It was only when I returned to Saigon that I learnt how Pyle, while I drank my coffee, had persuaded a young naval officer to take him on a landing-craft which after a routine patrol dropped him surreptitiously at Nam Dinh. Luck was with him and he got back to Hanoi with his trachoma team twenty-four hours before the road was officially regarded as cut. When I reached Hanoi he had already left for the south, leaving me a note with the barman at the Press Camp.

“Dear Thomas,” he wrote, “I can’t begin to tell you how swell you were the other night. I can tell you my heart was in my mouth when I walked into that room to find you.” (Where had it been on the long boat-ride down the river?) “There are not many men who would have taken the whole thing so calmly. You were great, and I don’t feel half as mean as I did, now that I’ve told you.” (Was he the only one that mattered? I wondered angrily, and yet I knew that he didn’t intend it that way. To him the whole affair would be happier as soon as he didn’t feel mean-I would be happier, Phuong would be happier, the whole world would be happier, even the Economic Attaché and the Minister. Spring had come to Indo-China now that Pyle was mean no longer.) “I waited for you here for twenty-four hours, but I shan’t get back to Saigon for a week if I don’t leave today, and my real work is in the south. I’ve told the boys who are running the trachoma teams to look you up-you’ll like them. They are great boys and doing a man-size Job. Don’t worry in any way that I’m returning to Saigon ahead of you. I promise you I won’t see Phuong until you return. I don’t want you to feel later that I’ve been unfair in any way. Cordially yours, Alden.”

Again that calm assumption that “later” it would be I who would lose Phuong. Is confidence based on a rate of exchange? We used to speak of sterling qualities. Have we got to talk now about a dollar love? A dollar love, of course, would include marriage and Junior and Mother’s Day, even though later it might include Reno or the Virgin Islands or wherever they go nowadays for their divorces. A dollar love had good intentions, a clear conscience, and to Hell with everybody. But my love had no intentions: it knew the future. All one could do was try to make the future less hard, to break the future gently when it came, and even opium had its value there. But I never foresaw that the first future I wouldn’t have to break to Phuong would be the death of Pyle.

I went-for I had nothing better to do-to the Press Conference. Granger, of course, was there. A young and too beautiful French colonel presided. He spoke in French and a junior officer translated. The French correspondents sat together like a rival football-team. I found it hard to keep my mind on what the colonel was saying: all the time it wandered back to Phuong and the one thought-suppose Pyle is right and I lose her: where does one go from here? The interpreter said, “The colonel tells you that the enemy has suffered a sharp defeat and severe losses-the equivalent of one complete battalion. The last detachments are now making their way back across the Red River on improvised rafts. They are shelled all the time by the Air Force.” The colonel ran his hand through his elegant yellow hair and, flourishing his pointer, danced his way down the leng maps on the wall. An American correspondent asked, “What are the French losses?”

The colonel knew perfectly well the meaning of the question-it was usually put at about this stage of the conference, but he paused, pointer raised with a kind smile like a popular schoolmaster, until it was interpreted. Then he answered with patient ambiguity. “The colonel says our losses have not been heavy. The exact number is not yet known.”

‘This was always the signal for trouble. You would have thought that sooner or later the colonel would have found a formula for dealing with his refractory class, or that, the headmaster would have appointed a member of his staff more efficient at keeping order.

“Is the colonel seriously telling us,” Granger said, “that he’s had time to count the enemy dead and not his own?”

Patiently the colonel wove his web of evasion, which he knew perfectly well would be destroyed again by another question. The French correspondents sat gloomily silent. If the American correspondents stung the colonel into an admission they would be quick to seize it, but they would not join in bailing their countryman.

“The colonel says the enemy forces are being over-run. It is possible to count the dead behind the firing-line, but while the battle is still in progress you cannot expect figures from the advancing French units.”

“It’s not what we expect,” Granger said, “it’s what the Etat Major knows or not. Are you seriously telling us that platoons do not report their casualties as they happen by walkie-talkie?”

The colonel’s temper was beginning to fray. If only, I thought, he had called our bluff from the start and told us firmly that he knew the figures but wouldn’t say. After all it was their war, not ours. We had no God-given right to information. We -didn’t have to fight Left-Wing deputies in Paris as well as the troops of Ho Ghi Minh between the Red and the Black Rivers. We were not dying.

The colonel suddenly snapped out the information that French casualties had been in a proportion of one in three, then turned his back on us, to stare furiously at his map. These were his men who were dead, his fellow officers, belonging to the same class at St. Cyr-not numerals as they were to Granger. Granger said, “Now we are getting somewhere,” and stared round with oafish triumph at llis fellows; the French with heads bent made their sombre notes. “That’s more than can be said in Korea,” I said with deliberate misunderstanding, but I had only given Granger a new line.

“Ask the colonel,” he said, “what the French are going to do next? He says the enemy is on the run across the Black River....” “Red River,” the interpreter corrected him.

“I don’t care what the colour of the river is. What we want to know is what the French are going to do now.” “The enemy are in flight.”

“What happens when they get to the other side? What are you going to do then? Are you just going to sit down on the other bank and say that’s over?” The French officers listened with gloomy patience to Granger’s bullying voice. Even humility is required today of the soldier. “Are you going to drop them Christmas cards?”

The captain interpreted with care, even to the phrase, “cartes de Noel.” The colonel gave us a wintry smile. “Not Christmas cards,” he said. I think the colonel’s youth and beauty particularly irritated Granger. The colonel wasn’t-at least not by Granger’s interpretation-a man’s man. He said, “You aren’t drop-ping much else.”

The colonel spoke suddenly in English, good English. He said, “If the supplies promised by the Americans had arrived, we should have more to drop.” He was really in spite of his elegance a simple man. He believed that a newspaper correspondent cared for his country’s honour more than for news. Granger said. sharply (he was efficient: he kept dates well in his head). “You mean that none of the supplies promised for the beginning of September have arrived?” “No”

Granger had got his news: he began to write. “I am sorry,” the colonel said, “that is not for printing: that is for background.”

“But, colonel,” Granger protested, “that’s news. We can help you there.” “No, it is a matter for the diplomats.” “What harm can it do?”

The French correspondents were at a loss: they could speak very little English. The colonel had broken the rules. They muttered angrily together.

“I am no judge,” the colonel said. “Perhaps the American newspapers would say, ‘Oh, the French are always complaining, always begging.’ And in Paris the Communists would accuse, ‘The French are spilling their blood for America and America will not even send a second-hand helicopter.’ It does no good. At the end of it we should still have HO helicopters, and the enemy would still be there, fifty miles from Hanoi.”

“At least I can print that, can’t I, that you need helicopters bad?”

“You can say,” the colonel said, “that six months ago we had three helicopters and now we have one. One,” he repeated with a kind of amazed bitterness. “You can say that if a man is wounded in this fighting, not seriously wounded, just wounded, he knows that he is probably a dead man. Twelve hours, twenty-four hours perhaps, on a stretcher to the ambulance, then bad tracks, a breakdown, perhaps an ambush, gangrene. It is better to be killed outright.” The French correspondents leant forward, trying to understand. “You can write that,” he said, looking all the more venomous for his physical beauty. “Interpretez,” he ordered, and walked out of the room, leaving the captain the unfamiliar task of translating from English into French.

“Got him on the raw,” said Granger with satisfaction, and he went into a Corner by the bar to write his telegram. Mine didn’t take long: there was nothing I could write from Phat Diem that the censors would pass. If the story had seemed good enough I could have flown to Hong Kong and sent it from there, but was any news good enough to risk expulsion? I doubted it. Expulsion meant the end of a whole life: it meant the victory of Pyle, and there, when I returned to my hotel, waiting in my pigeon-hole, was in fact his victory, the end-the congratulatory telegram of promotion. Dante never thought up that turn of the screw for his condemned lovers. Paolo was never promoted to the Purgatorio

I went upstairs to my bare room and the dripping cold-water tap (there was no hot water in Hanoi) and sat on the edge of my bed with the bundle of the mosquito-net like a swollen cloud overhead. I was to be the new foreign editor, arriving every afternoon at half past three, at that grim Victorian building near Blackfriars station with a plaque of Lord Salisbury by the lift. They had sent the good news on from Saigon, and I wondered whether it had already reached Phuong’s ears. I was to be a reporter no longer: I was to have opinions, and in return for that empty privilege I was- deprived of my last hope in the contest with Pyle. I had experience to match his virginity, age was as good a card to play in the sexual game as youth, but now I hadn’t even the limited future of twelve more months to offer, and a future was trumps. I envied the most homesick officer condemned to the chance of death. I would have liked to weep, but the ducts were as dry as the hot-water pipes. Oh, they could have home-I only wanted my room in the rue Catinat.

It was cold after dark in Hanoi and the lights were lower than those of Saigon, more suited to the darker clothes of the women and the fact of war. I walked up the rue Gambetta to the Paix Bar-I didn’t want to drink in the Metropole with the senior French officers, their wives and their girls, and as I reached the bar I was aware of the distant drumming of the guns out towards Hoa Binh. In the day they were drowned in traffic-noises, but everything was quiet now except for the tring of ‘bicycle-bells where the trishaw-drivers plied for hire. Pietri sat in his usual place. He had an odd elongated skull which sat on his shoulders like a pear on a dish; he was a Surete officer and was married to a pretty Tonkinese who owned the Paix Bar. He was another man who had no particular desire to go home. He was a Corsican, but he preferred Marseilles, and to Marseilles he preferred any day his seat on the pavement in the rue Gambetta. I wondered whether he already knew the contents of my telegram. “Quatre Vingt-et-un?” he asked. “Why not?”

We began to throw and it seemed impossible to me that I could ever have a life again, away from the rue Gambetta and the rue Catinat, the flat taste of vermouth cassis, the homely click of dice, and the gunfire travelling like a clock-hand around the horizon. I said, “I’m going back.”

“Home?” Pietri asked, throwing a four-two-one. “No. England.”

 

 

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

 

Pyle had invited himself for what he called a drink, but siftoew very well he didn’t really drink. After the passage of weeks that fantastic meeting in Phat Diem seemed hardly believable: even the details of the conversation were less clear. They were like the missing letters on a Roman tomb and I the archaeologist filling in the gaps according to the bias of my scholarship. It even occurred to me that he had been pulling my leg, and that the conversation had been an elalaborate and humorous disguise for his real purpose, for it .was already the gossip of Saigon that he was engaged in one of those services so ineptly called secret. Perhaps he was arranging American arms for a Third Force-the Bishop’s brass band, all that was left of his young scared unpaid levies. The telegram that had awaited me in Hanoi I kept in my pocket. There was no point in telling Phuong, for that would be to poison the few months we had left with tears and quarrels. I wouldn’t even go for my exit-permit till the last moment in case she had a relation in the immigration-office. I told her, “Pyle’s coming at six.”

“I will go and see lay sister,” she said. “I expect he’d like to see you.”

“He does not like me or my family. When you were away he did not come once to my sister, although she had invited him. She was very hurt.” “You needn’t go out.”

“If he wanted to see me, he would have asked us to the Majestic. He wants to talk to you privately-about business.” “What is his business?”

“People say he imports a great many things.” “What things?” “Drugs, medicines...”

“Those are for the trachoma teams in the north.” “Perhaps. The Customs must not open them. They are diplomatic parcels. But once there was a mistake-the man was discharged. The First Secretary threatened to stop all imports.” “What was in the case?” “Plastic.”

I said idly, “What did they want plastic for?” When Phuong had gone, I wrote home. A man from Renter’s was leaving for Hong Kong in a few days and he could mail my letter from there. I knew my appeal was hopeless, but I was not going to reproach myself later for not taking every possible measure. I wrote to the Managing Editor that this was the wrong moment to change their correspondent. General de Lattre was dying in Paris: the French were about to withdraw altogether from Hoa Binh: the north had never been in greater danger. I wasn’t suitable, I told him, for a foreign editor-I was a reporter, I had no real opinions about anything. On the last page I even appealed to him on personal grounds, although it was unlikely that any human sympathy could survive under the strip light, among the green eye-shades and the stereotyped phrases- “the good of the paper,” “the situation demands...”

I wrote: “For private reasons I am very unhappy at being moved from Vietnam. I don’t think I can do my best work in England, where there will be not only financial but family strains. Indeed, if I could afford it I would resign rather than return to the U. K. I only mention this as showing the strength of my objection. I don’t think you have found me a bad correspondent, and this is the first favour I have ever asked of you.” Then I looked over my article on the battle of Phat Diem, so that I could send it out to be posted under a Hong Kong date-line. The French would not seriously object now-the siege had been raised: a defeat could be played as a victory. Then I tore up the last page of my letter to the editor: it was no use-the ‘private reasons’ would become only the subject of sly jokes. Every correspondent, it was assumed, had his local girl. The editor would joke to the night-editor, who would take the envious thought back to his semi-detached villa at Streatham and climb into bed with it beside the faithful wife he had carried with him years back from Glasgow. I could see so well the of house that has no mercy-a broken tricycle stood in the hall and somebody had broken his favourite pipe; and there was a child’s shirt in the living-room waiting for a button to be sewn on. ‘Private reasons’: drinking in the Press Club I wouldn’t want to be reminded by their jokes of Phuong.

There was a knock on the door. I opened it to Pyle and his black dog walked in ahead of him. Pyle looked over my shoulder and found the room empty. “I’m alone,” I said. “Phuong is with her sister.” He blushed. I noticed that he was wearing a Hawaii shirt, even though it was comparatively restrained in colour and design. I was surprised: had he been accused of un-American activities? He said. “I hope I haven’t interrupted. . .” “Of course not. Have a drink?” “Thanks. Beer?”

“Sorry. We haven’t a fridge, we send out for ice. What about a Scotch?”

“A small one, if you don’t mind. I’m not very keen on hard liquor.”

“On the rocks?”

“Plenty of soda-if you aren’t short.” I said, “I haven’t seen you since Phat Diem.” “You got my note, Thomas?”

