‘I remember thinking before I went to sleep how convenient it would be if there were an attack and you were killed. A hero’s death. For Democracy.’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Thomas.’ He shifted his long limbs uneasily. ‘I must seem a bit dumb to you, but I know when you’re kidding.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I know if you come clean you want what’s best for her.’
It was then I heard Phuong’s step. I had hoped against hope that he would have gone before she returned. He heard it too and recognized it. He said, ‘There she is,’ although he had had only one evening to learn her footfall. Even the dog got up and stood by the door, which I had left open for coolness, almost as though he accepted her as one of Pyle’s family. I was an intruder.
Phuong said, ‘My sister was not in,’ and looked guardedly at Pyle.
I wondered whether she were telling the truth or whether her sister had ordered her to hurry back.
‘You remember Monsieur Pyle?’ I said.
‘Enchantée.’ She was on her best behaviour.
‘I’m so pleased to see you again,’ he said, blushing.
‘Comment?’
‘Her English is not very good,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid my French is awful. I’m taking lessons though. And I can understand—if Phuong will speak slowly.’
‘I’ll act as interpreter,’ I said. ‘The local accent takes some getting used to. Now what do you want to say? Sit down, Phuoug. Monsieur Pyle has come specially to see you. Are you sure,’ I added to Pyle. ‘that you wouldn’t like me to leave you two alone?’
‘I want you to hear everything I have to say. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.’
‘Well, fire away.’
He said solemnly, as though this part he had learned by heart, that he had a great love and respect for Phuong. He had felt it ever since the night he had danced with her. I was reminded a little of a butler showing a party of tourists over a ‘great house.’ The great house was his heart, and of the private apartments where the family lived we were given only a rapid and surreptitious glimpse. I translated for him with meticulous care—it sounded worse that way, and Phuong sat quiet with her hands in her lap as though she were listening to a movie.
‘Has she understood that?’ he asked.
‘As far as I can tell. You don’t want me to add a little fire to it do you?’
‘Oh no.’ he said, ‘just translate. I don’t want to sway her emotionally.’
‘I see.’
‘Tell her I want to marry her.’
I told her.
‘What was that she said?’
‘She asked me if you were serious. I told her you were the serious type.’
‘I suppose this is an odd situation,’ he said. ‘Me asking you to translate.’
‘Rather odd.’
‘And yet it seems so natural. After all you are my best friend.’
‘It’s kind of you to say so.’
‘There’s nobody I’d go to in trouble sooner than you,’ he said.
‘And I suppose being in love with my girl is a kind of trouble?’
‘Of course. I wish it was anybody but you, Thomas.’
‘Well, what do I say to her next. That you can’t live without her?’
‘No, that’s too emotional. It’s not quite true either. I’d have to go away, of course, but one gets over everything.’
‘While you are thinking what to say, do you mind if I put in a word for myself?’
‘No, of course not, it’s only fair, Thomas.’
‘Well, Phuong,’ I said, ‘are you going to leave me for him? He’ll marry you. I can’t. You know why.’
‘Are you going away?’ she asked and I thought of the editor’s letter in my pocket.
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘How can one promise that? He can’t either. Marriages break. Often they break quicker than an affair like ours.’
‘I do not want to go,’ she said, but the sentence was not comforting; it contained an unexpressed ‘but.’
Pyle said, ‘I think I ought to put all my cards on the table. I’m not rich. But when my father dies I’ll have about fifty thousand dollars. I’m in good health—I’ve got a medical certificate only two months old, and I can let her know my blood-group.’
‘I don’t know how to translate that. What’s it for?’
‘Well, to make certain we can have children together.’
‘Is that how you make love in America—figures of income and blood-group?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never done it before. Maybe at home my mother would talk to her mother.’
‘About your blood-group?’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Thomas. I expect I’m old-fashioned. You know I’m a little lost in this situation.’
‘So am I. Don’t you think we might call it off and dice for her?’
