It was a small, untidy place, not unlike a junk warehouse itself, in the Boulevard de la Somme. A car was jacked up in the middle of the floor with its bonnet open, gaping like the cast of some pre-historic animal in a provincial museum which nobody ever visits. I don’t believe anyone remembered it was there. The floor was littered with scraps of iron and old boxes—the Vietnamese don’t like throwing anything away, any more than a Chinese cook partitioning a duck into seven courses will dispense with so much as a claw. I wondered why anybody had so wastefully disposed of the empty drums and the damaged mould—perhaps it was a theft by an employee making a few piastres, perhaps somebody had been bribed by the ingenious Mr Heng.
Nobody seemed about, so I went in. Perhaps, I thought, they are keeping away for a while in case the police call. It was possible that Mr Heng had some contact in the Sureté, but even then it was unlikely that the police would act. It was better from their point of view to let people assume that the bombs were Communist.
Apart from the car and the junk strewn over the concrete floor there was nothing to be seen. It was difficult to picture how the bombs could have been manufactured at Mr Muoi’s. I was very vague about how one turned the white dust I had seen in the drum into plastic, but surely the process was too complex to be carried out here, where even the two petrol pumps in the street seemed to be suffering from neglect. I stood in the entrance and looked out into the street. Under the trees in the centre of the boulevard the barbers were at work: a scrap of mirror nailed to a tree-trunk caught the flash of the sun. A girl went by at a trot under her mollusc hat carrying two baskets slung on a pole. The fortune-teller squatting against the wall of Simon Frères had found a customer, an old man with a whisp of beard like Ho Chi Minh’s who watched impassively the shuffling and turning of the ancient cards. What possible future had he got that was worth a piastre? In the Boulevard de la Somme you lived in the open; everybody here knew all about Mr Muoi, but the police had no key which would unlock their confidence. This was the level of life where everything was known, but you couldn’t step down to that level as you could step into the street. I remembered the old women gossiping on our landing beside the communal lavatory: they heard everything too, but I didn’t know what they knew.
I went back into the garage and entered a small office at the back. There was the usual Chinese commercial calendar, a littered desk—price-lists and a bottle of gum and an adding-machine, some paper-clips, a teapot and three cups and a lot of unsharpened pencils, and for some reason an unwritten picture-postcard of the Eiffel Tower. York Harding might write in graphic abstractions about the Third Force, but this was what it came down to—this was It. There was a door in the back wall; it was locked, but the key was on the desk among the pencils. I opened the door and went through.
I was in a small shed about the size of the garage. It contained one piece of machinery that at first sight seemed like a cage of rods and wires furnished with innumerable perches to hold some wingless adult bird—it gave the impression of being tied up with old rags, but the rags had probably been used for cleaning when Mr Muoi and his assistants had been called away. I found the name of a manufacturer—somebody in Lyons and a patent number—patenting what? I switched on the current and the old machine came alive: the rods had a purpose—the contraption was like an old man gathering his last vital force, pounding down his fist, pounding down . . . This thing was still a press, though in its own sphere it must have belonged to the same era as the nickelodeon, but I suppose that in this country where nothing was ever wasted, and where everything might be expected to come one day to finish its career (I remembered seeing that ancient movie The Great Train Robbery jerking its way across a screen, giving entertainment, in a back-street in Nam Dinh), the press was still employable.
I examined the press more closely; there were traces of a white powder. Diolacton, I thought, something in common with milk. There was no sign of a drum or a mould. I went back into the office and into the garage. I felt like giving the old car a pat on the mudguard; it had a long wait ahead of it, perhaps, but it too one day . . . Mr Muoi and his assistants were probably by this time somewhere among the rice-fields on the way to the sacred mountain where General Thé had his headquarters. When now at last I raised my voice and called ‘Monsieur Muoi!’ I could imagine I was far away from the garage and the boulevard and the barbers, back among those fields where I had taken refuge on the road to Tanyin. ‘Monsieur Muoi!’ I could see a man turn his head among the stalks of rice.
I walked home and up on my landing the old women burst into their twitter of the hedges which I could understand no more than the gossip of the birds. Phuong was not in—only a note to say that she was with her sister. I lay down on the bed—I still tired easily—and fell asleep. When I woke I saw the illuminated dial of my alarm pointing to one twenty-five and I turned my head expecting to find Phuong asleep beside me. But the pillow was undented. She must have changed the sheet that day—it carried the coldness of the laundry. I got up and opened the drawer where she kept her scarves, and they were not there. I went to the bookshelf—the pictorial Life of the Royal Family had gone too. She had taken her dowry with her.
In the moment of shock there is little pain; pain began about three A.M. when I began to plan the life I had still somehow to live and to remember memories in order somehow to eliminate them. Happy memories are the worst, and I tried to remember the unhappy. I was practised. I had lived all this before. I knew I could do what was necessary, but I was so much older—I felt I had little energy left to reconstruct.
