‘They aren’t interested in Thé either. And do you think they would dare to touch an American? He has diplomatic privileges. He’s a graduate of Harvard. The Minister’s very fond of Pyle. Heng, there was a woman there whose baby—she kept it covered under her straw hat. I can’t get it out of my head. And there was another in Phat Diem.’
‘You must try to be calm, Mr Fowler.’
‘What’ll he do next, Heng?’
‘Would you be prepared to help us, Mr Fowler?’
‘He comes blundering in and people have to die for his mistakes. I wish your people had got him on the river from Nam Dinh. It would have made a lot of difference to a lot of lives.’
‘I agree with you, Mr Fowler. He has to be restrained. I have a suggestion to make.’ Somebody coughed delicately behind the door, then noisily spat. He said, ‘If you would invite him to dinner tonight at the Vieux Moulin. Between eight thirty and nine thirty.’
‘What good . . . ?’
‘We would talk to him on the way,’ Heng said.
‘He may be engaged.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if you asked him to call on you—at six thirty. He will be free then: he will certainly come. If he is able to have dinner with you, take a book to your window as though you want to catch the light.’
‘Why the Vieux Moulin?’
‘It is by the bridge to Dakow—I think we shall be able to find a spot and talk undisturbed.’
‘What will you do?’
‘You do not want to know that, Mr Fowler. But I promise you we will act as gently as the situation allows.’
The unseen friends of Heng shifted like rats behind the wall. ‘Will you do this for us, Mr Fowler?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Sooner or later,’ Heng said, and I was reminded of Captain Trouin speaking in the opium house, ‘one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.’
II
I left a note at the Legation asking Pyle to come and then I went up the street to the Continental for a drink. The wreckage was all cleared away; the fire-brigade had hosed the square. I had no idea then how the time and the place would become important. I even thought of sitting there throughout the evening and breaking my appointment. Then I thought that perhaps I could frighten Pyle into inactivity by warning him of his danger—whatever his danger was, and so I finished my beer and went home, and when I reached home I began to hope that Pyle would not come. I tried to read, but there was nothing on my shelves to hold the attention. Perhaps I should have smoked, but there was no one to prepare my pipe. I listened unwillingly for footsteps and at last they came. Somebody knocked. I opened the door, but it was only Dominguez.
I said, ‘What do you want, Dominguez?’
He looked at me with an air of surprise. ‘Want?’ He looked at his watch. ‘This is the time I always come. Have you any cables?’
‘I’m sorry—I’d forgotten. No.’
‘But a follow-up on the bomb? Don’t you want something filed?’
‘Oh, work one out for me, Dominguez. I don’t know how it is—being there on the spot, perhaps I got a bit shocked. I can’t think of the thing in terms of a cable.’ I hit out at a mosquito which came droning at my ear and saw Dominguez wince instinctively at my blow. ‘It’s all right, Dominguez, I missed it.’ He grinned miserably. He could not justify this reluctance to take life: after all he was a Christian—one of those who had learnt from Nero how to make human bodies into candles.
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ he asked. He didn’t drink, he didn’t eat meat, he didn’t kill—I envied him the gentleness of his mind.
‘No, Dominguez. Just leave me alone tonight.’ I watched him from the window, going away across the rue Catinat. A trishaw driver had parked beside the pavement opposite my window; Dominguez tried to engage him, but the man shook his head. Presumably he was waiting for a client in one of the shops, for this was not a parking place for trishaws. When I looked at my watch it was strange to see that I had been waiting for little more than ten minutes, and, when Pyle knocked, I hadn’t even heard his step.
‘Come in.’ But as usual it was the dog that came in first.
‘I was glad to get your note, Thomas. This morning I thought you were mad at me.’
‘Perhaps I was. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’
‘You know so much now, it won’t hurt to tell you a bit more. I saw Thé this afternoon.’
‘Saw him? Is he in Saigon? I suppose he came to see how his bomb worked.’
‘That’s in confidence, Thomas. I dealt with him very severely.’ He spoke like the captain of a school-team who has found one of his boys breaking his training. All the same I asked him with a certain hope, ‘Have you thrown him over?’