When he used my Christian name, it was like a declaration that he hadn’t been humorous, that he hadn’t been covering up, that he was here to get Phuong. I noticed that his crew-cut had recently been trimmed; was even the Hawaii shirt serving the function of male plumage?

“I got your note,” I said. “I suppose I ought to knock you down.”

“Of course,” he said, “you’ve every right, Thomas. But I did boxing at college-and I’m so much younger.” “No, it wouldn’t be a good move for me, would it?” “You know, Thomas (I’m sure you feel the same), I don’t like discussing Phuong behind her back. I thought she would be here.”

“Well, what shall we discuss-plastic?” I hadn’t meant to surprise him. He said, “You know about that?” “Phuong told me.” “How could she. . .?”

“You can be sure it’s all over the town. What’s important about it? Are you going into the toy business?”

“We don’t like the details of our aid to get around. You know what ‘Congress is like-and then one has visiting Senators. We had a lot of trouble about our trachoma teams because they were using one drug instead of another.” “I still don’t understand the plastic.” His black dog sat on the floor taking up too much room, panting its tongue looked like a burnt pancake. Pyle said vaguely, “Oh, you know, we want to get some of these local industries on their feet, and we have to be careful of the French. They want everything bought in France.” “I don’t blame them. A war needs money.” “Do you like dogs?” “No.”

“I thought the British were great dog lovers.” “We think Americans love dollars, but there must be exceptions.”

“I don’t know how I’d get along without Duke. You know, sometimes I feel so darned lonely. . . .” “You’ve got a great many companions in your branch.”

“The first dog I ever had was called Prince. I called him after the Black Prince. You know, the fellow who.. .” “Massacred all the women and children in Limoges.”

“I don’t remember that.” “The history books gloss it over.”

I was to see many times that look of pain and disappointment touch his eyes and mouth, when reality didn’t match the romantic ideas he cherished, or when someone he loved or admired dropped below the impossible standard he had set. Once, I remember, I caught York Harding out in a gross error of fact, and I had to comfort him: “It’s human to make mistakes.” He had laughed nervously and said, “You must think me a fool, but-well, I almost thought him infallible.” He added, “My father, took to him a lot the only time they met, and my father’s darned difficult to please.” The big black dog called Duke, having panted long enough to establish a kind of right to the air, began to poke about the room. “Could you ask your dog to be still?” I said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Duke. Duke. Sit down, Duke.” Duke sat down and began noisily to lick his private parts. I filled our glasses and managed in passing to disturb Duke’s toilet. The quiet lasted a very short time; he began to scratch himself.

“Duke’s awfully intelligent,” said Pyle. “What happened to Prince?”

“We were down on the farm in Connecticut and he got run over.” “Were you upset?”

“Oh, I minded a lot. He meant a great deal to me, but one has to be sensible. Nothing could bring him back.” “And if you lose Phuong, will you be sensible?” “Oh yes, I hope so. And you?”

“I doubt it. I might even run amok. Have you thought about that, Pyle?” “I wish you’d call me Alden, Thomas.” “I’d rather not. Pyle has got-associations. Have you thought about it?”

“Of course I haven’t. You’re the straightest guy I’ve ever known. When I remember how you behaved when I barged in...”

“I remember thinking before I went to sleep how convenient it would be if there were an attack and you were killed. A hero’s death. For Democracy.”

“Don’t laugh at me, Thomas.” He shifted his long limbs uneasily. “I must seem a bit dumb to you, but I know when you’re kidding.” “I’m not.”

“I know if you come clean you want what’s best for her.” It was then I heard Phuong’s step. I had hoped against hope that he would have gone before she returned- He heard it too and recognised it. He said, “There she is,” although he had had only one evening to learn her footfall. Even the dog got up and stood by the door, which I had left open for coolness, almost as though he accepted her as one of Pyle’s family. I was an intruder.

Phuong said, “My sister was not in,” and looked guardedly at Pyle.

I wondered whether she were telling the truth or whether her sister had ordered her to hurry back. “You remember M. Pyle?” I said. “Enchantee.” She was on her best behaviour. “I’m so pleased to see you again,” he said, blushing. “Comment?”  “Her English is not very good,” I said. “I’m afraid my French is awful. I’m taking lessons though. And l can understand—if Miss Phuong will speak slowly.”

“I’ll act as interpreter,” I said. “The local accent takes some getting used to. Now what do you want to say? Sit down, Phuong. M. Pyle has come specially to see you. Are you sure,” I added to Pyle, “that you wouldn’t like me to leave you two alone?”

“I want you to hear everything I have to say. I wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”  “Well fire away.”

He said solemnly, as though this part he had learned by heart, that he had a great love and respect for Phuong. He had felt it ever since the night he had danced with her. I was reminded a little of a butler showing a party of tourists over a “great house”. The great house was his heart, and of the private apartments where the family lived we were given only a rapid and surreptitious glimpse. I translated for him with meticulous care-it sounded worse that way, and Phuong sat quiet with her hands in her lap as though she were listening to a movie. “Has she understood that?” he asked. “As far as I can tell. You don’t want me to add a little fire to it, do you?”

“Oh no,” he said, “just ‘translate. I don’t want to sway her emotionally.” “I see.”

“Tell her I want to marry her.” I told her. “What was that she said?”

“She asked me if you were serious. I told her you were the serious type.”

“I suppose this is an odd situation,” he said. “Me asking you to translate.” “Rather odd.”

“And yet it seems so natural. After all you are my best friend.” “It’s kind of you to say so.”

“There’s nobody I’d go to in trouble sooner than you,” he said.

“And I suppose being in love with my girl is a kind of trouble?” “Of course. I wish it was anybody but you, Thomas.”

“Well, what do I say to her next? That you can’t live without her?”

“No, that’s too emotional. It’s not quite true either. I’d have to go away, of course, but one gets over everything.”

“While you are thinking what to say, do you mind if I put in a word for myself?”

“No, of course not, it’s only fair, Thomas.”

“Well, Phuong,” I said, “are you going to leave me for him? He’ll marry you. I can’t. You know why.” Are you going away?” she asked and I thought of the editor’s letter in my pocket. “No.” “Never?”

“How can one promise that? He can’t either. Marriages break. Often they break quicker than an affair like ours.” ‘Il do not want to go,” she said, but the sentence was not comforting: it contained an unexpressed ‘but’. Pyle said, “I think I ought to put all my cards on the table. I’m not rich. But when my father dies I’ll have about fifty thousand dollars. I’m in good health-I’ve got a medical certificate only two months old, and I can let her know my blood-group.”

‘I don’t know how to translate that. What’s it for?” “Well, to make certain we can have children together.” “Is that how you make love in America-figures of income and a blood-group?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never done it before. Maybe at home my mother would talk to her mother.”

“About your blood-group?”

‘Don’t laugh at me, Thomas. I expect I’m old fashioned. You know I’m a bit lost in this situation.”

“So am I. Don’t you think we might call it off and dice for her?”

“Now you are pretending to be tough, Thomas. I know you love her in your way as much as I do.” “Well, go on, Pyle.”

‘Tell her I don’t expect her to love me right away. That will come in time, but tell her what I offer is security and respect. That doesn’t sound very exciting, but perhaps it’s better than passion.”

“She can always get passion,” I said, “with your chauffeur when you are away at the office.” Pyle blushed. He got awkwardly to his feet and said,

“That’s a dirty crack. I won’t have her insulted. You’ve no right . . .” “She’s not your wife yet.”

“What can you offer her?” he asked with anger. “A couple of hundred dollars when you leave for England, or will you pass her on with the furniture?” “The furniture isn’t mine.”

“She’s not either. Phuong, will you marry me?” “What about the blood-group?” I said. “And a health certificate. You’ll need hers, surely? Maybe you ought to have mine too. And her horoscope-no, that is an Indian custom.” “Will you marry me?”

“Say it in French,” I said. “I’m damned if I’ll interpret for you any more.”

I got to my feet and the dog growled. It made me furious. “Tell your damned Duke to be quiet. This is my home, not his.”

“Will you marry me?” he repeated. I took a step towards Phuong and the dog growled again.

I said to Phuong, “Tell him to go away and take his dog with him.”

“Come away with me now,” Pyle said. “Avec moi.” “No,” Phuong said, “no.” Suddenly all the anger in both of us vanished: it was a problem as simple as that: it could be solved with a word of two letters. I felt an enormous relief; Pyle stood there with his mouth a little open and an expression of bewilderment on his face. He said, “She said no.”

“She knows that much English.” I wanted to laugh now: what fools we had both made of each other. I said, “Sit down and have .another Scotch, Pyle.” “I think I ought to go.” “One for the road.” “Mustn’t drink all your whisky,” he muttered. ‘I get all I want through the Legation.” I moved towards table and the dog bared its teeth. Pyle said furiously, “Down, Duke. Behave yourself.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I’m awfully sorry, Thomas, if I said anything I shouldn’t. I don’t know what came over me.” He took the glass and said wistfully, “The best man wins. Only please don’t leave her, Thomas.” “0f course I shan’t leave her,” I said. Phuong said to me, “Would he like to smoke a pipe?” “Would you like to smoke a pipe?”

“No, thank you, I don’t touch opium and we have strict rules in the service. I’ll just drink this up and be off. I’m sorry about Duke. He’s very quiet as a rule.” “Stay to supper.”

“I think, if you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone.” He gave an uncertain grin. “I suppose people would say we’d both behaved rather strangely. I wish you could marry her, Thomas.”

‘Do you really?” “Yes. Ever since I saw that place-you know, that house near the Chalet-I’ve been so afraid.” He drank his unaccustomed whisky quickly, not looking at Phuong, and when he said goodbye he didn’t touch her hand, but gave an awkward little bobbing bow. I noticed hot her eyes followed him to the door and as I passed the mirror I saw myself: the top button of my trousers undone, the beginning of a paunch. Outside he said, “I promise not to see her, Thomas. You won’t let this interfere between us, will you? I’ll get a transfer when I finish my tour.”

“When’s that?” “About two years.”  I went back to the room and I thought, ‘What’s the good? I might as well have told them both that I was going.’

He had only to carry his bleeding heart for a few weeks as a decoration . . . My lie would even ease his conscience. “Shall I make you a pipe?” Phuong asked. “Yes, in a moment. I just want to write a letter.” It was the second letter of the day, but I tore none of this up, though I had as little hope of a response. I wrote: “Dear Helen, I am coming back to England next April to take the job of foreign editor. You can imagine I am not very happy about it. England is to me the scene of my failure. I had intended our marriage to last quite as much as if I had shared your Christian beliefs. To this day I’m not certain what went wrong (I know we both tried), but I think it was my temper. I know how cruel and bad my temper can be. Now I think it’s a little better-the East has done that for me-not sweeter, but quieter. Perhaps it’s simply that I’m five years older-at that end of life when five years becomes a high proportion of what’s left. You have been very generous to me, and you have never reproached me once since our separation. Would you be even more generous? I know that before we married you warned me there could never be a divorce. I accepted the risk and I’ve nothing to complain of. At the same time I’m asking for one now.”

Phuong called out to me from the bed that she had the tray ready. “A moment,” I said.

“I could wrap this up,” I wrote, “and make it sound more honourable and more dignified by pretending it was for someone else’s sake. But it isn’t, and we always used to tell each other the truth. It’s for my sake and only mine. I love someone very much, we have lived together for more than two years, she has been very loyal to me, but I know I’m not essential to her. If I leave her, she’ll be a little unhappy I think, but there won’t be any tragedy. She’ll marry someone else and have a family. It’s stupid of me to tell you this. I’m putting a reply into your mouth. But because I’ve been truthful so far, perhaps you’ll believe me when I tell you that to lose her will be, for me, the begin-ning of death. I’m not asking you to be ‘reasonable’ (reason is all on your side) or to be merciful. It’s too big a word for my situation and anyway I don’t particularly deserve mercy. I suppose what I’m really asking you is to behave, all of a sudden, irrationally, out of. character. I want you to feel-(I hesitated over the word and then I didn’t get it right) affection and to- act before you have time to think. I know that’s easier done over a telephone than over eight thousand miles. If only you’d just cable me I agree’!”

When I had finished I felt as though I had run a long way and strained unconditioned muscles .l lay down on the bed while Phuong made my pipe. I said, “He’s young.” “Who?” “Pyle” “That’s not so important.” “I would marry you if I could, Phuong.” “I think so, but my sister does not believe it.” “I have just written to my wife and I have asked her to divorce me. I have never tried before. There is always a chance.”

“A big chance?” “No, but a small one.” “Don’t worry. Smoke.”

I drew in the smoke and she began to prepare my second pipe. I asked her again, “Was your sister really not at home, Phuong?”

“I told you-she was out.” I was absurd to subject her to this passion for truth, an Occidental passion, lile the passion for alcohol. Because of the whisky I had drunk with Pyle, the effect of the opium-was lessened. I said, “I lied to you, Phuong. I have been ordered home.”

She put the pipe down. “But you won’t go?” “If I refused, what would we live on?” “I could come with you. I would like to see London.” “It would be very uncomfortable for you if we were not married.”

“But perhaps your wife will divorce you.” “Perhaps.”

“I will come with you anyway,” she said. She meant it, but I could see in her eyes the long train of thought begin, as she lifted the pipe again and began to warm the pellet of opium. She said, “Are there skyscrapers in London?” and I loved her for the innocence of her question. She might lie from politeness, from fear, even for profit, but she would never have the cunning to keep her lie concealed. “No,” I said, “you have to go to America for them.” She gave me a quick look over the needle and registered her mistake. Then as she kneaded the opium she began to talk at random of what clothes she would wear in London, where we should live, of the Tube-trains she had read about in a novel, and the double-decker buses: would we fly or go by sea? “And the Statue of Liberty . . .” she said. “No, Phuong, that’s American too.”

