The End of the Affair

by Graham Greene

Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?

I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil. I have known so intimately the way that demon works in my imagination.

It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.

I try to remember to be kind at breakfast, kind at lunch when he’s home, kind at dinner, and sometimes I forget and he’s kind back. Two people being kind to each other for a lifetime.

When I came in and sat down and looked round I realized it was a Roman church, full of plaster statues and bad art, realistic art. I hated the statues, the crucifix, all the emphasis on the human body. I was trying to escape from the human body and all it needed. I thought I could believe in some kind of a God that bore no relation to ourselves, something vague, amorphous, cosmic, to which I had promised something and which had given me something in return—stretching out of the vague into the concrete human life, like a powerful vapour moving among the chairs and walls. One day I too would become part of that vapour—I would escape myself for ever. And then I came into that dark church in Park Road and saw the bodies standing around me on all the altars—the hideous plaster statues with their complacent faces, and I remembered that they believed in the resurrection of the body, the body I wanted destroyed for ever. I had done so much injury with this body. How could I want to preserve any of it for eternity, and suddenly I remembered a phrase of Richard’s—about human beings inventing doctrines to satisfy their desires, and I thought how wrong he is. If I were to invent a doctrine it would be that the body was never born again, that it rotted with last year’s vermin.

That scar was part of his character as much as his jealousy. And so I thought, do I want that body to be vapour (mine yes, but his?), and I knew I wanted that scar to exist through all eternity. But could my vapour love that scar? Then I began to want my body that I hated, but only because it could love that scar. We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can even love with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve. Richard’s right, I thought, we have invented the resurrection of the body because we do need our own bodies, and immediately I admitted that he was right and that this was a fairy-tale we tell each other for comfort, I no longer felt any hate of those statues. They were like bad coloured pictures in Hans Andersen: they were like bad poetry, but somebody had needed to write them, somebody who wasn’t so proud that he hid them rather than expose his foolishness.

So today I looked at that material body on that material cross, and I wondered, how could the world have nailed a vapour there? A vapour of course felt no pain and no pleasure. It was only my superstition that imagined it could answer my prayers. Dear God, I had said. I should have said, Dear Vapour. I said I hate you, but can one hate a vapour? I could hate that figure on the Cross with its claim to my gratitude—‘I’ve suffered this for you’, but a vapour … And yet Richard believed in less even than a vapour. He hated a fable, he fought against a fable, he took a fable seriously. I couldn’t hate Hansel and Gretel, I couldn’t hate their sugar house as he hated the legend of heaven. When I was a child I could hate the wicked queen in Snow White, but Richard didn’t hate his fairy-tale Devil. The Devil didn’t exist and God didn’t exist, but all his hatred was for the good fairy-tale, not for the wicked one. Why? I looked up at that over-familiar body, stretched in imaginary pain, the head drooping like a man asleep. I thought, sometimes I’ve hated Maurice, but would I have hated him if I hadn’t loved him too? Oh God, if I could really hate you, what would that mean?

Suppose God did exist, suppose he was a body like that, what’s wrong in believing that his body existed as much as mine? Could anybody love him or hate him if he hadn’t got a body? I can’t love a vapour that was Maurice. That’s coarse, that’s beastly, that’s materialist, I know, but why shouldn’t I be beastly and coarse and materialist. I walked out of the church in a flaming rage, and in defiance of Henry and all the reasonable and the detached I did what I had seen people do in Spanish churches: I dipped my finger in the so-called holy water and made a kind of cross on my forehead.

‘To expect you to love a man with this.’ He turned his bad cheek towards me. ‘You believe in God,’ he said. ‘That’s easy. You are beautiful. You have no complaint, but why should I love a God who gave a child this?’ ‘Dear Richard,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing so very bad …’ I shut my eyes and put my mouth against the cheek. I felt sick for a moment because I fear deformity, and he sat quiet and let me kiss him, and I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good You are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain. I felt him move abruptly away and I opened my eyes. He said, ‘Good-bye.’ ‘Good-bye, Richard.’ ‘Don’t come back,’ he said, ‘I can’t bear your pity.’ ‘It’s not pity.’ ‘I’ve made a fool of myself.’ I went away. It wasn’t any good staying. I couldn’t tell him I envied him, carrying the mark of pain around with him like that, seeing You in the glass every day instead of this dull human thing we call beauty.

