The Tenth Man by Graham Greene Read Free Book Online Page A

garden you give to children to cultivate: a space little larger than a carpet. All around the desolation lapped. He remembered what had been here in the old days—the strawberry beds, the bushes of currants and raspberries , the sweet and bitter smell of herbs. The wall which separated this garden from the fields had tumbled in one place, or else some looter had picked his way through the old stonework to get into the garden: it had all happened a long time ago, for nettles had grown up over the fallen stones. From the gap he stood and looked a long time at something which had been beyond the power of time to change, the long slope of grass towards the elms and the river. He had thought that home was something one possessed, but the things one had possessed were cursed with change; it was what one didn’t possess that remained the same and welcomed him. This landscape was not
his
, not anybody’s home: it was simply home.
    Now there was nothing more for him to do except go away. If he went away, what could he do but drown himself in the river? His money was nearly gone: already after less than a week of liberty he had learned how impossible it was for him to find work.
    At seven o’clock in the morning (five minutes past by the mayor’s watch and two minutes to by Pierre’s alarm clock) the Germans had come for Voisin, Lenôtre and Janvier. That had been his worst shame up to date, sitting against the wall, watching his companions’ faces, waiting for the crack of the shots. He was one of them now, a man without money or position, and unconsciously they had accepted him, and begun to judge him by their own standards, and to condemn him. The shame he felt now shuffling like a beggar up to the door of the house went nearly as deep. He had realized reluctantly that Janvier could still be used for his benefit even after his death.
    The empty windows watched him come like the eyes of men sitting round the wall of a cell. He looked up once and took it all in: the unpainted frames, the broken glass in what had been his study, the balustrade of the terrace broken in two places. Then his eyes fell to his feet again, scuffling up the gravel. It occurred to him that the house might still be empty, but when he turned the corner of the terrace and came slowly up the steps to the door, he saw the same diminutive signs of occupation as he had noticed in the kitchen garden. The steps were spotless. When he put out his hand and pulled the bell it was like a gesture of despair. He had tried his best not to return but here he was.

7
    THE FLAGS OF rejoicing had been months old when Jean-Louis Charlot had come back to Paris. The uppers of his shoes were still good, but the soles were nearly paper thin, and his dark lawyer’s suit bore the marks of many years’ imprisonment. He had thought of himself in the cells as a man who kept up appearances, but now the cruel sun fingered his clothes like a second-hand dealer, pointing out the rubbed cloth, the missing buttons, the general dinginess. It was some comfort that Paris itself was dingy too.
    In his pocket Charlot had a razor wrapped in a bit of newspaper with what was left of a tablet of soap, and he had three hundred francs: he had no papers, but he had something which was better than papers—the slip from the prison officer in which the Germans had carefully recorded a year before the incorrect details he had given them—including the name Charlot. In France at this moment such a document was of more value than legal papers, for no collaborator possessed a German prison dossier authenticated with most efficient photographs, full face and profile. The face had altered somewhat, since Charlot had grown his beard, but it was still, if carefully examined, the same face. The Germans were thoroughly up-to-date archivists: photographs can be easily substituted on documents: plastic surgery can add or eliminate scars, but it is not so simple to alter the actual measurements of the skull and