He picked his way through a forest of table-legs and smashed bottles and jagged strips of flooring and half a double bass, the torn wood a bright naked colour against the varnish. He came to the edge of the dais where the orchestra had stood. Through the settling dust, which shone in the searchlight beams like falling snow, he could just make out odd shapes lumped together against the wall. He stopped and thought about Anne-Marie, and about Van Loon who had been at the bar behind the collapsed ceiling. Just in front of him, next to a table, lay a woman’s leg severed above the knee; the bloodied stocking trailed away under the table like the skin of a liver-sausage. The carpet was scattered with spilt cigarette butts, many of them marked with lipstick.
Neil turned giddily away, tripping over a fallen chair. He put out his hand to stop himself falling and touched the wall. It was sticky with a red stain that extended from the floor to above his head. A French officer was standing beside him, steadying him by the arm. Neil stared at the smear on his hand and heard the officer mutter, ‘Ce nest pas du vin rouge, Monsieur!’
CHAPTER 7
‘They must have used two or three hundred kilos of the stuff,’ said the doctor; ‘I’ve counted twenty-seven dead already.’ He turned to Neil, speaking with quiet fury: ‘Monsieur le journalist, you write it all down — all of it!’ He swept his arm round the wrecked hall. ‘This is what the Arabs do to us! This is what the United Nations are asking us to put up with! — to live with these people! — these assassins!’
Neil looked down at Van Loon, feeling a sudden anger against the doctor. What right had he to start ranting about politics now? The Dutchman lay on the floor with his head resting against a corner of the bar, his arms folded in his lap. His eyes were open and he grinned at Neil with a glazed blue look. He was very drunk. When the bomb had exploded he had been at the end of his seventh Bacardi cocktail. He had woken up on the floor with one of the bamboo poles through his back. The doctor had given him a jab of morphine; the bamboo had pierced his intestine.
He gave a hoarse giggle: ‘Hey, Neil, I did not pay for any of those bloody drinks!’
‘Try not to talk,’ said Neil.
The doctor said, ‘I’ll speak to one of the ambulance men. You’re both staying at the Miramar, aren’t you?’
‘Hey, give me a drink!’ cried Van Loon.
‘You mustn’t drink,’ said Neil. He leant down and looked sadly at the Dutchman; there was blood seeping out of his mouth into his beard. ‘How do you feel?’ he said.
‘Oh I would like a drink, old fellow!’ he muttered, ‘I would like some ouzo.’ He smiled: ‘I should have gone to Beirut. I would have found lots of girls in Beirut.’
Neil tried to smile back, then hurried off to fetch the doctor again. He found him standing near the smashed roulette table, giving orders to some stretcher-bearers. The man turned impatiently; he was middle-aged with a grey-chopped head as round as a football. ‘What do you want?’ he snapped.
‘My Dutch friend,’ said Neil, ‘he’s bleeding badly.’
The doctor threw up his hands: ‘What do you expect? He has an abdomen wound. Everyone is bleeding.’ His face was exhausted, miserable. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added, ‘but there’s nothing I can do until we get him to hospital. There are more than a hundred as bad as him.’
‘Can I give him something to drink? Some cognac?’
‘If you want to kill him,’ said the doctor.
Neil went back to the broken bar and found Anne-Marie bending over Van Loon. He was smiling up at her and asking her for a drink.
‘Don’t give him anything,’ Neil whispered; ‘the doctor’s already seen him. They’re taking him to hospital.’
She nodded. Her face was a dull white under her suntan, her eyes round and wild.
‘Are you all right?’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m all right.’ She looked round the room and her face quivered. ‘This is the work of Ali La Joconde,’ she said softly, ‘this is the sort of thing he does — then they call a patriot like General Guérin a traitor!’
Neil grabbed her arm. Van Loon had closed his eyes again and his face had suddenly turned the colour of a mushroom. ‘Peter!’ he called, grasping one of his huge limp hands. Van Loon opened one eye and muttered, ‘I must have another bloody drink.’
‘You can’t, you crazy Dutchman. Just lie still. The ambulance is coming.’
‘Bloody ambulance,’ Van Loon growled, ‘where is that girl Annette? I want her.’
Anne-Marie took his other hand and said gently, ‘We’ll find her. She’ll come and see you in hospital.’
He smiled, his eyes closed,
