Chapter 6 chapter Five

I thought I would only be away from Saigon for a week, but in fact, it took almost three weeks for me to return. First of all, it is not easy to enter the area of ​​​​Fayan, and it is even more difficult to get out.The land route between Nam Dinh and Hanoi has long since been cut off, and air transportation cannot be arranged just for a reporter, not to mention that this reporter should not have gone to Pha Diem at all. Later, when I got to Hanoi, reporters were flying in from below to be briefed on the latest victory, and there was no room for me on the plane to take them back.Pyle had left Fa Diem the morning of his arrival: he had done his mission—come and talk to me about Feng Er, and there was nothing to keep him from staying.He was still asleep when the mortars stopped at 5:30, and I left him for a cup of coffee and a few biscuits in the restaurant.When I came back, he had already left.I guess he went out for a stroll—since he can go all the way along the river from Nam Dinh, a few snipers won't worry him, he can't imagine the pain he might bring to others Yes, just as he could not conceive of the pain or danger to which he might be subjected.Once—but it was many months later—I couldn't help it, and I pushed his foot in, I mean into pain, and I still remember how he turned around and looked at him in bewilderment. Looking at his soiled shoe, he said, "I've got to shine my shoe before I go to the Minister." I knew then that he had chosen the words he had learned from York Harding's book. way out.But as far as he was concerned, he was sincere: it was a mere coincidence that all the sacrifices had been paid for by someone else, until that last night, falling under the bridge to Darko.

Only after I returned to Saigon did I know how Pyle left Phat Diem.When I went to drink coffee, he persuaded a young naval officer to board a landing craft, and after the landing craft completed a routine patrol mission, let him sneak ashore in Nam Dinh.He was lucky. Twenty-four hours after he returned to Hanoi with the trachoma treatment team, the road from Nam Dinh to Hanoi was officially announced to be cut off.When I arrived in Hanoi, he had already left for the south, and left a letter with the bartender in the press camp, asking him to pass it on to me. "Dear Thomas," he wrote, "I cannot tell you how wonderful you were that night. I can tell you that I was very nervous when I went into that room to find you." (in What was in his mind as he propped the boat down the river for a long time?) "Few people take it so lightly. You're amazing. Now that I've explained it to you, I don't feel like I did before. So ashamed." (Does it matter if he's the only one? I thought angrily, but I knew he didn't mean it. It seemed to him that as long as he wasn't ashamed, the whole thing would be pleasant at once A bit - I'll be happy, Feng'er will be happy, the whole world will be happy, even the Economic Commissioner and the American Minister will be happy. Now that Pyle is no longer ashamed, spring has come to Indochina .) "I've been waiting here for you for twenty-four hours, but if I don't leave today, I won't be able to get back to Saigon in a week, and my actual job is in the south. I've already told the director of trachoma treatment The lads on the team, ask them to come to you--you'll love them. They're some great lads doing a job grown men do.

I'll go back to Saigon before you, so don't worry.I promise you, I won't visit Feng Er until you go back to Saigon.I never want you to think I'm unfair in the future.Your friendly Alden. " It's that brazen assumption again, thinking that "in the future" I will lose Feng'er.Is confidence also based on the dollar exchange rate?We used to talk about the value of the pound too.Now, do we have to talk about a gold dollar romance?Gold dollar romance will of course include marriages, boys, and "Mother's Day," though in the future it could also include Reno or the Virgin Islands or wherever they're going for a divorce now.A golden dollar love has good intentions and a clean conscience, then everyone else will go to their devils.But my love has no purpose: it knows what will end in the future.All you can do is try to make the future less embarrassing, and when it comes, state it gently.Even opium has its value in this respect.However, I never foresaw that the first "future" I had to point out to Feng'er would be the news of Pyle's death.

With nothing better to do, I went to the press conference.Granger was there, of course. The receptionist was presided over by a young, overly handsome French colonel.He spoke French, and a minor officer acted as interpreter.The French journalists sat together like a rival football team.The Colonel went on talking, and I found it difficult to keep my eyes on what the Colonel had to say: my mind kept turning to Fenger and this idea—if Pyle was right, I lost her: and from here on Where are you going? The interpreter said: "The colonel informs you that the enemy has suffered a great defeat and suffered heavy losses - equivalent to the loss of a whole battalion. The remnants of the troops are fleeing across the Red River on improvised rafts. They have been attacked by our Air force attack." The colonel brushed his neat yellow hair with a hand, and waving his pointing stick, he danced and pointed to the long maps on the wall.An American reporter asked: "What about the French losses?"