III
I went to the American Legation and asked for Pyle. It was necessary to fill in a form at the door and give it to a military policeman. He said, ‘You haven’t put the purpose of the visit.’
‘He’ll know,’ I said.
‘You’re by appointment, then?’
‘You can put it that way if you like.’
‘Seems silly to you, I guess, but we have to be very careful. Some strange types come around here.’
‘So I’ve heard.’ He shifted his chewing-gum to another side and entered the lift. I waited. I had no idea what to say to Pyle. This was a scene I had never played before. The policeman returned. He said grudgingly, ‘I guess you can go up. Room 12A. First floor.’
When I entered the room I saw that Pyle wasn’t there. Joe sat behind the desk: the Economic Attaché: I still couldn’t remember his surname. Phuong’s sister watched me from behind a typing desk. Was it triumph that I read in those brown acquisitive eyes?
‘Come in, come in, Tom,’ Joe called boisterously. ‘Glad to see you. How’s your leg? We don’t often get a visit from you to our little outfit. Pull up a chair. Tell me how you think the new offensive’s going. Saw Granger last night at the Continental. He’s for the north again. That boy’s keen. Where there’s news there’s Granger. Have a cigarette. Help yourself. You know Miss Hei? Can’t remember all these names—too hard for an old fellow like me. I call her “Hi, there!”—she likes it. None of this stuffy colonialism. What’s the gossip of the market, Tom? You fellows certainly do keep your ears to the ground. Sorry to hear about your leg. Alden told me . . .’
‘Where’s Pyle?’
‘Oh, Alden’s not in the office this morning. Guess he’s at home. Does a lot of his work at home.’
‘I know what he does at home.’
‘That boy’s keen. Eh, what’s that you said?’
‘Anyway, I know one of the things he does at home.’
‘I don’t catch on, Tom. Slow Joe—that’s me. Always was. Always will be.’
‘He sleeps with my girl—your typist’s sister.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Ask her. She fixed it. Pyle’s taken my girl.’
‘Look here, Fowler, I thought you’d come here on business. We can’t have scenes in the office, you know.’
‘I came here to see Pyle, but I suppose he’s hiding.’
‘Now, you’re the very l
ast man who ought to make a remark like that. After what Alden did for you.’
‘Oh yes, yes, of course. He saved my life, didn’t he? But I never asked him to.’
‘At great danger to himself. That boy’s got guts.’
‘I don’t care a damn about his guts. There are other parts of his body that are more à propos.’
‘Now we can’t have any innuendoes like that, Fowler, with a lady in the room.’
‘The lady and I know each other well. She failed to get her rake-off from me, but she’s getting it from Pyle. All right. I know I’m behaving badly, and I’m going to go on behaving badly. This is a situation where people do behave badly.’
‘We’ve got a lot of work to do. There’s a report on the rubber output . . .’
‘Don’t worry, I’m going. But just tell Pyle if he phones that I called. He might think it polite to return the visit.’ I said to Phuong’s sister, ‘I hope you’ve had the settlement witnessed by the notary public and the American Consul and the Church of Christ Scientist.’
I went into the passage. There was a door opposite me marked Men. I went in and locked the door and sitting with my head against the cold wall I cried. I hadn’t cried until now. Even their lavatories were air-conditioned, and presently the temperate tempered air dried my tears as it dries the spit in your mouth and the seed in your body.
IV
I left affairs in the hands of Dominguez and went north. At Haiphong I had friends in the Squadron Gascogne, and I would spend hours in the bar up at the airport, or playing bowls on the gravel-path outside. Officially I was at the front: I could qualify for keenness with Granger, but it was of no more value to my paper than had been my excursion to Phat Diem. But if one writes about war, self-respect demands that occasionally one shares the risks.
It wasn’t easy to share them for even the most limited period, since orders had gone out from Hanoi that I was to be allowed only on horizontal raids—raids in this war as safe as a journey by bus, for we flew above the range of the heavy machine-gun; we were safe from anything but a pilot’s error or a fault in the engine. We went out by time-table and came home by time-table: the cargoes of bombs sailed diagonally down and the spiral of smoke blew up from the road-junction or the bridge, and then we cruised back for the hour of the aperitif and drove our iron bowls across the gravel.
One morning in the mess in the town, as I drank brandies-and-sodas with a young officer who had a passionate desire to visit Southend Pier, orders for a mission came in. ‘Like to come?’ I said yes. Even a horizontal raid would be a way of killing time and killing thought. Driving out to the airport he remarked, ‘This is a vertical raid.’
‘I thought I was forbidden . . .’
‘So long as you write nothing about it. It will show you a piece of country up near the Chinese border you will not have seen before. Near Lai Chau.’
‘I thought all was quiet there—and in French hands?’
‘It was. They captured this place two days ago. Our parachutists are only a few hours away. We want to keep the Viets head down in their holes until we have recaptured the post. It means low diving and machine-gunning. We can only spare two planes—one’s on the job now. Ever dive-bombed before?’
‘No.’
‘It is a little uncomfortable when you are not used to it.’
