A Burnt-Out Case

by Graham Greene

  "A lot of it is my own fault," Rycker said, reaching his second stage. "I realise that. I have failed to teach you the real values as I see them. What can you expect from the manager of a palm-oil factory? I was not meant for this life. I should have thought even you could have seen that." His vain yellow face hung like a mask between her and Africa. He said, "When I was young I wanted to be a priest." He must have told her this, after drinks, at least once a month since they married, and every time he spoke she remembered their first night in the hotel at Antwerp, when he had lifted his body off her like a half-filled sack and dumped it at her side, and she, feeling some tenderness because she thought that in some way she had failed him, touched his shoulder (which was hard and round like a swede in the sack), and he asked her roughly, "Aren't you satisfied? A man can't go on and on." Then he had turned on his side away from her: the holy medal that he always wore had got twisted by their embrace and now lay in the small of his back, facing her like a reproach. She wanted to defend herself: 'It was you who married me. I know about chastity too—the nuns taught me.' But the chastity she had been taught was something which she connected with clean white garments and light and gentleness, while his was like old sackcloth in a desert.

  "What did you say?"

  "Nothing."

  "You are not even interested when I tell you my deepest feelings."

  She said miserably, "Perhaps it was a mistake."

  "Mistake?"

  "Marrying me. I was too young."

  "You mean I am too old to give you satisfaction."

  "No—no. I didn't mean..."

  "You know only one kind of love, don't you? Do you suppose that's the kind of love the saints feel?"

  "I don't know any saints," she said desperately.

  "You don't believe I am capable in my small way of going through the Dark Night of the Soul? I am only your husband who shares your bed..."

  She whispered, "I don't understand. Please, I don't understand."

  "What don't you understand?"

  "I thought that love was supposed to make you happy."

  "Is that what they taught you in the convent?"

  He made a grimace at her, breathing heavily, and the coupé was filled momentarily with the scent of Vat 69. They passed beside the grim constructed figure in the chair; they were nearly home.

  "What are you thinking?" he asked.

  She had been back in the shop in the rue de Namur watching an elderly man who was gently, so gently, easing her foot into a stiletto-heeled shoe. So she said, "Nothing."

  Rycker said in a voice suddenly kind, "That is the opportunity for prayer."

  "Prayer?" She knew, but without relief, that the quarrel was over, for from experience she knew too that, after the rain had swept by, the lightning always came nearer.

  "When I have nothing else to think of, I mean that I have to think of, I always say a Pater Noster, an Ave Maria or even an Act of Contrition."

  "Contrition?"

  "That I have been unjustly angry with a dear child whom I love." His hand fell on her thigh and his fingers kneaded gently the silk of her skirt, as though they were seeking some muscle to fasten on. Outside the rusting abandoned cylinders showed they were approaching the house; they would see the lights of the bedrooms when they turned.

  She wanted to go straight to her room, the small hot uninviting room where he sometimes allowed her to be alone during her monthly or unsafe periods, but he stopped her with a touch; she hadn't really expected to get away with it. He said, "You aren't angry with me, Mawie?" He always lisped her name childishly at the moments when he felt least childish.

  "No. It's only—it wouldn't be safe." Her hope of escape was that he feared a child.

  "Oh come. I looked up the calendar before I came out."

  "I've been so irregular the last two months." Once she had bought a douche, but he had found it and thrown it away and afterwards he had lectured her on the enormity and unnaturalness of her act, speaking so long and emotionally on the subject of Christian marriage that the lecture had ended on the bed.

  He put his hand below her waist and propelled her gently in the direction he required. "Tonight," he said, "we'll take a risk."

  "But it's the worst time. I promise..."

  "The Church doesn't intend us to avoid all risk. The safe period mustn't be abused, Mawie."

  She implored him, "Let me go to my room for a moment. I've left my things there," for she hated undressing in front of his scrutinising gaze. "I won't be long. I promise I won't be long."