‘Now you are pretending to be tough, Thomas. I know you love her in your way as much as I do.’
‘Well, go on, Pyle.’
‘Tell her I don’t expect her to love me right away. That will come in time, but tell her what I offer is security and respect. That doesn’t sound very exciting, but perhaps it’s better than passion.’
‘She can always get passion,’ I said, ‘with your chauffeur when you are away at the office.’
Pyle blushed. He got awkwardly to his feet and said, ‘That’s a dirty crack. I won’t have her insulted. You’ve no right . . .’
‘She’s not your wife yet.’
‘What can you offer her?’ he asked with anger. ‘A couple of hundred dollars when you leave for England, or will you pass her on with the furniture?’
‘The furniture isn’t mine.’
‘She’s not either. Phuong, will you marry me?’
‘What about the blood-group?’ I said. ‘And a health certificate. You’ll need hers, surely? Maybe you ought to have mine too. And her horoscope—no, that’s an Indian custom.’
‘Will you marry me?’
‘Say it in French,’ I said, ‘’I’m damned if I’ll interpret for you any more.’
I got to my feet and the dog growled. It made me furious. ‘Tell your damned Duke to be quiet. This is my home, not his.’
‘Will you marry me?’ he repeated. I took a step towards Phuong and the dog growled again.
I said to Phuong, ‘Tell him to go away and take his dog with him.’
‘Come away with me now.’ Pyle said. ‘Avec moi.’
‘No,’ Phuong said, ‘no.’ Suddenly all the anger in both of us vanished; it was a problem as simple as that: it could be solved with a word of two letters. I felt an enormous relief; Pyle stood there with his mouth a little open and an expression of bewilderment on his face. He said, ‘She said no.’
‘She knows that much English.’ I wanted to laugh now: what fools we had both made of each other. I said, ‘Sit down and have another Scotch, Pyle.’
‘I think I ought to go.’
‘One for the road.’
‘Mustn’t drink all your whisky,’ he muttered.
‘I get all I want through the Legation.’ I moved towards the table and the dog bared its teeth.
Pyle said furiously, ‘Down, Duke. Behave yourself.’ He wiped the sweat off his forehead. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Thomas, if I said anything I shouldn’t. I don’t know what came over me.’ He took the glass and said wistfully, ‘The best man wins. Only please don’t leave her, Thomas.’
‘Of course I shan’t leave her,’ I said.
Phuong said to me, ‘Would he like to smoke a pipe?’
‘Would you like to smoke a pipe?’
‘No, thank you. I don’t touch opium and we have strict rules in the service. I’ll just drink this up and be off. I’m sorry about Duke. He’s very quiet as a rule.’
‘Stay to supper.’
‘I think, if you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone.’ He gave an uncertain grin. ‘I suppose people would say we’d both beha
ved rather strangely. I wish you could marry her, Thomas.’
‘Do you really?’
‘Yes. Ever since I saw that place—you know, that house near the Chalet—I’ve been so afraid.’
He drank his unaccustomed whisky quickly, not looking at Phuong, and when he said good-bye he didn’t touch her hand, but gave an awkward little bobbing bow. I noticed how her eyes followed him to the door and as I passed the mirror I saw myself: the top button of my trousers undone, the beginning of a paunch. Outside he said, ‘I promise not to see her, Thomas. You won’t let this come between us, will you? I’ll get a transfer when I finish my tour.’
‘When’s that?’
‘About two years.’
I went back to the room and I thought, ‘What’s the good? I might as well have told them both that I was going.’ He had only to carry his bleeding heart for a few weeks as a decoration . . . My lie would even ease his conscience.
‘Shall I make you a pipe?’ Phuong asked.
‘Yes, in a moment. I just want to write a letter.’
