The Heart of the Matter-Graham Greene

The Heart of the Matter

Graham Greene

(A Tale of the Matter of Heart)

                                                                     

It was fortuitous, and also fortunate for me, that the first book of Graham Greene I read was The Heart of the Matter. I have had similar experience with two more artists: writer Somerset Maugham and classical singer Kishori Amonkar. The very first volume of their works I came across, spawned an ardour that has grown stronger in decades- Love at first encounter. With The Heart of the Matter a similar fondness was born for Greene’s books, perhaps seasoned in more reason.                                                             

Before reading Greene, I had not met in literature, attributes that are trademark of his books: immaculately terse prose, severely understated emotions, inner turmoil of ordinary man facing extraordinary tribulations, a realistic appraisal of human condition in its varied hues, the bleak landscape within and without the dramatis personae, and an undercurrent of comedy throughout the story - occasionally bordering on farce - which appears to emphasise the travails of a run-of-the-mill life.

I first read the book many years back. I had forgotten the details, and remembered only the way it had moved me. I read it again some time back. I enjoyed it immensely, more than I had on my first reading.

Book was published in 1948. Its geographic background is west Africa, probably Sierra Leone, where Greene had worked for a few years. It narrates events in this British colony during the Second World War. Scobie - a scrupulously honest officer - is deputy commissioner of police in the colony. He is passed over for promotion. He accepts this with nonchalance and fortitude. But his poetry-loving wife, Louise, resents this bitterly. This is the proverbial last straw on the back of her patience in this remote, unfriendly land.

Louise has never been happy here, caught in a loveless marriage, far from home. She finds the officials and their wives in this outback pretentious bores. She longs to escape the country. She begs Scobie to arrange for her to travel to South Africa. Scobie cannot afford money for the journey. But he cannot bear the growing despondency of Louise, for he holds himself responsible for her predicament. He is thus, forced to borrow money from the local Syrian businessman, Yusef. Yusef is a dishonourable trader, cunning and manipulative, who has for long sought Scobie’s friendship to further his disreputable business. This act spawns a chain of events that ultimately involve Scobie in deceit, vice, lies, and adultery. In Louise’s absence Scobie is involved in an affair with a young widow, Helen. His life now spirals into an irredeemable gloom, escape from which he cannot fathom.  

Book describes Scobie’s plight as he tries to bring happiness in the lives of people who, he thinks, are dependent on him for it. He has no demands from life. He accepts failures and triumphs with similar equanimity. His one unwavering principle in life is a cast-iron honesty. He cannot bring himself to utter a lie even if untruth can bring much joy in his marital life and make it simple. ‘I’ve known it or years. You don’t love me,’ is Louise’s constant refrain as she once again nags him to arrange for her passage to South Africa. Scobie understands the reality, ‘the truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being—it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.’ But he cannot utter the lie that would comfort Louise. All he can say is, ‘I try all the time to keep you happy. I work hard for that.’ And he suffers silently. He even blames himself for not loving Louise in the manner she expects him.

Scobie has all he needs for happiness; a place he loves, its changing seasons which he likes, a staid work that gives him a fixed routine to follow. He has everything: but for peace of mind. He covets loneliness. He cannot understand why joys of people should depend on fulfilment of certain expectations from others. Greene depicts this turmoil of Scobie with extreme dexterity. Reference to the title of the book appears in the middle. ‘If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?’ In essence, Greene’s attempt is to explore the heart of the matter of human life. At their heart, aren’t all lives unfathomably unique; imprisoned in their own selves, inaccessible to all. Can one ever know what goes on in another heart: its longings, its joy, its sorrows?

The locale —a British colony in Africa— is exotic and remote. Greene doesn’t write long passages to highlight the physical milieu, but in brief portrayals brings out the dust-blown, hot and sultry, coastal town alive. It is an inseparable character in the narrative, lurking always in the background, but never presents itself ostentatiously. His concise words describing the land are as beautiful as his prose probing Scobie’s mental conflicts. ‘In the evening the port became beautiful for perhaps five minutes. The laterite roads that were ugly and clay-heavy by day became a delicate flower-like pink. It was the hour of content. Men who had left the port for ever would sometimes remember on a grey wet London evening the bloom and glow that faded as soon as it was seen: they would wonder why they had hated the coast and for a space of a drink they would long to return’.

