I pulled a medium-sized hunk of gravel from my pocket, took aim and chucked it with all my might. Somehow, I managed to miss the largest pot, but I did smash its neighbor to smithereens.

“That’s the one I was aiming at,” I said.

“Liar,” said Civilai.

“Can you do any better?” I asked.

“I believe so.”

He walked forward, stepped over the red rope, grabbed two particularly elegant pieces of pottery and smashed them together like cymbals. The sound was far more pleasing.

“I didn’t know that was allowed,” I said, and I joined him on the illegal side of the rope. We did a good deal of smashing. I was just about to drop kick a potbellied antique when the gallery attendant arrived, still wiping baguette crumbs from his lips. He stood in the entry way, eyes huge, mouth agape. My kick took out a whole line of finely tapered pots, the shards of which landed at his feet.

“What are . . . what do you think . . . ?” said the attendant.

“Destroying priceless artifacts,” said Civilai, anticipating the question. He went to the wall and elbowed the glass on the fire alarm. The building rattled from the sound. But the curator and his secretary had already arrived in the gallery from the other direction. The curator staggered backward. The secretary, a plump young man in steamy glasses, screamed and ran back along the corridor, probably in search of a telephone to call the police. The guard arrived. Nobody dared approach us maniacs. I sat cross-legged on the ground, attempting to make a paper airplane from a quite lovely sixteenth-century watercolor, while Civilai attempted to lob his gravel into the last pot standing. We had destroyed no fewer than eighteen priceless artifacts.

It was clearly the first crime scene the new South Vietnamese police force had had to deal with. The officers who arrived had no idea what to do. Officially, the commissioner general was the go-to person for matters of national importance. But he was due to leave in three days, and all he dreamed of was a trouble-free period in which to pack, to drink his way through as much of the wine cellar as possible, and to disconnect tactfully from his mistress. All of his duties were handed over to the commander-in-chief, General Jacquot, who, in turn, passed these last-minute annoyances on to the prefect of the Saigon-Cholon region, Monsieur Blazer. He too had planned to escape peacefully yet there in his anteroom stood two anarchists who had dared to ruin his orderly exit by destroying national treasures.

Blazer was still the prefect, and he could have ordered us executed there and then. It would have been a profound statement to make before launching a career in domestic politics. Exactly the kind of gesture he needed. But he seemed confused by our nonchalance.

“What do you have to say for yourselves?” he asked.