The colonel was well aware of the meaning of the question--the kind of question usually asked at this stage of a press conference--but he stopped, raised his stick, and smiled amiably, like a well-received Like my teacher, waiting for the translator to finish the sentence.Then he answered patiently and vaguely. "The colonel said our losses were not significant. The exact figure is not yet known." Such responses are consistently a sign of trouble.You'd think that sooner or later the colonel would figure out a way to deal with this unruly group of reporters, or else the "principal" would have sent someone better on his staff to keep order.

"Did the Colonel really tell us," Granger said, "that he had time to count the enemy's dead, but not his own?" The colonel patiently made up another set of evasive words.He also knew very well that anyone who asked again would make his evasive words untenable again.The French reporters just sat there silent and gloomy.If the American journalists could get the Colonel to confess something, they would grab it quickly, but they were not willing to join in and bait their own countrymen. "The colonel says the enemy is broken by us. The dead can now be counted behind the lines of fire, but you can't expect casualty figures from the advancing French units while the fighting is going on."

"It's not that we're counting on it," Granger said. "It's whether the staff knows or not. Are you serious about telling us that the platoons don't immediately report the actual casualties to headquarters by walkie-talkie?" The colonel began to lose his temper a little bit.I think it would have been less embarrassing if he had shown us at the outset, telling us firmly that he knew the number of casualties but he would not.After all, this is their war, not ours.God does not give us any privilege to ask Him to tell the truth.We didn't have to fight the leftist parliamentarians in Paris, nor did we have to fight Ho Chi Minh's troops between the Red River and the Blackwater River.None of us died.

The colonel blurted out the news suddenly, saying that the casualties of the army were one to three. As soon as he finished speaking, he turned his back to us and stared at the map with wide eyes angrily.Those who died were his soldiers, his fellow officers, his classmates at St. Cyr—not the number Granger had in mind.At this time, Granger said: "Now we finally have a clue," looking around at his colleagues with a dazed smug expression, and the French reporters all lowered their heads and recorded in frustration. Download this message. "This casualty ratio can be said to be greater than that on the Korean battlefield," I deliberately pretended not to understand, but I gave Granger a new clue.

"Please ask the colonel," he said, "what is the French army going to do next? He said that the enemy is fleeing across the Blackwater River..." "Red River," the interpreter corrected him. "I don't care what color the river is. All we want to know is what the French are going to do now." "The enemy is fleeing." "They got to the other side of the river, what's the situation? What are you going to do? Are you going to sit on this side of the river and announce that the war is over?" The French officers listened to Granger's aggressiveness with gloom and patience. voice.To be a soldier now, you have to swallow your breath. "Are you going to send them some Christmas cards?"

The captain translated the sentence carefully, including the words "artes de Noel."The colonel smiled grimly at us. "No Christmas cards," he said. I think the Colonel's youthful good looks particularly displeased Granger.The colonel was not a manly man - at least not according to Granger.Granger said again: "You don't plan to vote for anything else, do you?" The colonel suddenly spoke English, and his English was very good.He said: "If the supply promised by the United States comes to us, we will have more to invest in." Although he looks very handsome, he is very simple minded.

