Грэм Грин - The Comedians

In the corridor I said to Martha, 'Even he seems to know.'

'How can he possibly?'

'What did he mean then by keeping secrets?'

'It's a game all children play.' But how difficult it was to consider him a child.

She said, 'He has suffered a great deal of pain. Don't you think he's behaving very well?'

'Yes. Of course. Very well.'

'Quite like a grown-up?'

'Oh yes. I thought that myself.'

I took her wrist and drew her down the corridor. 'Who sleeps in this room?'

'No one.'

I opened the door and pulled her in. Martha said, 'No. Can't you see it's impossible?'

'I've been away three months and we've made love only once since then.'

'I didn't make you go away to New York. Can't you feel I'm not in the mood, not tonight?'

'You asked me to come tonight.'

'I wanted to see you. That's all. Not to make love.'

'You don't love me, do you?'

'You shouldn't ask questions like that.'

'Why?'

'Because I might ask you the same.'

I recognized the justness of her retort and it angered me, and the anger drove away the desire.

'How many "adventures" have you had in your life?'

'Four,' she said with no hesitation at all.

'And I'm the fourth?'

'Yes. If you want to call yourself an adventure.'

Many months later when the affair was over, I realized and appreciated her directness. She played no part. She answered exactly what I asked. She never claimed to like a thing that she disliked or to love something to which she was indifferent. If I had failed to understand her, it was because I failed to ask her the right questions, that was all. It was true that she was no comedian. She had kept the virtue of innocence, and I know now why I loved her. In the end the only quality but beauty which attracts me in a woman is that vague thing, 'goodness'. The woman in Monte Carlo had betrayed her husband with a schoolboy, but her motive had been generous. Martha too had betrayed her husband, but it was not Martha's love for me which held me, if she did love, it was her blind unselfish attachment to her child. With goodness one can feel secure; why wasn't I satisfied with goodness, why did I always ask her the wrong questions?

'Why not one adventure to last?' I asked as I released her.

'How can I tell?'

I remembered the only real letter which I had ever received from her, apart from notes for rendezvous made ambiguous in case they fell into the wrong hands. It was while I was waiting in New York, and I must have written to her grudgingly, suspiciously, jealously. (I had found a call-girl on East 56th Street, and so I assumed, of course, that she had found an equivalent resource to fill the empty months.) She wrote back to me with tenderness, without rancour. Perhaps having one's father hanged for monstrous crimes puts all our petty grievances into proportion. She wrote of Angel and his cleverness in mathematics, she wrote a great deal about Angel and the nightmares he was having — 'I stay in with him nearly every night now,' and at once I began to wonder what she did when she did not stay in, with whom she passed the evening hours. It was useless to tell myself that she was with her husband, or at the casino where I had first met her.

And suddenly, as though she knew how my thoughts would turn, she wrote — or words to that effect: 'Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination … then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.'

At that moment I found in what she wrote a pretentiousness, a lack of sincerity. I was angry with myself, and so I was angry with her. I tore the letter up in spite of its tenderness, in spite of the fact that it was the only one I had. I thought she was preaching at me because I had spent two hours that afternoon in the apartment on East 56th Street, though how could she possibly have known? That is the reason why of all my jackdaw-relics — the paper-weight from Miami, an entrance-ticket from Monte Carlo — I have no scrap of her writing with me now. And yet I can remember her writing very clearly, rounded and childish, though I can't remember the tones of her voice.

'Well,' I said, 'we may as well go downstairs.' The room we stood in was cold and unoccupied; the pictures on the wall were probably chosen by an office of works.

'You go. I don't want to see those people.'

'The Colombus statue when he's better?'

'The Columbus statue.'

Just as I was expecting nothing she put her arms round me. She said, 'Poor darling. What a homecoming.'

'It's not your fault.'

She said, 'Let's do it. Let's do it quickly.' She lay on the edge of the bed and pulled me towards her, and I heard the voice of Angel down the passage calling, 'Papa. Papa.'

'Don't listen,' she said. She had drawn up her knees and I was reminded of Doctor Philipot's body under the diving-board: birth, love and death in their positions closely resemble each other. I found I could do nothing, nothing at all, no white bird flew in to save my pride. Instead there were the footsteps of the ambassador mounting the stairs.

'Don't worry,' she said. 'He won't come here,' but it wasn't the ambassador who had chilled me. I stood up and she said, 'It doesn't matter. It was a bad idea of mine, that's all.'

'The Columbus statue?'

'No. I'll find something better, I swear I will.'

She went out of the room in front of me and called, 'Luis.'

'Yes, dear?' He came to the door of their room carrying Angel's puzzle.

'I'm just showing Mr Brown the rooms up here. He says we could do with a few refugees.' There was not a false note in her voice; she was perfectly at ease, and I thought of her anger when we talked of comedians, although now she proved to be the best comedian of us all. I played my part less well; there was a dryness in my voice which betrayed anxiety and I said, 'I must go.'

'Why? It's still quite early,' Martha said. 'We haven't seen you for a long time, have we, Luis?'

'There's a rendezvous I have to keep,' I told her without knowing that I spoke the truth.

3

The long long day was not yet over: midnight was an hour or an age away. I took my car and drove along the edge of the sea, the road pitted with holes. There were very few people about; perhaps they had not realized the curfew was raised or they feared a trap. On my right hand were a line of wooden huts in little fenced saucers of earth where a few palm trees grew and slithers of water gleamed between, like scrap-iron on a dump. An occasional candle burned over a little group bowed above their rum like mourners over a coffin. Sometimes there were furtive sounds of music. An old man danced in the middle of the road — I had to brake my car to a standstill. He came and giggled at me through the glass — at least there was one man in Port-au-Prince that night who was not afraid. I couldn't make out the meaning of his patois and I drove on. It was two years or more since I had been to Mиre Catherine's, but tonight I needed her services. My impotence lay in my body like a curse which it needed a witch to raise. I thought of the girl on East 56th Street, and when reluctantly I thought of Martha I whipped up my anger. If she had made love to me when I had wanted her, this would not be happening.

Just before Mиre Catherine's the road branched — the tarmac, if you could call it tarmac, came to an abrupt end (money had run out or someone hadn't received his cut). To the left was the main southern highway, almost impassable except by jeep. I was surprised to find a road-block there, for no one expected invasion from the south. I stood, while they searched me more carefully than usual, under a great placard which announced 'U.S.A.-Haitian Joint Five-Year Plan. Great Southern Highway', but the Americans had left and nothing remained of all the five-year plan but the notice-board, over the stagnant pools, the channels in the road, the rocks and the carcass of a dredger which nobody had bothered to rescue from the mud.