The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [18]
Finally, the lavatory: he lifted up the wooden seat: nothing had been laid between the porcelain and the wood. He put his hand on the lavatory chain, and in the mirror became aware for the first time of a tension: the brown eyes were no longer on his face, they were fixed on something else, and following that gaze home, he saw his own hand tighten on the chain.
Is the cistern empty of water? he wondered, and pulled. Gurgling and pounding in the pipes, the water flushed down. He turned away and the Portuguese said with a smugness he was unable to conceal, ‘You see, major.’ And at that moment Scobie did see. I’m becoming careless, he thought. He lifted the cap of the cistern. Fixed in the cap with adhesive tape and dear of the water lay a letter.
He looked at the address - a Frau Groener in Friedrichstrasse, Leipzig. He repeated, ‘I’m sorry, captain,’ and because the man didn’t answer, he looked up and saw the tears beginning to pursue the sweat down the hot fat cheeks. ‘I’ll have to take it away,’ Scobie said, ‘and report...’
‘Oh, this war,’ the captain burst out, ‘how I hate this war.’
‘We’ve got cause to hate it too, you know,’ Scobie said.
‘A man is ruined because he writes to his daughter,’
‘Daughter?’
‘Yes. She is Frau Groener. Open it and read. You will see.’
‘I can’t do that. I must leave it to the censorship. Why didn’t you wait to write till you got to Lisbon, captain?’
The man had lowered his bulk on to the edge of the bath as though it were a heavy sack his shoulders could no longer bear. He kept on wiping his eyes with the back of his hand like a child - an unattractive child, the fat boy of the school Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast. Scobie knew he should have taken the letter and gone; he could do no good with his sympathy.
The captain moaned, ‘If you had a daughter you’d understand. You haven’t got one,’ he accused, as though there were a crime in sterility.
‘No.’
‘She is anxious about me. She loves me,’ he said, raising his tear-drenched face as though he must drive the unlikely statement home. ‘She loves me,’ he repeated mournfully.
‘But why not write from Lisbon?’ Scobie asked again. ‘Why run this risk?’
‘I am alone. I have no wife,’ the captain said. ‘One cannot always wait to speak. And in Lisbon - you know how things go - friends, wine. I have a little woman there too who is jealous even of my daughter. There are rows, the time passes. In a week I must be off again. It was always so easy before this voyage.’
Scobie believed him. The story was sufficiently irrational to be true. Even in war-time one must sometimes exercise the faculty of belief if it is not to atrophy. He said, ‘I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it. Perhaps nothing will happen.’
‘Your authorities,’ the captain said, ‘will blacklist me. You know what that means. The consul will not give a navicert to any ship with me as captain. I shall starve on shore.’
‘There are so many slips,’ Scobie said, ‘in these matters. Files get mislaid. You may hear no more about it.’
‘I shall pray,’ the man said without hope.
‘Why not?’ Scobie said.
‘You are an Englishman. You wouldn’t believe in prayer.’
‘I’m a Catholic, too,’ Scobie said.
The fat face looked quickly up at him. ‘A Catholic?’ he exclaimed with hope. For the first time he began to plead. He was like a man who meets a fellow countryman in a strange continent. He began to talk rapidly of his daughter in Leipzig; he produced