It was the second letter of the day, but I tore none of this up, though I had as little hope of a response. I wrote: ‘Dear Helen, I am coming back to England next April to take the job of foreign editor. You can imagine I am not very happy about it. England is to me the scene of my failure. I had intended our marriage to last quite as much as if I had shared your Christian beliefs. To this day I’m not certain what went wrong (I know we both tried), but I think it was my temper. I know how cruel and bad my temper can be. Now I think it’s a little better—the East has done that for me—not sweeter, but quieter. Perhaps it’s simply that I’m five years older—at the end of life when five years becomes a high proportion of what’s left. You have been very generous to me, and you have never reproached me once since our separation. Would you be even more generous? I know that before we married you warned me there could never be a divorce. I accepted the risk and I’ve nothing to complain of. At the same time I’m asking for one now.’
Phuong called out to me from the bed that she had the tray ready.
‘A moment,’ I said.
‘I could wrap this up,’ I wrote, ‘and make it sound more honourable and more dignified by pretending it was for someone else’s sake. But it isn’t, and we always used to tell each other the truth. It’s for my sake and only mine. I love someone very much, we have lived together for more than two years, she has been very loyal to me, but I know I’m not essential to her. If I leave her, she’ll be a little unhappy I think, but there won’t be any tragedy. She’ll marry someone else and have a family. It’s stupid of me to tell you this. I’m putting a reply into your mouth. But because I’ve been truthful so far, perhaps you’ll believe me when I tell you that to lose her will be, for me, the beginning of death. I’m not asking you to be “reasonable” (reason is all on your side) or to be merciful. It’s too big a word for my situation and anyway I don’t particularly deserve mercy. I suppose what I’m really asking you is to behave, all of a sudden, irrationally, out of character. I want you to feel’ (I hesitated over the word and then I didn’t get it right) ‘affection and to act before you have time to think. I know that’s easier done over a telephone than over eight thousand miles. If only you’d just cable me “I agree”!’
When I had finished I felt as though I had run a long way and strained unconditioned muscles. I lay down on the bed while Phuong made my pipe. I said, ‘He’s young.’
‘Who?’
‘Pyle.’
‘That’s not so important.’
‘I would marry you if I could, Phuong.’
‘I think so, but my sister does not believe it.’
‘I have just written to my wife and I have asked her to divorce me. I have never tried before. There is always a chance.’
‘A big chance?’
‘No, but a small one.’
‘Don’t worry. Smoke.’
I drew in the smoke and she began to prepare my second pipe. I asked her again, ‘Was your sister really not at home, Phuong?’
‘I told you—she was out.’ It was absurd to subject her to this passion for truth, an Occidental passion, like the passion for alcohol. Because of the whisky I had drunk with Pyle, the effect of the opium was lessened. I said, ‘I lied to you, Phuong. I have been ordered home.’
She put the pipe down. ‘But you won’t go?’
‘If I refused, what would we live on?’
‘I could come with you. I would like to see London.’
‘It would be very uncomfortable for you if we were not married.’
‘But perhaps your wife will divorce you.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I will come with you anyway,’ she said. She meant it, but I could see in her eyes the long train of thoughts begin, as she lifted the pipe again and began to warm the pellet of opium. She said, ‘Are there skyscrapers in London?’ and I loved her for the innocence of her question. She might lie from politeness, from fear, even for profit, but she would never have the cunning to keep her lie concealed.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you have to go to America for them.’
She gave me a quick look over the needle and registered her mistake. Then as she kneaded the opium she began to talk at random of what clothes she would wear in London, where we should live, of the tube-trains she had read about in a novel, and the double-decker buses: would we fly or go by sea? ‘And the Statue of Liberty . . .’ she said.
‘No, Phuong, that’s American too.’
2
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. Caodaism, the invention of a Cochin civil servant, was a synthesis of the three religions. The Holy See was at Tanyin. A Pope and female cardinals. 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 a certain hope for the Caodaists, for what could more painlessly emphasize their own loyalty than to have a few important guests shot outside 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, Moroccans or Senegalese. 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 impatience, 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 rice-fields into the rice-fields of the Hoa-Haos and thence into the rice-fields 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, bel
onging 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 Thé 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 Thé.
‘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.