A Burnt-Out Case

by Graham Greene

  Marie Rycker gave herself a second helping of potatoes.

  "Don't tell me," she said, "that I'm eating enough for two."

  "I won't."

  "It's the stock colon joke, you know, for someone with worms."

  "How is your stomach-ache?"

  "Alas, it's gone. The doctor seemed to think that it had no connection."

  "Hadn't you better telephone to your husband? Surely he'll be anxious if you don't come back today."

  "The lines are probably down. They usually are."

  "There hasn't been a storm."

  "The Africans are always stealing the wire."

  She finished off a horrible mauve dessert before she spoke again. "I expect you are right. I'll telephone," and she left him alone with his coffee. His cup and Parkinson's clinked in unison over the empty tables.

  Parkinson called across, "The mail's not in. I've been expecting a copy of my second article. I'll drop it in your room if it comes. Let me see. Is it six or seven? It wouldn't do to get the wrong room, would it?"

  "You needn't bother."

  "You owe me a photograph. Perhaps you and Mme. Rycker would oblige."

  "You'll get no photograph from me, Parkinson."

  Querry paid the bill and went to find the telephone. It stood on a desk where a woman with blue hair and blue spectacles was writing her accounts with an orange pen. "It's ringing," Marie Rycker said, "but he doesn't answer."

  "I hope his fever's not worse."

  "He's probably gone across to the factory." She put the telephone down and said, "I've done my best, haven't I?"

  "You could try again this evening before we have dinner."

  "You are stuck with me, aren't you?"

  "No more than you with me."

  "Have you any more stories to tell?"

  "No. I only know the one."

  She said, "It's an awful time till tomorrow. I don't know what to do until I know."

  "Lie down awhile."

  "I can't. Would it be very stupid if I went to the cathedral and prayed?"

  "Nothing is stupid that makes the time pass."

  "But if the thing is here," she said, "inside me, it couldn't suddenly disappear, could it, if I prayed?"

  "I wouldn't think so." He said reluctantly, "Even the priests don't ask you to believe that. They would tell you, I suppose, to pray that God's will be done. But don't expect me to talk to you about prayer."

  "I'd want to know what his will was before I prayed anything like that," she said. "All the same, I think I'll go and pray. I could pray to be happy, couldn't I?"

  "I suppose so."

  "That would cover almost everything."

  2

  Querry too found the hours hanging heavily. Again he walked down to the river. Work had stopped upon the Bishop's boat, and there was no one on board. In the little square the shops were shuttered. It seemed as though all the world were asleep except himself and the girl who, he supposed, was still praying. But when he returned to the hotel he found that Parkinson at least was awake. He stood under the mauve-and-pink streamers, with his eyes upon the door. After Querry had crossed the threshold, he came tiptoeing forward and said with sly urgent importance, "I must have a word with you quietly before you go to your room."

  "What about?"

  "The general situation," Parkinson said. "Storm over Luc. Do you know who's up there?"

  "Up where?"

  "On the first floor."

  "You seem very anxious to tell me. Go ahead."

  "The husband," Parkinson said heavily.

  "What husband?"

  "Rycker. He's looking for his wife."

  "I think he'll find her in the Cathedral."

  "It's not as simple as all that. He knows you're with her."

  "Of course he does. I was at his house yesterday."

  "All the same I don't think he expected to find you here in adjoining rooms."

  "You think like a gossip-writer," Querry said. "What difference does it make whether rooms adjoin? You can sleep together from opposite ends of a passage just as easily."

  "Don't underrate the gossip-writers. They write history. From Fair Rosamund to Eva Braun."

  "I don't think history will be much concerned with the Ryckers." He went to the desk and said, "My bill, please. I'm leaving now."

  "Running away?" Parkinson asked.

  "Why running away? I was only staying here to give her a lift back. Now I can leave her with her husband. She's his responsibility."

  "You are a cold-blooded devil," Parkinson said. "I begin to believe some of the things you told me."