Greene’s ruminations on life and people are as perspicacious and superbly composed. These litter the book but do not obstruct the narration. They strengthen it.

In a few sentences Greene expertly portrays characters, highlighting their vagaries, their strengths and their weaknesses. Young Wilson with ‘bald pink knees’, who is given to corpulence and loves poetry, falls in love with Louise and writes pathetic maudlin poetry in her love. He has been sent by the authorities to snoop on Scobie. Louise spurns his mawkish advances, while Scobie encourages their friendship as both are fond of poetry, a topic he thinks will cheer Louise.

In a remote, lonely outpost in jungles, Bamba, the assistant deputy commissioner, Pemberton, commits suicide. He was ‘a little puppy of twenty-five. All spots and bounce’. In the desolate wild settlement, Pemberton’s life had gone to pot as he became an alcoholic. Scobie goes there with his native servant, Ali, to investigate the matter. In a chapter Greene details this journey. In short paragraphs Greene writes on Scobie’s love for the countryside, his fondness for Ali, and on the wretchedness of young British serving in a friendless, desolate foreign country. As they drive to Pamba, Scobie ‘could see in the driver’s mirror Ali nodding and breathing. It seemed to him that this was all he needed of love or friendship. He could be happy with no more in the world than this—the grinding sun, the hot tea against his lips, the heavy damp weight of the forest, even the aching head, the loneliness.’ When man wants so little for his contentment, should even this be denied him? Why should others expect love when he doesn’t crave it from them? Isn’t his honest compassion and care sufficient? Should he suffer pangs of ceaseless guilt because he doesn’t love those who expect him to?

Father clay, a miserable priest catering to fifteen converts in these backwaters, thinks there is no redemption for Pemberton, because of suicide. Scobie has a strong belief in religion and the concept of hell. But he cannot believe the young Pemberton deserves eternal damnation. When he looks at Pemberton’s body, ‘he had the impression that he was looking at a child in a night shirt quietly asleep: the pimples were the pimples of puberty and the dead face seemed to bear the trace of no experience beyond the class-room or the football field’. And then Scobie reads Pemberton’s note to his father, ‘that elderly, retired bank manager whose wife had died in giving birth to Pemberton.’ Note reads, ‘Dear dad, forgive all this trouble. There doesn’t seem anything else to do. It’s a pity I’m not in army because then I might be killed…It’s rotten business for you, but it can’t be helped’. Scobie is convinced Pemberton has not committed any sin. And he tells father Clay, ‘You’re not going to tell me there’s anything unforgiveable there, Father. If you or I did it, it would be despair—I grant you everything with us. We would be damned because we know, but he doesn’t know a thing’. This is an extremely well written chapter in the book— and there are many. It sets the tone for the predicament to befall Scobie.

Book essentially deals with themes of faith and betrayal, goodness and evil, love, fidelity, suffering; themes that dominate Greene books. In his measured prose, his clever observations on life, Greene unveils the dull, run-down lives of British in the colony. Young Pemberton’s tragic death shows the futility of the life of petty officials. Scobie’s colleagues and their wives lead a pompous life of mundane routine, hackneyed social interactions and snobbish attitude for a life that seems to follow a different path. ‘Literary Louise’, they call Scobie’s wife behind her back because she likes literature. They look down upon officers who allegedly sleep with native women, but openly woo their colleagues’ wives. They thrive on rumours about each other. Greene describes the rot that has set in the expatriate society through stray observations and remarks even as story proceeds on its set course.

For a very short time Scobie finds happiness in Helen’s company. But soon Helen’s demands from him increase and he finds that he is again living the life he led with Louise. Now his only concern is to make Helen happier. ‘He wanted happiness for others and solitude and peace for himself’.

Louise returns from South Africa unexpectedly. Scobie finds that he is now the cause of unhappiness of two souls. He is at the end of his tether. ‘I don’t want to plan any more…They wouldn’t need me if I were dead. No one needs the dead. The dead can be forgotten…’ And Scobie sets about planning his death meticulously, to make it look accidental. His belief in the Christian God assures him that after this act he will be damned for ever. But he wants to save Louise the ignominy of his suicide. After his death, a small slip, noticed by Wilson, reveals that Scobie had committed suicide. 

