Грэм Грин - The Comedians

'I hope Mrs Smith is well.'

'She's fine,' he said, 'fine. She's down there in the cabin getting up her French grammar. She said she couldn't concentrate with me around.'

'French grammar?'

'They tell me that's the language spoken where we are going. Mrs Smith is a wonderful linguist. Give her a few hours with a grammar and she'll know everything except the pronunciation.'

'French hasn't come her way before?'

'That's no problem for Mrs Smith. Once we had a German girl staying in the house — it wasn't half a day before Mrs Smith was telling her to keep her room tidy in her own language. Another time we had a Finn. It took Mrs Smith nearly a week before she could get her hands on a Finnish grammar, but then there was no stopping her.' He paused and said with a smile that touched his absurdity with a strange dignity, 'I've been married for thirty-five years and I've never ceased to admire that wornan.'

'Do you often,' I asked disingenuously, 'take holidays in these parts?'

'We try to combine a vacation,' he said, 'with our mission. Neither Mrs Smith nor I are ones for undiluted pleasure.'

'I see, and your mission this time is bringing you …?'

'Once,' he said, 'we took our vacation in Tennessee. It was an unforgettable experience. You see, we went as freedom riders. There was an occasion in Nashville on the way down when I feared for Mrs Smith.'

'It was a courageous way to spend a holiday.'

He said, 'We have a great love for coloured people.' He seemed to think it was the only explanation needed.

'I'm afraid they'll prove a disappointment to you where you are going now.'

'Most things disappoint till you look deeper.'

'Coloured people can be as violent as the whites in Nashvflle.'

'We have our troubles in the U.S.A. All the same I thought — perhaps — the purser was pulling my leg.'

'He intended to. The joke's against him. The reality's worse than anything he can have seen from the waterfront. I doubt if he goes far into the town.'

'You would advise us like he did — to go on to Santo Domingo?'

'Yes.'

His eyes looked sadly out over the monotonous repetitive scape of sea. I thought I had made an impression. I said, 'Let me give you an example of what life is like there.'

I told Mr Smith of a man who was suspected of being concerned in an attempt to kidnap the President's children on their way home from school. I don't think there was any evidence against him, but he had been the prize sharpshooter of the republic at some international gathering in Panama, and perhaps they thought it needed a prize marksman to pick off the Presidential guard. So the Tontons Macoute surrounded his house — he wasn't there — and set it on fire with petrol and then they machine-gunned anyone who tried to escape. They allowed the fire-brigade to keep the flames from spreading, and now you could see the gap in the street like a drawn tooth.

Mr Smith listened with attention. He said, 'Hitler did worse, didn't he? And he was a white man. You can't blame it on their colour.'

'I don't. The victim was coloured too.'

'When you look properly at things, they are pretty bad everywhere. Mrs Smith wouldn't like us to turn back just because …'

'I'm not trying to persuade you. You asked me a question.'

'Then why is it — if you'll excuse another — that you are going back?'

'Because the only thing I own is there. My hotel.'

'I guess the only thing we own — Mrs Smith and me — is our mission.' He sat staring at the sea, and at that moment Jones passed. He called at us over his shoulder, 'Four times round,' and went on.

'He's not afraid either,' Mr Smith said, as though he had to apologize for showing courage, as a man might apologize for a rather loud tie which his wife had given him by pointing out that others wore the same.

'I wonder if it's courage in his case. Perhaps he's like me and he hasn't anywhere else to go.'

'He's been very friendly to us both,' Mr Smith said firmly. It was obvious that he wished to change the subject.

When I knew Mr Smith better I recognized that particular tone of voice. He was acutely uneasy if I spoke ill of anyone even of a stranger or of an enemy. He would back away from the conversation like a horse from water. It amused me sometimes to draw him unsuspectingly to the very edge of the ditch and then suddenly urge him on, as it were, with whip and spurs. But I never managed to teach him how to jump. I think he soon began to divine what I was at, but he never spoke his displeasure aloud. That would have been to criticize a friend. He preferred just to edge away. This was one characteristic at least he did not share with his wife. I was to learn later how fiery and direct her nature could be — she was capable of attacking anyone, except of course the Presidential Candidate himself. I had many quarrels with her in the course of time, she suspected that I laughed a little at her husband, but she never knew how I envied them. I have never known in Europe a married couple with that kind of loyalty.

I said, 'You were talking about your mission just now.'

'Was I? You must excuse me, talking about myself like that. Mission is too big a word.'

'I'm interested.'

'Call it a hope. But I guess a man in your profession wouldn't find it very sympathetic.'

'You mean it's got something to do with vegetarianism?'

'Yes.'

'I'm not unsympathetic. My job is to please my guests. If my guests are vegetarian …'

'Vegetarianism isn't only a question of diet, Mr Brown. It touches life at many points. If we really eliminated acidity from the human body we would eliminate passion.'

'Then the world would stop.'

He reproved me gently, 'I didn't say love,' and I felt a curious sense of shame. Cynicism is cheap — you can buy it at any Monoprix store — it's built into all poor-quality goods.

'Anyway you're on the way to a vegetarian country,' I said.

'How do you mean, Mr Brown?'

'Ninety-five per cent of the people can't afford meat or fish or eggs.'

'But hasn't it occurred to you, Mr Brown, that it isn't the poor who make the trouble in the world? Wars are made by politicians, by capitalists, by intellectuals, by bureaucrats, by Wall Street bosses or Communist bosses — they are none of them made by the poor.'

'And the rich and powerful aren't vegetarian, I suppose?'

'No sir. Not usually.' Again I felt ashamed of my cynicism. I could believe for a moment, as I looked at those pale blue eyes, unflinching and undoubting, that perhaps he had a point. A steward stood at my elbow. I said, 'I don't want soup.'

'It's not time for soup yet, sah. The captain asks you kindly to have a word with him, sah.'

The captain was in his cabin — an apartment as bare and as scrubbed as himself, with nothing personal anywhere except for one cabinet-sized photograph of a middle-aged woman who looked as if she had emerged that instant from her hair-dresser's where even her character had been capped under the drying helmet. 'Sit down, Mr Brown. Will you take a cigar?'

'No, no thank you.'

The captain said, 'I wish to come quickly to the point. I have to ask your cooperation. It is very embarrassing.'

'Yes?'

He said in a tone heavy with gloom, 'If there is one thing I do not like on a voyage it is the unexpected.'

'I thought at sea … always … storms …'

'Naturally I am not talking of the sea. The sea presents no problem.' He altered the position of an ash-tray, of a cigarbox, and then he moved a centimetre closer to him the photograph of the blank-faced woman whose hair seemed set in grey cement. Perhaps she gave him confidence: she would have given me a paralysis of the will. He said, 'You have met this passenger Major Jones. He calls himself Major Jones.'

'I've spoken to him.'