The Gascogne Squadron possessed only small B.26 bombers—the French called them prostitutes because with their short wingspan they had no visible means of support. I was crammed on to a little metal pad the size of a bicycle seat with my knees against the navigator’s back. We came up the Red River, slowly climbing, and the Red River at this hour was really red. It was as though one had gone far back in time and saw it with the old geographer’s eyes who had named it first, at just such an hour when the late sun filled it from bank to bank; then we turned away at 9,000 feet towards the Black River, really black, full of shadows, missing the angle of the light, and the huge majestic scenery of gorge and cliff and jungle wheeled around and stood upright below us. You could have dropped a squadron into those fields of green and grey and left no more trace than a few coins in a harvest-field. Far ahead of us a small plane moved like a midge. We were taking over.
We circled twice above the tower and the green-encircled village, then corkscrewed up into the dazzling air. The pilot—who was called Trouin—turned to me and winked. On his wheel were the studs that controlled the gun and the bombchamber. I had that loosening of the bowels, as we came into position for the dive, that accompanies any new experience—the first dance, the first dinner-party, the first love. I was reminded of the Great Racer at the Wembley Exhibition when it came to the top of the rise—there was no way to get out: you were trapped with your experience. On the dial I had just time to read 3,000 metres when we dove down. All was feeling now, nothing was sight. I was forced up against the navigator’s back: it was as though something of enormous weight were pressing on my chest. I wasn’t aware of the moment when the bombs were released; then the gun chattered and the cockpit was full of the smell of cordite, and the weight was off my chest as we rose, and it was the stomach that fell away, spiralling down like a suicide to the ground we had left. For forty seconds Pyle had not existed: even loneliness hadn’t existed. As we climbed in a great arc I could see the smoke through the side window pointing at me. Before the second dive I felt fear—fear of humiliation, fear of vomiting over the navigator’s back, fear that my ageing lungs would not stand the pressure. After the tenth dive I was aware only of irritation—the affair had gone on too long, it was time to go home. And again we shot steeply up out of machine-gun range and swerved away and the smoke pointed. The village was surrounded on all sides by mountains. Every time we had to make the same approach, through the same gap. There was no way to vary our attack. As we dived for the fourteenth time I thought, now that I was free from the fear of humiliation, ‘They have only to fix one machine-gun into position.’ We lifted our nose again into the safe air—perhaps they didn’t even have a gun. The forty minutes of the patrol had seemed interminable, but it had been free from the discomfort of personal thought. The sun was sinking as we turned for home: the geographer’s moment had passed: the Black River was no longer black, and the Red River was only gold.
Down we went again, away from the gnarled and fissured forest towards the river, flattening out over the neglected ricefields, aimed like a bullet at one small sampan on the yellow stream. The cannon gave a single burst of tracer, and the sampan blew apart in a shower of sparks: we didn’t even wait to see our victims struggling to survive, but climbed and made for home. I thought again as I had thought when I saw the dead child at Phat Diem, ‘I hate war.’ There had been something so shocking in our sudden fortuitous choice of a prey—we had just happened to be passing, one burst only was required, there was no one to return our fire, we were gone again, adding our little quota to the world’s dead.
I put on my earphones for Captain Trouin to speak to me. He said, ‘We will make a little detour. The sunset is wonderful on the calcaire. You must not miss it,’ he added kindly, like a host who is showing the beauty of his estate, and for a hundred miles we trailed the sunset over the Baie d’Along. The helmeted Martian face looked wistfully out, down the golden groves among the great humps and arches of porous stone, and the wounds of murder ceased to bleed.
V
Captain Trouin insisted that night on being my host in the opium house, though he would not smoke himself. He liked the smell, he said, he liked the sense of quiet at the end of the day, but in his profession relaxation could go no further. There were officers who smoked, but they were Army men—he had to have his sleep. We lay in a small cubicle in a row of cubicles like a dormitory at school, and the Chinese proprietor prepared my pipes. I hadn’t smoked since Phuong left me. Across the way a métisse with long and lovely legs lay coiled after her smoke reading a glossy woman’s paper, and in the cubicle next to her two middle-aged Chinese transacted business, sipping tea, their pip
es laid aside.
I said, ‘That sampan—this evening—was it doing any harm?’
Trouin said, ‘Who knows? In those reaches of the river we have orders to shoot up anything in sight.’
I smoked my first pipe. I tried not to think of all the pipes I had smoked at home. Trouin said, ‘Today’s affair—that is not the worst for someone like myself. Over the village they could have shot us down. Our risk was as great as theirs. What I detest is napalm bombing. From 3,000 feet, in safety.’ He made a hopeless gesture. ‘You see the forest catching fire. God knows what you would see from the ground. The poor devils are burnt alive, the flames go over them like water. They are wet through with fire.’ He said with anger against a whole world that didn’t understand, ‘I’m not fighting a colonial war. Do you think I’d do these things for the planters of Terre Rouge? I’d rather be court-martialled. We are fighting all of your wars, but you leave us the guilt.’