  "Print them instead of your pious rubbish. It might be interesting to tell the truth for once."

  "But which truth? You aren't as simple-minded as you make out, Querry, and there weren't any lies of fact in what I wrote. Leaving out Stanley, of course."

  "And your pirogue and your faithful servants."

  "Anyway, what I wrote about you was true."

  "No."

  "You have buried yourself here, haven't you? You are working for the lepers. You did pursue that man into the forest... It all adds up, you know, to what people like to call goodness."

  "I know my own motives."

  "Do you? And did the saints? What about 'most miserable sinner' and all that crap?"

  "You talk—almost—as Father Thomas does. Not quite, of course."

  "History's just as likely to take my interpretation as your own. I told you I was going to build you up, Querry. Unless, of course, as now seems likely, I find it makes a better story if I pull you down."

  "Do you really believe you have all that power?"

  "Montagu Parkinson has a very wide syndication."

  The woman with blue hair said, "Your bill, M. Querry," and he turned to pay. "Isn't it worth your while," Parkinson said, "to ask me a favour?"

  "I don't understand."

  "I've been threatened often in my time. I've had my camera smashed twice. I've spent a night in a police-cell. Three times in a restaurant somebody hit me." For a moment he sounded like St. Paul: 'Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned: I have been shipwrecked three times...' He said, "The strange thing is that no one has ever appealed to my better nature. It might work. It's probably there, you know, somewhere..." It was like a genuine grief.

  Querry said gently, "Perhaps I would, Parkinson, if I cared at all."

  Parkinson said, "I can't bear that damned indifference of yours. Do you know what he found up there? But you wouldn't ask a journalist for information, would you? There's a towel in your room. I showed it him myself. And a comb with long hair in it." The misery of being Parkinson for a moment looked out of his wounded eyes. He said, "I'm disappointed in you, Querry. I'd begun to believe my own story about you."

  "I'm sorry," Querry said.

  "A man's got to believe a bit or contract out altogether."

  Somebody stumbled at the turn of the stairs. It was Rycker coming down. He had a book of some kind in his hand in a pulpy scarlet cover. The fingers on the rail shook as he came, from the remains of fever or from nerves. He stopped and the fat-boy mask of the man in the moon grinned at him from a neighbouring light-bracket. He said, "Querry."

  "Hello, Rycker, are you feeling better?"

  "I can't understand it," Rycker said. "You of all men in the world..." He seemed to be searching desperately for clichés, the clichés from the Marie-Chantal serials rather than the clichés he was accustomed to from his reading in theology. "I thought you were my friend, Querry."

  The orange pen was suspiciously busy behind the desk and the blue head was unconvincingly bent. "I don't know what you are talking about, Rycker," Querry said. "You'd better come into the bar. We'll be more alone there." Parkinson prepared to follow them, but Querry blocked the door. He said, "No, Parkinson, there isn't a story for the Post."

  "I have nothing to hide from Mr. Parkinson," Rycker said in English.

  "As you wish." The heat of the afternoon had driven a
way even the barman. The paper streamers hung down like old man's beard. Querry said, "Your wife tried to telephone to you at lunch-time, but there was no reply."

  "What do you suppose? I was on the road by six this morning."

  "I'm glad you've come. I shall be able to leave now."

  Rycker said, "It's no good denying anything, Querry, anything at all. I've been to my wife's room, number six, and you've got the key of number seven in your pocket."

  "You needn't jump to stupid conclusions, Rycker. Even about towels and combs. What if she did wash in my room this morning? As for rooms they were the only ones prepared when we arrived."

  "Why did you take her away without so much as a word...?"

  "I meant to tell you, but you and I talked about other things." He looked at Parkinson leaning on the bar. He was watching their mouths closely as though in that way he might come to understand the language they were using.

  "She went and left me ill with a high fever..."

  "You had your boy. There were things she had to do in town."

  "What things?"

