The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

he had a shrewd, lined and idealistic face. You needed to be shrewd in this country if you were going to retain any ideals at all and he was cunning in the defence of the good life.

He was quite incurious about this man whom his foreman had brought in on a mule in a state of collapse three days before. All he knew the priest had told him. That was another thing this country taught you—never ask questions or to look ahead.

He wasn’t very thirsty; he was satisfying a sense of luxury.

‘Of course,’ Mr Lehr said, ‘my sister and I are Lutherans. We don’t hold with your Church, father. Too much luxury, it seems to me, while the people starve.’

‘Luxury?’ the priest asked. He stood by the earthenware jar, glass in hand, trying to collect his thoughts, staring out over the long peaceful glassy slopes. ‘You mean …’ Perhaps Mr Lehr was right; he had lived very easily once and here he was, already settling down to idleness again. ‘All the gold leaf in the churches.’ ‘It’s often just paint, you know,’ the priest murmured conciliatingly. He thought: yes, three days and I’ve done nothing, nothing, and he looked down at his feet elegantly shod in a pair of Mr Lehr’s shoes, his legs in Mr Lehr’s spare trousers.

Drills may be no good in battle, but they form the character. Otherwise you get—well, people like me.’

Mr Lehr and his sister had combined to drive out savagery by simply ignoring anything that conflicted with an ordinary German-American homestead. It was, in its way, an admirable mode of life.

Tiny fishes played over his chest and made little tugs at his nipples undisturbed.

Was not expecting *nipples* to show up at this party

The priest afterwards took the soap and followed suit. He felt it was expected of him, though he couldn’t help thinking it was a waste of time. Sweat cleaned you as effectively as water. But this was the race which had invented the proverb that cleanliness was next to godliness—cleanliness, not purity.

Two brass bedsteads, a single chair and a wardrobe—the room was monastic, except that there was no cross—no ‘inessentials’ as Mr Lehr would have put it. But there was a Bible.

she brought one of those from the hotel. You wouldn’t understand that, father. You don’t like people to read the Bible.’ He was on the defensive all the time about his faith, as if he were perpetually conscious of some friction, like that of an ill-fitting shoe.

He walked slowly, conscious of peace and safety. The first man he saw took off his hat and knelt and kissed the priest’s hand.

When he saw the priest coming he looked ostentatiously away. He was the law-abiding element: he wouldn’t recognize criminals. He began to talk pedantically and priggishly to someone behind him—something about the infant class. A woman kissed the priest’s hand; it was odd to be wanted again, not to feel himself the carrier of death.

He made calculations: there was no need to arrive in Las Casas then as a beggar; he could buy a decent suit of clothes, find a respectable lodging, settle down … He said, ‘You must pay one peso fifty a head.’ ‘One peso, father. We are very poor.’ ‘One peso fifty.’ A voice from years back said firmly into his ear: they don’t value what they don’t pay for.

Oh no. Are we reverting?

After all these years, it was like wealth. He felt respect all the way up the street: men took off their hats as he passed: it was as if he had got back to the days before the persecution. He could feel the old life hardening round him like a habit, a stony cast which held his head high and dictated the way he walked, and even formed his words.