"Gas?"
"There was plenty. I crammed it full before I started. Those bastards in Tanyin have syphoned it out. I ought to have noticed. It's like them to leave us enough to get out of their zone." "What shall we do?"
"We can just make the next watch-tower. Let's hope they have a little." But we were out of luck. The car reached within thirty yards of the tower and gave up. We walked to the foot of the tower and I called up in French to the guards that we were friends, that we were coming up. I had no wish to be shot by a Vietnamese sentry. There was no reply: nobody looked out. I said to Pyle, "Have you a gun?" "I never carry one."
"Nor do 1."
The last colours of sunset, green and gold like the rice, were dripping over the edge of the flat world: against the grey neutral sky the watch-tower looked as black as print. It must be nearly the hour of curfew. I shouted again and nobody answered.
"Do you know how many towers we passed since the last fort?" "I wasn't noticing."
"Nor was 1." It was probably at least six kilometres to the next fort-an hour's walk. I called a third time, and silence repeated itself like an answer.
I said, "It seems to be empty: I'd better climb up and see." The yellow flag with red stripes* faded to orange showed that we were out of the territory of the Hoa-Haos and in the territory of the Vietnamese army.
Pyle said, "Don't you think if we waited here a car might come?" "It might, but they might come first." "Shall I go back and turn on the lights? For a signal." "Good God, no. Let it be." It was dark enough now to stumble, looking for the ladder. Something cracked under foot; I could imagine the sound travelling across the fields of paddy, listened to by whom? Pyle had lost his outline and was a blur at the side of the road. Darkness, when once it fell, fell like a stone. I said, "Stay there until I call." I wondered whether the guard would have drawn up his ladder, but there it stood-though an enemy might climb it, it was their only way of escape. I began to mount. Il have read so often of people's thoughts in the moment of fear: of God, or family, or a woman. I admire their control. I thought of nothing, not even of the trapdoor above me: I ceased, for those seconds to exist: I was fear taken neat. At the top of the ladder I banged my head because fear couldn't count steps, hear, or see. Then my head came over the earth floor and nobody shot at me and fear seeped away.
(3) A small oil lamp burned on the floor and two men crouched against the wall, watching me. One had a sten gun and one a rifle, but they were as scared as I'd been. They looked like schoolboys, but with the Vietnamese age drops suddenly like the sunthey are boys and then they are old men. I was glad that the colour of my skin and the shape of my eyes were a passport-they wouldn't shoot noiw even from fear.
' I came up out of the floor, talking to reassure them, telling them that my car was outside, that I had run out of petrol. Perhaps they had a little I could buy-somewhere: it didn't seem likely as I Stared around. There was nothing in the little round room except a box of ammunition for the sten gun, a small wooden bed, and two packs hanging on a nail. A couple of pans with the remains of rice and some wooden chopsticks showed they had been eating without much appetite.
"Just enough to get us to the next fort?" I asked. One of the men sitting against the wallthe one with the rifle-shook his head.
"If you can't we'll have to stay the night here." "C'est defendu."* "Whoby?" "You are a civilian."
"Nobody's going to make me sit out there on the road and have my throat cut." "Aren't you French?"
Only one man had spoken. The other sat with his head turned sideways, watching the slit in the wall. He could have seen nothing but a postcard of sky: he seemed to be listening and I began to listen too. The silence became full of sound: noises you couldn't put a name to-a crack, a creak, a rustle something like a cough, and a whisper. Then I heard Pyle: he must have come to the foot of the ladder. "You all right, Thomas?"
"Come up," I called back. He began to climb the ladder and the silent soldier shifted his sten gun-1 don't believe he'd heard aword of what we'd said: it was an awkward, jumpy movement. I realised that fear had paralysed him. I rapped out at him like a sergeantmajor, "Put that gun down!" and I used the kind of French obscenity I thought he would recognise. He obeyed me automatically. Pyle came lip into the room. I said, "We've been offered the safety of the tower till morning."
"Fine," Pyle said. His voice was a little puzzled. He said, "Oughtn't one of those mugs to be on sentry?"
"They prefer not to be shot at. I wish you'd brought something stronger than lime-juice."
"I guess I will next time," Pyle said. "We've got a long night ahead." Now that Pyle was with me, I didn't hear the noises. Even the two soldiers seemed do have relaxed a little.
"What happens if the Viets attack them?" Pyle asked. "They'll fire a shot and run. You read it every morning in the Extreme-Orient* 'A post south-west of Saigon was temporarily occupied last night by the Vietminh.' " "It's a bad prospect."
"There are forty towers like this between us and Saigon. The chances always are that it's the other chap who's hurt." "We could have done with those sandwiches," Pyle said. "I do think one of them should keep a look-out."* "He's afraid a bullet might look in." Now that we too had settled on the floor, the Vietnamese relaxed a little. I felt some sympathy for them: if wasn't an easy job for a couple of ill-trained men to sit up here night after night, never sure of when the Viets might creep up on the road through the fields of paddy. I said to Pyle, "Do you think they know they are fighting for Democracy? We ought to have YorkHarding here to explain it to them." "You always laugh at York," Pyle said.
"I laugh at anyone who spends so much time writing about what doesn't exist--mental concepts." "They exist for him. Haven't you got any mental con-cepts? God, for instance?" "I've no reason to believe in a God. Do you?" "Yes. I'm a Unitarian."*
"How many hundred million Gods do people believe in? Why, even a Roman Catholic believes in quite a different God when he's scared or happy or hungry." "Maybe, if there is a God, he'd be so vast he'd look different to everyone."
"Like the great Buddha in Bangkok,"* I said. "You can't see all of him at once. Anyway he keeps still."
"I guess you're just trying to be tough," Pyle said. "There's something you must believe in. Nobody can go on living without some belief."
"Oh, I'm not a Berkeleian.* I believe my back's against this wall. I believe there's a sten gun over there." "I didn't mean that."
"I even believe what I report, which is more than most of your correspondents do."
"Cigarette?"
"I don't smoke-except opium. Give one to the guards. We'd better stay friends with them." Pyle got up and lit their cigarettes and came back. I said, "I wish cigarettes had a symbolic significance like salt." "Don't you trust them?"
"No French officer," I said, "would care to spend the night alone with two scared guards in one of these towers. Why, even a platoon have been known to hand over their officers. Sometimes the Viets have a better success with a megaphone than a bazooka. I don't blame them. They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested."
"They don't want Communism."
"They want enough rice," I said. "They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want." "If Indo-China goes. . ."