  "I'll be waiting for you," Rycker promised.

  She undressed as slowly as she dared and took a pyjama jacket from under her pillow. There was no room here for anything but a small iron bed, a chair, a wardrobe, a chest-of-drawers. On the chest was a photograph of her parents—two happy elderly people who had married late and had one child. There was a picture postcard of Bruges sent by a cousin, and an old copy of Time. Underneath the chest she had hidden a key and now she unlocked the bottom drawer. Inside the drawer was her secret museum: a too-clean Missal which she had been given at the time of her first communion, a sea-shell, the programme of a concert in Brussels, M. Andre Lejeune's Catholic History of Europe in one volume for the use of schools, and an exercise book containing an essay which she had written during her last term (she had received the maximum marks) on the Wars of Religion. Now she added to her collection the old copy of Time. Querry's face covered M. Lejeune's History: it lay, a discord, among the relics of childhood. She remembered Mme. Guelle's words exactly: "His reputation in certain ways is very bad." She locked the drawer and hid the key—it was unsafe to delay any further. Then she walked along the verandah to their room, where Rycker was stretched naked inside the mosquito tent of the double-bed under the wooden body on the cross. He looked like a drowned man fished up in a net—hair lay like seaweed on his belly and legs; but at her entrance he came immediately to life, lifting the side of the tent. "Come, Mawie," he said. A Christian marriage, how often she had been told it by her religious instructors, symbolised the marriage of Christ and his Church.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Superior with old-fashioned politeness ground out his cheroot, but Mme. Rycker was no sooner seated than absentmindedly he lit another. His desk was littered with hardware catalogues and scraps of paper on which he had made elaborate calculations that always came out differently, for he was a bad mathematician—multiplication with him was an elaborate form of addition and a series of subtractions would take the place of long division. One page of a catalogue was open at the picture of a bidet which the Superior had mistaken for a new kind of foot-bath. When Mme. Rycker entered he was trying to calculate whether he could afford to buy three dozen of these for the leproserie: they were just the thing for washing leprous feet.

  "Why, Mme. Rycker, you are an unexpected visitor. Is your husband..."

  "No."

  "It's a long way to come alone."

  "I had company as far as the Perrins'. I spent the night there. My husband asked me to bring you two drums of oil."

  "How very kind of him."

  "I am afraid we do too little for the leproserie."

  It occurred to the Superior that he might ask the Ryckers to supply a few of the novel foot-baths, but he was uncertain how many they could afford. To a man without possessions any man with money appears rich—should he ask for one foot-bath or the whole three dozen? He began to turn the photographs towards Marie Rycker, cautiously, so that it might look as though he were only fiddling with his papers. It would be so much easier for him to speak if she were to exclaim, "What an interesting new foot-bath," so that he could follow up by saying Instead of that she confused him by changing the subject. "How are the plans for the new church, father?"

  "New church?"

  "My husband told me you were building a wonderful new church as big as a cathedral, in an African style."

  "What an extraordinary idea. If I had the money for that"—not with all his scraps of
paper could he calculate the cost of a "church like a cathedral"—"why, we could build a hundred houses, each with a foot-bath." He turned the catalogue a little more towards her. "Doctor Colin would never forgive me for wasting money on a church."

  "I wonder why my husband...?"

  Was it possibly a hint, the Superior wondered, that the Ryckers were prepared to finance... He could hardly believe that the manager of a palm-oil factory had made himself sufficiently rich, but Mme. Rycker of course might have been left a fortune. Her inheritance would certainly be the talk of Luc, but he only made the journey to the town once a year. He said, "The old church, you know, will serve us a long time yet. Only half our people are Catholics. Anyway it's no use having a great church if the people still live in mud huts. Now our friend Querry sees a way of cutting the cost of a cottage by a quarter. We were such amateurs here until he came."

  "My husband has told everyone that Querry is building a church."

