"Greene, Graham - Quiet American" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greene Graham)

I saw that she was doing her hair differently, allowing it to fall black and straight over her shoulders. I remembered that Pyle had once criticised the elaborated hairdressing which she thought became the daughter of a mandarin. I shut my eyes and she was again the same as she used to be:

she was the hiss of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest.

"He will not be long," she said as though I needed comfort for his absence.

I wondered what they talked about together: Pyle was very earnest and I had suffered from his lectures on the Far East, which he had known for as many months as I had years. Democracy was another subject of his, and he had pronounced and aggravating views on what the United States was doing for the world. Phuong on the other hand was wonderfully ignorant: if Hitler had come into the conversation she would have interrupted to ask who he was. The explanation would be made more difficult because she had never met a German or a Pole and had only the vaguest knowledge of European geography, though about Princess Margaret* of course she knew more than 1. I heard her put a tray down on the end of the bed. "Is he still in love with you, Phuong?" To take an Annamite* to bed with you is like taking a bird: they twitter and sing on your pillow. There had been a time when I thought none of their voices sang like Phuong's. I put out my band and touched her arm-their bones too were as fragile as a bird's. "Is he, Phuong?"

She laughed and I heard her strike a match.

"In love?"- perhaps it was one of the phrases she didn't understand.

"May I make your pipe?" she asked.

When I opened my eyes she had lit the lamp and the tray was already prepared. The lamplight made her skin the colour of dark amber as she bent over the flame with a frown of concentration, heating the small paste of opium, twirling her needle.

"Does Pyle still not smoke?" I asked her,

"No."

"You ought to make him or he won't come back." It was a superstition among them that a lover who smoked would always return, even from France. A man's sexual capacity might be injured by smoking, but they would always prefer a faithful to a potent lover. Now she was kneading the little ball of hot paste on the convex margin of the bowl and I could smell the opium. There is no smell like it. Beside the bed my alarm-clock showed twelve-twenty, but already my tension was over. Pyle had diminished. The lamp lit her face as she tended the long pipe, bent above it with the serious attention she might have given to a child. I was fond of my 'pipe: more than two feet of straight bamboo, ivory at either end. Two-thirds of the way down was the bowl, like a convolvulus* reversed, the convex margin polished and darkened by the frequent kneading of the opium. Now with a flick of the wrist she plunged the needle into the tiny cavity, released the opium and reversed the bowl over the flame, holding the pipe steady for me. The bead of opium bubbled gently and smoothly as I inhaled.

The practised inhaler can draw a whole pipe down in one breath, but I always had to take several pulls. Then I lay back, with my neck on the leather pillow, while she prepared the second pipe.

I said, "You know, really, it's as clear as daylight. Pyle knows I smoke a few pipes before bed, and he doesn't want to disturb me. He'll be round in the morning."

In went the needle and I took my second pipe. As I laid it down, I said,

"Nothing to worry about. Nothing to I worry about at all." I took a sip of tea and held my hand in the pit of her arm.

"When you left me," I said, "it was lucky I had this to fall ba
"But he's going to marry me," she said. "Soon now." "Of course, that's another matter." "Shall I make your pipe again?" "Yes."

I wondered whether she would consent to sleep with me that night if Pyle never came, but I knew that when I had smoked four pipes I would no longer want her. Of course it would be agreeable to feel her thigh beside me in the bed-she always slept on her back, and when I woke in the morning I could start the day with a pipe, instead of with my own company. "Pyle won't come now," I said. "Stay here, Phuong." She held the pipe out to me and shook her head. By the time I had drawn the opium in, her presence or absence mattered very little. "Why is Pyle not here?" she asked.

"How do I know?" I said. "Did he go to see General The?" "I wouldn't know."*

"He told me if he could not have dinner with you, he would come here."

"Don't worry. He'll come. Make me another pipe." When she bent over the flame the poem of Baudelaire's* came into my mind: "Mon enfant, ma soeur...."* How did it go on?

"Aimer a loisir, Aimer et mourir Aupaysquiteressemble."*

Out on the waterfront slept the ships, "dont l'humeur estvagabonde."* I thought that if I smelt her skin it would have the faintest fragrance of opium, and her colour was that of the small flame. I had seen the flowers on her dress beside the canals in the north, she was indigenous like a herb, and I never wanted to go home.

"I wish I were Pyle," I said aloud, but the pain was limited and bearable-the opium saw to that. Somebody knocked on the door. "Pyle," she said. "No. It's not his knock."

Somebody knocked again impatiently. She got quickly up, shaking the yellow tree* so that it showered its petals again over my typewriter. The door opened. "Monsieur Fowlair," a voice commanded.

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