I hadn’t during that period any hatred of her God, for hadn’t I in the end proved stronger?

‘I wondered whether I ought to ask a priest about it. She kept so many things quiet. For all I know she may have become a Catholic. She’s been so strange lately.’ ‘Oh no, Henry. She didn’t believe in anything, any more than you or me.’ I wanted her burnt up, I wanted to be able to say, Resurrect that body if you can. My jealousy had not finished, like Henry’s, with her death. It was as if she were alive still, in the company of a lover she had preferred to me. How I wished I could send Parkis after her to interrupt their eternity.

I thought, to hell with the whole lot of them and I walked out of the room where I was seeing him, and I slammed the door to show what I thought of priests. They are between us and God, I thought; God has more mercy, and then I came out of the church and saw the crucifix they have there, and I thought, of course, he’s got mercy, only it’s such an odd sort of mercy, it sometimes looks like punishment.

But what’s the good, Maurice? I believe there’s a God—I believe the whole bag of tricks, there’s nothing I don’t believe, they could subdivide the Trinity into a dozen parts and I’d believe. They could dig up records that proved Christ had been invented by Pilate to get himself promoted and I’d believe just the same. I’ve caught belief like a disease. I’ve fallen into belief like I fell in love. I’ve never loved before as I love you, and I’ve never believed in anything before as I believe now. I’m sure. I’ve never been sure before about anything. When you came in at the door with the blood on your face, I became sure. Once and for all. Even though I didn’t know it at the time. I fought belief for longer than I fought love, but I haven’t any fight left.

‘Of course, it didn’t happen on the beach. I only meant we walked that way. I left Sarah by the door and went to find the priest. I had to tell him a few lies—white ones of course—to explain things. I could put it all on my husband, of course. I said he’d promised before we married, and then he’d broken his promise. It helped a lot not being able to speak much French. You sound awfully truthful if you don’t know the right words. Anyway he did it there and then, and we caught the bus back to lunch.’ ‘Did what?’ ‘Baptized her a Catholic.’ ‘Is that all?’ I asked with relief. ‘Well, it’s a sacrament—or so they say.’ ‘I thought at first you meant that Sarah was a real Catholic.’ ‘Well, you see, she was one, only she didn’t know it. I wish Henry had buried her properly,’ Mrs Bertram said and began again the grotesque drip of tears. ‘You can’t blame him if even Sarah didn’t know.’ ‘I always had a wish that it would “take”. Like vaccination.’

Nobody appreciated her like I did.’ She took some more port and said, ‘If only you’d known her properly. Why, if she’d been brought up in the right way, if I hadn’t always married such mean men, she could have been a saint I truly believe.’

I lay on my back and watched the shadows of the Common trees shift on my ceiling. It’s just a coincidence, I thought, a horrible coincidence that nearly brought her back at the end to You. You can’t mark a two-year-old child for life with a bit of water and a prayer. If I began to believe that, I could believe in the body and the blood. You didn’t own her all those years: I owned her. You won in the end, You don’t need to remind me of that, but she wasn’t deceiving me with You when she lay here with me, on this bed, with this pillow under her back. When she slept I was with her, not You. It was I who penetrated her, not You. All the light went out, darkness was over the bed, and I dreamed I was at a fair with a gun in my hand. I was shooting at bottles that looked as though they were made of glass but my bullets bounded off them as though they were coated with steel. I fired and fired, and not a bottle could I crack, and at five in the morning I woke with exactly the same thought in my head: for those years you were mine, not His.

‘But now the house never seems empty like that. I don’t know how to express it. Because she’s always away, she’s never away. You see, she’s never anywhere else. She’s not having lunch with anybody, she’s not at a cinema with you. There’s nowhere for her to be but at home.’ ‘But where’s her home?’ I said.

