"I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown*
that in five hundred years there may be no New
York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell or Europeans. And remember-from a buffalo's point of view you are a European too."
"They'll be forced to believe what they are told, they won't be allowed to think for themselves."
"Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?"
"You talk as if the whole country were peasant. What about the educated? Are they going to be happy?"
"Oh no," I said, "we've brought them up in our ideas. We've taught them dangerous games, and that's why we are waiting here, hoping we don't get our throats cut. We deserve to have them cut. I wish your friend York was here too. I wonder how he'd relish it."
"York Harding's a very courageous man. Why, in Korea. . "
"He wasn't an enlisted man, was he? He had a return ticket. With a return ticket courage becomes an intellectual exercise, like a monk's flagellation. How much can I stick? Those poor devils can't catch a plane home. Hi," I called to them, "what are your names?" I thought that knowledge somehow would bring them into the circle of our conversation. They didn't answer: just lowered back at us behind the stumps of their cigarettes. "They think we are French," I said.
"That's just it," Pyle said. "You shouldn't be against York, you should be against the French. Their colonialism." "Isms and ocracies.* Give me facts. A rubber planter beats his labourer-all right, I'm against him. He hasn't
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been instructed to do it by the Minister of the Colonies. In France I expect he'd beat his wife. I've seen a priest, so poor he hasn't a change of trousers, working fifteen hours a day from hut to hut in a cholera epidemic, eating nothing but rice and salt fish, saying his Mass with an old cup-a wooden platter. I don't believe in God and yet I'm for that priest. Why don't you call that colonialism?"
"It is colonialism. York says it's often the good administrators who make it hard to change a bad system."
"Anyway the French are dying every day-that's not a mental concept. They aren't leading these people on with half-lies like your politicians-and ours. I've been in India, Pyle, and I know the harm liberals do. We haven't a liberal party any more-liberalism's infected all the other parties. We are all either liberal conservatives or liberal socialists: we all have a good conscience. I'd rather be an exploiter who fights for what he exploits, and dies with it. Look at the history of Burma. We go and invade the country: the local tribes support us: we are victorious: but like you Americans we weren't colonialists in those days. Oh no, we made peace with the king and we handed him back his province and left our allies to be crucified and sawn in two. They were innocent. They thought we'd stay. But we were liberals and we didn't want a bad conscience." "That was a long time ago."
"We shall do the same thing here. Encourage them and leave them with a little equipment and a toy industry." "Toy industry?" "Your plastic." "Oh yes, I see."
"I don't know what I'm talking politics for. They don't interest me and I'm a reporter. I'm not engage.'"*
i "Aren't you?" Pyle said.
"For the sake of an argument-to pass this bloody night, that's all. I don't take sides. I'll be still reporting, whoever Wins.""
"If they win, you'll be reporting lies." "There's usually a way round, and I haven't noticed much regard for truth in our papers either." I think the fact of our sitting there talking encouraged
the two soldiers: perhaps they thought the sound of our white voices-for voices have a colour too, yellow voices sing and black voices gargle, while ours just speak-would give an impression of numbers and keep the Viets away. They picked up their pans and began to eat again, scraping with their chopsticks, eyes watching Pyle and me over the rim of the pan.
"So you think we've lost?"
"That's not the point," I said. "I've no particular desire to see you win. I'd like those two poor buggers there to be happy-that's all. I wish they didn't have to sit in the dark at night scared." "You have to fight for liberty."
"I haven't seen any Americans fighting around here. And as for liberty, I don't know what it means. Ask them." I called across the floor in French to them. "La Liberte-qu'est-ce que c'est la liberte?"* They sucked in the rice and stared back and said nothing. Pyle said, "Do you want everybody to be made in the same mould? You're arguing for the sake of arguing. You're an intellectual. You stand for the importance of the indi-vidual as much as I do-or York."
"Why have we only just discovered it?" I said. "Forty years ago no one talked that way."
"It wasn't threatened then." "Ours wasn't threatened, oh no, but who cared about the individuality of the man in the paddy field-and who does now? The only man to treat him as a man is the political commissar. He'll sit in his hut and ask his name and listen to his complaints; he'll give up an hour a day to teaching him-it doesn't matter what, he's being treated like a man, like someone of value. Don't go on in the East with that parrot cry about a threat to the individual soul. Here you'd find yourself on the wrong side-it's they who stand for the individual and we just stand for Private 23987, unit in the global strategy."*
''You don't mean half what you are saying," Pyle said uneasily.
"Probably three quarters. I've been here a long time. You know, it's lucky I'm not engage, there are things I might be tempted to do-because here in the East-well, I don't like Ike.* I like-well, these two. This is their country. What's the time? My watch has stopped." "It's turned eight-thirty." "Ten hours and we can move."
"It's going to be quite chilly," Pyle said and shivered. "I never expected that."
"There's water all round. I've got a blanket in the car. That will be enough." "Is it safe?"
"It's early for the Viets." "Let me go." "I'm more used to the dark." When I stood up the two soldiers stopped eating. I told them, "Je reviens, tout de suite."*
I dangled my legs over the trap door, found the ladder and went down. It is odd how reassuring conversation is, especially on abstract subjects: it seems to normalise the strangest surroundings. I was no longer scared: it was as though I had left a room and would be returning there to pick up the argument-the watch-tower was the rue Catinat, the bar of the Majestic, or even a room off Gordon Square.*
I stood below the tower for a minute to get my vision back. There was starlight, but no moonlight. Moonlight reminds me of a mortuary and the cold wash of an unshaded globe over a marble slab, but starlight is alive and never still, it is almost as though someone in those vast spaces is trying to communicate a message of good will, for-even
names of the stars are friendly. Venus is any woman we love, the Bears are the bears of childhood, and I suppose the Southern Gross, to those, like my wife, who believe, may be a favourite hymn or a prayer beside the bed. Once I shivered as Pyle had done. But the night was hot enough, enly the shallow stretch of water on either side gave a kind of icing to the warmth. I started out towards the car, and fora moment when l^stood on the road I thought it was no longer there. That shook my confidence, even after I remembered that it had petered out thirty yards away. I couldn't help walking with my shoulders bent: I felt more unobtrusive that way.*
I had to unlock the boot to get the blanket and the click and squeak startled me in the silence. I didn't relish being the only noise in what must have been a night full of people. With the blanket over my shoulder I lowered the boot more carefully than I had raised it, and then, just as the catch caught,* the sky towards Saigon flared with light and the sound of an explosion came rumbling down the road. A bren* spat* and spat and was quiet again before the rumbling stopped. I thought, "Somebody's had it, and very far away heard voices crying with pain or fear or perhaps even triumph. I don't know why, but I had thought all the time of an attack coming from behind, along the road we had passed, and I had a moment's sense of unfairness that the Viet should be there ahead, between us and Saigon. It was as though we had been unconsciously driving towards danger instead of away from it, just as I was now walking in its direction, back towards the tower. I walked because it was less noisy than to run, but my body wanted to run. At the foot of the ladder I called up to Pyle, "It's me-Fowler." (Even then I couldn't bring myself to use my Christian name to him.) The scene inside the hut had changed. The pans of rice were back on the floor; one man held his rifle on his hip and sat against the wall staring at Pyle and Pyle knelt a little way out from the opposite wall with his eyes on the sten gun which lay between him and the second guard. It was as though he had begun to crawl towards it but had been halted. The second guard's arm was extended towards the gun: no one had fought or even threatened, it was like that child's game when you mustn't be seen to move or you are sent back to base to start 'again. "What's going on?" I said. The two guards looked at me and Pyle pounced, pulling the sten to his side of the room.