‘I told him that if he made another uncontrolled demonstration we would have no more to do with him.’
‘But haven’t you finished with him already, Pyle?’ I pushed impatiently at his dog which was nosing around my ankles.
‘I can’t. (Sit down, Duke.) In the long run he’s the only hope we have. If he came to power with our help, we could rely on him . . .’
‘How many people have to die before you realize . . . ?’ But I could tell that it was a hopeless argument.
‘Realize what, Thomas?’
‘That there’s no such thing as gratitude in politics.’
‘At least they won’t hate us like they hate the French.’
‘Are you sure? Sometimes we have a kind of love for our enemies and sometimes we feel hate for our friends.’
‘You talk like a European, Thomas. These people aren’t complicated.’
‘Is that what you’ve learned in a few months? You’ll be calling them childlike next.’
‘Well—in a way.’
‘Find me an uncomplicated child, Pyle. When we are young we are a jungle of complications. We simplify as we get older.’ But what good was it to talk to him? There was an unreality in both our arguments. I was becoming a leader-writer before my time. I got up and went to the bookshelf.
‘What are you looking for, Thomas?’
‘Oh, just a passage I used to be fond of. Can you have dinner with me, Pyle?’
‘I’d love to, Thomas. I’m so glad you aren’t mad any longer. I know you disagree with me, but we can disagree, can’t we, and be friends?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘After all, Phuong was much more important than this.’
‘Do you really believe that, Pyle?’
‘Why, she’s the most important thing there is. To me. And to you, Thomas.’
‘Not to me any longer.’
‘It was a terrible shock today, Thomas, but in a week, you’ll see, we’ll have forgotten it. We are looking after the relatives too.’
‘We?’
‘We’ve wired to Washington. We’ll get permission to use some of our funds.’
I interrupted him. ‘The Vieux Moulin? Between nine and nine thirty?’
‘Where you like, Thomas.’ I went to the window. The sun had sunk below the roofs. The trishaw driver still waited for his fare. I looked down at him and he raised his face to me.
‘Are you waiting for someone, Thomas?’
‘No. There was just a piece I was looking for.’ To cover my action I read, holding the book up to the last light:
‘I drive through the streets and I care not a damn,
The people they stare, and they ask who I am;
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.’
‘That’s a funny kind of poem,’ Pyle said with a note of disapproval.
‘He was an adult poet in the nineteenth century. There weren’t so many of them.’ I looked down into the street again. The trishaw driver had moved away.
‘Have you run out of drink?’ Pyle asked.
‘No, but I thought you didn’t . . .’
‘Perhaps I’m beginning to loosen up,’ Pyle said. ‘Your influence. I guess you’re good for me, Thomas.’
I got the bottle and glasses—I forgot one of them the first journey and then I had to go back for water. Everything that I did that evening took a long time. He said, ‘You know, I’ve got a wonderful family, but maybe they were a little on the strict side. We have one of those old houses in Chestnut Street, as you go up the hill on the right-hand side. My mother collects glass, and my father—when he’s not eroding his old cliffs—picks up all the Darwin manuscripts and association-copies he can. You see, they live in the past. Maybe that’s why York made such an impression on me. He seemed kind of open to modern conditions. My father’s an isolationist.’
‘Perhaps I would like your father,’ I said. ‘I’m an isolationist too.’
For a quiet man Pyle that night was in a talking mood. I didn’t hear all that he said, for my mind was elsewhere. I tried to persuade myself that Mr Heng had other means at his disposal but the crude and obvious one. But in a war like this, I knew, there is no time to hesitate: one uses the weapon to hand—the French the napalm bomb, Mr Heng the bullet or the knife. I told myself too late that I wasn’t made to be a judge—I would let Pyle talk awhile and then I would warn him. He could spend the night at my house. They would hardly break in there. I think he was speaking of the old nurse he had had—‘She really meant more to me than my mother, and the blueberry pies she used to make!’ when I interrupted him. ‘Do you carry a gun now—since that night?’
