The Quiet American

CHAPTER II

(1)

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. Gaodaism, the invention of a Cochin* civil servant,* was a synthesis of the three religions. The Holy See was at Tanyin. A Pope and female car-dinals. 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 Gaodaists.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, MoroccansorSenegalese.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 im-patience, 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 ricefields into the ricefields of the Hoa-Haos and thence into the ricefields 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. "Re-rmember God loves th& 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 inio 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 meatyou 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. Fowler," 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 lionlike 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 tor 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 ennded 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 con-versation 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 mihtary 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, woldn'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 Attache-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 stright?' It belonged to a psychological world of great simpilicity, 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 1."

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 1." 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 sunthey 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 noiw 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 wallthe 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-1 don't believe he'd heard aword 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 sergeantmajor, "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 YorkHarding 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 con-cepts? 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

121

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 engage.'"*

i "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 indi-vidual 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, enly the shallow stretch of water on either side gave a kind of icing to the warmth. I started out towards the car, and fora 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-Fowler." (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 1. 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 tha^ 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 Irttle 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-1 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. Fowler?" "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 athing 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.fiffty."

"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 terrifled of losing her. I thought I saw her changing--I don't know if she really was, but I couldn't bear the uncertainty any longer. Iran towards the finish just like a coward runs towards the enemy andwinsa 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 encour-arement 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 ahundred 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 sexisn*tthe 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 awoman 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 itrwas an attack-itincreasedourchances. "Are you scared, Thomas?" "Of course I am. With all my instincts. Bat wiihmy 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'dbetterleavehim 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 Morriage-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 embrasuTe was like walking through the voice. I looked quickly out: there was nothing to be seen-1 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. Pylesaid sharply, "Drop your rifle." I had just time to wonder whether the sten was unloaded-1 hadn't hothered to lookwhen the man threw his rifle down. I crossed the room and picked it up. Then the voice began again-1 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. "Perhapsabazooka.perhapsaViet." Pyle exauained bis 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 outfast." "They may be waiting at the bottom."

"Yes."

The two men watched us-1 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 sihoot 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. Comeon." It wasn't my war, but I wished those others in the dark knew that as well. I blew the oillamp 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-1 don't know how deep. Ready?" "Yes"

"Thanks for the company." "Alwaysapleasure,"Pylesaid. 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 retarn. "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 vou, 'Pvie, 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 w^ant 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 bullfrog.

"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. 1. 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'-1 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 onr 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 w^rong 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 hav^e 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-1 didn't even have to suffer much pain after the hypodermic of morphia had bitten my leg.