The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene Read Free Book Online Page A

will mend the car if he knows it is the only way he can get to bed.’ He folded his large fat hands over his knee and said, ‘You have a very fine car, Major Scobie. You must have paid four hundred pounds for it.’
    ‘One hundred and fifty,’ Scobie said.
    ‘I would pay you four hundred.’
    ‘It isn’t for sale, Yusef. Where would I get another?’
    ‘Not now, but maybe when you leave.’
    ‘I’m not leaving.’
    ‘Oh, I had heard that you were resigning, Major Scobie.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘We shopkeepers hear so much—but all of it is unreliable gossip.’
    ‘How’s business?’
    ‘Oh, not bad. Not good.’
    ‘What I hear is that you’ve made several fortunes since the war. Unreliable gossip of course.’
    ‘Well, Major Scobie, you know how it is. My store in Sharp Town, that does fine because I am there to keep an eye on it. My store in Macaulay Street—that does not bad because my sister is there. But my stores in Durban Street and Bond Street they do badly. I am cheated all the time. Like all my countrymen, I cannot read or write, and everyone cheats me.’
    ‘Gossip says you can keep all your stocks in all your stores in your head.’
    Yusef chuckled and beamed. ‘My memory is not bad. But it keeps me awake at night, Major Scobie. Unless I take a lot of whisky I keep thinking about Durban Street and Bond Street and Macaulay Street.’
    ‘Which shall I drop you at now?’
    ‘Oh, now I go home to bed, Major Scobie. My house in Sharp Town, if you please. Won’t you come in and have a little whisky?’
    ‘Sorry. I’m on duty, Yusef.’
    ‘It is very kind of you, Major Scobie, to give me this lift. Would you let me show my gratitude by sending Mrs Scobie a roll of silk?’
    ‘Just what I wouldn’t like, Yusef.’
    ‘Yes, yes, I knew. It’s very hard, all this gossip. Just because there are some Syrians like Tallit.’
    ‘You would like Tallit out of your way, wouldn’t you, Yusef?’
    ‘Yes, Major Scobie. It would be for my good, but it would also be for your good.’
    ‘You sold him some of those fake diamonds last year, didn’t you?’
    ‘Oh, Major Scobie, you don’t really believe I’d get the better of anyone like that. Some of the poor Syrians suffered a great deal over those diamonds, Major Scobie. It would be a shame to deceive your own people like that.’
    ‘They shouldn’t have broken the law by buying diamonds. Some of them even had the nerve to complain to the police.’
    ‘They are very ignorant, poor fellows.’
    ‘You weren’t as ignorant as all that, were you, Yusef?’
    ‘If you ask me, Major Scobie, it was Tallit. Otherwise, why does he pretend I sold him the diamonds?’
    Scobie drove slowly. The rough street was crowded. Thin black bodies weaved like daddy-long-legs in the dimmed headlights. ‘How long will the rice shortage go on, Yusef?’
    ‘You know as much about that as I do, Major Scobie.’
    ‘I know these poor devils can’t get rice at the controlled price.’
    ‘I’ve heard, Major Scobie, that they can’t get their share of the free distribution unless they tip the policeman at the gate.’
    It was quite true. There was a retort in this colony to every accusation. There was always a blacker corruption elsewhere to be pointed at. The scandalmongers of the secretariat fulfilled a useful purpose—they kept alive the idea that no one was to be trusted. That was better than complacence. Why, he wondered, swerving the car to avoid a dead pye-dog, do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn’t had time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn’t love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed. He felt a sudden