The Quiet American Read Online Free PDF Page B

explains to us what we’ve been looking at. Then we file our cables with the censor. Then we have drinks. Best barman in Indo-China. Then we catch the plane back.” Pyle frowned at his beer.
    “You underrate yourself, Bill,” the Economic Attaché said. “Why, that account of Road 66--what did you call it? Highway to Hell-that was worthy of the Pulitzer. You know the story I mean-the man with his head blown off kneeling in the ditch, and that other you saw walking in a dream...”
    “Do you think I’d really go near their stinking highway? Stephen Crane could describe a war without seeing one. Why shouldn’t I? It’s only a damned colonial war anyway. Get me another drink. And then let’s go and find a girl. You’ve got a bit of tail. I want a bit of tail too.”
    I said to Pyle, “Do you think there’s anything in the rumour about Phat Diem?”
    “I don’t know. Is it important? I’d like to go and have a look,” he said, “if it’s important.” “Important to the Economic Mission?” “Oh, well,” he said, “you can’t draw hard lines. Medicine’s a kind of weapon, isn’t it? These Catholics, they’d be pretty strong against the Communists, wouldn’t they?”
    “They trade with the Communists. The Bishop gets his cows and the bamboo for his building from the Communists. I wouldn’t say they were exactly York Harding’s Third Force,” I teased him. “Break it up,” Granger was shouting. “Can’t waste the whole night here. I’m off to the House of Five Hundred girls.
    “If you and Miss Phuong would have dinner with me. . .” Pyle said.
      “You can eat at the Chalet,” Granger interrupted him, “while I’m knocking the girls next door. Come on, Joe. Anyway you’re a man.”
    I think it was then, wondering what is a man, that I felt my first affection for Pyle. He sat a little turned away from Granger, twisting his beer mug, with an expression of determined remoteness. He said to Phuong, “I guess you get tired of all this shop-about your country, I mean?”
    “Comment?”
    “What are you going to do with Mick?” the Economic attaché asked. “Leave him here,” Granger said.
    “You can’t do that. You don’t even know his name.” “We could bring him along and let the girls look after
    The -Economic Attaché gave a loud communal laugh. He looked like a face on television. He said, “You young people can do what you want, but I’m too old for games. I’ll take him home with me. Did you say he was French?” “He spoke French.” “If you can get him into my car. . “ After he had driven away, Pyle took a trishaw with Biranger, and Phuong and I followed, along the road to Ghholon. Granger had made an attempt to get into the trishaw with Phuong, but Pyle diverted him. As they pedalled us down the long suburban road to the Chinese town a line of ‘”French armoured cars went by, each with its jutting gun and silent officer motionless like a figure-head under the stars and the black, smooth, concave sky-trouble again probably with a private army, the Binh Xuyen, who ran the Grand Monde and the gambling halls of Cholon. This was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the Middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here? Columbus had not yet discovered their country. I said to Phuong, “I like that fellow, Pyle.”
    “He’s quiet,” she said, and the adjective which she was the first to use stuck like a schoolboy name, till I heard even Vigot use it, sitting there with his green eye-shade, telling me of Pyle’s death.
    I stopped our trishaw outside the Chalet and said to Phuong, “Go in and find a table. I had better look after Pyle.” That was my first instinct-to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
    When