  "I think that's for her to tell you, Rycker. A woman can have her secrets."

  "You seem to share them all right. Hasn't a husband got the right...?"

  "You are too fond of talking about rights, Rycker. She has her rights too. But I'm not going to stand and argue..."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To find my boy. I want to start for home. We can do nearly four hours before dark."

  "I've got a lot more to talk to you about."

  "What? The love of God?"

  "No," Rycker said, "about this." He held the book open at a page headed with a date. Querry saw that it was a diary with ruled lines and between them the kind of careful script girls learn to write at school. "Go on," Rycker said, "read it."

  "I don't read other people's diaries."

  "Then I'll read it to you. 'Spent night with Q."

  Querry smiled. He said, "It's true—in a way. We sat drinking whisky and I told her a long story."

  "I don't believe a word you're saying."

  "You deserve to be a cuckold, Rycker, but I never went in for seducing children."

  "I can imagine what the Courts would say to this."

  "Be careful, Rycker. Don't threaten me. I might change my mind."

  "I could make you pay," Rycker said, "pay heavily."

  "I doubt whether any court in the world would take your word against hers and mine. Goodbye, Rycker."

  "You can't walk out of here as though nothing had happened."

  "I would have liked to leave you in suspense, but it wouldn't be fair to her. Nothing has happened, Rycker. I haven't even kissed your wife. She doesn't attract me in that way."

  "What right have you to despise us as you do?"

  "Be a sensible man. Put that diary back where you found it and say nothing."

  " 'Spent the night with Q' and say nothing?"

  Querry turned to Parkinson. "Give your friend a drink and talk some sense into him. You owe him an article."

  "A duel would make a good story," Parkinson said wistfully.

  "It's lucky for her I'm not a violent man," Rycker said. "A good thrashing..."

  "Is that a part of Christian marriage, too?"

  He felt an extraordinary weariness; he had lived a lifetime in the middle of some such scene as this, he had been born to such voices, and if he were not careful, he would die with them in his ears. He walked out on the two of them, paying no attention at all to the near scream of Rycker, "I've got a right to demand..."

  In the cabin of the truck sitting beside Deo Gratias he was at peace again. He said, "You've never been back, have you, into the forest, and I know you'll never take me there... All the same, I wish... Is Pendélé very far away?"

  Deo Gratias sat with his head down, saying nothing.

  "Never mind."

  Outside the Cathedral Querry stopped the truck and got out. It would be wiser to warn her. The doors were open for ventilation, and the hideous windows through which the hard light glared in red and blue made the sun more clamorous than outside. The boots of a priest going to the sacristy squealed on the tiled floor, and a mammy chinked her beads. It was not a church for meditation; it was as hot and public as a market-place, and in the side-chapels stood plaster stallholders, offering a baby or a bleeding heart. Marie Rycker was sitting under a statue of Ste. Thérese of Lisieux. It seemed a less than suitable choice. The two had nothing in common but youth.

  He asked her, "Still praying?"

  "Not really. I didn't hear you come."

  "Your husband's at the hotel."

  "Oh," she said flatly, looking up at the saint who had disappointed her.

  "He's been reading a diary you left in your room. You oughtn't to have written what you did—'Spent the night with Q.'"

  "It was true, wasn't it? Besides I put in an exclamation mark to show."

  "Show what?"

  "That it wasn't serious. The nuns never minded if you put an exclamation mark. 'Mother Superior in a tearing rage!' They always called it the 'exaggeration mark'."

  "I don't think your husband knows the convent code."

  "So he really believes...?" she asked and giggled.

  "I've tried to persuade him otherwise."

  "It seems such a waste, doesn't it, if he believes that. We might just as well have really done it. Where are you going now?"

  "I'm driving home."

  "I'd come with you if you liked. Only I know you don't like."

  He looked up at the plaster face with its simpering and holy smile. "What would she say?"

