Quiet American, The by Greene Graham

Author:Greene, Graham [Greene, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political, Political thriller, Novel, Fiction, Modern Classics
Publisher: Random House / Vintage Classics
Published: 1955-01-23T03:00:00+00:00

3

I

I came slowly up the stairs to the flat in the rue Catinat, pausing and resting on the first landing. The old women gossiped as they always had done, squatting on the floor outside the urinoir, carrying Fate in the lines of their faces as others on the palm. They were silent as I passed and I wondered what they might have told me, if I had known their language, of what had passed while I had been away in the Legion Hospital back on the road towards Tanyin. Somewhere in the tower and the fields I had lost my keys, but I had sent a message to Phuong which she must have received, if she was still there. That ‘if’ was the measure of my uncertainty. I had had no news of her in hospital, but she wrote French with difficulty, and I couldn’t read Vietnamese. I knocked on the door and it opened immediately and everything seemed to be the same. I watched her closely while she asked how I was and touched my splinted leg and gave me her shoulder to lean on, as though one could lean with safety on so young a plant. I said, ‘I’m glad to be home.’

She told me that she had missed me, which of course was what I wanted to hear: she always told me what I wanted to hear, like a coolie answering questions, unless by accident. Now I awaited the accident.

‘How have you amused yourself?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I have seen my sister often. She has found a post with the Americans.’

‘She has, has she? Did Pyle help?’

‘Not Pyle, Joe.’

‘Who’s Joe?’

‘You know him. The Economic Attaché.’

‘Oh, of course, Joe.’

He was a man one always forgot. To this day I cannot describe him, except his fatness and his powdered clean-shaven cheeks and his big laugh; all his identity escapes me—except that he was called Joe. There are some men whose names are always shortened.

With Phuong’s help I stretched myself on the bed. ‘Seen any movies?’ I asked.

‘There is a very funny one at the Catinat,’ and immediately she began to tell me the plot in great detail, while I looked around the room for the white envelope that might be a telegram. So long as I didn’t ask, I could believe that she had forgotten to tell me, and it might be there on the table by the typewriter, or on the wardrobe, perhaps put for safety in the cupboard-drawer where she kept her collection of scarves.

‘The postmaster—I think he was the postmaster, but he may have been the mayor—followed them home, and he borrowed a ladder from the baker and he climbed through Corinne’s window, but, you see, she had gone into the next room with François, but he did not hear Mme Bompierre coming and she came in and saw him at the top of the ladder and thought . . .’

‘Who was Mme Bompierre?’ I asked, turning my head to see the wash-basin, where sometimes she propped reminders among the lotions.

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