The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

‘Well, father,’ the woman said, ‘we can’t turn you away. You’d better come along.’ He followed her meekly, tripping once in the long peon’s trousers, with the happiness wiped off his face and the smile somehow left behind like the survivor of a wreck. There were seven or eight men, two women, half a dozen children: he came among them like a beggar. He couldn’t help remembering the last time . . . the excitement, the gourds of spirit brought out of holes in the ground . . . his guilt had still been fresh, yet how he had been welcomed. It was as if he had returned to them in their vicious prison as one of themselves – an émigré who comes back to his native place enriched. ‘This is the father,’ the woman said. Perhaps it was only that they hadn’t recognized him, he thought, and waited for their greetings. They came forward one by one and kissed his hand and then stood back and watched him. He said, ‘I am glad to see you . . .’ he was going to say ‘my children’, but then it seemed to him that only the childless man has the right to call strangers his children. The real children were coming up now to kiss his hand, one by one, under the pressure of their parents. They were too young to remember the old days when the priests dressed in black and wore Roman collars and had soft superior patronizing hands; he could see they were mystified at the show of respect to a peasant like their parents. He didn’t look at them directly, but he was watching them closely all the same. Two were...