  "Oh no, we have better uses for him than that. The new hospital too is a long way from being finished. Any money we can beg or steal must go to equipping it. I've just been looking at these catalogues..."

  "Where is M. Querry now?"

  "Oh, I expect he's working in his room, unless he's with the doctor."

  "Everybody was talking about him at the Governor's two weeks ago."

  "Poor M. Querry."

  A small black child hardly more than two feet high walked into the room without knocking, coming in like a scrap of shadow from the noonday glare outside. He was quite naked and his little tassel hung like a bean-pod below the pot-belly. He opened a drawer in the Superior's desk and pulled out a sweet. Then he walked out again.

  "They were being quite complimentary," Mme. Rycker said. "Is it true—about this boy getting lost...?"

  "Something of the sort happened. I don't know what they are saying."

  "That he stayed all night and prayed..."

  "M. Querry is hardly a praying man."

  "My husband thinks a lot of him. There are so few people my husband can talk to. He asked me to come here and invite..."

  "We are very grateful for the two drums of oil. What you have saved us with those, we can spend..." He turned the photograph of the bidet a little further towards Mme. Rycker.

  "Do you think I could speak to him?"

  "The trouble is, Mme. Rycker, this is his hour for work."

  She said imploringly, "I only want to be able to tell my husband that I've asked him," but her small toneless voice contained no obvious appeal and the Superior was looking elsewhere, at a feature of the foot-bath which he did not fully understand. "What do you think of that?" he asked.

  "What?"

  "This foot-bath. I want to get three dozen for the hospital."

  He looked up because of her silence and was surprised to see her blushing. It occurred to him that she was a very pretty child. He said, "Do you think...?"

  She was confused, remembering the ambiguous jokes of her more dashing companions at the convent. "It's not really a foot-bath, father."

  "What else could it be for then?"

  She said with the beginnings of humour, "You'd better ask the doctor—or M. Querry." She moved a little in her chair, and the Superior took it for a sign of departure.

  "It's a long ride back to the Perrins', my dear. Can I offer you a cup of coffee, or a glass of beer?"

  "No. No, thank you."

  "Or a little whisky?" In all the long years of his abstinence the Superior had never learnt that whisky was too strong for the midday sun.

  "No, thank you. Please, father, I know you are busy. I don't want to be a nuisance, but if I could just see M. Querry and ask him..."

  "I will give him your message, my dear. I promise I won't forget. See, I am writing it down." He hesitated which sum to disfigure with the memo—"Querry Rycker." It was impossible for him to tell her that he had given his promise to Querry to leave him undisturbed, "particularly by that pious imbecile, Rycker."

  "It won't do, father. It won't do. I promised I'd see him myself. He won't believe I've tried." She broke off and the Superior thought, 'I really believe she was going to ask me for a note, the kind of note children take to school, saying that they have been genuinely ill.'

  "I'm not even sure where he is," the Superior said, emphasising the word 'sure' to avoid a lie.

  "If I could just look for him."

  "We can't have you wandering around in this sun. What would your husband say?"

  "That's what I am afraid of. He'll never believe that I did my best." She was obviously close to tears and this made her look younger, so that it was easy to discount the tears as the facile meaningless grief of childhood.

  "I tell you what," the Superior said, "I will get him to telephone—when the line is in order."

  "I know that he doesn't like my husband," she said with sad frankness.

  "My dear child, it's all in your imagination." He was at his wit's end. He said, "Querry's a strange fellow. None of us really knows him. Perhaps he likes none of us."

  "He stays with you. He doesn't avoid you."

  The Superior felt a stab of anger against Querry. These people had sent him two drums of oil. Surely they deserved in return a little civility. He said, "Stay here. I'll see if Querry's in his room. We can't have you looking all over the leproserie..."