 

 

CHAPTER II

(I)

 

At least once a year the Caodaists hold a festival at the Holy See in Tanyin, which lies eighty kilometres to the north-west of Saigon, to celebrate such and such a year of Liberation, or of Conquest, or even a Buddhist, Confucian or Christian festival. Caodaism was always the favourite chapter of my briefing to visitors. Caodaism, the invention of a Cochin civil servant, was a synthesis of the three religions. The Holy See was at Tanyin. A Pope and female cardinals. Prophecy by planchette. Saint Victor Hugo. Christ and Buddha looking down from the roof of the Cathedral on a Walt Disney fantasia of the East, dragons and snakes in technicolour. Newcomers were always delighted with the description. How could one explain the dreariness of the whole business: the private army of twenty-five thousand men, armed with mortars made out of the exhaust-pipes of old cars, allies of the French who turned neutral at the moment of danger? To these celebrations, which helped to keep the peasants quiet, the Pope invited members of the Government (who would turn up if the Caodaists at the moment held office), the Diplomatic Corps (who would send a few second secretaries with their wives or girls) and the French Commander-in-Chief, who would detail a two-star general from an office job to represent him.

Along the route to Tanyin flowed a fast stream of staff and C. D. cars, and on the more exposed sections of the road Foreign Legionaries threw out cover across the rice-fields. It was always a day of some anxiety for the French High Command and perhaps of a certain hope for the Caodaists for what could more painlessly emphasise their own loyalty than to have a few important guests shot out-side their territory?

Every kilometre a small mud watch-tower stood up above the flat fields like an exclamation-mark, and every ten kilometres there, was a larger fort manned by a platoon of Legionaries, Moroccans or Senegalese Like the traffic into New York the cars kept one pace-and as with the traffic into New York you had a sense of controlled impatience, watching the next car ahead and in the mirror the car behind. Everybody wanted to reach Tanyin, see the show and get back as quickly as possible: curfew was at seven.

One passed out of the French-controlled rice fields into the rice fields of the Hoa-Haos and thence into the rice fields of the Caodaists, who were usually at war with the Hoa-Haos: only the flags changed on the watch-towers. Small naked boys sat on the buffaloes which waded genital-deep among the irrigated fields; where the gold harvest was ready the peasants in their hats like limpets winnowed the rice against little curved shelters of plaited bamboo. The cars drove rapidly by, belonging to another world.

Now the churches of the Caodaists would catch the attention of strangers in every village; pale blue and pink plasterwork and a big eye of God over the door. Flags increased: troops of peasants made their way along the road: we were approaching the Holy See. In the distance the sacred mountain stood like a green bowler hat above Tanyin-that was where General The held out, the dissident Chief of Staff who had recently declared his intention of Fighting both the French and the Vietminh. The Caodaists made no attempt to capture him, although he had kidnapped a cardinal, but it was rumoured that he had done it with the Pope’s connivance.

It always seemed hotter in Tanyin than anywhere else in the Southern Delta; perhaps it was the absence of water, perhaps it was the sense of interminable ceremonies which made one sweat vicariously, sweat for the troops standing to attention through the long speeches in a language they didn’t understand, sweat for the Pope in his heavy chinoiserie robes. Only the female cardinals in their white silk trousers chatting to the priests in sun-helmets gave an impression of coolness under the glare: you couldn’t believe

it would ever be seven o’clock and cocktail-time on the roof of the Majestic, with a wind from Saigon river.

After the parade I interviewed the Pope’s deputy. I didn’t expect to get anything out of him and I was right: it was a convention on both sides. I asked him about General The. “A rash man,” he said and dismissed the subject. He began his set speech, forgetting that I had heard it two years before: it reminded me of my own gramophone records for newcomers: Caodaism was a religious synthesis. . . the best of all religions . . . missionaries had been despatched to Los Angeles ... the secrets of the Great Pyramid. He wore a long white soutane and he chain-smoked. There was something cunning and corrupt about him: the word love’ occurred often. I was certain he knew that all of us were there to laugh at his movement; our air of respect was as corrupt as his phoney hierarchy, but we were less cunning. Our hypocrisy gained us nothing-not even a reliable ally, while theirs had procured arms, supplies, even cash down.

“Thank you, your Eminence.” I got up to go. He came with me to the door, scattering cigarette-ash. “God’s blessing on your work,” he said unctuously. “Remember God loves the truth.” “Which truth?” I asked.

“In the Caodaist faith all truths are reconciled and truth is love.”

He had a large ring on his finger and, when he held out his hand I really think he expected me to kiss it, but I am not a diplomat.

Under the bleak vertical sunlight I saw Pyle: he was trying in vain to make his Buick start. Somehow, during the last two weeks, at the bar of the Continental, in the only good bookshop, in the rue Catinat, I had continually run into Pyle. The friendship which he had imposed from the beginning he now emphasised more than ever. His sad eyes would inquire mutely after Phuong, while his lips expressed with even more fervour the strength of his affection and of his admiration-God save the mark-for me.

A Caodaist commandant stood beside the car talking rapidly. He stopped when I came up. I recognised him-he had been one of The’s assistants before The took to the hills.

“Hullo, commandant,” I said, “how’s the General?” “Which general?” he asked with a shy grin. “Surely in the ‘Caodaist faith,” I said, “all generals are reconciled.”

“I can’t make this car move, Thomas,” Pyle said. “I will get a mechanic,” the commandant said, and left us. “I interrupted you.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” Pyle said. “He wanted to know how much a Buick cost. These people are so friendly when you treat them right. The French don’t seem to know how to handle them.” “The French don’t trust them.”

Pyle said solemnly, “A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.” It sounded like a Caodaist maxim. I began to feel the air of Tanyin was too ethical for me to breathe. “Have a drink,” Pyle said. “There’s nothing I’d like better.”

“I brought a thermos of lime-juice with me.” He leant over and busied himself with a basket in the back. “Any gin?”

“No, I’m awfully sorry. You know,” he said encouraging-ly, “lime-juice is very good for you in this climate. It contains-I’m not sure which vitamins.” He held out a cup to me and I drank. “Anyway, it’s wet,” I said.

“Like a sandwich? They’re really awfully good. A new sandwich-mixture called Vit-Health. My mother sent it from the States.” “No, thanks, I’m not hungry.” “It tastes rather like Russian salad-only sort of drier.”

“I don’t think I will.” “You don’t mind if I do?”      . “No, no, of course not.”

He took a large mouthful and it crunched and crackled. In the distance Buddha in white and pink stone rode away from his ancestral home and his valet-another statue- pursued him running. The female cardinals were drifting back to their house and the Eye of God watched us from above the Cathedral door.

“You know they are serving lunch here?” I said. “I thought I wouldn’t risk it. The meat-you have to be careful in this heat.”

“You are quite safe. They are vegetarian.” “I suppose it’s all right-but I like to know what I’m eating.” He took another munch at his Vit-Health. “Do you think they have any reliable mechanics?” “They know enough to turn your exhaust pipe into a mortar. I believe Buicks make the best mortars.”

The commandant returned and, saluting us smartly, said he had sent to the barracks for a mechanic. Pyle offered him a Vit-Health sandwich, which he refused politely. He said with a man-of-the-world air, “We have so many rules here about food.” (He spoke excellent English.) “So foolish. But you know what it. is in a religious capital. I expect it is the same thing in Rome—or Canterbury,” he added with a neat natty little bow to me. Then he was silent. They were both silent. I had a strong impression that my company was not wanted. I couldn’t resist the temptation to tease Pyle-it is, after all, the weapon of weakness and I was weak. I hadn’t youth, seriousness, integrity, a future. I said, “Perhaps after all I’ll have a sandwich.”

“Oh, of course,” Pyle said, “of course.” He paused before turning to the basket in the back.

“No, no,” I said. “I was only joking. You two want to be alone.”

“Nothing of the kind,” Pyle said. He was one of the most inefficient liars I have ever known-it was an art he had obviously never practised. He explained to the commandant, “Thomas here’s the best friend I have.” “I know Mr. Fowlair,” the commandant said. “I’ll see you before I go, Pyle.” And I walked away to the Cathedral. I could get some coolness there.

Saint Victor Hugo in the uniform of the French Academy with a halo round his tricorn hat pointed at some noble sentiment Sun Yat Sen was inscribing on a tablet, and then I was in the nave. There was nowhere to sit expect in the Papal chair, round which a plaster cobra coiled, the marble floor glittered like water and there was no glass in the windows-we make a cage for air with holes, I thought, and man makes a cage for his religion in much the same way-with doubts left open to the weather and creeds opening on innumerable interpretations. My wife had found her cage with holes and sometimes I envied her. There is a conflict between sun and air: I lived too much in the sun.

I walked the long empty nave-this was not the Indo-China I loved. The dragons with lion-like heads climbed the pulpit: on the roof Christ exposed his bleeding heart. Buddha sat, as Buddha always sits, with his lap empty: Confucius’s beard hung meagrely down like a waterfall in the dry season. This was play-acting: the great globe above the altar was ambition: the basket with the movable lid in which the Pope worked his prophecies was trickery.

If this Cathedral had existed for five centuries instead of “two decades, would it have gathered a kind of convincingness with the scratches of feet and the erosion of weather? Would somebody who was convincible like my wife find here a faith she couldn’t find in human beings? And if I had really wanted faith would I have found it in her Norman church? But I had never desired faith. The job of a reporter is to expose and record. I had never in my career discovered the inexplicable. The Pope worked his prophecies with a pencil in a movable lid and the people believed. In any vision somewhere you could find the planchette. I had no visions or miracles in my repertoire of memory. I turned my memories over at random like pictures in an album: a fox I had seen by the light of an enemy flare over Orpington stealing along beside a fowl run, out of his russet place in the marginal country: the body of a bayoneted Malay which a Gurkha patrol had brought at the back of a lorry into a mining camp in Pahang, and the Chinese coolies stood by and giggled with nerves, while a brother Malay put a cushion under the dead head: a pigeon on a mantelpiece, poised for flight in a hotel bedroom: my wife’s face at a window when I came home to say goodbye for the last time. My thoughts had begun and ended with her. She must have received my letter more than a week ago, and the cable I did not expect had not come. But they say if a jury remains out for long enough there is hope for the prisoner. In another week, if no letter arrived, could I begin to hope? All round me I could hear the cars of the soldiers and the diplomats rowing iip: the party was over for another year. The stampede back to Saigon was beginning, and curfew called. I went out to look for Pyle.

He was standing in a patch of shade with the commandant, and no one was doing anything to his car. The conversation seemed to be over, whatever it had been about, and they stood silently there, constrained by mutual politeness. I joined them.

“Well,” I said, “I think I’ll be off. You’d better be leaving too if you want to be in before curfew.” “The mechanic hasn’t turned up.”

“He will come soon,” the commandant said. “He was in the parade.”

“You could spend the night,” I said. “There’s a special Mass-you’ll find it quite an experience. It lasts three hours.” “I ought to get back.”

“You won’t get back unless you start now.” I added unwillingly, “I’ll give you a lift if you like and the commandant can have your car sent in to Saigon tomorrow.”

“You need not bother about curfew in Caodaist territory,” the commandant said smugly. “But beyond . . . Certainly I will have your car sent tomorrow.”

“Exhaust intact;” I said, and he smiled brightly, neatly, efficiently, a military abbreviation of a smile.

 

 

(2)

 

The procession of cars was well ahead of us by the time we started. I put on speed to try to overtake it, but we had passed out of the Caodaist zone into the zone of the Hoa-Haos with not even a dust cloud ahead of us. The world was flat and empty in the evening.

It was not the kind of country one associates with ambush, but men .could conceal themselves neck-deep in the drowned fields within a few yards of the road.

Pyle cleared his throat and it was the signal for an approaching intimacy. “I hope Phuong’s well,” he said.

“I’ve never known her ill.” One watch-tower sank behind, another appeared, like weights on a balance.

“I saw her sister out shopping yesterday.” “And I suppose she asked you to look in,” I said. “As a matter of fact she did.” “She doesn’t give up hope easily.” “Hope?”

“Of marrying you to Phuong.” “She told me you are going away.” “These rumours get about.”

Pyle said, “You’d play straight with me, Thomas, wouldn’t you?” “Straight?”

“I’ve applied for a transfer,” he said. “I wouldn’t want her to be left without either of us.” “I thought you were going to see your time out.” He said without self-pity, “I found I couldn’t stand it.” “When are you leaving?”

“I don’t know. They thought something could be ar-in six months.”

“You can stand six months?” “I’ve got to.”

“What reason did you give?”

“I told the Economic Attaché-you met him.-Joe-more or less the facts.” “I suppose he thinks I’m a bastard not to let you walk off with my girl.”

“Oh no, he rather sided with you.” The car was spluttering and heaving-it had been spluttering for a minute, I think, before I noticed it, for I had been examining Pyle’s innocent question: ‘Are you playing straight?’ It belonged to a psychological world of great simplicity, where you talked of Democracy and Honor without the u as it’s spelt on old tombstones, and you meant what your father meant by the same words. I said, “We’ve run out.”

“Gas?”

“There was plenty. I crammed it full before I started. Those bastards in Tanyin have syphoned it out. I ought to have noticed. It’s like them to leave us enough to get out of their zone.” “What shall we do?”

“We can just make the next watch-tower. Let’s hope they have a little.”

But we were out of luck. The car reached within thirty yards of the tower and gave up. We walked to the foot of the tower and I called up in French to the guards that we were friends that we were coming up. I had no wish to be shot by a Vietnamese sentry. There was no reply: nobody looked out. I said to Pyle, “Have you a gun?” “I never carry one.” “Nor do I.”

The last colours of sunset, green and gold like the rice, were dripping over the edge of the flat world: against the grey neutral sky the watch-tower looked as black as print. It must be nearly the hour of curfew. I shouted again and nobody answered.

“Do you know how many towers we passed since the last fort?” “I wasn’t noticing.”

“Nor was I.” It was probably at least six kilometres to the next fort-an hour’s walk. I called a third time, and silence repeated itself like an answer.

I said, “It seems to be empty: I’d better climb up and see.” The yellow flag with red stripes faded to orange showed that we were out of the territory of the Hoa-Haos and in the territory of the Vietnamese army.

