The Quiet American (15 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It still means nothing to me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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