He actually believed that a journalist cared more about the honor of his country than just getting news.Granger said sharply (he was quite capable and had the dates in his head), "Are you saying that none of the supplies promised to arrive in early September have arrived?" "No." Granger now had the news he wanted: he hurried to write the newsletter. "I'm sorry," said the colonel, "but this is not for publication in the papers and is only background material for reference." "But, Colonel," Granger protested, "this is news. We can help you with this matter." "No, it's a matter for diplomats to negotiate." "What harm is there in publishing it?" The French journalists were all bewildered at this moment: they spoke only a few words of English.The Colonel broke with convention.Several French journalists complained angrily together. "I am not in a position to judge whether there is any harm," said the colonel. "Perhaps the American newspapers will say: Oh, the French are always complaining, always begging. And in Paris, the Communists will charge that the French are bleeding for the United States, and that the United States has not even a worn-out plane. Helicopters didn't come either. It doesn't do any good to get such news. In the end, we still don't get helicopters, and the enemy is still there, not fifty miles from Hanoi." "At least I can post that you need helicopters urgently, okay?" "You can say," said the colonel, "six months ago we had three helicopters and now we have one. One." He repeated it with a look of wonder and resentment. "You could say that if a man was wounded in this battle, not badly wounded, but wounded, he knew very well that he was probably finished. Twelve hours on a stretcher, maybe twenty It took four hours to get someone into an ambulance, and the roads were so bad that the car might break down, or an ambush might happen, and he would die of gangrene. It would be better if he was beaten to death right then." The French reporters They all stuck their heads forward, trying to hear what the Colonel was saying. "You can write it all down," said the colonel, all the more bitter because of his good figure. "Interpretez," he ordered, and strode out of the room, leaving the captain to do a job for which he was not very skilled: translating from English to French. "Hitting him where it hurts," Granger said triumphantly, and he ran off to a corner by the bar to draft his telegram.My telegram was finished in no time: In Phat Diem, I couldn't write anything that the censors would let go.If the news worth reporting was good, I could have flown to Hong Kong and sent a telegram from there, but what news was worth risking deportation?I doubt it.If I were deported by them, my life would be over.That would be Pyle's victory, but when I got back to my hotel, what was waiting for me in the mailbox was his victory, and my end—a telegram congratulating me on my promotion.It never occurred to Dante to apply such pressure to punish the condemned lover of his poem.Paul was never raised into "Purgatory". I went upstairs to my empty room with a leaking cold water tap (there is no hot water in Hanoi) and sat down on the edge of the bed, the huge mosquito net hanging over me like a black cloud. The head swelled. The newspaper wanted me to go back to work as the new foreign affairs editor, to work every afternoon at three-thirty in that gloomy Victorian building near Blackfriars station in London, with a picture of Lord Salisbury hanging on the lift. plaque image.They transferred the good news from Saigon to Hanoi. I don't know if the news has reached Feng Er.I have since ceased to be a reporter: I have to speak out, and the reward for this hollow privilege is to deprive me of my last hope of competing with Pyle.I have the experience to deal with Pyle, a delicate-skinned young man. Age is a trump card in the game of sex between men and women, just like youth, but now I can't even compete for the limited prospect of twelve months more. Can't bring it up, but the future is the trump card.I envy the officers who are punished to die here and miss their families the most.I really want to cry, but there are no tears. My tear ducts are as dry as the hot water pipes here.Oh, let them have a home--I just want my room in Rue Catina. In Hanoi it was cold after dark and the lights were not as bright as in Saigon, more fitting with the darker clothing of the women here and the fact of the war.I walked down Rue Gambetta to the Bar de la Paix—I didn't want to go to the Metropolitan and drink with the high-ranking French officers and their wives and girlfriends drinking there.When I was about to walk to the bar, I heard the sound of cannons in the distance, which was sent in the direction of Heping Mansion.During the day, there are vehicles coming and going, and the sound of cannons cannot be heard, but now, everything is very quiet, only the tinkling of the bell of the car can be heard, that is the tricycle driver desperately trying to do business.Pietelli was still sitting in his old place.He had an oddly long head perched high on his shoulders like a pear on a plate, and he was a police officer married to a beautiful Tokyo woman.This peace bar was opened by his woman.He's also a guy who doesn't particularly want to go back to his hometown.He was a Corsican, but he preferred Marseilles, which he would have sat on the pavement of Rue de la Gombetta any day over Hanoi: he preferred his throne.I do not know whether he already knows the contents of my telegram. "How about a gamble?" he asked. "Why don't you come?" Let's roll the dice.It seemed to me that I had left the Rue Gambetta and the Rue Catina to drink this faint black vermouth and cocktail, to hear this common sound of craps, to see the spark of a cannon like a It seemed impossible for me to live any longer with the hands of the big clock turning around in the sky like that. I said, "I'm going back soon." "Going home?" asked Pietelli, throwing one: four and one. "No. Back to England."