The Honorary Consul-Graham Greene

****/*****                                                                                                                                                       Novel

The Honorary Consul

Graham Greene

This is another masterly crafted novel of Graham Greene situated in the quintessentially Greene country; a bleak, neglected countryside in North Argentina. The un-named town on the south bank of the great river Parana is notable for its extreme dullness and staid existence, to the extent that the brothel of Senora Sanchez seems like an epitome of cultural innovation. Across the river, on its north bank lies Paraguay, ruled by a brutal dictator. Unsuccessful but persistent rebellion against him by the intrepid, though professionally immature, communist revolutionaries makes the country a dangerous land. The southern dreary city is home to just three British citizens; Doctor Plarr, Doctor Humphries and Charley Fortnum. Doctor Eduardo Plarr, the central character of the novel is a medical practitioner. His British father, now languishing in a Paraguayan prison, had sent Eduardo, then still a young boy and his Paraguayan mother to the safety of Argentina as his revolutionary activities endangered his family. Plarr’s mother never forgave his father for what she says ‘abandoning’ them. Doctor Plarr has found a peaceful existence in these backwaters, perhaps an escape from his ever-cavilling mother who lives in Buenos Aires constantly indulging in her two dear past-times now; griping over the past and eating her favourite chocolates. Plarr’s is a strange character. He has never experienced nor can understand love. He abhors sentimentality. He considers all emotions mere expression of certain needs of our body. The other British resident of this morosely calm city is Doctor Humphries, a retired English teacher, a cynical, captious fault-finder. His one constant source of joy is eating the insipidly gooey goulash at the only Italian restaurant in the city. And the third British citizen of this riparian outback is the titular protagonist, the Honorary British Consul, the colourful Charley Fortnum. His is, to say mildly, a slightly disreputable personality. He is fond of his drinks. He prides himself on knowing the ‘right measure’ of his whisky, ‘not too much not too little’. And he adores Senora Sanchez’s brothel. He is a consul for namesake, an Honorary Consul, not a member of British Foreign Service. Not on regular payroll of His Majesty’s Government, he is unscrupulous enough to make a little money on the sides, by misusing his consular privilege to import foreign cars regularly and selling them at some profit.

Drama opens when a group of Paraguayan revolutionaries kidnap Charley Fortnum to bargain for release of some of their companions held in Paraguayan prisons. By now Greene has complete control of his characters and the story. With a spellbinding craftsmanship he weaves his tale moving with equal ease through comedy & tragedy, profound and farce, human sentimentality and dry apathy. Comedy is that Charley Fortnum has been mistakenly kidnapped. Actual target of the rebels was the visiting American ambassador. Tragedy of Charley Fortnum’s unenviable situation is brought home with poignancy amid the hilarious circumstances he finds himself in. Here is a reprobate, Honorary British Consul of a non-descript province in Argentina whom British Government has been planning to sack soon, held captive for political gains by an inefficient revolutionary group, while neither the British Foreign Ministry nor the Paraguayan dictator who is on a fishing holiday in Argentina, consider Honorary Consul even two-penny worth. Doctor Plarr is inextricably involved in the crisis as he finds that two of his schoolmates from his childhood in Paraguay are among the kidnappers. One of them has been a Catholic priest, now reformed. There is a lingering doubt too that perhaps Doctor Plarr’s father might be one of the prisoners whose release kidnappers are seeking. His father is the only person towards whom Doctor Plarr has ever experienced something not unlike a tender feeling. Through these circumstances and disparate characters Greene explores the themes of love, faithfulness, honesty, deceit, betrayal, adultery, sin and virtue. The only tedious section of the book I came across was discussion on his favourite topic, the religious faith, many pages long, towards the end.

Except a few, I’ve read most of Greene’s books and I found this, one of his best. Story moves at a leisurely pace. Unobtrusively, Greene comments wryly on essential human emotions and the ecstasy and devastation they spawn. Greene wrote this book when he was approaching eighth decade of his long life and sixth decade of his exuberantly productive career as a writer. He considered this book one of his best. In his words, ‘perhaps the novel I prefer to all the others’ and also ‘one of the novels I found hardest to write’. I can only experience the truth of the later statement vicariously but can sincerely vouch for the first.

Oct 2016