Greene, Graham by The Confidential Agent

Author:The Confidential Agent [Agent, The Confidential]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIGHT was out of Mr. K. He left the taxi without a word and went on down the basement steps. D. turned up the light in the little bed-sitting-room and lit the gas; bent over the fire with the match between his fingers, he wondered whether he was really going to commit a murder. It seemed hard luck on Glover—whoever she might be: a person's home had a kind of innocency. When a house front gave way before an explosion and showed the iron bed, the chairs, the hideous picture, and the chamber pot, you had a sense of rape: intrusion into a stranger's home was an act of lust. But you were driven always to copy what your enemy did. You dropped the same bombs, you broke up the same private lives. He turned with sudden fury on Mr. K. and said: "You've asked for this."

Mr. K. backed against the divan, sat down. Above his head was a small bookshelf with a few meagre books in limp morocco bindings—the inconsiderable library of a pious woman. He said: "I swear to you, I wasn't there."

"You don't deny, do you, that you and she planned to get my papers?"

"You were superseded."

"I know all that." He came close up to him; this was the moment for the blow in the face, the worked-up rage: they had shown him the other day how a man was beaten up. But he couldn't do it. To touch K. at all was to start a relationship . . . his mouth quivered in distaste. He said: "Your only chance of getting out alive is to be frank. They bought you both, didn't they?"

Mr. K.'s glasses dropped on to the divan; he felt for them over the art needlework cover. He said: "How were we to know you had not sold out?"

"There was no way, was there?" D. said.

"They didn't trust you—or why should we have been employed? . . ."

He listened, with his fingers on the gun. If you were the jury as well as the judge—the attorney too—you had to give every chance: you had to be fair even if the whole world was biased. "Go on."

Mr. K. was encouraged. His pink-rimmed eyes peered up, trying to focus: he moved the muscles of his mouth into a testing smile. He said: "And then, of course you did behave oddly—didn't you? How could we tell that you wouldn't sell at a price?"

"True."

"Everyone has to look after himself. If you had sold—we should have got nothing."

It was a rather dreadful revelation of human depravity: Mr. K. had been more bearable when he was frightened, cringing. . . . Now his courage was coming back. He said: "It's no good being left behind. After all, there's no hope."

"No hope?"

"You've only to read the paper tonight. We are beaten. Why, you know yourself how many ministers have ratted. You don't think they are getting nothing, do you?"

"I wonder what you got."

Mr. K. found his glasses and shifted on the divan.

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