Pyle said, “Don’t you think if we waited here a car might come?” “It might, but they might come first.” “Shall I go back and turn on the lights? For a signal.” “Good God, no. Let it be.” It was dark enough now to stumble, looking for the ladder. Something cracked under foot; I could imagine the sound travelling across the fields of paddy, listened to by whom? Pyle had lost his outline and was a blur at the side of the road. Darkness, when once it fell, fell like a stone. I said, “Stay there until I call.” I wondered whether the guard would have drawn up his ladder, but there it stood-though an enemy might climb it, it was their only way of escape. I began to mount. Il have read so often of people’s thoughts in the moment of fear: of God, or family, or a woman. I admire their control. I thought of nothing, not even of the trapdoor above me: I ceased, for those seconds to exist: I was fear taken neat. At the top of the ladder I banged my head because fear couldn’t count steps, hear, or see. Then my head came over the earth floor and nobody shot at me and fear seeped away.

 

 

(3)    

 

A small oil lamp burned on the floor and two men crouched against the wall, watching me. One had a sten gun and one a rifle, but they were as scared as I’d been. They looked like schoolboys, but with the Vietnamese age drops suddenly like the sun-they are boys and then they are old men. I was glad that the colour of my skin and the shape of my eyes were a passport-they wouldn’t shoot now even from fear.

I came up out of the floor, talking to reassure them, telling them that my car was outside, that I had run out of petrol. Perhaps they had a little I could buy-somewhere: it didn’t seem likely as I Stared around. There was nothing in the little round room except a box of ammunition for the sten gun, a small wooden bed, and two packs hanging

on a nail. A couple of pans with the remains of rice and some wooden chopsticks showed they had been eating without much appetite.

“Just enough to get us to the next fort?” I asked. One of the men sitting against the wall-the one with the rifle-shook his head.

“If you can’t we’ll have to stay the night here.” “C’est defendu.” “Whoby?” “You are a civilian.”

“Nobody’s going to make me sit out there on the road and have my throat cut.” “Aren’t you French?”

Only one man had spoken. The other sat with his head turned sideways, watching the slit in the wall. He could have seen nothing but a postcard of sky: he seemed to be listening and I began to listen too. The silence became full of sound: noises you couldn’t put a name to-a crack, a creak, a rustle something like a cough, and a whisper. Then I heard Pyle: he must have come to the foot of the ladder. “You all right, Thomas?”

“Come up,” I called back. He began to climb the ladder and the silent soldier shifted his sten gun-I don’t believe he’d heard a word of what we’d said: it was an awkward, jumpy movement. I realised that fear had paralysed him. I rapped out at him like a sergeant-major, “Put that gun down!” and I used the kind of French obscenity I thought he would recognise. He obeyed me automatically. Pyle came lip into the room. I said, “We’ve been offered the safety of the tower till morning.”

“Fine,” Pyle said. His voice was a little puzzled. He said, “Oughtn’t one of those mugs to be on sentry?”

“They prefer not to be shot at. I wish you’d brought something stronger than lime-juice.”

“I guess I will next time,” Pyle said. “We’ve got a long night ahead.” Now that Pyle was with me, I didn’t hear the noises. Even the two soldiers seemed do have relaxed a little.

“What happens if the Viets attack them?” Pyle asked. “They’ll fire a shot and run. You read it every morning in the Extreme-Orient ‘A post south-west of Saigon was temporarily occupied last night by the Vietminh.’”  “It’s a bad prospect.”

“There are forty towers like this between us and Saigon. The chances always are that it’s the other chap who’s hurt.” “We could have done with those sandwiches,” Pyle said. “I do think one of them should keep a look-out.” “He’s afraid a bullet might look in.” Now that we too had settled on the floor, the Vietnamese relaxed a little. I felt some sympathy for them: if wasn’t an easy job for a couple of ill-trained men to sit up here night after night, never sure of when the Viets might creep up on the road through the fields of paddy. I said to Pyle, “Do you think they know they are fighting for Democracy? We ought to have York Harding here to explain it to them.” “You always laugh at York,” Pyle said.

“I laugh at anyone who spends so much time writing about what doesn’t exist—mental concepts.” “They exist for him. Haven’t you got any mental concepts? God, for instance?” “I’ve no reason to believe in a God. Do you?” “Yes. I’m a Unitarian.”

“How many hundred million Gods do people believe in? Why, even a Roman Catholic believes in quite a different God when he’s scared or happy or hungry.” “Maybe, if there is a God, he’d be so vast he’d look different to everyone.”

“Like the great Buddha in Bangkok,” I said. “You can’t see all of him at once. Anyway he keeps still.”

“I guess you’re just trying to be tough,” Pyle said. “There’s something you must believe in. Nobody can go on living without some belief.”

“Oh, I’m not a Berkeleian. I believe my back’s against this wall. I believe there’s a sten gun over there.” “I didn’t mean that.”

“I even believe what I report, which is more than most of your correspondents do.” “Cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke-except opium. Give one to the guards. We’d better stay friends with them.” Pyle got up and lit their cigarettes and came back. I said, “I wish cigarettes had a symbolic significance like salt.” “Don’t you trust them?”

“No French officer,” I said, “would care to spend the night alone with two scared guards in one of these towers. Why, even a platoon have been known to hand over their officers. Sometimes the Viets have a better success with a megaphone than a bazooka. I don’t blame them. They don’t believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren’t interested.”

“They don’t want Communism.”

“They want enough rice,” I said. “They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want.” “If Indo-China goes. . .”

“I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does ‘go’ mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I’d bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New

York or London, but they’ll be growing paddy in these fields, they’ll be carrying their produce to market on long poles wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don’t like our smell, the smell or Europeans. And remember-from a buffalo’s point of view you are a European too.”

“They’ll be forced to believe what they are told, they won’t be allowed to think for themselves.”

“Thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?”

“You talk as if the whole country were peasant. What about the educated? Are they going to be happy?”

“Oh no,” I said, “we’ve brought them up in our ideas. We’ve taught them dangerous games, and that’s why we are waiting here, hoping we don’t get our throats cut. We deserve to have them cut. I wish your friend York was here too. I wonder how he’d relish it.”

“York Harding’s a very courageous man. Why, in Korea. . “

“He wasn’t an enlisted man, was he? He had a return ticket. With a return ticket courage becomes an intellectual exercise, like a monk’s flagellation. How much can I stick? Those poor devils can’t catch a plane home. Hi,” I called to them, “what are your names?” I thought that knowledge somehow would bring them into the circle of our conversation. They didn’t answer: just lowered back at us behind the stumps of their cigarettes. “They think we are French,” I said.

“That’s just it,” Pyle said. “You shouldn’t be against York, you should be against the French. Their colonialism.” “Isms and ocracies. Give me facts. A rubber planter beats his labourer-all right, I’m against him. He hasn’t been instructed to do it by the Minister of the Colonies. In France I expect he’d beat his wife. I’ve seen a priest, so poor he hasn’t a change of trousers, working fifteen hours a day from hut to hut in a cholera epidemic, eating nothing but rice and salt fish, saying his Mass with an old cup-a wooden platter. I don’t believe in God and yet I’m for that priest. Why don’t you call that colonialism?”

“It is colonialism. York says it’s often the good administrators who make it hard to change a bad system.”

“Anyway the French are dying every day-that’s not a mental concept. They aren’t leading these people on with half-lies like your politicians-and ours. I’ve been in India, Pyle, and I know the harm liberals do. We haven’t a liberal party any more-liberalism’s infected all the other parties. We are all either liberal conservatives or liberal socialists: we all have a good conscience. I’d rather be an exploiter who fights for what he exploits, and dies with it. Look at the history of Burma. We go and invade the country: the local tribes support us: we are victorious: but like you Americans we weren’t colonialists in those days. Oh no, we made peace with the king and we handed him back his province and left our allies to be crucified and sawn in two. They were innocent. They thought we’d stay. But we were liberals and we didn’t want a bad conscience.” “That was a long time ago.”

“We shall do the same thing here. Encourage them and leave them with a little equipment and a toy industry.” “Toy industry?” “Your plastic.” “Oh yes, I see.”

“I don’t know what I’m talking politics for. They don’t interest me and I’m a reporter. I’m not engaged’”

“Aren’t you?” Pyle said.

“For the sake of an argument-to pass this bloody night, that’s all. I don’t take sides. I’ll be still reporting, whoever Wins.””

“If they win, you’ll be reporting lies.” “There’s usually a way round, and I haven’t noticed much regard for truth in our papers either.” I think the fact of our sitting there talking encouraged

the two soldiers: perhaps they thought the sound of our white voices-for voices have a colour too, yellow voices sing and black voices gargle, while ours just speak-would give an impression of numbers and keep the Viets away. They picked up their pans and began to eat again, scraping with their chopsticks, eyes watching Pyle and me over the rim of the pan.

“So you think we’ve lost?”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “I’ve no particular desire to see you win. I’d like those two poor buggers there to be happy-that’s all. I wish they didn’t have to sit in the dark at night scared.” “You have to fight for liberty.”

“I haven’t seen any Americans fighting around here. And as for liberty, I don’t know what it means. Ask them.” I called across the floor in French to them. “La Liberte- qu’est-ce que c’est la liberte?” They sucked in the rice and stared back and said nothing.

Pyle said, “Do you want everybody to be made in the same mould? You’re arguing for the sake of arguing. You’re an intellectual. You stand for the importance of the individual as much as I do-or York.”

“Why have we only just discovered it?” I said. “Forty years ago no one talked that way.”

“It wasn’t threatened then.” “Ours wasn’t threatened, oh no, but who cared about the individuality of the man in the paddy field-and who does now? The only man to treat him as a man is the political commissar. He’ll sit in his hut and ask his name and listen to his complaints; he’ll give up an hour a day to teaching him-it doesn’t matter what, he’s being treated like a man, like someone of value. Don’t go on in the East with that parrot cry about a threat to the individual soul. Here you’d find yourself on the wrong side-it’s they who stand for the individual and we just stand for Private 23987, unit in the global strategy.”

“You don’t mean half what you are saying,” Pyle said uneasily.

“Probably three quarters. I’ve been here a long time. You know, it’s lucky I’m not engage, there are things I might be tempted to do-because here in the East-well, I don’t like Ike. I like-well, these two. This is their country. What’s the time? My watch has stopped.” “It’s turned eight-thirty.” “Ten hours and we can move.”

“It’s going to be quite chilly,” Pyle said and shivered. “I never expected that.”

“There’s water all round. I’ve got a blanket in the car. That will be enough.” “Is it safe?” “It’s early for the Viets.” “Let me go.” “I’m more used to the dark.”

When I stood up the two soldiers stopped eating. I told them, “Je reviens, tout de suite.” I dangled my legs over the trap door, found the ladder and went down. It is odd how reassuring conversation is, especially on abstract subjects: it seems to normalise the strangest surroundings. I was no longer scared: it was as though I had left a room and would be returning there to pick up the argument-the watch-tower was the rue Catinat, the bar of the Majestic, or even a room off Gordon Square.

I stood below the tower for a minute to get my vision back. There was starlight, but no moonlight. Moonlight reminds me of a mortuary and the cold wash of an unshaded globe over a marble slab, but starlight is alive and never still, it is almost as though someone in those vast spaces is trying to communicate a message of good will, for-even names of the stars are friendly. Venus is any woman we love, the Bears are the bears of childhood, and I suppose the Southern Gross, to those, like my wife, who believe, may be a favourite hymn or a prayer beside the bed. Once I shivered as Pyle had done. But the night was hot enough, only the shallow stretch of water on either side gave a kind of icing to the warmth. I started out towards the car, and for a moment when l stood on the road I thought it was no longer there. That shook my confidence, even after I remembered that it had petered out thirty yards away. I couldn’t help walking with my shoulders bent: I felt more unobtrusive that way.

I had to unlock the boot to get the blanket and the click and squeak startled me in the silence. I didn’t relish being the only noise in what must have been a night full of people. With the blanket over my shoulder I lowered the boot more carefully than I had raised it, and then, just as the catch caught, the sky towards Saigon flared with light and the sound of an explosion came rumbling down the road. A bren spat and spat and was quiet again before the rumbling stopped. I thought, “Somebody’s had it, and very far away heard voices crying with pain or fear or perhaps even triumph. I don’t know why, but I had thought all the time of an attack coming from behind, along the road we had passed, and I had a moment’s sense of unfairness that the Viet should be there ahead, between us and Saigon. It was as though we had been unconsciously driving towards danger instead of away from it, just as I was now walking in its direction, back towards the tower. I walked because it was less noisy than to run, but my body wanted to run.

At the foot of the ladder I called up to Pyle, “It’s me- Fowlair.” (Even then I couldn’t bring myself to use my Christian name to him.) The scene inside the hut had changed. The pans of rice were back on the floor; one man held his rifle on his hip and sat against the wall staring at Pyle and Pyle knelt a little way out from the opposite wall with his eyes on the sten gun which lay between him and the second guard. It was as though he had begun to crawl towards it but had been halted. The second guard’s arm was extended towards the gun: no one had fought or even threatened, it was like that child’s game when you mustn’t be seen to move or you are sent back to base to start ‘again. “What’s going on?” I said.

The two guards looked at me and Pyle pounced, pulling the sten to his side of the room. “Is it a game?” I asked.

“I don’t trust him with the gun,” Pyle said, “if they are coming.”

“Ever used a sten?” “No.”

“That’s fine. Nor have I. I hope it’s loaded-we wouldn’t know how to reload.”

The guards had quietly accepted the loss of the gun. The one lowered his rifle and laid it across his things; the other slumped against the wall and shut his eyes as though like a child he believed himself invisible in the dark. Perhaps he was glad to have no more responsibility. Somewhere far away the bren started again-three bursts and then silence. The second guard screwed his eyes closer shut.

“They don’t know we can’t use it,” Pyle said. “They are supposed to be on our side.” “I thought you didn’t have a side.” “Touche,” I said. “I wish the Viets knew it.” “What’s happening out there?”

