Even the river seemed consumed by people trying to escape, and all sorts of small craft competed for clear water, flitting round the larger vessels like tiny fish. There was more thunder and people stopped in the street and looked upward, unsure if what they heard was man-made. On some rotting, buckling jetties stretched lines of people awaiting passage or loading every type of domestic and human baggage into whatever vessel their money could buy. From time to time a brief burst of small-arms fire would ignite and then fall silent as if some argument had been settled or been deemed unworthy of continuing. I could see La Porte Bleue in the distance but as I got closer I realised that its window was dark and the outside tables and chairs were empty. The front door was closed but not locked and when I entered I found the inside lit only by what light filtered from the hallway and shadowed my movements. I called out but there was no reply and, as I approached the back room where I had sat so often with Donovan, I half-expected to see him at a table with one of his agents or swigging a beer with Vien. But the room was empty and my footsteps echoed in the silence and I started once when my foot kicked a fallen ashtray and sent it skimming under tables. I opened the door, the one through which I had first seen Tuyen emerge, and called again but there was no response. Finding myself in the back hallway, I opened the doors that led off it, to discover only empty rooms. One of them was clearly Tuyen’s and I lingered long enough to lightly touch some of the objects on her bedside and dressing table, but of her or her parents there was no trace. I wondered if Donovan had made arrangements for them, and whether even then they were flying to safety, and I was a little regretful that they would never know that I had come to do the right thing and that I was no longer able to make perhaps the only romantic gesture that life might offer me.

There was someone in the restaurant. A table or chair rattled as if someone had brushed it in passing. I called out, but the sound of my voice was met only by whispers followed by silence and then, when I retraced my steps to the front room, I found myself looking at two men. The one who had gone behind the counter was holding a wooden truncheon and when he saw me his companion pulled a knife from the waistband of his trousers. They shouted at each other and then at me – speaking too quickly for me to understand but I needed no translation to know that I was in danger. Were they Vietcong looking for an early revenge on those who in their eyes had collaborated with the enemy, or merely looters? I held up both my hands in a submissive gesture and the smaller of the two men raised his knife and pointed it. He was wild-eyed, shouting and pointing with the knife, and at first I didn’t understand before realising he was gesturing to my watch, allowing me to hope that my fate might be to be mugged rather than murdered. I handed it over and, after pocketing it, he gestured once more and I knew he wanted my wallet. When I started to reach inside my jacket he began screaming, probably fearful that I was pulling a gun, and he jabbed closer to me with the blade.