"Is he in the mortuary?" I asked Vigot. "How did you know he was dead?" It was a foolish policeman's question, unworthy of the man who read Pascal, unworthy also of the man who so strangely loved his wife. YOU cannot love without intuition.
"Not guilty," I said. I told myself that it was true. Didn't Pyle always go his own way? I looked for any feeling in myself, even resentment at a policeman's suspicion, but I could find none. No one but Pyle was responsible. Aren't we all better dead? the opium reasoned within me. But I looked cautiously at Phuong, for it was hard on her.* She must have loved him in her way: hadn't she been fond of me and hadn't she left me for Pyle?
She had attached lierself to youth and hope and seriousness and now they had failed her more than age and despair. She sat there looking at the two of us and I thought she had not yet
understood. Perhaps it would be a good thing if I could get her away before the fact got home* I was ready to answer any questions if I could bring the interview quickly and still ambiguously to. an end, so that I might tell her later, in private, away from a policeman's eye and the hard office-chairs and the bare globe* where the moths circled. I said to Vigot, "What hours are you interested in?"
"Between six and ten."
"I had a drink at the Continental at six. The waiters will remember. At six forty-five I walked down to the quay to watch the American planes unloaded. I saw Wilkins of the Associated News by the door of the Majestic. Then I went into the cinema next door. They'll probably remember they had to get me change. From there I took a trishaw to the Vieux Moulin*--1 suppose I arrived about eight thirty-and had dinner by myself. Granger was there-you can ask him. Then I took a trishaw back about a quarter to ten. You could probably find the driver. I was expecting Pyle at ten, but he didn't turn up." "W:hy were you expecting him?" "He telephoned me. He said he had to see me about something important." "Have you any idea what?" "No. Everything was important to Pyle."
"And this girl of his?-do you know where she was?" "She was waiting for him outside at midnight. She was anxious. She knows nothing. Why, can't you see she's waiting for him still?" "Yes," he said.
"And you can't really believe I killed him for jealousy -or she for what?-he was going to marry her." "Yes."
"Where did you find him?" "He was in the water under the bridge to Dakow." The Vieux Moulin stood beside the bridge. There were armed police on the bridge and the restaurant had an iron grille to keep out grenades. It wasn't safe to cross the bridge at night, for all the far side of the river was in the hands of the Vietminh after dark. I must have dined within fifty yards of his body.
"The trouble was," I said, "he got mixed up." "To speak plainly," Vigot said, "I am not altogether sorry. He was doing a lot of harm."
"God save us always," I said, "from the innocent and the good." "The good?"
"Yes, good. In his way. You're a Roman Catholic. You wouldn't recognise his way. And anyway, he was a damned Yankee."
"Would you mind identifying him? I'm sorry. It's a routine, not a very nice routine."
I didn't bother to ask him why he didn't wait for someone from the American Legation, for I knew the reason. French methods are a little old-fashioned by our cold standards: they believe in the conscience, the sense of guilt. a criminal should be confronted with his crime, for he may break down and betray himself. I told myself again I was innocent, while he went down the stone stairs to where the refrigerating plant hummed in the basement.
They pulled him out like a tray of ice-cubes, and I looked at him. The wounds were frozen into placidity. I said, "You see, they don't re-open in my presence." "Comment?"
"Isn't that one of the objects? Ordeal by something or other? But you've frozen him stiff. They didn't have deep freezes* in the Middle Ages." "You recognise him?" "Oh yes" He looked more than ever out of place: he should have stayed at home. I saw him in a family snapshot album, riding on a dude ranch,* bathing on Long Island,* photographed with his colleagues in some apartment on the twenty-third floor. He belonged to the skyscraper and the express elevator, the ice-cream, and the dry Martinis,* milk at lunch, and chicken sandwiches on the Merchant Limited.*
"He wasn't dead from this," Vigot said, pointing at a wound in the chest. "He was drowned in the mud. We found the mud in his lungs." "You work quickly." "One has to in this climate."
They pushed the tray back and closed the door. The rubber padded.*
"You can't help us at all?" Vigot asked. "Not at all." I walked back with Phuong towards my flat: I was no longer on my dignity.* Death takes away vanity-even the vanity of the cuckold who mustn't show his pain. She was still unaware of what it was about, and I had no technique for telling her slowly and gently. I was a correspondent: I thought in headlines. "American official murdered in Saigon." Working on a newspaper one does not learn the way to break bad news, and even now I had to think of my paper and to ask her. "Do you mind stopping at the cable office?" I left her in the street and sent my wire and came back to her. It was only a gesture: I knew too well that the French correspondents would already be informed, or if Vigot had played fair (which was possible), then the censors would hold my telegram till the French had filed theirs. My paper would get the news first under a Paris date line.* Not that Pyle was very important. It wouldn't have done to cable the details of his true career, that before he died he had been responsible for at least fifty deaths,
for it would have damaged Anglo-American relations, the Minister would have been upset. The Minister had a great respect for Pyle-Pyle had taken a good degree in-well. one of those subjects Americans can take degrees in: perhaps public relations* or theatrecraft, perhaps even Far Eastern studies (he had read a lot of books). "Where is Pyle?" Phuong asked. "What did they want?" "Come home," I asked. "Will Pyle come?"
"He's as likely to come there as anywhere else." The old women were still gossiping on the landing, in the relative cool. When I opened my door I could tell my room had been searched: everything was tidier than I ever left it.
"Another pipe?" Phuong asked. "Yes."
I took offmy^tie and my shoes; the interlude was over: the night was nearly the same as it had been. Phuong crouched at the end of the bed and lit the lamp. Mon enfant, ma soeurskin the colour of amber. Sa douce langue natale.*
"Phuong," I said. She was kneading the opium on the bowl. "II est mort,* Phuong." She held the needle in her hand and looked up at me like a-child trying to concentrate, frowning.''Tudis?"* "Pyle est mort. Assassine."*
She put the needle down and sat back on her heels, looking at me. There was no scene, no tears, just thought-the long private thought of somebody who has to alter a whole course of life.
"You had better stay here tonight," I said. Shenodded and taking up the needle began again to heat the opium. That night I woke from one of those short deep opium sleeps, ten minutes long, that seem a whole
38
night's rest, and found my hand where it had always lain ^t night, between her legs. She was asleep and I could hardly hear her breathing. Once again after so many months I was not alone, and yet I thought suddenly with anger, remembering Vigot with his eye-shade in the police station and the quiet corridors of the Legation with no one about lad the soft hairless skin under my hand. Am I the only bne who really cared for Pyle?
CHAPTER II
The morning Pyle arrived in the square by the Conti-tteritall had seen enough of my American colleagues of the Press, big, noisy, boyish and middle-aged, full of sour Slacks against the French, who were, when all was said,* frgftting this war. Periodically, after an engagement had liteen tidily finished and the casualties removed from the gfeerie.they would be summoned to Hanoi, nearly four fears' flight away, addressed by the Commander-in-Chief, lodged for one nighl in a Press Gamp where they boasted fliiatthe barman was the best in Indo-China, flown over ¹c late battlefield at a height of 3,000 feet (the limit of a heavy machine-gun's range) and then delivered safely and ftfeisily back, like aschool-treat, to the Continental Hotel in Saigon.