The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

the immense demands made from the altar steps by men who didn’t know the meaning of sacrifice.

he would have walled it in if he could with steel until he had eradicated from it everything which reminded him of how it had once appeared to a miserable child. He wanted to destroy everything: to be alone without any memories at all. Life began five years ago.

She was very young—about thirteen—and at that age you are not afraid of many things, age and death, all the things which may turn up, snake-bite and fever and rats and a bad smell. Life hadn’t got at her yet;

Suddenly and unexpectedly there was agony in the cemetery. They had been used to losing children, but they hadn’t been used to what the rest of the world knows best of all—the hope which peters out. The woman began to cry, dryly, without tears, the trapped noise of something wanting to be released; the old man fell on his knees with his hands held out. ‘Padre José,’ he said, ‘there is no one else …’

The priest scrambled off and began to laugh. He was feeling happy. It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.

If he left them, they would be safe, and they would be free from his example. He was the only priest the children could remember: it was from him they would take their ideas of the faith. But it was from him too they took God—in their mouths. When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn’t it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example? He was shaken with the enormity of the problem. He lay with his hands over his eyes: nowhere, in all the wide flat marshy land, was there a single person he could consult. He raised the brandy to his mouth.

They had spent no love in her conception: just fear and despair and half a bottle of brandy and the sense of loneliness had driven him to an act which horrified him—and this scared shame-faced overpowering love was the result. He said, ‘Why not? Why won’t you say it?’ taking quick secret glances, never meeting her gaze, feeling his heart pound in his breast unevenly, like an old donkey engine, with the baulked desire to save her from—everything.

‘One of the Fathers has told us that joy always

depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty …’ He stopped suddenly, with his eyes glancing away into the shadows, expecting the cruel laugh that did not come. He said, ‘We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty—for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal …’ Again he stopped. He felt his own unworthiness like a weight at the back of the tongue. There was a smell of hot wax from where a candle drooped in the nocturnal heat; people shifted on the hard floor in the shadows. The smell of unwashed human beings warred with the wax. He cried out stubbornly in a voice of authority, ‘That is why I tell you that heaven is here: this is a part of heaven just as pain is a part of pleasure.’ He said, ‘Pray that you will suffer more and more and more. Never get tired of suffering. The police watching you, the soldiers gathering taxes, the beating you always get from the jefe because you are too poor to pay, smallpox and fever, hunger … that is all part of heaven—the preparation. Perhaps without them, who can tell, you wouldn’t enjoy heaven so much. Heaven would not be complete.

‘Heaven is where there is no jefe, no unjust laws, no taxes, no soldiers and no hunger. Your children do not die in heaven.’ The door of the hut opened and a man slipped in. There was whispering out of the range of the candlelight. ‘You will never be afraid there—or unsafe. There are no Red Shirts. Nobody grows old. The crops never fail. Oh, it is easy to say all the things that there will not be in heaven: what is there is God. That is more difficult. Our words are made to describe what we know with our senses. We say “light”, but we are thinking only of the sun, “love” …’ It was not easy to concentrate: the police were not far away. The man had probably brought news. ‘That means perhaps a child …’ The door opened again: he could see another day drawn across like a grey slate outside. A voice whispered urgently to him, ‘Father.’

He began the Consecration of the Host (he had finished the wafers long ago—it was a piece of bread from Maria’s oven); impatience abruptly died away: everything in time became a routine but this—‘Who the day before he suffered took Bread into his holy and venerable hands …’ Whoever moved outside on the forest path, there was no movement here—‘Hoc est enim Corpus Meum.’ He could hear the sigh of breaths released: God was here in the body for the first time in six years. When he raised the Host he could imagine the faces lifted like famished dogs. He began the Consecration of the Wine—in a chipped cup. That was one more surrender—for two years he had carried

a chalice around with him; once it would have cost him his life, if the police officer who opened his case had not been a Catholic. It may very well have cost the officer his life, if anybody had discovered the evasion—he didn’t know; you went round making God knew what martyrs—in Concepción or elsewhere—when you yourself were without grace enough to die.

He lay listening to the heavy breathing of the half-caste and wondered why he had not gone the same road as Padre José and conformed to the laws. I was too ambitious, he thought, that was it. Perhaps Padre José was the better man—he was so humble that he was ready to accept any amount of mockery; at the best of times he had never considered himself worthy of the priesthood.

