"Perhaps you ought to have been a priest." "I didn't read the right authors for that-in those days." "You still suspect me, don't you, of being concerned?" He rose and drank what was left of his vermouth cassis. "I'd like to talk to you, that's all." I thought after he had turned and gone that he had looked at me with compassion, as he might have looked at some prisoner for whose capture he was responsible undergoing his sentence for life.
(2)
I had been punished. It was as though Pyle, when he left my flat, had sentenced me, to so many weeks of uncertainty. Every time that I returned home it was with the expectation of disaster. Sometimes Phuong would not be there, and I found it impossible to settle to any work till she returned, for I always wondered whether she would ever return. I would ask her where she had been (trying to keep anxiety or suspicion out of my voice) and some-times she would reply the market or the shops and produce her piece of evidence (even her readiness to confirm her story seemed at that period unnatural), and sometimes it was the cinema, and the stub of her ticket was there to prove it, and sometimes it was her sister's-that was where I believed she met Pyle. I made love to her in those days savagely as though I hated her, but what I hated was the future. Loneliness lay in my bed and I took loneliness into my arms at night. She didn't change; she cooked for me, she made my pipes, she gently and sweetly laid out her body for my pleasure (but it was no longer a pleasure), and just as in those early days I wanted her mind, now I wanted to read her thoughts, but they were hidden away in a language I couldn't speak. I didn't want to question her. I didn't want to make her lie (as long as no lie was spoken openly I could pretend that we were the same to each other as we had always been), but suddenly my anxiety would speak for me; and I said, "When did you last see Pyle?" She hesitated-or was it that she was really thinking back? "When he came here," she said. I began-almost unconsciously-to run down* everything that was American. My conversation was full of the poverty of American literature, the scandals of American politics, the beastliness of American children. It was as though she were being taken away from me by a nation rather than by a man. Nothing that America could do was right. I became a bore on the subject of America, even with my French friends who were ready enough to share my antipathies. It was as if I had been betrayed, but one is not betrayed by an enemy.
It was just at that time that the incident occurred of the bicycle-bombs. Coming back from the Imperial Bar to an empty flat (was she at the cinema or with her sister?) I found that a note had been pushed under the door. it was from Dominguez. He apologised for being still sick and asked me to be outside the big store at the corner of the Boulevard Charner around ten-thirty the next morning. He was writing at the request of Mr. Chou, but I suspected that Mr. Heng was the more likely to require my presence. The whole affair, as it turned out, was not worth more than a paragraph, and a humorous paragraph at that. It bore no relation to the sad and heavy war in the north, those canals in Phat Diem choked with the grey days-old bodies, the pounding of the mortars, the white glare of napalm. I had been waiting for about a quarter of an hour by a stall of flowers when a truck-load of police drove up with a grinding of brakes and a squeal of rubber from the direction of the Surete Headquarters in the rue Catinat: the men disembarked and ran for the store, as though they were charging a mob, but there was no mob-only a zareba* of bicycles. Every large building in Saigon is fenced in by them-no university city in the West contains so many bicycle-owners. Before I had time to adjust my camera the comic and inexplicable action had been accomplished. The police had forced their way among the bicycles and emerged with three which they carried over their heads into the boulevard and dropped into the decorative fountain. Before I could intercept a single policeman they were back in their truck and driving hard down the Boulevard Bonnard.
"Operation Bicyclette,"* a voice said. It was Mr. Heng. "What is it?" I asked, "A practice? For what?" "Wait a while longer," Mr. Heng said. A few idlers began to approach the fountain, where one wheel stuck up like abuoy as though to warn shipping away from the wrecks below: a policeman crossed the road shouting and waving his hands.
"Let's have a look." I said.
"Better not," Mr. Heng said, and examined his watch. The hands stood at four minutes past eleven. "You're fast" I said.
"It always gains." And at that moment the fountain exploded over the pavement. A bit of decorative coping struck a window and the glass fell like the water in a bright shower. Nobody was hurt. We shook the water and glass from our clothes. A bicycle wheel hummed like a top in the road, staggered and collapsed. "It must be just eleven," Mr. Heng said.
"What on earth. . .?"
"I thought you would be interested," Mr. Heng said. "I hope you were interested." "Come and have a drink?"
"No) I am sorry. I inust go back to Mr. Chou's, but first let me show you something." He led me to the bicycle park and unlocked his own machine. "Look carefully." "A Raleigh,"* I s^id.
"No) look at the pump. Does it remind you of anything?" He smiled patronisingly at my mystification and pushed off. Once he turned and waved his hand, pedalling towards Cholon and the warehouse of junk. At the Surete) I went for information, I realised what he meant. The mould I had seen in his warehouse had been shaped like a half-section of a bicycle-pump. That day all over Saigon innocent bicycle-pumps had proved to be plastic bombs and gone off at the stroke of eleven, except where the police, acting on information which I suspect emanated from Mr. Heng, had been able to anticipate the explosions. It was all quite trivial-ten explosions, six people slightly injured, and God knows how many bicycles. My colleagues-except for the correspondent of the ExtremeOrient, who called it an "outrage" -knew they could only get space by making fun of the affair.
"Bicycle Bombs" made a good headline. All of them blamed the Communists. I was the only one to write that the bombs were a demonstration on the part of General The, and my account was altered in the office. The General wasn't news. You couldn't waste space by identifying him. I sent a message of regret through Dominguez to Mr. Heng-1 had done my best. Mr. Heng sent a polite verbal reply. It seemed to me then that he-or his Vietminh committee-had been unduly sensitive; no one held the affair seriously against the Communists. Indeed, if anything were capable of doing so, it would have given them the reputation for a sense of humour. "WhaVli they think of nest?" people said at parties, and the whole absurd affair was symbolised for me too in the bicycle-wheel gaily spinning like a top in the middle of the boulevard. I never even mentioned to Pyle what I had heard of his connection with the General. Let him play harmlessly with plastic: it might keep his mind off Phuong. All the same, because I happened to be in the neighbourhood one evening, because I had nothing better to do, I called in at Mr. Muoi's garage.
It was a small, untidy place, not unlike a junk warehouse itself, in the Boulevard de la Somme. A car was packed up in the middle of the floor with its bonnet open, gaping like the cast of some prehistoric animal in a provincial museum which nobody ever visits. I don't believe anyone remembered it was there. The floor was littered with scraps of iron and old boxes-the Vietnamese don't like throwing anything away, any more than a Chinese cook partitioning a duck into seven courses will dispense with so much as a claw. I wondered why anybody had so wastefully disposed of the empty drums and the damaged mould-perhaps it was a theft by an employee making a
few piastres, perhaps somebody had been bribed by the ingenious Mr. Heng. Nobody seemed about, so I went in. Perhaps, I thought, they are keeping away for a while in case the police call. It was possible that Mr. Heng had some contact in the Surete, but even then it was unlikely that the police would act. It was better from their point of view to let people assume that the bombs were Communist.