The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [36]
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 me if you had told your policeman to say something a little different. I was quite overcome with astonishment, Major Scobie, to sit in a police court and hear true facts from the mouths of policemen. You must have taken a lot of trouble to find out what was true, and to make them say it. I said to myself, Yusef, a Daniel has come to the Colonial Police.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk so much, Yusef. I’m not interested in your friendship.’
‘Your words are harder than your heart, Major Scobie. I want to explain why in my soul I have always felt your friend. You have made me feel secure. You will not frame me. You need facts, and I am sure the facts will always be in my favour.’ He dusted the ashes from his white trousers, leaving one more grey smear. ‘These are facts. I have burned all the IOU’s.’
‘I may yet find traces, Yusef, of what kind of agreement you were intending to make with Pemberton. This station controls one of the main routes across the border from - damnation, I can