When they had saddled the mule they set off again, the mestizo holding the stirrup. They were silent—sometimes the half-caste stumbled, and the grey false dawn began; a small coal of cruel satisfaction glowed at the back of the priest’s mind—this was Judas sick and unsteady and scared in the dark. He had only to beat the mule on to leave him stranded in the forest once he dug in the point of his stick and forced it forward at a weary trot, and he could feel the

pull, pull of the half-caste’s arm on the stirrup holding him back. There was a groan—it sounded like ‘Mother of God’, and he let the mule slacken its pace. He prayed silently, ‘God forgive me.’ Christ had died for this man too: how could he pretend with his pride and lust and cowardice to be any more worthy of that death than the half-caste? This man intended to betray him for money which he needed, and he had betrayed God for what? Not even for real lust. He said, ‘Are you sick?’ and there was no reply. He dismounted and said, ‘Get up. I’ll walk for a while.’

He became suddenly serious, remembering Maria’s words—it wouldn’t be a good thing to bring mockery on the Church. He said, ‘Martyrs are holy men. It is wrong to think that just because one dies … no. I tell you I am in a state of mortal sin. I have done things I couldn’t talk to you about. I could only whisper them in the confessional.’ Everybody, when he spoke, listened attentively to him as if he were addressing them in church. He wondered where the inevitable Judas was sitting now, but he wasn’t aware of Judas as he had been in the forest hut. He was moved by an irrational affection for the inhabitants of this prison. A phrase came to him: ‘God so loved the world …’ He said, ‘My children, you must never think the holy martyrs are like me. You have a name for me. Oh, I’ve heard you use it before now. I am a whisky priest. I am in here now because they found a bottle of brandy in my pocket.’

‘Nobody here,’ a voice said, ‘wants their blood money.’ Again he was touched by an extraordinary affection. He was just one criminal among a herd of criminals … He had a sense of companionship which he had never experienced in the old days when pious people came kissing his black cotton glove.

When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity—that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

‘And there’s a Red Shirt,’ the priest said. ‘A Red Shirt?’ ‘He really caught me.’ ‘Mother of God,’ the mestizo said, ‘and they all have the ear of the Governor.’ He looked up beseechingly. He said, ‘You’re an educated man. Advise me.’ ‘It would be murder,’ the priest said, ‘a mortal sin.’ ‘I don’t mean that. I mean about the reward. You see as long as they don’t know, well, I’m comfortable here. A man deserves a few weeks’ holiday. And you can’t escape far, can you? It would be better, wouldn’t it, to catch you out of here. In the town somewhere. I mean nobody else could claim …’ He said furiously, ‘A poor man has so much to think about.’

the tiny body shook with a kind of fury of pain; they watched the eyeballs roll up and suddenly become fixed, like marbles in a solitaire-board, yellow and ugly with death. The woman let go his hand and scrambled to a pool of water, cupping her fingers for it. The priest said, ‘We don’t need that any more,’ standing up with his hands full of wet shirt. The woman opened her fingers and let the water fall.

She said ‘Father’ imploringly, and he wearily went down on his knees and began to pray. He could feel no meaning any longer in prayers like these. The Host was different: to lay that between a dying man’s lips was to lay God. That was a fact—something you could touch, but this was no more than a pious aspiration. Why should anyone listen to his prayers? Sin was a constriction which prevented their escape; he could feel his prayers weigh him down like undigested food.

The woman had gone down on her knees and was shuffling slowly across the cruel ground towards the group of crosses; the dead baby rocked on her back. When she reached the tallest cross she unhooked the child and held the face against the wood and afterwards the loins; then she crossed herself, not as ordinary Catholics do, but in a curious and complicated pattern which included the nose and ears. Did she expect a miracle? and if she did, why should it not be granted her, the priest wondered? Faith, one was told, could move mountains, and here was faith—faith in the spittle that healed the blind man and the voice that raised the dead. The evening star was out: it hung low down over the edge of the plateau—it looked as if it was within reach—and a small hot wind stirred. The priest found himself watching the child for some movement. When none came, it was as if God had missed an opportunity. The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle began to eat, and the child lay quietly at the foot of the cross. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?