  "I don't consult her about everything. Only in extremis. Though this is pretty extremis now, I suppose, isn't it? What with this and that. Have I got to tell him about the baby?"

  "It would be better to tell him before he finds out."

  "And I prayed to her so hard for happiness," she said disdainfully. "What a hope. Do you believe in prayer at all?"

  "No."

  "Did you never?"

  "I suppose I believed once. When I believed in giants." He looked around the church, at the altar, the tabernacle, the brass candles, and the European saints, pale like albinos in the dark continent. He could detect in himself a dim nostalgia for the past, but everyone always felt that, he supposed, in middle age, even for a past of pain, when pain was associated with youth. If there were a place called Pendélé, he thought, I would never bother to find my way back.

  "You think I've been wasting my time, don't you, praying?"

  "It was better than lying on your bed brooding."

  "You don't believe in prayer at all—or in God?"

  "No." He said gently, "Of course, I may be wrong."

  "And Rycker does," she said, calling him by his surname as though he were no longer her husband. "I wish it wasn't always the wrong people who believed."

  "Surely the nuns..."

  "Oh, they are professionals. They believe anything. Even the Holy House of Loretto. They ask us to believe too much and then we believe less and less." Perhaps she was talking in order to postpone the moment of return. She said, "Once I got into trouble drawing a picture of the Holy House in full flight with jet-engines. How much did you believe—when you believed?"

  "I suppose, like the boy in the story I told you, I persuaded myself to believe almost everything with arguments. You can brainwash yourself into anything you want—even into marriage or a vocation. Then the years pass and the marriage or the vocation fails and its better to get out. It's the same with belief. People hang on to a marriage for fear of a lonely old age or to a vocation for fear of poverty. It's not a good reason. And it's not a good reason to hang on to the Church for the sake of some mumbo jumbo when you come to die."

  "And what about the mumbo-jumbo of birth?" she asked. "If there's a baby inside me now, I'll have to have it christened, won't I? I'm not sure that I'd be happy if it wasn't. Is that dishonest? If only it hadn't him for a father."

  "Of co
urse it isn't dishonest. You mustn't think your marriage has failed yet."

  "Oh but it has."

  "I didn't mean with Rycker, I meant..." He said sharply. "For God's sake, don't start taking me for an example, too."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The rather sweet champagne was the best that Querry had been able to find in Luc, and it had not been improved by the three-day drive in the truck and a breakdown at the first ferry. The nuns provided tinned pea-soup, four lean roast chickens, and an ambiguous sweet omelette which they had made with guava jelly: the omelette had sat down halfway between their house and the fathers'. But on this day, when the ceremony of raising the roof-tree was over at last, no one felt in a mood to criticise. An awning had been set up outside the dispensary, and at long trestle tables the priests and nuns had provided a feast for the lepers who had worked on the hospital and their families, official and unofficial; beer was there for the men and fizzy fruit drinks and buns for the women and children. The nuns' own celebration had been prepared in strict privacy, but it was rumoured to consist mainly of extra strong coffee and some boxes of petits fours that had been kept in reserve since the previous Christmas and had probably turned musty in the interval.

  Before the feast there was a service. Father Thomas trapesed round the new hospital, supported by Father Joseph and Father Paul, sprinkling the walls with holy water, and several hymns were sung in the Mongo language. There had been prayers and a sermon from Father Thomas which went on far too long—he had not yet learned enough of the native tongue to make himself properly understood. Some of the younger lepers grew impatient and wandered away, and a child was found by Brother Philippe arrosing the new walls with his own form of water.

  Nobody cared that a small dissident group who had nothing to do with the local tribe sang their own hymns apart. Only the doctor, who had once worked in the Lower Congo, recognised them for what they were, trouble-makers from the coast more than a thousand kilometres away. It was unlikely that any of the lepers could understand them, so he let them be. The only sign of their long journey by path and water and road was an unfamiliar stack of bicycles up a sidepath into the bush which he had happened to take that morning.