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

"Most likely the exhaust of a car," I said, and was suddenly sorry for his disappointment. One forgets so quickly one's own youth: once I was interested myself in what for want of a better term they call news. But grenades had staled on me; they were something listed on the back page of the local paper-so many last night in Saigon, so many in Cholon: they never made the European Press.* .Up the street came the lovely fiat figures-the white silk trousers, the long tight jackets in pink and mauve patterns slit up the thigh: I watched them -with the nostalgia I knew I would feel when I had left these regions forever. "They are lovely, aren't they?" I said over my beer, and Pyle

cast. them a cursory glance as they went on up the rue Catinat.

"Oh, sure," he said indifferently: he was a serious type. "The Minister's very concerned about these grenades. It would be very awkward, he says, if the^ewas an incident- withoneofus.lmean." :

"With one of you? Yes, I suppose that would be serious. Congress wouldn't like it." Why does one want to tease the innocent? Perhaps only ten days ago he had been walking back across the Common in Boston* his arms full of the books he had been reading in advance on the Far East and the problems of China. He didn't even he^r what I said: he was absorbed already in the dilemBaas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West: heyas determined-1 learnt that very soon-to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world. Well, he was in his element* now with the whole universe to improve.

"Is he in the mortuary?" I asked Vigot. "How did you know he was dead?" It was a foolish policeman's question, unworthy of the man who read Pascal, unworthy also of the man who so strangely loved his wife. YOU cannot love without intuition.

"Not guilty," I said. I told myself that it was true. Didn't Pyle always go his own way? I looked for any feeling in myself, even resentment at a policeman's suspicion, but I could find none. No one but Pyle was responsible. Aren't we all better dead? the opium reasoned within me. But I looked cautiously at Phuong, for it was hard on her.* She must have loved him in her way: hadn't she been fond of me and hadn't she left me for Pyle? She had attached lierself to youth and hope and seriousness and now they had failed her more than age and despair. She sat there looking at the two of us and I thought she had not yet

understood. Perhaps it would be a good thing if I could get her away before the fact got home* I was ready to answer any questions if I could bring the interview quickly and still ambiguously to. an end, so that I might tell her later, in private, away from a policeman's eye and the hard office-chairs and the bare globe* where the moths circled. I said to Vigot, "What hours are you interested in?"

"Between six and ten."

"I had a drink at the Continental at six. The waiters will remember. At six forty-five I walked down to the quay to watch the American planes unloaded. I saw Wilkins of the Associated News by the door of the Majestic. Then I went into the cinema next door. They'll probably remember they had to get me change. From there I took a trishaw to the Vieux Moulin*--1 suppose I arrived about eight thirty-and had dinner by myself. Granger was there-you can ask him. Then I took a trishaw back about a quarter to ten. You could probably find the driver. I was expecting Pyle at ten, but he didn't turn up." "W:hy were you expecting him?" "He telephoned me. He said he had to see me about something important." "Have you any idea what?" "No. Everything was important to Pyle."

"And this girl of his?-do you know where she was?" "She was waiting for him outside at midnight. She was anxious. She knows nothing. Why, can't you see she's waiting for him still?" "Yes," he said.

"And you can't really believe I killed him for jealousy -or she for what?-he was going to marry her." "Yes."

"Where did you find him?" "He was in the water under the bridge to Dakow."

The Vieux Moulin stood beside the bridge. There were armed police on the bridge and the restaurant had an iron grille to keep out grenades. It wasn't safe to cross the bridge at night, for all the far side of the river was in the hands of the Vietminh after dark. I must have dined within fifty yards of his body.

"The trouble was," I said, "he got mixed up." "To speak plainly," Vigot said, "I am not altogether sorry. He was doing a lot of harm."

"God save us always," I said, "from the innocent and the good." "The good?"

"Yes, good. In his way. You're a Roman Catholic. You wouldn't recognise his way. And anyway, he was a damned Yankee."

"Would you mind identifying him? I'm sorry. It's a routine, not a very nice routine."

I didn't bother to ask him why he didn't wait for someone from the American Legation, for I knew the reason. French methods are a little old-fashioned by our cold standards: they believe in the conscience, the sense of guilt. a criminal should be confronted with his crime, for he may break down and betray himself. I told myself again I was innocent, while he went down the stone stairs to where the refrigerating plant hummed in the basement.

They pulled him out like a tray of ice-cubes, and I looked at him. The wounds were frozen into placidity. I said, "You see, they don't re-open in my presence." "Comment?"

"Isn't that one of the objects? Ordeal by something or other? But you've frozen him stiff. They didn't have deep freezes* in the Middle Ages." "You recognise him?" "Oh yes"

He looked more than ever out of place: he should have stayed at home. I saw him in a family snapshot album, riding on a dude ranch,* bathing on Long Island,* photographed with his colleagues in some apartment on the twenty-third floor. He belonged to the sky-scraper and the express elevator, the ice-cream, and the dry Martinis,* milk at lunch, and chicken sandwiches on the Merchant Limited.*

"He wasn't dead from this," Vigot said, pointing at a wound in the chest. "He was drowned in the mud. We found the mud in his lungs." "You work quickly." "One has to in this climate."

They pushed the tray back and closed the door. The rubber padded.*

"You can't help us at all?" Vigot asked. "Not at all."

I walked back with Phuong towards my flat: I was no longer on my dignity.* Death takes away vanity-even the vanity of the cuckold who mustn't show his pain. She was still unaware of what it was about, and I had no technique for telling her slowly and gently. I was a correspondent: I thought in headlines. "American official murdered in Saigon." Working on a newspaper one does not learn the way to break bad news, and even now I had to think of my paper and to ask her. "Do you mind stopping at the cable office?" I left her in the street and sent my wire and came back to her. It was only a gesture: I knew too well that the French correspondents would already be informed, or if Vigot had played fair (which was possible), then the censors would hold my telegram till the French had filed theirs. My paper would get the news first under a Paris date line.* Not that Pyle was very important. It wouldn't have done to cable the details of his true career, that before he died he had been responsible for at least fifty deaths,