"Dear Thomas," he wrote, "I can't begin to tell you how swell you were the other night. I can tell you my heart was in my mouth when I walked into that room to find you." (Where had it been on the long boat-ride down the river?) "There are not many men who would have taken the whole thing so calmly. You were great, and I don't feel half as mean as I did, now that I've told you." (Was he the only one that mattered? I wondered angrily, and yet I knew that he didn't intend it that way. To him the whole affair would be happier as soon as he didn't feel mean-1 would be happier, Phuong would be happier, the whole world would be happier, even the Economic Attache and the Minister. Spring had come to Indo-China now that iPyle was mean no longer.) "I waited for you here for twenty-four hours, but I shan't get back to Saigon for a week if I don't leave today, and my real work is in the south. I've told the boys who are running the trachoma teams to look you up-you'll like them. They are great boys and doing a man-size Job. Don't worry in any way that I'm returning to Saigon ahead of you. I promise you I won't see Phuong until you return. I don't want you to feel later that I've been unfair in any way. Cordially yours, Alden."
Again that calm assumption that "later" it would be I who would lose Phuong. Is confidence based on a rate of exchange? We used to speak of sterling qualities. Have we got to talk now about a dollar love? A dollar love, of course, would include marriage and Junior* and Mother's Day,* even though later it might include Reno* or the Virgin Islands or wherever they go nowadays for their divorces. A dollar love had good intentions, a clear conscience, and to Hell with everybody. But my love had no intentions: it knew the future. All one could do was try to make the future less hard, to break the future gently* when it came, and even opium had its value there. But I never foresaw that the first future I wouldn have to break to Phuong would be the death of Pyle.
I went-for I had nothing better to do-to the Press Conference. Granger, of course, was there. A young and too beautiful French colonel presided. He spoke in French and a junior officer translated. The French correspondents sat together like a rival footballteam. I found it hard to keep my mind on what the colonel was saying: all the time it wandered back to Phuong and the one thought-suppose Pyle is right and I lose her: where does one go from here? The interpreter said, "The colonel tells you that the enemy has suffered a sharp defeat and severe losses-the equivalent of one complete battalion. The last detachments are now making their way back across the Red River on improvised rafts. They are shelled all the time by the Air Force." The colonel ran his hand through his elegant yellow hair and, flourishing his pointer, danced his way down the leng maps on the wall. An American correspondent asked, "What are the French losses?" The colonel knew perfectly well the meaning of the question-it was usually put at about this stage of the con-ference, but he paused, pointer raised with a kind smile like a popular shoolmaster, until it was interpreted. Then he ans-wered with patient ambiguity.
"The colonel says our losses have not been heavy. The exact number is not yet known."
'This was always the signal for trouble. You would have thought that sooner or later the colonel would have found a formula for dealing with his refractory class, or that, the headmaster would have appointed a member of his staff more efficient at keeping order.
"Is the colonel seriously telling us," Granger said, "that he's had time to count the enemy dead and not his own?"
Patiently the colonel wove his web of evasion, which he knew perfectly well would be destroyed again by another question. The French correspondents sat gloomily silent. If the American correspondents stung the colonel into an admission they would be quick to seize it, but they would not join in bailing their countryman.
"The colonel says the enemy forces are being over-run.* It is possible to count the dead behind the firing-line, but while the battle is still in progress you cannot expect figures from the advancing French units."
"It's not what we expect," Granger said, "it's what the Etat Major knows or not. Are you seriously telling us that platoons do not report their casualties as they happen by walkietalkie?" The colonel's temper was beginning to fray. If only, I thought, he had called our bluff from the start and told us firmly that he knew the figures but wouldn't say. After all it was their war, not ours. We had no God-given right to information. We -didn't have to fight Left-Wing deputies in Paris as well as the troops of Ho Ghi Minh* between the Red and the Black Rivers. We were not dying.
The colonel suddenly snapped out the information that French casualties had been in a proportion of one in three, then turned his back on us, to stare furiously at his map. These were his men who were dead, his fellow officers, belonging to the same class at St. Cyr*not numerals as they were to Granger. Granger said, "Now we are getting somewhere," and stared round with oafish triumph at llis fellows; the French with heads bent made their sombre notes. "That's more than can be said in Korea," I said with deliberate misunderstanding, but I had only given Granger a new line.
"Ask the colonel," he said, "what the French are going to do next? He says the enemy is on the run across the Black River...." "RedRiver,"theinterpretercorrectedhim.
"I don't care what the colour of the river is. What we want to know is what the French are going to do now." "The enemy are in flight."
"What happens when they get to the other side? What are you going to do then? Are you just going to sit down on the other bank and say that's over?" The French officers listened with gloomy patience to Granger's bullying voice. Even humility is required today of the soldier. "Are you going to drop them Christmas cards?" a The captain interpreted with care, even to the phrase, "cartes de Noel."* The colonel gave us a wintry smile. "Not Christmas cards," he said. I think the colonel's youth and beauty particularly irritated Granger. The colonel wasn't-at least not by Granger's interpretation-a man's man.* He said, "You aren't drop-ping much else."
The colonel spoke suddenly in English, good English. He said, "If the supplies promised by the Americans had arrived, we should have more to drop." He was really in spite of his elegance a simple man. He believed that a newspaper corespondent cared for his country's honour more than for news. Granger said. sharply (he was efficient: he kept dates well in his head). "You mean that none of the supplies promised for the beginning of September have arrived?" "No"