By Graham Greene

When I came out it was nearly half past eleven and I went down as far as the Pavilion for a glass of iced beer. The Pavilion was a coffee centre for European and American women, and I was confident that I would not see Phuong there. Indeed, I knew exactly where she would be at this time of day—she was not a girl to break her habits, and so, coming from the planter's apartment, I had crossed the road to avoid the milk-bar where at this time of day she had her chocolate malt. Two young American girls sat at the next table, neat and clean in the heat, scooping up ice-cream. They each had a bag slung on the left shoulder, and the bags were identical, with brass eagle badges. Their legs were identical too, long and slender, and their noses, just a shade titled, and they were eating their ice-cream with concentration, as though they were making an experi­ment in the college laboratory. I wondered whether they were Pyle's colleagues; they were charming, and I wanted to send them home, too. They finished their ices, and one looked at her watch. "We'd better be go­ing," she said, "to be on the safe side." I wondered idly what appointment they had.

"Warren said we mustn't stay later than eleven-twenty-five."

"It's past that now."

"It would be exciting to stay. I don't know what it's all about, do you?"

"Not exactly, but Warren said better not."

"Do you think it's a demonstration? "

"I've seen so many demonstrations," the other said wearily, like a tourist glutted with churches. She rose and laid on their table the money for the ices. Before going she looked around the cafe, and the mirrors caught her profile at every freckled angle. There was only myself left and a dowdy middle-aged French­woman who was carefully and uselessly making up her face. Those two hardly needed make-up, the quick dash of a lipstick, a comb through the hair. For a mo­ment her glance had rested on me—it was not like a woman's glance, but a man's, very straightforward, speculating on some course of action. Then she turned quickly to her companion. "We'd better be off."

I watched them idly as they went out side by side into the sun-splintered street. I found myself for a moment envying them their sterilized world, so different from this world that I inhabited—which suddenly, inexpli­cably, broke in pieces.

Two of the mirrors on the wall flew at me and col­lapsed half-way. The dowdy Frenchwoman was on her knees in a wreckage of chairs and tables. Her compact lay open and unhurt in my lap, and oddly enough I sat exactly where I had sat before, although my table had joined the wreckage around the Frenchwoman. A cu­rious garden sound filled the cafe—the regular drip of a fountain—and, looking at the bar, I saw rows of smashed bottles which let out their contents in a multi­coloured stream—the red of porto, the orange of Coint­reau, the green of chartreuse, the cloudy yellow of pastis—across the floor of the cafe. The French-woman sat up and calmly looked around for her compact. I gave it her, and she thanked me formally, sitting on the floor. I realized that I didn't hear her very well. The explosion had been so close that my ear-drums had still to recover from the pressure.

I thought rather petulantly, 'Another joke with plas­tics', but when I got into the Place Gamier I realized by the heavy clouds of smoke that this was no joke. The smoke came from the cars burning in the car-park in front of the national theatre; bits of cars were scattered over the square; and a man without his legs lay twitch­ing at the edge of the ornamental gardens. People were crowding in from the rue Catinat, from the Boulevard Bonnard. The sirens of police cars, the bells of the am­bulances and fire-engines, came at one remove to my shocked ear-drums. For one moment I had forgotten that Phuong must have been in the milk-bar on the other side of the square. The smoke lay between. I couldn't see through.

I stepped out into the square, and a policeman stop­ped me. They had formed a cordon round the edge to prevent the crowd inc reasing, and already the stretch­ers were beginning to emerge. I implored the police­man in front of me, "Let me across. I have a friend—"

"Stand back," he said. "Everyone here has friend."

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