The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [37]
But in this sleep there were no pleasant dreams. Pemberton and Louise were obscurely linked. Over and over again he was reading a letter which consisted only of variations on the figure 200 and the signature at the bottom was sometimes ‘Dicky’ and sometimes ‘Ticki’; he had the sense of time passing and his own immobility between the blankets - mere was something he had to do, someone he had to save, Louise or Dicky or Ticki, but he was tied to the bed and they laid weights on his forehead as you lay weights on loose papers. Once the sergeant came to the door and Ali chased him away, once Father Clay tiptoed in and took a tract off a shelf, and once, but that might have been a dream, Yusef came to the door.
About five in the evening he woke feeling dry and cool and weak and called Ali in. ‘I dreamed I saw Yusef.’
‘Yusef come for to see you, sah.’
‘Tell him I’ll see him now.’ He felt tired and beaten about the body: he turned to face the stone wall and was immediately asleep. In his sleep Louise wept silently beside him; he put out his hand and touched the stone wall again - ‘Everything shall be arranged. Everything. Ticki promises.’ When he awoke Yusef was beside him.
‘A touch of fever, Major Scobie. I am very sorry to see you poorly.’
‘I’m sorry to see you at all, Yusef.’
‘Ah, you always make fun of me.’
‘Sit down, Yusef. What did you have to do with Pemberton?’
Yusef eased his great haunches on the hard chair and noticing that his flies were open put down a large and hairy hand to deal with them. ‘Nothing, Major Scobie.’
‘It’s an odd coincidence that you are here just at the moment when he commits suicide.’
‘I think myself it is providence.’
‘He owed you money, I suppose?’
‘He owed my store-manager money.’
‘What sort of pressure were you putting on nun, Yusef?’
‘Major, you give an evil name to a dog and the dog is finished. If the D.C. wants to buy at my store, how can my manager stop selling to him? If he does that, what will happen? Sooner or later there will be a first-class row. The Provincial Commissioner will find out. The D.C. will be sent home. If he does not stop selling, what happens then? The D.C. runs up more and more bills. My manager becomes afraid of me, he asks the D.C. to pay - there is a row that way. When you have a D.C. like poor young Pemberton, there will be a row one day whatever you do. And the Syrian is always wrong.’
‘There’s quite a lot in what you say, Yusef.’ The pain was beginning again. ‘Give me that whisky and quinine, Yusef.’
‘You are not taking too much quinine, Major Scobie? Remember blackwater.’
‘I don’t want to be stuck up here for days. I want to kill this at birth. I’ve too many things to do.’
‘Sit up a moment, Major, and let me beat your pillows.’
‘You aren’t a bad chap, Yusef.’
Yusef said, ‘Your sergeant has been looking for bills, but he could not find any. Here are IOU’s though. From my manager’s safe.’ He flapped his thigh with a little sheaf of papers.
‘I see. What are you going to do with them?’
‘Burn them,’ Yusef said. He took out a cigarette-lighter and lit the corners. ‘There,’ Yusef said. ‘He has paid, poor boy. There is no reason to trouble his father.’
‘Why did you come up here?’
‘My manager was worried. I was going to propose an arrangement.’
‘One needs a long spoon to sup with you, Yusef.’
‘My enemies do. Not my friends. I would do a lot for you, Major Scobie.’
‘Why do you always call me a friend, Yusef?’
‘Major Scobie,’ Yusef said, leaning his great white head forward, reeking of hair oil, ‘friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something. You remember when you put me into court ten years ago?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Scobie turned his head away from the light of the door.
‘You nearly caught me, Major Scobie, that time. It was a matter of import duties, you remember. You could have caught