The Tenth Man by Graham Greene Read Free Book Online
Authors: Graham Greene
long curving gravel drive with trees and shrubs. Suddenly it comes right out in front of the terrace, and then divides: the left-hand path leads off to the servants’ quarters, and the right round to the front door. My mother used to keep a look out for visitors she didn’t want to meet. Nobody could call without her seeing him arrive. My grandfather, when he was young, used to watch in just the same way as my mother …’
‘How old’s the house?’ Janvier interrupted.
‘Two hundred and twenty-three years old,’ Chavel said.
‘Too old,’ Janvier said. ‘I’d have liked something modern. The old woman has rheumatics.’
The darkness had long enclosed them both and now the last light slid off the ceiling of the cell. Men automatically turned to sleep. Pillows like children were shaken and slapped and embraced. Philosophers say that past, present and future exist simultaneously, and certainly in this heavy darkness many pasts came to life: a lorry drove up the Boulevard Montparnasse, a girl held out her mouth to be kissed, and a town council elected a mayor: and in the minds of three men the future stood as inalterably as birth—fifty yards of cinder track and a brick wall chipped and pitted.
It seemed to Chavel now his hysteria was over that that simple track was infinitely more desirable after all than the long obscure route on which his own feet were planted.
THE TENTH MAN
PART
II
6
A MAN CALLING himself Jean-Louis Charlot came up the drive of the house at St Jean de Brinac.
Everything was the same as he had remembered it and yet very slightly changed, as if the place and he had grown older at different rates. Four years ago he had shut the house up, and while for him time had almost stood still, here time had raced ahead. For several hundred years the house had grown older almost imperceptibly: years were little more than a changed shadow on the brickwork. Like an elderly woman the house had been kept in flower—the face lifted at the right moment: now in four years all that work had been undone: the lines broke through the enamel which had not been renewed.
In the drive the gravel was obscured by weeds: a tree had fallen right across the way, and though somebody had lopped the branches for firewood, the trunk still lay there to prove that for many seasons no car had driven up to the house. Every step was familiar to the bearded man who came cautiously round every bend like a stranger. He had been born here: as a child he had played games of hide and seek in the bushes: as a boy he had carried the melancholy and sweetness of first love up and down the shaded drive. Ten yards further on there would be a small gate on to the path which led between heavy laurels to the kitchen garden.
The gate had gone: only the posts showed that memory hadn’t failed him. Even the nails which had held the hinges had been carefully extracted to be used elsewhere for some more urgent purpose. He turned off the drive: he didn’t want to face the house yet: like a criminal who returns to the scene of his crime or a lover who returns to haunt the place of farewell he moved in intersecting circles: he didn’t dare to move in a straight line and finish his pilgrimage prematurely, with nothing more to do for ever after.
The glass-house had obviously been unused for years, though he remembered telling the old man who worked in the garden that he was to keep the garden stocked, and sell the vegetables for what he could get in Brinac. Perhaps the old man had died and no one in the village had the initiative to appoint himself his successor. Perhaps there was no one left in the village. From the trampled unsown earth beside the glass-house he could see the ugly red-brick church pointing like an exclamation mark at the sky, closing a sentence he couldn’t read from here.
Then he saw that something after all had been planted: a patch had been cleared of weeds for the sake of some potatoes, cabbages, savoys. It was like the
‘How old’s the house?’ Janvier interrupted.
‘Two hundred and twenty-three years old,’ Chavel said.
‘Too old,’ Janvier said. ‘I’d have liked something modern. The old woman has rheumatics.’
The darkness had long enclosed them both and now the last light slid off the ceiling of the cell. Men automatically turned to sleep. Pillows like children were shaken and slapped and embraced. Philosophers say that past, present and future exist simultaneously, and certainly in this heavy darkness many pasts came to life: a lorry drove up the Boulevard Montparnasse, a girl held out her mouth to be kissed, and a town council elected a mayor: and in the minds of three men the future stood as inalterably as birth—fifty yards of cinder track and a brick wall chipped and pitted.
It seemed to Chavel now his hysteria was over that that simple track was infinitely more desirable after all than the long obscure route on which his own feet were planted.
THE TENTH MAN
PART
II
6
A MAN CALLING himself Jean-Louis Charlot came up the drive of the house at St Jean de Brinac.
Everything was the same as he had remembered it and yet very slightly changed, as if the place and he had grown older at different rates. Four years ago he had shut the house up, and while for him time had almost stood still, here time had raced ahead. For several hundred years the house had grown older almost imperceptibly: years were little more than a changed shadow on the brickwork. Like an elderly woman the house had been kept in flower—the face lifted at the right moment: now in four years all that work had been undone: the lines broke through the enamel which had not been renewed.
In the drive the gravel was obscured by weeds: a tree had fallen right across the way, and though somebody had lopped the branches for firewood, the trunk still lay there to prove that for many seasons no car had driven up to the house. Every step was familiar to the bearded man who came cautiously round every bend like a stranger. He had been born here: as a child he had played games of hide and seek in the bushes: as a boy he had carried the melancholy and sweetness of first love up and down the shaded drive. Ten yards further on there would be a small gate on to the path which led between heavy laurels to the kitchen garden.
The gate had gone: only the posts showed that memory hadn’t failed him. Even the nails which had held the hinges had been carefully extracted to be used elsewhere for some more urgent purpose. He turned off the drive: he didn’t want to face the house yet: like a criminal who returns to the scene of his crime or a lover who returns to haunt the place of farewell he moved in intersecting circles: he didn’t dare to move in a straight line and finish his pilgrimage prematurely, with nothing more to do for ever after.
The glass-house had obviously been unused for years, though he remembered telling the old man who worked in the garden that he was to keep the garden stocked, and sell the vegetables for what he could get in Brinac. Perhaps the old man had died and no one in the village had the initiative to appoint himself his successor. Perhaps there was no one left in the village. From the trampled unsown earth beside the glass-house he could see the ugly red-brick church pointing like an exclamation mark at the sky, closing a sentence he couldn’t read from here.
Then he saw that something after all had been planted: a patch had been cleared of weeds for the sake of some potatoes, cabbages, savoys. It was like the