‘No. We have orders in the Legation . . .’
‘But you’re on special duties?’
‘It wouldn’t do any good—if they wanted to get me, they always could. Anyway I’m as blind as a coot. At college they called me Bat—because I could see in the dark as well as they could. Once when we were fooling around . . .’ He was off again. I returned to the window.
A trishaw driver waited opposite. I wasn’t sure—they looked so much alike, but I thought he was a different one. Perhaps he really had a client. It occurred to me that Pyle would be safest at the Legation. They must have laid their plans, since my signal, for later in the evening: something that involved the Dakow bridge. I couldn’t understand why or how: surely he would not be so foolish as to drive through Dakow after sunset and our side of the bridge was always guarded by armed police.
‘I’m doing all the talking,’ Pyle said. ‘I don’t know how it is, but somehow this evening . . .’
‘Go on,’ I said, ‘I’m in a quiet mood, that’s all. Perhaps we’d better cancel that dinner.’
‘No, don’t do that. I’ve felt cut off from you, since . . . well . . .’
‘Since you saved my life,’ I said and couldn’t disguise the bitterness of my self-inflicted wound.
‘No, I didn’t mean that. All the same how we talked, didn’t we, that night? As if it was going to be our last. I learned a lot about you, Thomas. I don’t agree with you, mind, but for you maybe it’s right—not being involved. You kept it up all right, even after your leg was smashed you stayed neutral.’
‘There’s always a point of change,’ I said. ‘Some moment of emotion . . .’
‘You haven’t reached it yet. I doubt if you ever will. And I’m not likely to change either—except with death,’ he added merrily.
‘Not even with this morning? Mightn’t that change a man’s views?’
‘They were only war casualties,’ he said. ‘It was a pity, but you can’t always hit your target. Anyway they died in the right cause.’
‘Would you have said the same if it had been your old nurse with her blueberry pie?’
He ignored my facile point. ‘In a way you could say they died for democracy,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t know how to translate that into Vietnamese.’ I was suddenly very tired. I wanted him to go away quickly and die. Then I could start life again—at the point before he came in.
‘You’ll never take me seriously, will you, Thomas?’ he complained, with that schoolboy gaiety which he seemed to have kept up his sleeve for this night of all nights. ‘I tell you what—Phuong’s at the cinema—what about you and me spending the whole evening together? I’ve nothing to do now.’ It was as though someone from outside were directing him how to choose his words in order to rob me of any possible excuse. He went on. ‘Why don’t we go to the Chalet? I haven’t been there since that night. The food is just as good as the Vieux Moulin, and there’s music.’
I said, ‘I’d rather not remember that night.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m a dumb fool sometimes, Thomas. What about a Chinese dinner in Cholon?’
‘To get a good one you have to order in advance. Are you scared of the Vieux Moulin, Pyle? It’s well wired and there are always police on the bridge. And you wouldn’t be such a fool, would you, as to drive through Dakow?’
‘It wasn’t that. I just thought it would be fun tonight to make a long evening of it.’
He made a movement and upset his glass, which smashed upon the floor. ‘Good luck,’ he said mechanically. ‘I’m sorry, Thomas.’ I began to pick up the pieces and pack them into the ash-tray. ‘What about it, Thomas?’ The smashed glass reminded me of the bottles in the Pavillion bar dripping their contents. ‘I warned Phuong I might be out with you.’ How badly chosen was the word ‘warn’. I picked up the last piece of glass. ‘I have got an engagement at the Majestic,’ I said, ‘and I can’t manage before nine.’
‘Well, I guess I’ll have to go back to the office. Only I’m always afraid of getting caught.’
There was no harm in giving him that one chance. ‘Don’t mind being late,’ I said. ‘If you do get caught, look in here later. I’ll come back at ten, if you can’t make dinner, and wait for you.’
‘I’ll let you know . . .’
‘Don’t bother. Just come to the Vieux Moulin—or meet me here.’ I handed back the decision to that Somebody in whom I didn’t believe: You can intervene if You want to: a telegram on his desk: a message from the Minister. You cannot exist unless you have the power to alter the future. ‘Go away now, Pyle. There are things I have to do.’ I felt a strange exhaustion, hearing him go away and the pad of his dog’s paws.
