A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene

Author:Graham Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

II

‘So that’s the new hospital,’ Parkinson said. ‘Of course I don’t know about these things, but there seems to me nothing very original . . .’ He bent over the plans and said with the obvious intention of provoking. ‘It reminds me of something in one of our new satellite towns. Hemel Hempstead perhaps. Or Stevenage.’

‘This is not architecture,’ Querry said. ‘It’s a cheap building job. Nothing more. The cheaper the better, so long as it stands up to heat, rain, and humidity.’

‘Do they require a man like you for that?’

‘Yes. They have no builder here.’

‘Are you going to stay till it’s finished?’

‘Longer than that.’

‘Then what Rycker told me must be partly true.’

‘I doubt if anything that man says could ever be true.’

‘You’d need to be a kind of a saint, wouldn’t you, to bury yourself here.’

‘No. Not a saint.’

‘Then what are you? What are your motives? I know a lot about you already. I’ve briefed myself,’ Parkinson said. He sat his great weight down on the bed and said confidingly, ‘You aren’t exactly a man who loves his fellows, are you? Leaving out women, of course.’ There is a strong allurement in corruption and there was no doubt of Parkinson’s; he carried it on the surface of his skin like phosphorus, impossible to mistake. Virtue had died long ago within that mountain of flesh for lack of air. A priest might not be shocked by human failings, but he could be hurt or disappointed; Parkinson would welcome any kind of failing. Nothing would hurt Parkinson or disappoint him but the size of a cheque.

‘You heard what the doctor called me just now – one of the burnt-out cases. They are the lepers who lose everything that can be eaten away before they are cured.’

‘You are a whole man as far as one can see,’ said Parkinson, looking at the fingers resting on the drawing-board.

‘I’ve come to an end. This place, you might say, is the end. Neither the road nor the river go any further. You have been washed up here too, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, no, I came with a purpose.’

‘I was afraid of you on the boat, but I’m afraid of you no longer.’

‘I can’t understand what you had to fear. I’m a man like other men.’

‘No,’ Querry said, ‘you are a man like me. Men with vocations are different from the others. They have more to lose. Behind all of us in various ways lies a spoilt priest. You once had a vocation, admit it, if it was only a vocation to write.’

‘That’s not important. Most journalists begin that way.’ The bed bent below Parkinson’s weight as he shifted his buttocks like sacks.

‘And end your way?’

‘What are you driving at? Are you trying to insult me? I’m beyond insult, Mr Querry.’

‘Why should I insult you? We are two of a kind. I began as an architect and I am ending as a builder. There’s little pleasure in that kind of progress. Is there pleasure in your final stage,

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