"I brought a thermos of lime-juice with me." He leant over and busied himself with a basket in the back. "Any gin?"
"No, I'm awfully sorry. You know," he said encouraging-ly, "lime-juice is very good for you in this climate. It contains-I'm not sure which vitamins." He held out a cup to me and I drank. "Anyway, it's wet," I said.
"Like* a sandwich? They're really awfully good. A new sandwich-mixture* called Vit*Health. My mother sent it from the States." "No, thanks, I'm not hungry." "It tastes rather like Russian salad-only sort of drier."
"I don't think I will." "You don't mind if I do?" . "No, no, of course not." He took a large mouthful and it crunched and crackled. In the distance Buddha in white and pink stone rode away from his ancestral home and his valet-another statue-pursued him running. The female cardinals were drifting back to their house and the Eye of God watched us from above the Cathedral door.
"You know they are serving lunch here?" I said. "I thought I wouldn't risk it. The meatyou have to be careful in this heat."
"You are quite safe. They are vegetarian." "I suppose it's all right-but I like to know what I'm eating." He took another munch* at his Vit-Health. "Do you think they have any reliable mechanics?" "They know enough to turn your exhaust pipe into a mortar. I believe Buicks make the best mortars."
The commandant returned and, saluting us smartly, said he had sent to the barracks for a mechanic. Pyle offered him a Vit-Health sandwich, which he refused politely. He said with a man-of-the-world air, "We have so many rules here about food." (He spoke excellent English.) "So foolish. But you know what it. is in a religious capital. I expect it is the same thing in Rome--or Canterbury,"* he added with a.neat natty little bow to me. Then he was silent. They were both silent. I had a strong impression that my company was not wanted. I couldn't resist the temptation to tease Pyle-it is, after all, the weapon of weakness and I
was weak. I hadn't youth, seriousness, integrity, a future. I said, "Perhaps after all I'll have a sandwich."
"Oh, of course," Pyle said, "of course." He paused before turning to the basket in the back.
"No, no," I said. "I was only joking. You two want to be alone."
"Nothing of the kind," Pyle said. He was one of the most inefficient liars I have ever known-it was an art he had obviously never practised. He explained to the commandant,
"Thomas here's the best friend I have." "I know Mr. Fowler," the commandant said. "I'll see you before I go, Pyle." And I walked away to the Cathedral. I could get some coolness there.
Saint Victor Hugo in the uniform of the French Academy with a halo round his tricorn hat pointed at some noble sentiment Sun Yat Sen* was inscribing on a tablet, and then I was in the nave.* There was nowhere to sit expect in the Papal chair, round which a plaster cobra coiled, the marble floor glittered like water and there was no glass in the windows-we make a cage for air with holes, I thought, and man makes a cage for his religion in much the same way-with doubts left open to the weather and creeds opening on innumerable interpretations. My wife had found her cage with holes and sometimes I envied her. There is a conflict between sun and air: I lived too much in the sun.
I walked the long empty nave-this was not the Indo-China I loved. The dragons with lionlike heads climbed the pulpit: on the roof* Christ exposed his bleeding heart. Buddha sat, as Buddha always sits, with his lap empty: Confucius's beard hung meagrely down like a waterfall in the dry season. This was play-acting:* the great globe above the altar was ambition: the basket with the movable lid in which the Pope worked his prophecies was trickery.
If this Cathedral had existed tor five centuries instead of "two decades, would it have gathered a kind of convincingness with the scratches of feet and the erosion of weather?
Would somebody who was convincible like my wife find here a faith she couldn't find in human beings? And if I had really wanted faith would I have found it in her Norman church?* But I had never desired faith. The job of a reporter is to expose and record. I had never in my career discovered the inexplicable. The Pope worked his prophecies with a pencil in a movable lid and the people believed. In any vision somewhere you could find the planchette. I had no visions or miracles in my repertoire of memory. I turned my memories over at random like pictures in an album: a fox I had seen by the light of an enemy flare over Orpington* stealing along beside a fowl run, out of his russet place in the marginal country:* the body of a bayoneted Malay which a Gurkha* patrol had brought at the back of a lorry into a mining camp in Pahang,* and the Chinese coolies stood by and giggled with nerves, while a brother Malay put a cushion under the dead head: a pigeon on a mantelpiece, poised for flight in a hotel bedroom: my wife's face at a window when I came home to say goodbye for the last time. My thoughts had begun and ennded with her. She must have received my letter more than a week ago, and the cable I did not expect had not come. But they say if a jury remains out for long enough there is hope for the prisoner. In another week, if no letter arrived, could I begin to hope? All round me I could hear the cars of the soldiers and the diplomats rowing iip: the party was over for another year. The stampede back to Saigon was beginning, and curfew called. I went out to look for Pyle.
He was standing in a patch of shade with the commandant, and no one was doing anything to his car. The con-versation seemed to be over, whatever it had been about, and they stood silently there, constrained by mutual politeness. I joined them.
"Well," I said, "I think I'll be off. You'd better be leaving too if you want to be in before curfew." "The mechanic hasn't turned up."
"He will come soon," the commandant said. "He was in the parade."
"You could spend the night," I said. "There's a special Mass-you'll find it quite an experience. It lasts three hours." "I ought to get back."
"You won't get back unless you start now." I added unwillingly, "I'll give you a lift if you like and the commandant can have your car sent in to Saigon tomorrow."
"You need not bother about curfew in Caodaist territory," the commandant said smugly.
"But beyond . . . Certainly I will have your car sent tomorrow."
"Exhaust intact;"* I said, and he smiled brightly, neatly, efficiently, a mihtary abbreviation of a smile.
(2)
The procession of cars was well ahead of us by the time we started. I put on speed to try to overtake it, but we had passed out of the Caodaist zone into the zone of the Hoa-Haos with not even a dust cloud ahead of us. The world was flat and empty in the evening. It was not the kind of country one associates with ambush, but men .could conceal themselves neck-deep in the drowned fields within a few yards of the road. Pyle cleared his throat and it was the signal for an approaching intimacy. "I hope Phuong's well," he said.
"I've never known her ill." One watch-tower sank behind, another appeared, like weights on a balance. ?
"I saw her sister out shopping yesterday." "And I suppose she asked you to look in," I said. "As a matter of fact she did." "She doesn't give up hope easily." "Hope?"
"Of marrying you to Phuong." "She told me you are going away." "These rumours get about."
Pyle said, "You'd play straight with me, Thomas, woldn't you?" "Straight?"
"I've applied for a transfer," he said. "I wouldn't want her to be left without either of us."
"I thought you were going to see your time out."* He said without self-pity, "I found I couldn't stand it." "When are you leaving?"
"I don't know. They thought something could be ar-in six months."
"You can stand six months?" "I've got to."
"What reason did you give?"
"I told the Economic Attache-you met him.-Joe-more or less the facts." "I suppose he thinks I'm a bastard not to let you walk off with my girl."
''Oh no, he rather sided with you." The car was spluttering and heaving-it had been spluttering for a minute, I think, before I noticed it, for I had been examining Pyle's innocent question: 'Are you playing stright?' It belonged to a psychological world of great simpilicity, where you talked of Democracy and Honor without the u as it's spelt on old tombstones, and you meant what your father meant by the same words. I said, "We've run out."*