The Tenth Man by Greene Graham

Author:Greene, Graham [Graham, Greene]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-21T23:00:00+00:00

9

FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IT WAS STRANGE AND BITTER TO BE living in his own house as an odd-job man, but after another twenty-four it was familiar and peaceful. If a man loves a place enough he doesn't need to possess it: it's enough for him to know that it is safe and unaltered—or only altered in the natural way by time and circumstance. Madame Mangeot and her daughter were like temporary lodgers. If they took a picture down it was only for some practical purpose—to save dusting, not because they wished to put another in its place; they would never have cut down a tree for the sake of a new view, or refurbished a room according to some craze of the moment. It was exaggeration even to regard them as legal lodgers: they were more like gypsies who had found the house empty and now lived in a few rooms, cultivated a corner of the garden well away from the road, and were careful to make no smoke by which they could be detected.

This was not entirely fanciful: he found they were in fact afraid of the village. Once a week the girl went into Brinac to the market, walking both ways though Charlot knew there was a cart they could have hired in St. Jean, and once a week the old woman went to Mass, her daughter taking her to the door of the church and meeting her there afterwards. The old woman never entered until a few moments before the Gospel was read, and at the very first moment, when the priest had pronounced the 'Ita Missa', she was on her feet. Thus she avoided all contact outside the church with the congregation. This suited Charlot well. It never occurred to either of them as strange that he too should avoid the village.

It was he who now went into Brinac on market day. The first time that he went he felt betrayed at every step by familiar things. It was as though even if no human spoke his name the signpost at the crossroads would betray him: the soles of his shoes signed his name along the margin of the road, and the slats of the bridge across the river sounded a personal note under his tread which seemed to him as unmistakable as an accent. Once on the road a cart passed him from St. Jean and he recognized the driver—a local farmer who had been crippled as a boy, losing his right arm in an accident with a tractor. As children they had played together in the fields round St. Jean, but after the boy's accident and the long weeks in hospital obscure emotions of jealousy and pride kept them apart, and when they met at last it was as enemies. They couldn't, like duelists, use the same weapons: his own strength was matched against the crippled boy's wounding tongue which bore the bedsores of a long sickness.

Charlot stepped back into the ditch as the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.