A Burnt-Out Case

The more bare a life is, the more we fear change.

The pouches under his eyes were like purses that contained the smuggled memories of a disappointing life.

You try to draw everything into the net of your faith, father, but you can't steal all the virtues. Gentleness isn't Christian, self-sacrifice isn't Christian, charity isn't, remorse isn't. I expect the cavemen wept to see another's tears.

I think I have always liked my fellow men. Liking is a great deal safer than love. It doesn't demand victims. Who is your victim, Querry?

Querry and Doctor Colin sat on the steps of the hospital in the cool of the early day. Every pillar had its shadow and every shadow its crouching patient.

Doctor Colin came into sight of the funnel where it stuck up between the long avenue of logs that had been cut ready for fuel. A man was walking up the avenue towards him. He raised his hat, a man of his own age, in the late fifties with a grizzled morning stubble, wearing a crumpled tropical suit. ‘My name is Querry,’ he introduced himself, speaking in an accent which Colin could not quite place as French or Flemish any more than he could immediately identify the nationality of the name. ‘Doctor Colin,’ he said. ‘Are you stopping here?’ ‘The boat goes no farther,’ the man answered, as if that were indeed the only explanation.

There is a time in life when a man with a little acting ability is able to deceive even himself.

As usual there was no silence. Silence belonged to cities. He dreamt of a girl whom he had once known and thought he loved. She came to him in tears because she had broken a vase which she valued, and she became angry with him because he didn’t share her suffering. She struck him in the face, but he felt the blow no more than a dab of butter against his cheek. He said, ‘I am sorry, I am too far gone, I can’t feel at all, I am a leper.’ As he explained his sickness to her he awoke.

While he washed his hands in spirits he took a look at Querry over his shoulder. The dispenser was shepherding the lepers out and they were alone. He said, ‘Are you wanted by the police? You needn’t be afraid of telling me–or any of us. You’ll find a leproserie just as safe as the Foreign Legion.’ ‘No. I’ve committed no crime. I assure you there’s nothing of interest in my case. I have retired, that’s all. If the fathers don’t want me here, I can always go on.’ ‘You’ve said it yourself–the boat goes no farther.’ ‘There’s the road.’ ‘Yes. In one direction. The way you came. It’s not often open though. This is the season of rains.’ ‘There are always my feet,’ Querry said. Colin looked for a smile, but there was none on Querry’s face.

Why did you give Querry Deo Gratias?’ ‘He’s cured, but he’s a burnt-out case, and I don’t want to send him away. He can sweep a floor and make a bed without fingers or toes.’ ‘Our visitors are sometimes fastidious.’ ‘I assure you Querry doesn’t mind. In fact he asked for him.

This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves—it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

Presently the Commissioner of Police walked in. He was a young man and this was his first case and the Greek was highly respected in Luc. “What have you done?” he demanded when he came into the parlour. “It is not the case of what have I done,” the old man said, “but of what I am going to do,” and he took a gun from under the cushion and shot himself through the head. Doctor Colin since those days had often found comfort in the careful sentence of the old Greek storekeeper.

Those doubts you have I can assure you I know them too. But couldn’t we perhaps go over together the philosophical arguments ... to help us both?

A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same to make them comfortable. My interest was in space, light, proportion. New materials interested me only in the effect they might have on those three. Wood, brick, steel, concrete, glass—space seems to alter with what you use to enclose it. Materials are the architect's plot. They are not the motive for work. Only the space, and the light and the proportion. The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rubempré in the end?

You, if anyone, will know how far I have failed in what I attempted. A doctor is not immune from ‘the long despair of doing nothing well’, the cafard that hangs around a writer’s life.

But, father, I’m not a good man. Can’t you believe me? Must you too twist everything like Rycker and that man? I had no good motive in coming here. I am looking after myself as I have always done, but surely even a selfish man has the right to a little happiness?’ ‘You have a truly wonderful quality of humility,’ Father Thomas said.

We have become cynical about progress because of the terrible things we have seen men do during the last forty years. All the same through trial and error the amoeba did become the ape. There were blind starts and wrong turnings even then, I suppose. Evolution today can produce Hitlers as well as St John of the Cross.

It was as thought he were on the verge of acceptance into a new country; like a refugee he watched the consul lift his pen to fill in the final details of his via. But the refugee remains apprehensive to the last; he has had too many experiences of the sudden afterthought, the fresh question or requirement, the strange official who comes into the room carrying another file.

Unhappiness was like a hungry animal waiting beside the track for any victim.

He looked around the church, at the altar, the tabernacle, the brass candles, and the European saints, pale like albinos in the dark continent.

He said, 'You don't have to make conversation with me.' 'My husband says that I am too silent.' 'Silence is not a bad thing.' 'It is when you are unhappy.

Are you a happy man?' Querry asked. 'I suppose I am. It's not a question that I've ever asked myself. Does a happy man ever ask it? I go on from day to day.

Don't be too sorry for those who die after some pain. It makes them ready to go. Think of how a death sentence must sound when you are full of health and vigour.

Discomfort irritates our ego like a mosquito-bite. We become aware of ourselves, the more uncomfortable we are

...What strange ideas people have about leprosy, doctor.'     'They learn it from the Bible. Like sex.'     'It's a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible

The cabin-passenger wrote in his diary a parody of Descartes: 'I feel discomfort, therefore I am alive.

Of course I shall respect your incognito. I will say nothing. You can trust me not to betray a guest. You’ll be far safer at my place than at the hotel. Only myself and my wife. As a matter of fact it was my wife who said to me, “Do you suppose he can possibly be the Querry?”’ ‘You’ve made a mistake.’ ‘Oh no, I haven’t. I can show you a photograph when you come to my house–in one of the papers that lie around in case they may prove useful. Useful! This one certainly has, hasn’t it, because otherwise we would have thought you were only a relation of Querry’s or that the name was pure coincidence, for who would expect to find the Querry holed up in a leproserie in the bush? I have to admit I am somewhat curious. But you can trust me, trust me all the way. I have serious enough problems of my own, so I can sympathize with those of another man. I’ve buried myself too. We’d better go outside, for in a little town like this even the walls have ears.’ ‘I’m afraid . . . they are expecting me to return . . .’ ‘God rules the weather. I assure you, M. Querry, you have no choice.

The passenger wondered when it was that he had first begun to detest laughter like a bad smell.

Those doubts you have. I can assure you I know them too. But couldn’t we perhaps go over together the philosophical arguments ... to help us both?