‘Any man could have her.’ I longed to believe what I said, for then there would be nothing to miss or regret. I would no longer be tied to her wherever she was. I would be free. ‘And you can’t teach me anything about penitence, Mr Bendrix. I’ve had twenty-five years of the Confessional. There’s nothing we can do some of the saints haven’t done before us.’ ‘I’ve got nothing to repent except failure. Go back to your own people, father, back to your bloody little box and your beads.’ ‘You’ll find me there any time you want me.’ ‘Me want you, father? Father, I don’t want to be rude, but I’m no Sarah. No Sarah.’ Henry said with embarrassment, ‘I’m sorry, father.’ ‘You don’t need to be. I know when a man’s in pain.’ I couldn’t get through the tough skin of his complacency. I pushed my chair back and said, ‘You’re wrong, father. This isn’t anything subtle like pain. I’m not in pain, I’m in hate. I hate Sarah because she was a little tart, I hate Henry because she stuck to him, and I hate you and your imaginary God because you took her away from all of us.’ ‘You’re a good hater,’ Father Crompton said. Tears stood in my eyes because I was powerless to hurt any of them. ‘To hell with the lot of you,’ I said.

Let him spill his holy wisdom to Henry, I thought, I’m alone. I want to be alone. If I can’t have you, I’ll be alone always. Oh, I’m as capable of belief as the next man. I would only have to shut the eyes of my mind for a long enough time, and I could believe that you came to Parkis’s boy in the night with your touch that brings peace. Last month in the crematorium I asked you to save that girl from me and you pushed your mother between us—or so they might say. But if I start believing that then I have to believe in your God. I’d have to love your God. I’d rather love the men you slept with.

Nothing—not even Sarah—is worth our hatred if You exist, except You. And, I thought, sometimes I’ve hated Maurice, but would I have hated him if I hadn’t loved him too? O God, if I could really hate you …

I remembered how Sarah had prayed to the God she didn’t believe in, and now I spoke to the Sarah I didn’t believe in. I said: You sacrificed both of us once to bring me back to life, but what sort of a life is this without you? It’s all very well for you to love God. You are dead. You have him. But I’m sick with life, I’m rotten with health. If I begin to love God, I can’t just die. I’ve got to do something about it. I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue: one can’t love and do nothing. It’s no use your telling me not to worry as you did once in a dream. If I ever loved like that, it would be the end of everything. Loving you I had no appetite for food, I felt no lust for any other woman, but loving him there’d be no pleasure in anything at all with him away. I’d even lose my work, I’d cease to be Bendrix. Sarah, I’m afraid.

And yet one cannot do without him. I can imagine a God feeling in just that way about some of us. The saints, one would suppose, in a sense create themselves. They come alive. They are capable of the surprising act or word. They stand outside the plot, unconditioned by it. But we have to be pushed around. We have the obstinacy of nonexistence. We are inextricably bound to the plot, and wearily God forces us, here and there, according to his intention, characters without poetry, without free will, whose only importance is that somewhere, at some time, we help to furnish the scene in which a living character moves and speaks, providing perhaps the saints with the opportunities for their free will.

‘It’s an extraordinary coincidence, isn’t it? Baptized at two years old, and then beginning to go back to what you can’t even remember … It’s like an infection.’

‘I’ll never lose my faith in coincidence, Henry.’

For if this God exists, I thought, and if even you—with your lusts and your adulteries and the timid lies you used to tell—can change like this, we could all be saints by leaping as you leapt, by shutting the eyes and leaping once and for all: if you are a saint, it’s not so difficult to be a saint. It’s something He can demand of any of us, leap. But I won’t leap. I sat on my bed and said to God: You’ve taken her, but You haven’t got me yet. I know Your cunning. It’s You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You’re a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don’t want Your peace and I don’t want Your love. I wanted something very simple and very easy: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse’s nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.

I looked at the pad of paper. It was more impersonal than a scrap of hair. You can touch hair with your lips and fingers and I was tired to death of the mind. I had lived for her body and I wanted her body. But the journal was all I had, so I shut it back in the cupboard, for wouldn’t that have been one more victory for Him, to destroy it and leave myself more completely without her? I said to Sarah, all right, have it your way. I believe you live and that He exists, but it will take more than your prayers to turn this hatred of Him into love. He robbed me and like that king you wrote about I’ll rob Him of what he wants in me. Hatred is in my brain, not in my stomach or my skin. It can’t be removed like a rash or an ache. Didn’t I hate you as well as love you? And don’t I hate myself?

I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You’ve done enough, You’ve robbed me of enough, I’m too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.