The Quiet American

CHAPTER III

(1)

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 sitser 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 cleanshaven cheeks and his big laugh; all his identity escapes meexcept 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-1 think he was the postmaster, but he may have been the mayorfollowed 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. Bompier-re'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 lifee 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 tihe 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-1 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 yoJii 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-1 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 con-suiting 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 amodest 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 -1

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 hos-pital 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-1 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 oyer 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 IndoChina, 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 homeindustries-1 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 colonialismnational 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 plam 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-1 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 Fowler. 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. "11 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: 'Diolac-ton.

"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. Fowler, 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 poll-tics."

"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 1), 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 tapemachine* with a uniformity that would never have altered if the voice hadn't broken infirst 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 ricefield 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 suryive 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.