I quoted again tomorrow’s Extreme-Orient: “A post fifty kilometres outside Saigon was attacked and temporarily captured last night by Vietminh irregulars.” “Do you think it would be safer in the fields?” “It would be terribly wet.” “You don’t seem worried,” Pyle said. “I’m scared stiff-but things are better the they might be. They don’t usually attack more than three posts in a night. Our chances have improved.” “What’s that?”

It was the sound of a heavy car coming up the road, driving towards Saigon. I went to the rifle slit and looked down, just as a tank went by.

“The patrol,” I said. The gun in the turret shifted now to this side, now to that. I wanted to call out to them, but what was the good? They hadn’t room on board for two useless civilians. The earth floor shook a little as they passed, and they had gone. I looked at my watch-eight fifty-one, and waited, straining to read when the light flapped. It was like judging the distance of lightning by the delay before the thunder. It was nearly four minutes before the gun opened up. Once I thought I detected a bazooka replying, then all was quiet again.

“When they come back,” Pyle said, “we could signal them for a lift to the camp.”

An explosion set the floor shaking. “If they come back,” I said. “That sounded like a mine.” When I looked at my watch again it had passed nine fifteen and the tank had not returned. There had been no more firing.

I sat down beside Pyle and stretched out my legs. “We’d better try to sleep,” I said. “There’s nothing else we can do.” “I’m not happy about the guards,” Pyle said. “They are all right so long as the Viets don’t turn up. Put the sten under your leg for safety.” I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself somewhere else-sitting up in one of the fourth-class compartments the German railways ran before Hitler came to power, in the days when one was young and sat up all night without melancholy, when waking dreams were full of hope and not of fear. This was the hour when Phuong always set about preparing my evening pipes. I wondered whether a letter was waiting for me-I hoped not, for I knew what a letter would contain, and so long as none arrived I could day-dream of the impossible. “Are you asleep?” Pyle asked. “No.”

“Don’t you think we ought to pull up the ladder?” “I begin to understand why they don’t. It’s the only way out.”

“I wish that tank would come back.” “It won’t now.”

I tried not to look at my watch except at long intervals, and the intervals were never as long as they had seemed. Nine forty, ten five, ten twelve, ten thirty-two, ten forty-one. “You awake?” I said to Pyle. “Yes.”

“What are you thinking about?” He hesitated. “Phuong,” he said. “Yes?” “I was just wondering what she was doing.”

“I can tell you that. She’ll have decided that I’m spending the night at Tanyin-it won’t be the first time. She’ll be lying on the bed with a joss stick burning to keep away the mosquitoes and she’ll be looking at the pictures in an old Paris-Match. Like the French she has a passion for the Royal Family”

He said wistfully, “It must be wonderful to know exactly,” and I could imagine his soft dog’s eyes in the dark. They ought to have called him Fido, not Alden.

“I don’t really know-but it’s probably true. There’s no good in being jealous when you can’t do anything about it. ‘No barricade for a belly.’ “

“Sometimes I hate the way you talk, Thomas. Do you know how she seems to me?-she seems fresh, like a flower.”

“Poor flower,” I said. “There are a lot of weeds around.” “Where did you meet her?” “She was dancing at the Grand Monde.” “Dancing,” he exclaimed, as though the idea were painful.

“It’s a perfectly respectable profession,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“You have such an awful lot of experience, Thomas.” “I have an awful lot of years. When you reach my age.. “

“I’ve never had a girl,” he said, “not properly. Not what you’d call a real experience.”

“A lot of energy with your people seems to go into whistling.”

“I’ve never told anybody else.” “You’re young. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” “Have you had a lot of women. Fowlair?” “I don’t know what a lot means. Not more than four women have had any importance to me-or me to them.

The other forty-odd-one wonders why one does it. A notion of hygiene, of one’s social obligations, both mistaken.” “You think they arc mistaken?”

“I wish I could have those nights back. I’m still in love, Pyle, and I’m a wasting asset. Oh, and there was pride, of course. It takes a long time before we cease to feel proud of being wanted. Though God knows why we should feel it, when we look around and see who is wanted too.”

“You don’t think there’s anything wrong with me, do you, Thomas?” “No, Pyle.”

“It doesn’t mean I don’t need it, Thomas, like everybody else. I’m not-odd.”

“Not one of us needs it as much as we say. There’s an awful lot of self-hypnosis around. Now I know I need nobody-except Phuong. But that’s a thing one learns with time. I could go a year without one restless night if she wasn’t there.”

“But she is there,” he said in a voice I could hardly catch.

“One starts promiscuous and ends like one’s grandfather, faithful to one woman.”

“I suppose it seems pretty naive to start that way. . .” “No.”

“It’s not in the Kinsey Report.” “That’s why it’s not naive.”

“You know, Thomas, it’s pretty good being here, talking to you like this. Somehow it doesn’t seem dangerous any more.”

“We used to feel that in the blitz” I said, “when a lull came. But they always returned.”

“If somebody asked you what your deepest sexual experience had been, what would you say?” I knew the answer to that. “Lying in bed early one morning and watching a woman in a red dressing-gown brush her hair.”

Joe said it was being in bed with a Chink and a negress at same time.”

“I’d have thought that one up too when I was twenty.” “Joe’s fifty.”

“I wonder what mental age they gave him in the war.” “Was Phuong the girl in the red dressing-gown?” I wished that he hadn’t asked that question. “No,” I said, “that woman came earlier. When I left my wife. “What happened?”

“I left her, too”

“Why?” Why indeed? “We are fools,” I said, “when we love. I was terrified of losing her. I thought I saw her changing—I don’t know if she really was, but I couldn’t bear the un-certainty any longer. Iran towards the finish just like a coward runs towards the enemy and wins a medal. I wanted to get death over.” “Death?” “It was a kind of death. Then I came east.”

“And found Phuong?”

‘Yes.”     :

“But don’t you find the same thing with Phuong?” “Not the same. You see, the other one loved me. I was afraid of losing love. Now I’m only afraid of losing Phuong.” Why had I said that, I wondered? He didn’t need encouragement from me.

“But she loves you, doesn’t she?” “Not like that. It isn’t in their nature. You’ll find that out. It’s a cliche to call them children—but there’s one thing which is childish. They love you in return for kind-ness, security, the presents you give them-they hate you for a blow or an injustice. They don’t know what it’s like -just walking into a room and loving a stranger. For an aging man, Pyle, it’s very secure-she won’t run away from home so long as the home is happy.”

I hadn’t meant to hurt him. I only realised I had done it when he said with muffled anger, “She might prefer a greater security or more kindness.” “Perhaps.” “Aren’t you afraid of that?” “Not o much as I was of the other.’ “Do you love her at all?”

“Oh yes, Pyle, yes. But that other way Fve only loved once.’

“In spite of the forty-odd women,’ he snapped at me. “I’m sure it’s below the Kinsey average. You know, Pyle, women don’t want virgins. I’m not sure we do, unless we are a pathological type.”

“I didn’t mean I was a virgin,” he said. All my conversations with Pyle seemed to take grotesque directions. Was it because of his sincerity that they so ran off the customary rails? His conversation never took the corners.

“You can have a hundred women and still be a virgin, Pyle. Most of your G.I.S who were hanged for rape in the war were virgins. We don’t have so many in Europe. I’m glad. They do a lot of harm.” - “I just don’t understand you, Thomas.”

“It’s not worth explaining. I’m bored with the subject anyway- Fve reached the age when sexisntthe problem so much as old age and death. I wake up with these in mind and not a woman’s body. I just don’t want to be alone in my last decade, that’s all. I wouldn’t know what to think about aH day long. I’d sooner have a woman in the same room-even one I didn’t love. But if Phuong left me, would I have the energy to find another?. . .”

“If that’s all she means to you. . .”

“All, Pyle? Wait until you’re afraid of living ten years alone with no companion and a nursing home at the end of it. Then you’ll start running in any direction, even away from that girl in the red dressing-gown, to find someone, any one, who will last until you are through.” Why don’t you go back to you rwife, then?” “It’s not easy to live with someone you’ve injured.” A sten gun fired a long burst-it couldn’t have been more than a mile away. Perhaps a nervous sentry was shooting at shadows: perhaps another attack had begun. I hoped it was an attack-it increased our chances. “Are you scared, Thomas?” “Of course I am. With all my instincts. But with my reason I know it’s better to die like this. That’s why I came east. Death stays with you.’ I looked at my watch. It had gone eleven. An eight-hour night and then we could relax. I said, “We seem to have talked about pretty nearly every-thing except God We’d better leave him to the small hours.” “You don’t believe in Him, do you?” “No”

“Things to me wouldn’t make sense without Him.” “Thee don’t make sense to me with him.” “I read a book once. . .”

I never knew what book Pyle had read. (Presumably it wasn’t York Harding or Shakespeare or the anthology of contemporary verse or The Physiology of Marriage- perhaps it was The Triumph of Life.) A voice came right into the tower with us, it seemed to speak from the shadows by the trap-a hollow megaphone voice saying something in, Vietnamese. “We’re for it,” I said. The two guards listened, their faces turned to the rifle-slit, their mouths hanging open. “What is it ?” Pyle said.

Walking to the embrasure was like walking through the voice. I looked quickly out: there was nothing to be seen-I couldn’t even distinguish the road and when I looked back into the room the rifle was pointed, I wasn’t sure whether at me or at the slit. But when I moved round the wall the rifle wavered, hesitated, kept me covered: the voice went on saying the same thing over again. I sat down arid the rifle was lowered. “What’s he saying?” Pyle asked.

“I don’t know. I expect they’ve found the car and are telling these chaps to hand us over or else. Better pick up that sten before they make up their minds.” “He’ll shoot.”

“He’s not sure yet. When he is he’ll shoot anyway.” Pyle shifted his leg and the rifle came up. “Ill move along the wall,” I said. “When his eyes waver get him covered.”

Just as I rose the voice stopped: the silence made me jump. Pyle said sharply, “Drop your rifle.” I had just time to wonder whether the sten was unloaded-I hadn’t bothered to look-when the man threw his rifle down.

I crossed the room and picked it up. Then the voice began again-I had the impression that no syllable had changed. Perhaps they used a record. I wondered when the ultimatum would expire.

“What happens next?” Pyle asked, like a schoolboy watching a demonstration in the laboratory: he didn’t seem personally concerned. “Perhaps a bazooka. perhaps a Viet.” Pyle examined his sten. “There doesn’t seem any mystery about this,” he said. “Shall I fire a burst?”

“No, let them hesitate. They’d rather take the post without firing and it gives us time. We’d better clear out fast.” “They may be waiting at the bottom.”

“Yes.”

The two men watched us-I write men, but I doubt whether they had accumulated forty years between them. “And these?” Pyle asked, and he added with a shocking directness, “Shall I shoot them?” Perhaps he wanted to try the sten. “They’ve done nothing.” “They were going to hand us over.” “Why not?” I said. “We’ve no business here. It’s their country.”      -

I unloaded the rifle and laid it on the floor. “Surely you’re not leaving that,” he said.

“I’m too old to run with a rifle. And this isn’t my war. Come on.”

It wasn’t my war, but I wished those others in the dark knew that as well. I blew the oil-lamp out and dangled my legs over the trap, feeling for the ladder. I could hear the guards whispering to each other like crooners, in their language like ,a song. “Make straight ahead,” I told Pyle, “aim for the rice. Remember there’s water-I don’t know how deep. Ready?” “Yes”

“Thanks for the company.” “Always a pleasure,” Pyle said.

I heard the guards moving behind us: I wondered if they had knives. The megaphone voice .spoke peremptorily as though offering a last chance. Something shifted softly in the dark below us, but it might have been a rat. I hesitated. “I wish to God I had a drink,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

Something was coming up the ladder: I heard nothing, but the ladder shook under my feet. “What’s keeping you?” Pyle said. I don’t know why I thought of it as something, that silent stealthy approach. Only a man could climb a ladder, and yet I couldn’t think of it as a man like myself-it was though as an animal were moving in to kill, very quietly and certainly with the remorselessness of another kind of creation. The ladder shook and shook and I imagined I saw its eyes glaring upwards. Suddenly I could bear it no longer and I jumped, and there was nothing there at all but the spongy ground, which took my ankle and twisted it as a hand might have done. I could hear Pyle coming down the ladder; I realised I had been a frightened fool who could not recognise his own trembling, and I had believed I was tough and unimaginative, all that a truthful observer arid reporter should be. I got on my feet and nearly fell again with the pain. I started out for the field dragging one foot after me and heard Pyle coming behind me. Then the bazooka shell burst on the tower and I was on my face again.

 

 

(4)

 

 

“Are you hurt?” Pyle said. “Something hit my leg. Nothing serious.” “Let’s get on,” Pyle urged me. I could just see him because he seemed to be covered with a fine white dust. Then he simply went out like a picture on the screen when the lamps of the projector fail: only the sound-track continued. I got gingerly up on to my good knee and tried to rise with out putting any weight on my bad left ankle, and then I was down again breathless with pain. It wasn’t my ankle: something had happened to my left leg. I couldn’t worry- pain took away care. I lay very still on the ground hoping that pain wouldn’t find me again: I even held my breath, as one does with toothache. I didn’t think about the Viets who would soon be searching the ruins of the tower: another shell exploded on it-they were making quite sure before

they came in. What a lot of money it costs, I thought as the pain receded, to kill a few human beings-you can kill horses so much cheaper. I can’t have been fully conscious, for I began to think I had strayed into a knacker’s yard which was the terror of my childhood in the small town where I was born. We used to think we heard the horses whinnying with fear and the explosion of the painless killer

It was some while since the pain had returned, now that I was lying still—and holding my breath, that seemed to me just .as important. I wondered quite lucidly whether perhaps I ought to crawl towards the fields. The Viet might not have time to search far. Another patrol would be out by now trying to contact the crew of the first tank. But I was more afraid of the pain than of the partisans, and I lay still. There was no sound anywhere of Pyle: he must have reached the fields. Then I heard someone weeping. It came from the direction of the tower, or what had been the tower. It wasn’t like a man weeping: it was like a child who is frightened of the dark and yet afraid to scream. I supposed it was one of the two boys-perhaps his companion had been killed. I hoped that the Viets wouldn’t cut his throat. One shouldn’t fight a war with children and a little curled body in a ditch came back to mind. I shut my eyes-that helped to keep the pain’ away, too, and waited. A voice called something I didn’t understand. I almost felt I could sleep in this darkness and loneliness and absence of pain.

