always a Third Force lo be found free from Communism and the taint of colonialismnational democracy he called it; you only had to find a leader and keep him safe from the old colonial powers."
"It's all in York Harding," I said. "He had read it before he came out here. He talked about it his first week and he's learned nothing."
"He may have found his leader," Dominguez said. "Would it matter?"
"I don't know. I don't know what he does. But go and talk to my friend on the Quai Mytho."
I went home to leave a note for Phuong in the rue Catinat and then drove down past the port as the sun set. The tables and chairs were out on the quai beside the steamers and the grey naval boats, and the little portable kitchens burned and bubbled. In the Boulevard de la Somme the hairdressers were busy under the trees and the fortune-tellers squatted against the walls with their soiled packs of cards. In Cholon you were in a different city where work seemed to be just beginning rather than petering out with the daylight. It was like driving into a pantomime set: the long vertical Chinese signs and the bright lights and the crowd of extras led you into the wings, where everything was suddenly so much darker and quieter. One such wing took me down again to the quai and a huddle of sampans,* where the warehouses yawned in the shadow and no one was about.
I found the place with difficulty and almost by accident, the godown gates were open, and I could see the strange Picasso shapes* of the junk-pile by the light of an old lamp: bedsteads, bathtubs, ashcans, the bonnets of cars, stripes of old colour where the light hit. I walked down a narrow track carved in the iron quarry and called out for Mr. Chou, but there was no reply. At the end of the godown a stair led up to what I supposed might be Mr. Chou's house--I had apparently been directed to the back door, and I supposed that Dominguez had his reasons. Even the staircase was lined with junk, pieces of scrap-iron which might come in useful one day in this jackdaw's nest of a house. There was one big room on the landing and a whole family sat and lay about in it with the effect of a camp which might be struck at any moment: small tea-cups stood about everywhere and there were lots of cardboard boxes full of unidentifiable objects and fibre suitcases ready strapped: there was an old lady sitting on a big bed, two boys and two girls, a baby crawling on the floor, three middle-aged women in old brown peasant-trousers and jackets, and two old men in a corner in blue silk mandarin coats playing mah jongg* they paid no attention to my coming: they played rapidly, identifying each piece by touch, and the noise was like shingle turning on a beach after a wave withdraws. No one paid any more attention than they did: only a cat leapt on to a cardboard box and a lean dog sniffed at me and withdrew.
"M. 'Chou?" I asked, and two of the women shook their heads, and still no one regarded me, except that one of the women rinsed out a cup and poured tea from a pot which had been resting warm. in its silk-lined box. I sat down on the end of the bed next the old lady and a girl brought me the cup: it was as though I had been absorbed into the community with the cat and the dog-perhaps they had turned up the first time as fortuitously as I had. The baby crawled across the floor and pulled at my laces and no one reproved it: one didn't in the East reprove children. Three commercial calendars were hanging on the walls, each with a girl in gay Chinese costume with bright pink cheeks. There was a big mirror mysteriously lettered Cafe de la Paix-perhaps It had got caught up accidentally in the junk: I felt caught up in it myself.
I drank slowly the green bitter tea, shifting the handleless cup from palm to plam as the heat scorched my fingers, and I wondered how long I ought to stay. I tried the family once in French, asking when they expected M. Chou to return, but no one replied: they had probably not understood. When my cup was empty they refilled it and continued their own occupations: a woman ironing, a girl sewing, the two boys at their lessons, the old lady looking at her feet, the tiny crippled feet of old China*-and the dog watching the cat, which stayed on the cardboard boxes.
I began to realise how hard Dominguez worked for his lean living.
A Chinese of extreme emaciation came into the room: he seemed to take up no room at alclass="underline" he was like the piece of grease-proof paper* that divides the biscuits in a tin. The only thickness he had was in his striped flannel pyjamas. "M. Chou?" I asked.
He looked at me with the indifferent gaze of a smoker: the sunken cheeks, the baby wrists, the arms of a small girl-many years and many pipes had been needed to whittle him down to these dimensions. I said, "My friend, M. Dominguez, said that you had something to show me-You are M. Chou?"
Oh yes, he said, he was M. Chou and waved me courteously back to my seat. I could tell that the object of my coming had been lost somewhere within the smoky corridors of his skull. I would have a cup of tea? he was much honoured by my visit. Another cup was rinsed on to the floor and put like a live coal into my hands-the ordeal by tea. I commented on the size of his family.
He looked round with faint surprise as though he had
never seen it in that light before. "My mother," he said, "my wife, my sister, my uncle, my brother, my children, my aunt's children." The baby had rolled away from my feet and lay on ifs back kicking and crowing. I wondered to whom it belonged. No one seemed young enough-or old enough-to have produced that. I said, "M. Dominguez told me it was important." "Ah, M. Dominguez. I hope M. Dominguez is well?" "He has had a fever."
"It is an unhealthy time of year." I wasn't convinced that he even remembered who Dominguez was. He began to cough, and under his pyjama jacket, which had lost two buttons, the tight skin twanged like a native drum.
"You should see a doctor yourself," I said. A newcomer joined us-1 hadn't heard him. enter. He was a young man neatly dressed in European clothes. He said in English, "Mr. Chou has only one lung."' "I am very sorry . . ."
"He smokes one hundred and fifty pipes every day." "That sounds a lot."
"The doctor says it will do him no good, but Mr. Chou feels much happier when he smokes." I made an understanding grunt. "If I may introduce myself, I am Mr. Chou's manager."
"My name is Fowler. Mr. Dominguez sent me. He said that Mr. Chon had something to tell me."
"Mr. Chou's memory is very much impaired. Will you have a cup of tea?"
"Thank you, I have had three cups already." It sounded like a question and an answer in a phrase-hook.
Mr. Chou's manager took the cup out of my hand and held it out to one of the girls, who after spilling the dregs on the floor again refilled it.
"That is not strong enough," he said, and took it and tasted it himself, carefully rinsed it and refilled it from a second teapot. "That is better?" he asked. "Much better." Mr. Chou cleared his throat, but it was only for an immense expectoration into a tin spittoon decorated with pink blooms. The baby rolled up and down among the tea-dregs and the cat leaped from a cardboard box on to a suitcase.
"Perhaps it would be better if you talked to me," the young man said. "My name is Mr. Heng." "If you would tell me. . ."
"We will go down to the warehouse,"' Mr. Heng said. "11 is quieter there." I put out my hand to Mr. Chou, who allowed it to rest between his palms with a look of bewilderment, then gazed around the crowded room as though he were trying to fit me in.* The sound of the turning shingle receded as we went down the stairs. Mr. Heng said,
"Be careful. The last step is missing," and he flashed a torch to guide me. We were hack among the bedsteads and the bathtubs, and Mr. Heng led the way down a side aisle. When he had gone about twenty paces he stopped and shone his light on to a small iron drum. He said, "Do you see that?" "What about it?" He turned it over and showed the trade mark: 'Diolac-ton.