We had spent what seemed to have been a week of nights together, but he could no more understand me than he could understand French. I said, "You'd have done better to let me be."
"I couldn't have faced Phuong," he said, and the name lay there like a banker's bid.* I took it up.
"So it was for her," I said. What made my jealousy more absurd and humiliating was that it had to be expressed in the lowest of whispers-it had no tone) and jealousy likes histrionics. "You think these heroics will get her. How w^rong you are. If I were dead you could have had her."
"I didn't mean that," Pyle said. "When you are in love you want to play the game, that's all." That's true, I thought, but not as he innocently means it. To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour-the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two. Perhaps I was no longer in love but I remembered.
"If it had been you, I'd hav^e left you," I said. "Oh no, you wouldn't, Thomas." He added with unbearable complacency, "I know you better than you do yourself." Angrily I tried to move away from him and take my own weight, but the pain came roaring back like a train in
a tunnel and I leant more heavily against him, before I began to sink into the water. He got both his arms round me and held me up, and then inch by inch he began to edge me to the bank and the roadside. When he got me there he lowered me flat in the shallow mud below the bank of the edge of the field, and when the pain retreated and I opened my eyes and ceased to hold my breath, I could see only the elaborate cypher of the constellations-a foreign cypher which I couldn't read: they were not the stars of home. His face wheeled over me, blotting them out. "I'm going down the road, Thomas, to find a patrol."
"Don't be a fool," I said. "They'll shoot you before they know who you are. If the Viets don't get you."
"It's the only chance. You can't lie in the water for six hours."
"Then lay me in the road."
"It's no good leaving you the sten?" he asked doubtfully.
"Of course it's not. If you are determined to be a hero, at least go slowly through the rice." "The patrol would pass before I could signal it." "You don't speak French."
"I shall call out 'Je suis Frongcais.'* Don't worry, Thomas. I'll be very careful." Before I could reply he was out of a whisper's range-he was moving as quietly as he knew how, with frequent pauses. I could see him in the light of the burning car, but no shot came; soon he passed beyond the flames and very soon the silence filled the footprints. Oh yes, he was being careful as he had been careful boating down the river into Phat Diem, with the caution of a hero in a boy's adventure-story, proud of his caution like a Scout's badge*
and quite unaware of the absurdity and the improbability of his adventure. I lay and listened for the shots from the Viet or a Legion patrol) but none came-it would probably take him an hour or even more before he reached a tower, if he ever reached it. I turned my head enough to see what remained of our tower, a heap of mud and bamboo and struts which seemed to sink lower as the flames of the car sank. There was peace when the pain went-a kind of Armistice Day of the nerves: I wanted to sing. I thought how strange it was that men of my profession would make only two news-lines out of all this night-it was just a common-or-garden night and I was the only strange thing about it. Then I heard a low crying begin again from what was left of the tower. One of the guards must still be alive.
I thought, 'Poor devil, if we hadn't broken down outside his post, he could have surrendered as they nearly all surrendered, or fled, at the first call from the megaphone. But we were there-two white men, and we had the sten and they didn't dare to move. When we left it was too late.' I was responsible for that voice crying in the dark: I had prided myself on detachment, on not belonging to this war, but those wounds had been inflicted by me just as though I had used the sten, as Pyle had wanted to do. I made an effort to get over the bank into the road. I wanted to join him. It was the only thing I could do, to share his pain. But my own personal pain pushed me back. I couldn't hear him any more. I lay still and heard nothing but my own pain beating like a monstrous heart and held my breath and prayed to the God I didn't believe in, "Let me die or faint. Let me die or faint"; and then I suppose I fainted and was aware of nothing until I dreamed that my eyelids had frozen together and someone was inserting a chisel to prise them apart, and I wanted to warn them not to damage the eyeballs beneath but couldn't speak and the chisel bit through and a torch was shining on my face.
"We made it, Thomas," Pyle said. I remember that, but I don't remember what Pyle later described to others: that I waved my hand in the wrong direction and told them there was a man in the tower and they had to see to him. Anyway I couldn't have made the sentimental assumption that Pyle made. I know myself, and I know the depth of my selfishness. I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken by the innocent for unselfishness, when all I am doing is sacrificing a small good-in this case postponement in attending to my hurt-for the sake of a far greater good) a peace of mind when I need think only of myself.
They came back to tell me the boy was dead, and I was happy-1 didn't even have to suffer much pain after the hypodermic of morphia had bitten my leg.
CHAPTER III
(1)
I came slowly up the stairs to the flat in the rue Catinat, pausing and resting on the first landing. The old women gossiped as they had always done, squatting on the floor outside the urinoir,* carrying Fate in the lines of their faces as others on the palm. They were silent as I passed and I wondered what they might have told me, if I had known their language, of what had passed while I had been away in the Legion Hospital back on the road towards Tanyin. Somewhere in tbe tower and the fields I had lost my keys, but I had sent a message to Phuong which she must have received, if she was still there. That 'if was the measure of my uncertainty. I had had no news of her in the hospital, but she wrote French with difficulty, and I couldn't read
Vietnamese. I knocked on the door and it opened immediately and everything seemed to be the same. I watched her closely while she asked how I was and touched my splinted leg and gave me her shoulder to lean on, as though one could lean with safety on so young a plant. I said, "I'm glad to be home."
She told me that she had missed me, which of course was what I wanted to hear: she always told me what I wanted to hear, like a coolie answering questions, unless by accident. Now I awaited the accident.
"How have you amused yourself?" I asked. "Oh, I have seen my sitser often. She has found a post with the Americans."
"She has, has she? Did Pyle help?" "Not Pyle, Joe." "Who's Joe?"
"You know him. The Economic Attache." "Oh, of course, Joe." He was a man one always forgot. To this day I cannot describe him, except his fatness and his powdered cleanshaven cheeks and his big laugh; all his identity escapes meexcept that he was called Joe. There are some men whose names are always shortened. With Phuong's help I stretched myself on the bed. "Seen any movies?" I asked.
"There is a very funny one at the Catinat," and immediately she began to tell me the plot in great detail, while I looked around the room for the white envelope that might be a telegram. So long as I didn't ask, I could believe that she had forgotten to tell me; and it might be there on the table by the typewriter, or on the wardrobe, perhaps put for safety in the cupboard-drawer where she kept her collection of scarves.