Then I head Pyle whispering, “Thomas. Thomas.” He had learnt footcraft quickly: I had not heard him return. “Go away,” I whispered back.

He found me then and lay down flat beside me. “Why didn’t you come? Are you hurt?” “My leg. I think it’s broken.” “A bullet?”

“No, no. Log of wood. Stone. Something from the tower. It’s not bleeding.” “You’ve got to make an effort.”

“Go away, Pyle. I don’t want to, it hurts too much.” “Which leg?” “Left”

He crept round to my side and hoisted my arm over his shoulder. I wanted to whimper like the boy in the tower and then I was angry, but it was hard to express anger in a whisper. “God damn you, ‘Pyle, leave me alone. I want to stay.” “You can’t.”

He was pulling me half on to his shoulder and the pain was intolerable. “Don’t be a bloody hero. I don’t want to go.”

“You’ve got to help,” he said, “or we are both caught. . .” “You...”

“Be quiet or they’ll hear you.” I was crying with vexation-you couldn’t use a stronger word. I hoisted myself against him and let my left leg dangle-we were like awkward contestants in a three-legged race and we wouldn’t have stood a chance if, at the moment we set off, a bren had not begun to fire in quick short bursts somewhere down the road towards the next tower: perhaps a patrol was pushing up or perhaps they were completing their score of three towers destroyed. It covered the noise of our slow and clumsy flight.

I’m not sure whether I was conscious all the time: I think for the last twenty yards Pyle must have almost carried my weight. He said, “Careful here. We are going in.” The dry rice rustled around us and the mud squelched and rose. The water was up to our waists when Pyle stopped. He was panting and a catch in his breath made him sound like a bull-frog.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Couldn’t leave you,” Pyle said.

The first sensation was relief: the water and mud held my leg tenderly and firmly like a bandage, but soon the cold set us chattering. I. wondered whether it had passed midnight yet: we might have six hours of this if the Viets didn’t find us.

“Can you shift your weight a little,” Pyle said, “just for a moment?” And my unreasoning irritation came back- I had no excuse for it hut the pain. I hadn’t asked to be saved, or to have death so painfully postponed. I thought with nostalgia of my couch on the hard dry ground. I stood like a crane on one leg trying to relieve Pyle of my weight, and when I moved, the stalks of rice tickled and cut and crackled.

“You saved my life there,” I said, and Pyle cleared his throat for the conventional response, “so that I could die here. I prefer dry land.”

“Better not talk,” Pyle said as though to an invalid. “Got to save our strength.”

“Who the hell asked you to save my life? I came east to be killed. It’s like your damned impertinence. . .”I staggered in the mnd and Pyle hoisted my arm around his shoulder. “Ease it off,” he said.

“You’ve been seeing war-films. We aren’t a couple of marines and you can’t win a war medal.”

“Sh-sh.” Footsteps could be heard, coming down to the edge of the field: the bren up the road stopped firing and there was no sound except the footsteps and the slight rustle of the rice when we breathed. Then the footsteps halted: they only seemed the length of a room away. I felt Pyle’s hand on my good side pressing me slowly down; we sank together into the mud very slowly so as to make the least disturbance of the rice. On one knee, by straining my head backwards, I could just keep my mouth out of the water. The pain came back to my leg and I thought. If I faint here I drown’-I had always hated and feared the thought of drowning. Why can’t one choose one’s death? There was no sound now perhaps twenty feet away they were waiting for a rustle, a cough, a sneeze-‘Oh, God, I thought, I’m going to sneeze.’ If only he had left me alone, I would have been responsible only for my own life-not his-and he wanted to live. I pressed my free fingers against my upper lip in that trick we learn when we are children playing at Hide and Seek, but the sneeze lingered, waiting to burst, and silent in the darkness the others waited for the sneeze. It was coming, coming, came. . .

But in the very second that my sneeze broke, the Viets opened with stens, drawing a line of fire through the rice -it swallowed my sneeze with its sharp drilling like a machine punching holes through steel. I took a breath and went under-so instinctively one avoids the loved thing, coquetting with death, like a woman who demands to be raped by her lover. The rice was lashed down over our heads and the storm passed. We came up for air at the same moment and heard the footsteps going away back towards the tower.

“We’ve made it,” Pyle said, and even in my pain I wondered what we’d made: for me, old age, an editor’s chair, loneliness; and as for him, one knows now that he spoke prematurely. Then in the cold we settled down to wait. Along the road to Tanyin a bonfire burst into life: it burnt merrily like a celebration. “That’s my car,” I said.

Pyle said, “Its a shame, Thomas. I hate to see waste.” “There must have been just enough petrol in the tank to set it going. Are yon as cold as I am, Pyle?” “I couldn’t be colder.”

“Suppose we get out and lie flat on the road?” “Let’s give them another half hour.” “The weight’s on you.”

“I can stick it, I’m young.” He had meant the claim humorously, but it struck as cold as the mud. I had intended to apologise for the way my pain had spoken, but now it spoke again. “You’re young all right. You can afford to wait, can’t you?” “I don’t get you, Thomas.”

We had spent what seemed to have been a week of nights together, but he could no more understand me than he could understand French. I said, “You’d have done better to let me be.”

“I couldn’t have faced Phuong,” he said, and the name lay there like a banker’s bid. I took it up.

“So it was for her,” I said. What made my jealousy more absurd and humiliating was that it had to be expressed in the lowest of whispers-it had no tone) and jealousy likes histrionics. “You think these heroics will get her. How wrong you are. If I were dead you could have had her.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Pyle said. “When you are in love you want to play the game, that’s all.” That’s true, I thought, but not as he innocently means it. To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour-the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two. Perhaps I was no longer in love but I remembered.

“If it had been you, I’d have left you,” I said. “Oh no, you wouldn’t, Thomas.” He added with unbearable complacency, “I know you better than you do yourself.”

Angrily I tried to move away from him and take my own weight, but the pain came roaring back like a train in a tunnel and I leant more heavily against him, before I began to sink into the water. He got both his arms round me and held me up, and then inch by inch he began to edge me to the bank and the roadside. When he got me there he lowered me flat in the shallow mud below the bank of the edge of the field, and when the pain retreated and I opened my eyes and ceased to hold my breath, I could see only the elaborate cypher of the constellations-a foreign cypher which I couldn’t read: they were not the stars of home. His face wheeled over me, blotting them out. “I’m going down the road, Thomas, to find a patrol.”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “They’ll shoot you before they know who you are. If the Viets don’t get you.”

“It’s the only chance. You can’t lie in the water for six hours.”

 

“Then lay me in the road.”

 

“It’s no good leaving you the sten?” he asked doubtfully.

 

“Of course it’s not. If you are determined to be a hero, at least go slowly through the rice.” “The patrol would pass before I could signal it.” “You don’t speak French.”

“I shall call out ‘Je suis Frongcais.’ Don’t worry, Thomas. I’ll be very careful.” Before I could reply he was out of a whisper’s range-he was moving as quietly as he knew how, with frequent pauses. I could see him in the light of the burning car, but no shot came; soon he passed beyond the flames and very soon the silence filled the footprints. Oh yes, he was being careful as he had been careful boating down the river into Phat Diem, with the caution of a hero in a boy’s adventure-story, proud of his caution like a Scout’s badge and quite unaware of the absurdity and the improbability of his adventure.

I lay and listened for the shots from the Viet or a Legion patrol) but none came-it would probably take him an hour or even more before he reached a tower, if he ever reached it. I turned my head enough to see what remained of our tower, a heap of mud and bamboo and struts which seemed to sink lower as the flames of the car sank. There was peace when the pain went-a kind of Armistice Day of the nerves: I wanted to sing. I thought how strange it was that men of my profession would make only two news-lines out of all this night-it was just a common-or-garden night and I was the only strange thing about it. Then I heard a low crying begin again from what was left of the tower. One of the guards must still be alive.

I thought, ‘Poor devil, if we hadn’t broken down outside his post, he could have surrendered as they nearly all surrendered, or fled, at the first call from the megaphone. But we were there-two white men, and we had the sten and they didn’t dare to move. When we left it was too late.’ I was responsible for that voice crying in the dark: I had prided myself on detachment, on not belonging to this war, but those wounds had been inflicted by me just as though I had used the sten, as Pyle had wanted to do.

I made an effort to get over the bank into the road. I wanted to join him. It was the only thing I could do, to share his pain. But my own personal pain pushed me back. I couldn’t hear him any more. I lay still and heard nothing but my own pain beating like a monstrous heart and held my breath and prayed to the God I didn’t believe in, “Let me die or faint. Let me die or faint”; and then I suppose I fainted and was aware of nothing until I dreamed that my eyelids had frozen together and someone was inserting a chisel to prise them apart, and I wanted to warn them not to damage the eyeballs beneath but couldn’t speak and the chisel bit through and a torch was shining on my face.

“We made it, Thomas,” Pyle said. I remember that, but I don’t remember what Pyle later described to others: that I waved my hand in the wrong direction and told them there was a man in the tower and they had to see to him. Anyway I couldn’t have made the sentimental assumption that Pyle made. I know myself, and I know the depth of my selfishness. I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken by the innocent for unselfishness, when all I am doing is sacrificing a small good-in this case postponement in attending to my hurt-for the sake of a far greater good) a peace of mind when I need think only of myself.

They came back to tell me the boy was dead, and I was happy-I didn’t even have to suffer much pain after the hypodermic of morphia had bitten my leg.

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

(I)

 

 

I came slowly up the stairs to the flat in the rue Catinat, pausing and resting on the first landing. The old women gossiped as they had always done, squatting on the floor outside the urinoir, carrying Fate in the lines of their faces as others on the palm. They were silent as I passed and I wondered what they might have told me, if I had known their language, of what had passed while I had been away in the Legion Hospital back on the road towards Tanyin. Somewhere in tbe tower and the fields I had lost my keys, but I had sent a message to Phuong which she must have received, if she was still there. That ‘if was the measure of my uncertainty. I had had no news of her in the hospital, but she wrote French with difficulty, and I couldn’t read

Vietnamese. I knocked on the door and it opened immediately and everything seemed to be the same. I watched her closely while she asked how I was and touched my splinted leg and gave me her shoulder to lean on, as though one could lean with safety on so young a plant. I said, “I’m glad to be home.”

She told me that she had missed me, which of course was what I wanted to hear: she always told me what I wanted to hear, like a coolie answering questions, unless by accident. Now I awaited the accident.

“How have you amused yourself?” I asked. “Oh, I have seen my sister often. She has found a post with the Americans.”

“She has, has she? Did Pyle help?” “Not Pyle, Joe.” “Who’s Joe?”

“You know him. The Economic Attache.” “Oh, of course, Joe.”

He was a man one always forgot. To this day I cannot describe him, except his fatness and his powdered clean shaven cheeks and his big laugh; all his identity escapes me-except that he was called Joe. There are some men whose names are always shortened.

With Phuong’s help I stretched myself on the bed. “Seen any movies?” I asked.

“There is a very funny one at the Catinat,” and immediately she began to tell me the plot in great detail, while I looked around the room for the white envelope that might be a telegram. So long as I didn’t ask, I could believe that she had forgotten to tell me; and it might be there on the table by the typewriter, or on the wardrobe, perhaps put for safety in the cupboard-drawer where she kept her collection of scarves.

“The postmaster-I think he was the postmaster, but he may have been the mayor-followed them home, and he borrowed a ladder from the baker and he climbed through Corinne’s window, but, you see, she had gone into the next room with Francois, but he did not hear Mme. Bompierre coming and she came in and saw him at the top of the ladder and thought . . .”

“Who was Mme. Bompierre?” I asked, turning my head to see the wash basin, where sometimes she propped reminders among the lotions.

“I told you. She was Corinne’s mother and she was looking for a husband because she was a widow . . .”

She sat on the bed and put her hand inside my shirt. “It was very funny,” she said.

“Kiss me, Phuong.” She had no coquetry. She did at once what I asked and she went on with the story of the film. Just so she would have made love if I had asked her to, straight away, peeling off her trousers without question, and afterwards have taken up the thread of Mme. Bompierre’s story and the postmaster’s predicament. “Has a call come for me?” “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you give it me?”

“It is too soon for you to work. You must lie down and rest.” “This may not be work.”

She gave it me and I saw that it had been opened. It read: “Four hundred words background wanted effect de Lattre’s departure on military and political situation.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is work. How did you know? Why did you open it?”

 

“I thought it was from. your wife. I hoped that it was good news.” “Who translated it for you?”

“I took it to my sister.”

“If it had been bad news would you have left me; Phliong?”

 

She rubbed her hand across my chest to reassure me, not realising that it was words this time I required, however untrue. “Would you like a pipe? There is a letter for you. I think perhaps it is from her.” “Did you open that too?”

“I don’t open your letters. Telegrams are public. The clerks read them.”

This envelope was among the scarves. She took it gingerly out and laid it on the bed. I recognised the handwriting. “If this is bad news what will you...?” I knew well that it could be nothing else but bad. A telegram might have meant a sudden act of generosity: a letter could only mean explanation, justification . . . so I broke off my question, for there was no honesty in asking for the kind of promise no one can keep.

“What are you afraid of?” Phuong asked, and I thought, Tm afraid of the loneliness, of the Press Club and the bed-sitting-room, I’m afraid of Pyle.’

“Make me a brandy and soda,” I said. I looked at the beginning of the letter, “Dear Thomas,” and the end, “Affectionately, Helen,” and waited for the brandy. “Jt is from Acr?”