Meanings of religion, sin, and virtue occupy considerable space in many of Greene’s books. This is the only tedious portion in this book too. For a non-believer, long discourse on intricate doctrines of any religion, their significance in workaday life of common people, are ridiculous.

George Orwell in his review of the book, published in 1948, was severely critical of it. He thought it is, ‘to put it as politely as possible, not one of his best…’. His critique is very well written. I was not aware that Orwell used sarcasm so effectively, to put forth his views. According to Orwell ‘the central idea of the book is that it is better, spiritually higher, to be an erring Catholic than a virtuous pagan.’ Orwell sees ‘a sort of snobbishness in Mr Greene’s attitude…’. In his opinion Greene appears to believe that, ‘there is something rather distingue (distinguished) in being damned…hell is a sort of high-class night club, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only, since the others, the non-Catholics are too ignorant to be held guilty…’. Orwell’s main criticism is that the story is improbable. If Scobie was so concerned about being virtuous, he wouldn’t have begun an affair with Helen. If he believed in hell, he wouldn’t risk going there for the sake of ‘two neurotic women’. Orwell also finds it absurd that though the book is situated in Africa during the world war, there is hardly any description of real Africa, the Africans and the war. Scobie, in Orwell’s understanding, never seems to think about the real issues of his work and environment. ‘All he (Scobie) is interested in, is his own progress towards damnation.’

George Orwell was an atheist and a socialist. He believed that no literature can claim to be completely apolitical. I see The Heart of the Matter differently. I also rate it as one of Greene’s best. Though drama happened in a British colony in Africa during the war years, Greene’s story deals with some specific aspects of the life of a colonial Official living here, in these times. I do not see it as Greene’s attempt to chronicle Second World War years in a British colony, neither has he given a biographical account of the protagonist’s life. Greene makes much of Scobie’s mental conflict with religious dogma, but this is a small portion of the story. Human suffering is universal. All suffer alike, believers and non-believers. Greene paints this human condition exceptionally well, sans the verbose sentiments.

The end sums up Greene's view of life in the story. Father Rank, the wise, harried priest, is visiting Louise - who is still bitter against Scobie - to condole the death.

"He was a bad Catholic."

"That's the silliest phrase in common use," Father Rank said.

"And in the end, this -- horror. He must have known that he was damning himself."

"Yes, he knew that all right. He never had any trust in mercy -- except for other people."

"It's no good even praying ..."

Father Rank clapped the cover of the diary and said, furiously, "For goodness' sake, Mrs. Scobie, don't imagine you -- or I -- know a thing about God's mercy."

"The Church says ..."

"I know the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."

"You think there's some hope, then?" she wearily asked.

"Are you so bitter against him?"

"I haven't any bitterness left."

"And do you think God's likely to be more bitter than a woman?" he said with harsh insistence, but she winced away from the arguments of hope.

"Oh why, why, did he have to make such a mess of things?"

Father Rank said, "It may seem an odd thing to say -- when a man's as wrong as he was -- but I think, from what I saw of him, that he really loved God."

She had denied just now that she felt any bitterness, but a little more of it drained out now like tears from exhausted ducts. "He certainly loved no one else," she said.

"And you may be in the right of it there, too," Father Rank replied.

Somerset Maugham opined in one of his essays that every writer has an idiosyncratic view of life. It is not a seer’s opinion, nor is it a very informed one. Readers don’t read fiction to have an unbiased appraisal of real-life events. Writer’s job is to present a believable account of events that narrate his tale. Readers too have varied tastes and ways of looking at things. Those with similar viewpoint as the author, find his stories fascinating, and if there are a large number of such readers, book achieves success. In The Heart of the Matter, Greene narrates the story of the tumult that visits a person when life appears to force him to tread a path that is anathema to him. It attempts to examine if such a person can still cling to the truth, virtue and goodness he has always believed in. This is a marvellous story of the pursuit of simple joys in life and the misery that visits when ones honest and sincere efforts to gratify such meagre wants are frustrated abjectly.