Our Man in Havana

by Graham Greene

Wormold thought, If the overdraft had been fifty thousand dollars he would have called me Jim.

No description could have been less accurate.

I pray that she’ll be a good Catholic again.’ ‘I’m not a good Catholic.’ ‘Oh, that’s different. You are invincibly ignorant.’

‘Ah yes, señor. Personal services I understand. You can trust me. I am discreet. Of course I will say nothing to the señorita.’ ‘I think perhaps you don’t understand.’ ‘When a man reaches a certain age,’ Lopez said, ‘he no longer wishes to search for a woman himself, he wishes to rest from trouble. He wishes to command, “Tonight yes, tomorrow night no”. To give his directions to someone he trusts …’

No one can serve you better than I can, because I have studied you, Señor Venell. You are not a Cuban; for you the shape of a girl’s bottom is less important than a certain gentleness of behavior …’

‘The other day I was offered money.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘To get information.’ ‘What sort of information?’ ‘Secret information.’ Dr Hasselbacher sighed. He said, ‘You are a lucky man, Mr Wormold. That information is always easy to give.’ ‘Easy?’ ‘If it is secret enough, you alone know it. All you need is a little imagination, Mr Wormold.’

But remember, as long as you lie you do no harm.’ ‘I take their money.’ ‘They have no money except what they take from men like you and me.’

A picture-postcard is a symptom of loneliness.

He began to realize what the criminal class knows so well, the impossibility of explaining anything to a man with power.

Am I perhaps going too far? He realized that he had forgotten to indicate the scale. He ruled a line and numbered it off: one inch representing three feet. Then for better measure he drew a little man two inches high below the nozzle. He dressed him neatly in a dark suit, and gave him a bowler hat and an umbrella.

To live in Havana was to live in a factory that turned out human beauty on a conveyor-belt.

You could tell how a rich man was by the fewness of the floors. Only a millionaire could afford a bungalow on a site that might have held a skyscraper.

‘You have no heart unless you turn this man out. We sit here talking as though we had been married for years. If all you want to do is to sit up all night and talk, why didn’t you stick to Maria?’

‘My dear, it was your idea to dance before bed.’ ‘You call what you did dancing?’ ‘I told you that I would take lessons.’ ‘Oh yes, so as to be with the girls at the school.’

He sat forlornly in the bulging breeches. Wormold saw that they had been unstitched along a seam to allow room for the contemporary Hasselbacher.

It was rather as though in your country a chauffeur had slept with a peeress.’ ‘We’re not shocked by that any longer.’ ‘It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.’

The poorest street in Havana had dignity compared with the shanty-life of Kingston

‘Please would you mind telling me how they are going to murder me? You see, it interests me personally.’

‘They can’t very well poison a bottle of wine. You could give the impression of being an alcoholic, somebody who doesn’t eat but only drinks.’ ‘Thank you. That would certainly be good for business.’

They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like the pain of an amputated leg no longer there. It was time, Wormold thought, to pack up and go and leave the ruins of Havana.

She walked quickly away without answering among the sage-green chairs and he saw that she had talked herself to the edge of tears. Ten years ago he would have followed her, but middle-age is the period of sad caution.