“Yes.” Before I read it I began to wonder whether at the end J should lie or tell the truth to Phuong.

 

“Dear Thomas,

“I was not surprised to get your letter and to know that you were not alone. You are not a man, are you? To remain alone for very long. You pick up women like your coat picks up dust. Perhaps I would feel more sympathy with your case if I didn’t feel that you would find consolation very easily when you return to London. I don’t suppose you’ll believe me, but what gives me pause and prevents me cabling you a simple No is the thought of the poor girl. We are apt to be more involved than you are.”

I had a drink of brandy. I hadn’t realised how open the sexual wounds remain over the years. I had carelessly-not choosing my words with skill-set hers bleeding again. Who could blame her for seeking my own scars in return? When we are unhappy we hurt. “Is it bad?” Phuong asked. “A bit hard,” I said. “But she has the right . . .” I read on.

“I always believed you loved Anne more than the rest of us until you packed up and went. Now you seem to be planning to leave another woman because I can tell from you letter that you don’t really expect a ‘favourable’ reply. ‘I’ll have done my best’-aren’t you thinking that? What would you do if I cabled ‘Yes’? Would you actually marry her? (I have to write ‘her-you don’t tell me her name.) Perhaps you would. I suppose like the rest of us you are getting old and don’t like living alone. I feel very lonely myself sometimes. I gather Anne has found another companion. But you left her in time.”

She had found the dried scab accurately. I drank again. An issue of blood-the phrase came into my mind. “Let me make you a pipe,” Phuong said. “Anything,” I said, “anything.”

“That is one reason why I ought to say no. (We don’t need to talk about the religious reason, because you’ve never understood or believed in that.) Marriage doesn’t prevent you leaving a woman, does it? It only delays the process, and it would be all the more unfair to the girl in this case if you lived with her as long as you lived with me. You would bring her back to England where she would be lost and a stranger, and when you left her, how terribly abandoned she would feel. I don’t suppose she even uses a knife and fork, does she? I’m being harsh because I’m thinking of her good more than I am of yours. But, Thomas dear, I do think of yours too.”

I felt physically sick. It was a long time since I had received a letter from my wife. I had forced her to write it and I could feel her pain in every line. Her pain struck at my pain: we were back at the old routine of hurting each other. If only it were possible to love without injury-fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again-I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower. Phuong lit the opium lamp. “Will she let you marry me?” “I don’t know yet.” “Doesn’t she say?” “If she does, she says it very slowly.” I thought, ‘How much you pride yourself on being degage the reporter, not the leader-writer, and what a mess you make behind the scenes. The other kind of war is more innocent than this. One does less damage with a mortar.’

“If I go against my deepest conviction and say ‘Yes’, would it even be good for you! You say you are being recalled to England and I can realise how you will hate that and do anything to make it easier. I can see you marrying after a drink too many. The first time we really tried-you as well as me-and we failed. One doesn’t try so hard the second time. You say it will be the end of life to lose this girl. Once you used exactly that phrase to me-I could show you the letter, I have it still-and I suppose you wrote in the same way to Anne. You say that we’ve always tried to tell the truth to each other, but, Thomas, your truth is always so temporary. What’s the good of arguing with you, or trying to make you see reason? Ifs easier to act as my faith tells me to act-as you think unreasonably-and simply to write: I don’t believe in divorce: my religion forbids it, and so the answer, Thomas, is no-no.”

There was another half page, which I didn’t read, before “Affectionately, Helen”. I think it contained news of the weather and an old aunt of mine I loved.

I had no cause for complaint, and I had expected this reply. There was a lot of truth in it. I only wished that she had not thought aloud at quite such length, when the thoughts hurt her as well as me. “She says ‘No’?”

I said with hardly any hesitation, “She hasn’t made up her mind. There’s still hope.”

Phuong laughed. “You say ‘hope” with such a long face.” She lay at my feet like a dog on a crusader’s tomb, preparing the opium, and I wondered what I should say to Pyle. When I had smoked four pipes I felt more ready for the future and I told her the hope was a good one-my wife was consulting a lawyer. Any day now I would get the telegram of release.

“It would not matter so much. You could make a settlement)” she said, and I could hear her sister’s voice speaking through her mouth.

“I have no savings,” I said. “I can’t outbid Pyle.” “Don’t worry. Something may happen. There are always ways,” she said. “My sister says you could take out a life-insurance,” and I thought how realistic it was of her not to minimise the importance of money and not to make any great and binding declarations of love. I wondered how Pyle over the years would stand that hard core, for Pyle was a romantic; hut then of course in his case there would be a good settlement, the hardness might soften like an unused muscle when the need for it vanished. The rich had it both ways.

That evening, before the shops had closed in the rue Catinat, Phuong bought three more silk scarves. She sat on the bed and displayed them to me, exclaiming at the bright colours, filling avoid with her singing voice, and then folding them carefully she laid them with a dozen others in her drawer: it was as though she were laying the foundation of a modest settlement. And I laid the crazy foundation of mine, writing a letter that very night to Pyle with the unreliable clarity and foresight of opium. This was what I wrote -I found it again the other day tucked into York Harding’s Role of the West. He must have been reading the book when my letter arrived. Perhaps he had used it as a bookmark and then not gone on reading.

“Bear Pyle,” I wrote, and was tempted for the only time to write, “Dear Alden,” for, after all, this was a bread-and-butter letter of some importance and it differed little from other bread-and-butter letters in containing a falsehood: “Dear Pyle, I have been meaning to write from the hospital to say thank you for the other night. You certainly saved me from an uncomfortable end. I’m moving about now with the help of a stick-I broke apparently in just the right place and age hasn’t yet reached my bones and made them brittle. We must have a party together some time to celebrate.” (My pen stuck on that word, and then, like an ant meeting an obstacle, went round it by another route.) “I’ve got something else to celebrate and I know you will be glad of this, too, for you’ve always said that Phuong’s interests were what we both wanted. I found a letter from my wife waiting when I got back, and she’s more or less agreed to divorce me. So you don’t need to worry any more about Phuong”-it was a cruel phrase, but I didn’t realise the cruelty until I read the letter over and then it was too late to alter. If I were going to scratch that out, I had better tear the whole letter up.

“Which scarf do you like best?” Phuong asked. “I love the yellow.”

“Yes. The yellow. Go down to the hotel and post this letter for me.”

She looked at the address. “I could take it to the Legation. It would save a stamp.” “I would rather you posted it.”

Then I lay back and in the relaxation of the opium I thought, ‘At ‘least she won’t leave me now before I go, and perhaps, somehow, tomorrow, after a few more pipes, I shall think of a way to remain.’

Ordinary life goes on-that has saved many a man’s reason. Just as in an air-raid it proved impossible to be frightened all the time, so under the bombardment of routine jobs, of chance encounters, of impersonal anxieties, one lost for hours together the personal fear. The thoughts of the coming April, of leaving Indo-China, of the hazy future without Phuong, were affected by the day’s telegrams, the bulletins of the Vietnam Press, and by the illness of my assistant, an Indian called Dominguez (his family had come from Goa by way of Bombay) who had attended in my place the less important Press Conferences, kept a sensitive ear open to the tones of gossip and rumour, and took my messages to the cable-offices and the censorship. With the help of Indian traders, particularly in the north, in Haiphong, Nam Dinh and Hanoi, he ran his own personal intelligence service for my benefit, and I think he knew more accurately than the French High Command the location of Vietminh battalions within the Tonkin delta.

And because we never used our information except when it became news, and never passed any reports to the French Intelligence, he had the trust and the friendship of several Vietminh agents hidden in Saigon-Cholon. The fact that he was an Asiatic, in spite of his name, unquestionably helped.

I was fond of Dominguez: where other men carry their pride like a skin-disease on the surface, sensitive to the least touch, his pride was deeply hidden and reduced to the smallest proportion possible, I think, for any human being. All that you encountered in daily contact with him was gentleness and humility and an absolute love of truth: you would have had to he married to him to discover the pride. Perhaps truth and humility go together; so many lies come from our pride-in my profession a reporter’s pride, the desire to file a better story than the other man’s, and it was Dominguez who helped me not to care-to withstand all those telegrams from home asking why I had not covered so and so’s story or the report of someone else which I knew to be untrue. Now that he was ill I realised how much I owed him, why, he would even see that my car was full of petrol, and yet never once, with a phrase or a look, had he encroached on my private life. I believed he was a Roman Catholic, but I had no evidence for it beyond his name and the place of his origin-for all I knew from his conversation, he might have worshipped Krishna or gone on annual pilgrimages, pricked by a wire frame, to the Batu Caves. Now his illness came like a mercy, reprieving me from the treadmill of private anxiety. It was I now who had to attend the wearisome Press Conferences and hobble to my table at the Continental for a gossip with my colleagues; but I was less capable than Dominguez of telling truth from falsehood, and so I formed the habit of calling in on him in the evenings to discuss what I had heard. Sometimes one of his Indian friends was there, sitting beside the narrow iron bed in the lodgings Dominguez shared in one of the meaner streets off the Boulevard Gallieni. He would sit up straight in his bed with his feet tucked under him so that you had less the impression of visiting a sick man than of being received by a rajah or a priest. Sometimes when his fever was bad his face ran with sweat, but he never lost the clarity of his thoughts. It was as though his illness were happening to another person’s body. His landlady kept a jug of fresh lime by his side, but I never saw him take a drink-perhaps that would have been to admit that it was his own thirst, and his own body which suffered.

Of all the days just then that I visited him one I remember in particular. I had given up asking him how he was for fear that the question sounded like a reproach, and it was always he who inquired with great anxiety about my health and apologised for the stairs I had to climb. Then he said, “I would like you to meet a friend of mine. He has a story you should listen to.” “Yes?”

“I have his name written down because I know you find it difficult to remember Chinese names. We must not use it, of course. He has a warehouse on the Quai Mytho for junk metal.” “Important?” “It might be.” “Can you give me an idea?”

“I would rather you heard from him. There is something strange, but I don’t understand it.” The sweat was pouring down his face, but he just let it run as though the drops were alive and sacred-there was that much of the Hindu in him, he would never have endangered the life of a fly. He said, “How much do you know of your friend Pyle?”

“Not very much. Our tracks cross, that’s all. I haven’t seen him since Tanyin.” “What job does he do?”

“Economic Mission, but that covers a multitude of sins. I think he’s interested in home-industries-I suppose with an American business tie-up. I don’t like the way they keep the French fighting and cut out their business at the same time.”

“I heard him talking the other day at a party the Legation was giving to visiting Congressmen. They had put him on to brief them.”

“God help Congress,” I said, “he hasn’t been in the country six months.”

“He was talking about the old colonial powers-England and France, and how you two couldn’t expect to win the confidence of the Asiatics. That was where America came in now with clean hands.”

“Honolulu, Puerto Rico” I said, “New Mexico.” “Then someone asked him some stock question about the chances of the Government here ever beating the Vietminh and he said a Third Force could -do it. There was always a Third Force lo be found free from Communism and the taint of colonialism-national democracy he called it; you only had to find a leader and keep him safe from the old colonial powers.”

“It’s all in York Harding,” I said. “He had read it before he came out here. He talked about it his first week and he’s learned nothing.”

“He may have found his leader,” Dominguez said. “Would it matter?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what he does. But go and talk to my friend on the Quai Mytho.”

I went home to leave a note for Phuong in the rue Catinat and then drove down past the port as the sun set. The tables and chairs were out on the quai beside the steamers and the grey naval boats, and the little portable kitchens burned and bubbled. In the Boulevard de la Somme the hairdressers were busy under the trees and the fortune-tellers squatted against the walls with their soiled packs of cards. In Cholon you were in a different city where work seemed to be just beginning rather than petering out with the daylight. It was like driving into a pantomime set: the long vertical Chinese signs and the bright lights and the crowd of extras led you into the wings, where everything was suddenly so much darker and quieter. One such wing took me down again to the quai and a huddle of sampans, where the warehouses yawned in the shadow and no one was about.

I found the place with difficulty and almost by accident, the godown gates were open, and I could see the strange Picasso shapes of the junk-pile by the light of an old lamp: bedsteads, bathtubs, ashcans, the bonnets of cars, stripes of old colour where the light hit. I walked down a narrow track carved in the iron quarry and called out for Mr. Chou, but there was no reply. At the end of the godown a stair led up to what I supposed might be Mr. Chou’s house—I had apparently been directed to the back door, and I supposed that Dominguez had his reasons. Even the staircase was lined with junk, pieces of scrap-iron which might come in useful one day in this jackdaw’s nest of a house. There was one big room on the landing and a whole family sat and lay about in it with the effect of a camp which might be struck at any moment: small tea-cups stood about everywhere and there were lots of cardboard boxes full of unidentifiable objects and fibre suitcases ready strapped: there was an old lady sitting on a big bed, two boys and two girls, a baby crawling on the floor, three middle-aged women in old brown peasant-trousers and jackets, and two old men in a corner in blue silk mandarin coats playing mah jongg -they paid no attention to my coming: they played rapidly, identifying each piece by touch, and the noise was like shingle turning on a beach after a wave withdraws. No one paid any more attention than they did: only a cat leapt on to a cardboard box and a lean dog sniffed at me and withdrew.

“M. ‘Chou?” I asked, and two of the women shook their heads, and still no one regarded me, except that one of the women rinsed out a cup and poured tea from a pot which had been resting warm. in its silk-lined box. I sat down on the end of the bed next the old lady and a girl brought me the cup: it was as though I had been absorbed into the community with the cat and the dog-perhaps they had turned up the first time as fortuitously as I had. The baby crawled across the floor and pulled at my laces and no one reproved it: one didn’t in the East reprove children. Three commercial calendars were hanging on the walls, each with a girl in gay Chinese costume with bright pink cheeks. There was a big mirror mysteriously lettered Cafe de la Paix- perhaps It had got caught up accidentally in the junk: I felt caught up in it myself.