III
There were no trishaw drivers nearer than the rue d’Ormay when I went out. I walked down to the Majestic and stood awhile watching the unloading of the American bombers. The sun had gone and they worked by the light of arc-lamps. I had no idea of creating an alibi, but I told Pyle I was going to the Majestic and I felt an unreasoning dislike of telling more lies than were needed.
‘Evening, Fowler.’ It was Wilkins.
‘Evening.’
‘How’s the leg?’
‘No trouble now.’
‘Got a good story filed?’
‘I left it to Dominguez.’
‘Oh, they told me you were there.’
‘Yes, I was. But space is tight these days. They won’t want much.’
‘The spice has gone out of the dish, hasn’t it?’ Wilkins said. ‘We ought to have lived in the days of Russell and the old Times. Dispatches by balloon. One had time to do some fancy writing then. Why, he’d even have made a column out of this. The luxury hotel, the bombers, night falling. Night never falls nowadays, does it, at so many piastres a word.’ From far up in the sky you could faintly hear the noise of laughter: somebody broke a glass as Pyle had done. The sound fell on us like icicles. ‘“The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men,”’ Wilkins malevolently quoted. ‘Doing anything tonight, Fowler? Care for a spot of dinner?’
‘I’m dining as it is. At the Vieux Moulin.’
‘I wish you joy. Granger will be there. They ought to advertise special Granger nights. For those who like background noise.’
I said good night to him and went into the cinema next door—Errol Flynn, or it may have been Tyrone Power (I don’t know how to distinguish them in tights), swung on
ropes and leapt from balconies and rode bareback into technicolour dawns. He rescued a girl and killed his enemy and led a charmed life. It was what they call a film for boys, but the sight of Oedipus emerging with his bleeding eyeballs from the palace at Thebes would surely give a better training for life today. No life is charmed. Luck had been with Pyle at Phat Diem and on the road from Tanyin, but luck doesn’t last, and they had two hours to see that no charm worked. A French soldier sat beside me with his hand in a girl’s lap, and I envied the simplicity of his happiness or his misery, whichever it might be. I left before the film was over and took a trishaw to the Vieux Moulin.
The restaurant was wired in against grenades and two armed policemen were on duty at the end of the bridge. The patron, who had grown fat on his own rich Burgundian cooking, let me through the wire himself. The place smelt of capons and melting butter in the heavy evening heat.
‘Are you joining the party of M Granjair?’ he asked me.
‘No.’
‘A table for one?’ It was then for the first time that I thought of the future and the questions I might have to answer. ‘For one,’ I said, and it was almost as though I had said aloud that Pyle was dead.
There was only one room and Granger’s party occupied a large table at the back; the patron gave me a small one closest to the wire. There were no window-panes, for fear of splintered glass. I recognized a few of the people Granger was entertaining, and I bowed to them before I sat down: Granger himself looked away. I hadn’t seen him for months—only once since the night Pyle fell in love. Perhaps some offensive remark I had made that evening had penetrated the alcoholic fog, for he sat scowling at the head of the table while Madame Desprez, the wife of a public-relations officer, and Captain Duparc of the Press Liaison Service nodded and becked. There was a big man whom I think was an hôtelier from Pnom Penh and a French girl I’d never seen before and two or three other faces that I had only observed in bars. It seemed for once to be a quiet party.
I ordered a pastis because I wanted to give Pyle time to come—plans go awry and so long as I did not begin to eat my dinner it was as though I still had time to hope. And then I wondered what I hoped for. Good luck to the O.S.S. or whatever his gang were called? Long life to plastic bombs and General Thé? Or did I—I of all people—hope for some kind of miracle: a method of discussion arranged by Mr Heng which wasn’t simply death? How much easier it would have been if we had both been killed on the road from Tanyin. I sat for twenty minutes over my pastis and then I ordered dinner. It would soon be half past nine: he wouldn’t come now.
The Quiet American Page 18