  He left his study and turning the corner of the verandah made for Querry's room. He passed the rooms of Father Thomas and Father Paul which were distinguished from each other by nothing more personal than an individual choice of crucifix and a differing degree of untidiness: then the chapel: then Querry's room. It was the only one in the place completely bare of symbols, bare indeed of almost everything. No photographs of a community or a parent. The room struck the Superior even in the heat of the day as cold and hard, like a grave without a cross. Querry was sitting at his table, a letter before him, when the Superior entered. He didn't look up.

  "I'm sorry to disturb you," the Superior said.

  "Sit down, father. Just a moment while I finish this." He turned the page and said, "How do you end your letters, father?"

  "It depends. Your brother in Christ perhaps?"

  "Toute a toi. I remember I used to put that phrase too. How false it sounds now."

  "You have a visitor. I've kept my word and defended you to the last ditch. I can do no more. I wouldn't have disturbed you otherwise."

  "I'm glad you came. I don't relish being alone with this. You see—the mail has caught up with me. How did anyone know I was here? Does that damned local journal in Luc circulate even in Europe?"

  "Mme. Rycker is here, asking for you."

  "Oh well, at least it's not her husband."

  He picked up the envelope. "Do you see, she's even got the post box number right. What patience. She must have written to the Order."

  "Who is she?"

  "She was once my mistress. I left her three months ago, poor woman—and that's hypocrisy. I feel no pity. I'm sorry, father. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

  "You haven't. It's Mme. Rycker who has done that. She brought us two drums of oil and she wants to speak to you."

  "Am I worth that much?"

  "Her husband sent her."

  "Is that the custom here? Tell him I'm not interested."

  "She's only brought you an invitation, poor young woman. Can't you see her and thank her and say no? She seems half-afraid to go back unless she can say that she has talked to you. You aren't afraid of her, are you?"

  "Perhaps. In a way."

  "Forgive me for saying it, M. Querry, but you don't strike me as a man who is afraid of women."

  "Have you never come across a leper, father, who is afraid of striking his fingers because he knows they won't hurt any more?"

  "I've known men rejoice when the feeling returns—even pain. But you have to give pain a chance."

  "One can have a mirage of pain. Ask the amputated. All right, father, bring her in. It's a great deal better than seeing he
r wretched husband anyway."

  The Superior opened the door, and there the girl was on the threshold, in the glare of sun, caught with her mouth open, like someone surprised by a camera in a night-club, looking up in the flash, with an ungainly grimace of pain. She turned sharply round and walked away to where her car was parked and they heard her inefficient attempts at starting. The Superior followed her. A line of women returning from the market delayed him. He scampered a little way after the car, the cheroot still in his mouth and his white sun-helmet tip-tilted, but she drove away under the big arch which bore the name of the leproserie, her boy watching his antics curiously through the side-window. He came limping back because he had stubbed a toe.

  "Silly child," he said, "why didn't she stay in my room? She could have spent the night with the nuns. She'll never get to the Perrins' by dark. I only hope her boy's reliable."

  "Do you suppose she heard?"

  "Of course she heard. You didn't exactly lower your voice when you spoke of Rycker. If you love a man it can't be very pleasant to hear how unwelcome..."

  "And it's far worse, father, when you don't love him at all."

  "Of course she loves him. He's her husband."

  "Love isn't one of the commonest characteristics of marriage, father."

  "They're both Catholics."

  "Nor is it of Catholics."

  "She's a very good young woman," the Superior said obstinately.

  "Yes, father. And what a desert she must live in out there alone with that man." He looked at the letter which lay on his desk and that phrase of immolation which everyone used and some people meant—"toute a toi". It occurred to him that one could still feel the reflection of another's pain when one had ceased to feel one's own. He put the letter in his pocket: it was fair at least that he should feel the friction of the paper. "She's been taken a long way from Pendélé," he said.

  "What's Pendélé?"

  "I don't know—a dance at a friend's house, a young man with a shiny simple face, going to Mass on Sunday with the family, falling asleep in a single bed perhaps."

  "People have to grow up. We are called to more complicated things than that."