I drank slowly the green bitter tea, shifting the handleless cup from palm to palm as the heat scorched my fingers, and I wondered how long I ought to stay. I tried the family once in French, asking when they expected M. Chou to return, but no one replied: they had probably not understood. When my cup was empty they refilled it and continued their own occupations: a woman ironing, a girl sewing, the two boys at their lessons, the old lady looking at her feet, the tiny crippled feet of old China-and the dog watching the cat, which stayed on the cardboard boxes.

I began to realise how hard Dominguez worked for his lean living.

A Chinese of extreme emaciation came into the room: he seemed to take up no room at all: he was like the piece of grease-proof paper that divides the biscuits in a tin. The only thickness he had was in his striped flannel pyjamas. “M. Chou?” I asked.

He looked at me with the indifferent gaze of a smoker: the sunken cheeks, the baby wrists, the arms of a small girl-many years and many pipes had been needed to whittle him down to these dimensions. I said, “My friend, M. Dominguez, said that you had something to show me-You are M. Chou?”

Oh yes, he said, he was M. Chou and waved me courteously back to my seat. I could tell that the object of my coming had been lost somewhere within the smoky corridors of his skull. I would have a cup of tea? he was much honoured by my visit. Another cup was rinsed on to the floor and put like a live coal into my hands-the ordeal by tea. I commented on the size of his family.

He looked round with faint surprise as though he had never seen it in that light before. “My mother,” he said, “my wife, my sister, my uncle, my brother, my children, my aunt’s children.” The baby had rolled away from my feet and lay on ifs back kicking and crowing. I wondered to whom it belonged. No one seemed young enough-or old enough-to have produced that. I said, “M. Dominguez told me it was important.” “Ah, M. Dominguez. I hope M. Dominguez is well?” “He has had a fever.”

“It is an unhealthy time of year.” I wasn’t convinced that he even remembered who Dominguez was. He began to cough, and under his pyjama jacket, which had lost two buttons, the tight skin twanged like a native drum.

“You should see a doctor yourself,” I said. A newcomer joined us-I hadn’t heard him. enter. He was a young man neatly dressed in European clothes. He said in English, “Mr. Chou has only one lung.”’ “I am very sorry . . .”

“He smokes one hundred and fifty pipes every day.” “That sounds a lot.”

“The doctor says it will do him no good, but Mr. Chou feels much happier when he smokes.” I made an understanding grunt. “If I may introduce myself, I am Mr. Chou’s manager.”

“My name is Fowlair. Mr. Dominguez sent me. He said that Mr. Chon had something to tell me.”

“Mr. Chou’s memory is very much impaired. Will you have a cup of tea?”

“Thank you, I have had three cups already.” It sounded like a question and an answer in a phrase-hook.

Mr. Chou’s manager took the cup out of my hand and held it out to one of the girls, who after spilling the dregs on the floor again refilled it.

“That is not strong enough,” he said, and took it and tasted it himself, carefully rinsed it and refilled it from a second teapot. “That is better?” he asked. “Much better.”

Mr. Chou cleared his throat, but it was only for an immense expectoration into a tin spittoon decorated with pink blooms. The baby rolled up and down among the tea-dregs and the cat leaped from a cardboard box on to a suitcase.

“Perhaps it would be better if you talked to me,” the young man said. “My name is Mr. Heng.” “If you would tell me. . .”

“We will go down to the warehouse,”’ Mr. Heng said. “It is quieter there.”

I put out my hand to Mr. Chou, who allowed it to rest between his palms with a look of bewilderment, then gazed around the crowded room as though he were trying to fit me in. The sound of the turning shingle receded as we went down the stairs. Mr. Heng said, “Be careful. The last step is missing,” and he flashed a torch to guide me.

We were hack among the bedsteads and the bathtubs, and Mr. Heng led the way down a side aisle. When he had gone about twenty paces he stopped and shone his light on to a small iron drum. He said, “Do you see that?” “What about it?”

 

He turned it over and showed the trade mark: ‘Diolacton.

“It still means nothing to me.”

He said, “I had two of those drums here. They were picked up with other junk at the garage of Mr. Phan-Van’ Muoi. You know him?” “No, I don’t think so.” “His wife is a relation of General The.” “I still don’t quite see. . . ?” “Do you know what this is?” Mr. Heng asked, stooping and lifting along concave object like a stick of celery which glistened chromium in the light of his torch. “It might be a bath-fixture.”

 

“It is a mould,” Mr. Heng said. He was obviously a man who took a tiresome pleasure in giving instruction. He paused for me to show my ignorance again. “You understand what I mean by a mould?” “Oh yes, of course, but I still don’t follow . . .” “This mould was made in U.S.A. Diolacton is an American trade name. You begin to understand?” “Frankly, no.”

“There is a flaw in the mould. That was why it was thrown away. But it should not have been thrown away with the junk nor the drum either. That was a mistake. Mr. Muoi’s manager came here personally. I could not find the mould, but I let him have back the other drum. I said it was all I had, and he told me he needed them for storing chemicals. Of course, he did not ask for the mould-that would have given too much away-but he had a good search. Mr. Muoi himself called later at the American Legation and asked for Mr. Pyle.”

“You seem to have quite an Intelligence Service,” I said. I still couldn’t imagine what it was all about. “I asked Mr. Chou to get in touch with Mr. Dominguez.”

“You mean you’ve established a kind of connection between Pyle and the General,” I said. “A very slender one. It’s not news anyway. Everybody here goes in for Intelligence.”

Mr. Heng beat his heel against the black iron drum and the sound reverberated among the bedsteads. He said, “Mr. Fowlair, you are English. You are neutral. You have been fair to all of us. You can sympathise if some of us feel strongly on whatever side.” I said, “If you are hinting that you are a Communist, or a Vietminh, don’t worry. I’m not shocked. I have no politics.”

“If anything unpleasant happens here in Saigon, it will be blamed on us. My Committee would like you to take a fair view. That is why I have shown you this and this.”

“What is Diolacton?” I said. “It sounds like condensed milk.”

 

“It has something in common with milk.” Mr. Heng shone his torch inside the drum. A little white powder lay like dust on the bottom. “It is one of the American plastics,” he said.

“I heard a rumour that Pyle was importing plastic for toys.” I picked up the mould and looked at it. I tried in my mind to divine its shape. This was not how the object itself would look: this was the image in a mirror, reversed. “Not for toys,” Mr. Heng said. “It is like parts of a rod.” “The shape is unusual.” “I can’t see what it could be for.”

Mr. Heng turned away. “I only want you to remember what you have seen,” he said, walking back in the shadows of the junk-pile. “Perhaps one day you will have a reason for writing about it. But you must not say you saw the drum here.” “Nor the mould?” I asked. “Particularly not the mould.”

 

 

(3)

 

 

It is not easy the first time to meet again one who has saved-as they put it-one’s life. I had not seen Pyle while I was in the Legion Hospital, and his absence and silence, easily accountable (for he was more sensitive to embarrassment than I), sometimes worried me unreasonably, so that at night before my sleeping drug had soothed me I would imagine him going up my stairs, knocking at my door, sleeping in my bed. I had been unjust to him in that, and so I had added a sense of guilt to my other more formal obligation. And then I suppose there was also the guilt of my letter. (What distant ancestors had given me this stupid conscience? Surely they were free of it when they raped and killed m their palaeolithic world.)

Should I invite my saviour to dinner, I sometimes wondered, or should I suggest a meeting for a drink in the bar of the Continental? It was an unusual social problem, perhaps depending on the value one attributed to one’s life. A meal and a bottle of wine or a double whisky?-it had worried me for some days until the problem was solved by Pyle himself, who came and shouted at me through my closed door. I was sleeping through the hot afternoon, exhausted by the morning’s effort to use my leg, and I hadn’t heard his knock.

“Thomas, Thomas.” The call dropped into a dream I was having of walking down a long empty road looking for a turning which never came. The road unwound like a tape-machine with a uniformity that would never have altered if the voice hadn’t broken in-first of all like a voice crying in pain from a tower and then suddenly a voice speaking to me personally, “Thomas, Thomas.”

Under my breath I said, “Go away, Pyle. Don’t come near me. I don’t want to be saved.”

“Thomas.” He was hitting at my door, but I lay possum as though I were back in the rice field and he was an enemy. Suddenly I realised that the knocking had stopped, someone was speaking in a low voice outside and someone was replying. Whispers are dangerous. I couldn’t tell who the speakers were. I got carefully off the bed and with the help of my stick reached the door of the other room. Perhaps I had moved too hurriedly and they had heard me, because a silence grew outside. Silence like a plant put out tendrils: it seemed to grow under the door and spread its leaves m the room where I stood. It was a silence I didn’t like, and I tore it apart by flinging the door open. Phuong stood in the passage and Pyle had his hands on her shoulders: from their attitude they might have parted from a kiss. “Why, come in,” I said, “come in.” “I couldn’t make you hear,” Pyle said. “I was asleep at first, and then I didn’t want to be disturbed. But I am disturbed, so come in.” I said in French to Phuong, “Where did you pick him up?”

“Here. In the passage,” she said. “I heard him knocking, so I ran upstairs to let him in.”

“Sit down,” I said to Pyle. “Will you have some coffee?” “No, and I don’t want to sit down, Thomas.” “I must. This leg gets tired. You got my letter?” “Yes. I wish you hadn’t written it,” “Why?”

“Because it was a pack of lies. I trusted you, Thomas.” “You shouldn’t trust anyone when there’s a woman in the case.”

“Then you needn’t trust me after this. I’ll come sneaking up here when you go out, I’ll write letters in typewritten envelopes. Maybe I’m growing up, Thomas.” But there were tears in his voice, and he looked younger than he had ever done. “Couldn’t you have won without lying?”

“No. This is European duplicity, Pyle. We have to make up for our lack of supplies. I must have been clumsy though. How did you spot the lies?”

“It was her sister,” he said. “She’s working for Joe now. I saw her just now. She knows you’ve been called home.” “Oh, that,” I said with relief. “Phuong knows it too.” “And the letter from your wife? Does Phuong know bout that? Her sister’s seen it.”

“How?”

“She came here to meet Phuong when you were out yesterday and Phuong showed it to her. You can’t deceive her. She reads English.”

“I see.” There wasn’t any point in being angry with anyone-the offender was too obviously myself, an-d Phuong had probably only shown the letter as a kind of boast-it wasn’t a sign of mistrust.

“You knew all this last night?” I asked Phuong. “Yes.”

“I noticed you were quiet.” I touched her arm. “What a fury you might have been, but you’re Phuong-you are no fury.”

“I had to think,” she said, and I remembered how waking in the night I had told from the irregularity of her breathing that she was not asleep. I’d put my arm out to her and asked her “Le cauchemar?” She used to suffer from nightmares when she first came to the rue Catinat, but last night she had shaken her head at the suggestion: her back was turned to me and I had moved my leg against her-the first move in the formula of intercourse. I had noticed nothing wrong even then. “Can’t you explain, Thomas, why . . .” “Surely it’s obvious enough. I wanted to keep her.” “At any cost to her?” “Of course.” “That’s not love.”

“Perhaps it’s not your way of love, Pyle.” “I want to protect her.”

“I don’t. She doesn’t need protection. I want her around, I want her in my bed.’” “Against her will?”

“She wouldn’t stay against her will, Pyle.” “She can’t love you after this.” His ideas were as simple as that. I turned to look for her. She had gone through to the bedroom and was pulling the counterpane straight where I had lain: then she took one of her picture books from a shelf and sat on the bed as though she were quite unconcerned with our talk. I could tell what book it was-a pictorial record of the Queen’s life. I could see upside-down the state coach on the way to Westminster.

“Love’s a Western word,” I said. “We use it for sentimental reasons or to cover up an obsession with one woman. These people don’t suffer from obsessions. You’re going to be hurt, Pyle, if you aren’t careful.” “I’d have beaten you up if it wasn’t for that leg.’ “You should be grateful to me-and Phuong’s sister, of course. You can go ahead without scruples now-and you are very scrupulous in some ways, aren’t you, when it doesn’t come to plastics.” “Plastics?”

“I hope to God you know what you are doing there. Oh, I know your motives are good, they always are.” He looked puzzled and suspicious. “I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings. And that applies to your country too, Pyle.” “I want to give her a decent life. This place-smells.” “We keep the smell down with joss sticks. I suppose you’ll offer her a deep freeze and a car for herself and the newest television set and . . .” “And children,” he said.

“Bright young American citizens ready to testify.” “And what will you give her? You weren’t going to take her home.”

“No, I’m not that cruel. Unless I can afford her a return ticket.”

“You’ll just keep her as a comfortable lay until you leave.”

“She’s a human being, Pyle. She’s capable of deciding.” “On faked evidence. And a child at that.” “She’s no child. She’s tougher than you’ll ever be. Do you know the kind of polish that doesn’t take scratches? That’s Phuong. She can survive a, dozen of us. She’ll get old, that’s all. She’ll suffer from childbirth and hunger and cold and rheumatism, but she’ll never suffer like we do from thoughts, obsessions-she won’t scratch, she’ll only decay.”

But even while I made my speech and watched her turn the page (a family group with Princess Anne), I knew I was inventing a character just as much as Pyle was. One never knows another human being; for all I could tell, she was as scared as the rest of us: she didn’t have the gift of expression, that was all. And I remembered that first tormenting year when I had tried so passionately to understand her, when I had begged her to tell me what she thought and had scared her with my unreasoning anger at her silences. Even my desire had been a weapon, as though when one plunged one’s sword towards the victim’s womb) she would lose control and speak.

“You’ve said enough,” I told Pyle. “You know all there is to know. Please go.” “Phuong” he called.

“Monsieur Pyle?” she inquired, looking up from the scrutiny of Windsor Castle, and her formality was comic and reassuring at that moment. “He’s cheated you.” “Je ne comprends pas.”’

“Oh, go away” I said. “Go to your Third Force and York Harding and the Role of Democracy. Go away and play with plastics.”

Later I had to admit that he had carried out my instructions to the letter.