The Quiet American

by Graham Greene

After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the rue Catinat;

There was no sign of Pyle anywhere in the long street.

he might have been detained for some reason at the American Legation, but surely in that case he would have telephoned

‘Phuong,’ I said—which means Phoenix, but nothing nowadays is fabulous and nothing rises from its ashes. I knew before she had time to tell me that she was waiting for Pyle too.

‘Je sais. Je t’ai vu seul à la fenêtre.’

She followed me upstairs. I thought of several ironic and unpleasant jests I might make,

neither her English nor her French would have been good enough for her to understand the irony,

all the old women turned their heads,

voices rose and fell as though they were singing together. ‘What are they talking about?’ ‘They think I have come home.’

‘He says you are going away soon now,’ she said. ‘Perhaps.’ ‘He is very fond of you.’

‘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.

‘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?’

‘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.

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.

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,

In went the needle and I took my second pipe.

‘Nothing to worry about. Nothing to 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 back on.

You shouldn’t live with a man who doesn’t ...

‘But he’s going to marry me,’ she sai...

‘Shall I make your pipe again?’ ‘Yes.’

‘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.

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 à loisir, Aimer et mourir Au pays qui te ressemble.

Somebody knocked on the door.

The door opened. ‘Monsieur Fowlair,’ a voice commanded.

I was needed immediately—at once—rapidly—at the Sureté. ‘At the French Sureté or the Vietnamese?’ ‘The French.’

‘Toi aussi,’ he said to Phuong.

‘I’ll come in the morning.’ ‘Sur le chung,’ he said, a little, neat, obstinate figure. There wasn’t any point in arguing,

Here the police had the last word:

After three pipes I felt my mind clear and alert: it could take such decisions easily without losing sight of the main question—what do they want from me?

I refused to allow him to question Phuong without me he gave way at once, with a single sigh that might have represented his weariness with

Saigon, with the heat, or with the whole human condition.

arguments. ‘I wanted to ask you a few questions—about Pyle.’ ‘You had better ask him the questions.’

He turned to Phuong

‘How

long have you lived with Monsieur Pyle?’ ‘A month—I don’t know,’ she said. ‘How much has he paid you?’ ‘Yo...

‘She used to live with you, didn’t she?’ he asked abruptl...

‘I am a friend,’ I said. ‘Why not? I shall be going home one day, won’t I?

I can’t take her with me. She’ll be all right with him. It’s a reasonable arrangement. And he’s going to marry her, he says.

Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental. A quiet American,’ ...

Vigot said, ‘Yes.’

‘A very quiet American.’

Opium makes you quick-witted—perhaps only because it calms the nerves and stills the emotions. Nothing, not even death, seems so important. Phuong, I thought, had not caught his tone, melancholy and final,

she was still waiting patiently for Pyle. I had at that moment given up waiting,

‘How did you meet him first?’ Vig...

I had seen him last September coming across the square towards the bar of the Continental: an unmistakably young and un...

‘Do you mind?’ he had asked with serious courtesy. ‘My name’s Pyle. I’m new here,’

he was absorbed already in the dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West; he was determined—I