A small lump of sugar—all that was left—lay by the child’s mouth—in case a miracle should happen or for the spirit to eat? The priest bent down with an obscure sense of shame and took it: the dead child couldn’t growl back at him like a broken dog: but who was he to disbelieve in miracles? He hesitated, while the rain poured down; then he put the sugar in his mouth. If God chose to give back life, couldn’t He give food as well?

‘Father …’ He was racked with his headache, he stumbled and put his hand against the wall for support. He felt immeasurably tired. He asked, ‘The barracks?’ ‘Father,’ the voice said, puzzled and worried, ‘it is our church.’ ‘A church?’ The priest ran his hands incredulously over the

wall like a blind man trying to recognize a particular house, but he was too tired to feel anything at all. He heard the man with the gun babbling out of sight, ‘Such an honour, father. The bell must be rung …’ and he sat down suddenly on the rain-drenched grass, and leaning his head against the white wall, he fell asleep, with home behind his shoulder-blades. His dream was full of a jangle of cheerful noise.

‘What will you charge, father?’ ‘Well—two pesos is the usual charge.’ He thought: I must hire two mules and a guide. It will cost me fifty pesos to reach Las Casas. Five pesos for the Mass—that left forty-five. ‘We are very poor here, father,’ she haggled gently. ‘I have four children myself. Eight pesos is a lot of money.’ ‘Four children are a lot of children—if the priest was here only three years ago.’ He could hear authority, the old parish intonation coming back into his voice, as if the last years had been a dream and he had never really been away from the Guilds, the Children of Mary, and the daily Mass. He asked sharply, ‘How many children are there here—unbaptized?’ ‘Perhaps a hundred, father.’ 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.

He wanted to say to this man, ‘Love is not wrong, but love should be happy and open—it is only wrong when it is secret, unhappy … It can be more unhappy than anything but the loss of God. It is the loss of God. You don’t need a penance, my child, you have suffered quite enough,’ and to

this other, ‘Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.’ But the habit of the confessional reasserted itself: it was as if he were back in the little stuffy wooden boxlike coffin in which men bury their uncleanness with their priest. He said, ‘Mortal sin … danger … self-control,’ as if those words meant anything at all. He said, ‘Say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys.’

‘I’ve had enough of escaping,’ he said. The half-caste was no longer in sight; the heavy clouds were piling up the sky: they made the real mountains look like little bright toys below them. He sighed and giggled nervously. ‘What a lot of trouble I had getting across those mountains, and now …

here I am …’ ‘I never believed you would return.’ ‘Oh well, lieutenant, you know how it is. Even a coward has a sense of duty.’ The cool fresh wind which sometimes blows across before a storm breaks touched his skin. He said with badly-affected ease, ‘Are you going to shoot me now?’ The lieutenant said again sharply, ‘I am not a barbarian. You will be tried … properly.’ ‘What for?’ ‘For treason.’

‘But why did you stay?’ ‘Once,’ the priest said, ‘I asked myself that. The fact is, a man isn’t presented suddenly with two courses to follow: one good and one bad. He gets caught up. The first year—well, I didn’t believe there was really any cause to run. Churches have been burnt before now. You know how often. It doesn’t mean much. I thought I’d stay till next month, say, and see if things were better. Then—oh, you don’t know how time can slip by.’ It was quite light again now: the afternoon rain was over: life had to go on.

‘Pride was what made the angels fall. Pride’s the worst thing of all. I thought I was a fine fellow to have stayed when the others had gone. And then I thought I was so grand I could make my own rules. I gave up fasting, daily Mass. I neglected my prayers—and one day because I was drunk and lonely—well, you know how it was, I got a child. It was all pride. Just pride because I’d stayed. I wasn’t any use, but I stayed. At least, not much use. I’d got so that I didn’t have a hundred communicants a month. If I’d gone I’d have given God to twelve times that number. It’s a mistake one makes—to think just because a thing is difficult or dangerous …’ He made a flapping motion with his hands.

The lieutenant said, ‘Those men I shot. They were my own people. I wanted to give them the whole world.’ ‘Well, who knows? Perhaps that’s what you did.’

What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead—soon he wouldn’t even be a memory—perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation—even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint.