The Quiet American

by Graham Greene

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

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

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

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

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

  3

  I

  I came slowly up the stairs to the flat in the rue Catinat, pausing and resting on the first landing. The old women gossiped as they always had 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 the 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 hospital, but she wrote French with difficulty, and I couldn’t read Vietnamese. I knocked on the door and it opened immediately and everything seemed to be the same. I watched her closely while she asked how I was and touched my splinted leg and gave me her shoulder to lean on, as though one could lean with safety on so young a plant. I said, ‘I’m glad to be home.’

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

  ‘How have you amused yourself?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I have seen my sister often. She has found a post with the Americans.’

  ‘She has, has she? Did Pyle help?’

  ‘Not Pyle, Joe.’

  ‘Who’s Joe?’

  ‘You know him. The Economic Attaché.’

  ‘Oh, of course, Joe.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Has a call come for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you give it me?’

  ‘It is too soon for you to work. You must lie down and rest.’

  ‘This may not be work.’

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

  ‘Yes.’ I said. ‘It is work. How did you know? Why did you open it?’

  ‘I thought it was from your wife. I hoped that it was good news.’

  ‘Who translated it for you?’

  ‘I took it to my sister.’

  ‘If it had been bad news would you have left me, Phuong?’

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

  ‘Did you open that too?’

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

  This envelope was among the scarves. She took it gingerly out and laid it on the bed. I recognized the hand-writing. ‘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, ‘I’m 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.

  ‘It is from her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Before I read it I began to wonder whether at the end I 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 realized 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 your letter that you don’t really expect a “favourable” reply. “I’ll have done my best”—aren’t you thinking that? What would you do if I cabled “Yes”? Would you actually marry her? (I have to write “her”—you don’t tell me her name.) Perhaps you would. I suppose like the rest of us you are getting old and don’t like living alone. I feel very lonely myself sometimes. I gather Anne has found another companion. But you left her in time.’

  She had found the dried scab accurately. I drank again. An issue of blood—the phrase came into my mind.

  ‘Let me make you a pipe,’ Phuong said.

  ‘Anything,’ I said, ‘anything.’

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

  I felt physically sick. It was a long time since I had received a letter from my wife. I had forced her to write it and I could feel her pain in every line. Her pain struck at my pain: we were back at the old routine of hurting each other. If only it were possible to love without injury—fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again—I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower.

  Phuong lit the opium lamp. ‘Will she let you marry me?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Doesn’t she say?’

  ‘If she does, she says it very slowly.’

  I thought, ‘How much you pride yourself on being dégagé, the reporter, not the leader-writer, and what a mess you make behind the scenes. The other kind of war is more innocent than this. One does less damage with a mortar.’

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

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

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

  ‘She says “No”?’

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

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

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

  ‘I have no savings,’ I said. ‘I can’t outbid Pyle.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Something may happen. There are always ways,’ she said. ‘My sister says you could take out a life-insurance,’ and I thought how realistic it was of her not to minimize 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; but 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 a void with her singing voice, and then folding them carefully she laid them with a dozen others in her drawer: it was as though she were laying the foundation of a modest settlement. And I laid the crazy foundation of mine, writing a letter that very night to Pyle with the unreliable clarity and foresight of opium. This was what I wrote—I found it again the other day tucked into York Harding’s Rôle 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.

  ‘Dear 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 from other bread-and-butter letters in containing a falsehood:

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

  ‘Which scarf do you like best?’ Phuong asked. ‘I love the yellow.’

  ‘Yes. The yellow. Go down to the hotel and post this letter for me.’

  She looked at the address. ‘I could take it to the Legation. It would save a stamp.’

  ‘I would rather you posted it.’

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

  II

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