A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene (pub.1955)

This is in some ways an ironic self-parody of the writer and his novels which would certainly irritate him if regarded as humility. By page 10 the still unnamed protagonist is saying:

One of the fathers, who was presumably the Superior, knocked and came in. He said, "Is there anything you want?"
       "Nothing. I want nothing." He nearly added, "That is my trouble.

The novel takes the form of a retreat from the fleshpots of Europe up the Congo river beyond which it is not possible to go by boat. This station happens to be a leprosarium run by White Fathers from Belgium. It is in the 1950's, the riots in Leopoldville are mentioned and a new era of freedom and continuous war is yet to come. Querry has hoped that his celebrity as an architect will not follow him here. He is known as ‘The Querry’ as in Le Corbusier or a man whose surname is also an epithet. The Fathers and the resident Doctor Colin have not a clue who he is. Only a factory owner in Luc the nearest town recognises him and insists on projecting a pious interpretation of his reason for being in Africa.

"Oh no, I haven't. I can show you a photograph when you come to my house—in one of the papers that lie around in case they may prove useful. Useful! This one certainly has, hasn't it, because otherwise we would have thought you were only a relation of Querry's or that the name was pure coincidence, for who would expect to find the Querry holed up in a leproserie in the bush? I have to admit I am somewhat curious. But you can trust me, trust me all the way. I have serious enough problems of my own, so I can sympathise with those of another man. I've buried myself too. We'd better go outside, for in a little town like this even the walls have ears."

This busybody and priest manque plays a fateful role in the novel. In Greeneland poltroons and triflers are always the agents of an ignoble fate. His very young wife Marie greets Querry:

 "I am very glad to meet you," she said. "We will try to make you comfortable." Querry had the impression that she had learnt such occasional speeches by heart from her governess or from a book of etiquette. Now she had said her piece she disappeared as suddenly as she had come; perhaps the school-bell had rung for class.

Greene as a world famous novelist must have had many attempts made to scrape an acquaintance with him and his depressive lethargy and the gathering of specimens might have allowed him to submit to importunity. Querry is also a quarry and maybe even a prey of the Hound of Heaven. Rycker likes to think so. After all this man has suffered the dark night of the soul when he went to the rescue of his servant Deo Gratias. This is the pious interpretation that is made of his decision to remain with the injured man:

 There was nothing to be done but wait for the morning. The man might die of fear, but neither of them would die from damp or mosquito-bites. He settled himself down as comfortably as he could by the boy and by the last light of the torch examined the rocky feet. As far as he could tell an ankle was broken—that seemed to be all. Soon the light was so dim that Querry could see the shape of the filament in the dark, like a phosphorescent worm; then it went out altogether. He took Deo Gratias's hand to reassure him, or rather laid his own hand down beside it; you cannot "take" a fingerless hand. Deo Gratias grunted twice, and then uttered a word. It sounded like "Pendéle". In the darkness the knuckles felt like a rock that has been eroded for years by the weather.

When he tells Doctor Colin about this:

"It must have been a long bad night."
       "One has had worse alone." He seemed to be searching his memory for an example. "Nights when things end. Those are the interminable nights. In a way you know this seemed a night when things begin. I've never much minded physical discomfort. And after about an hour when I tried to move my hand, he wouldn't let it go. His fist lay on it like a paper-weight. I had an odd feeling that he needed me."

Here is the point where the novel gets away from its writer and begins to tell a truth. Feeling the need of a mutilé is an answer to Querry’s own deformity. The planning and building of a new hospital on the simplest and most economical scale is a project that he can do using his expertise to save the Fathers money. He begins to work on it. Naturally the world, the flesh and the devil intervenes.

I feel that I have failed to give any sense of the story of the healing of a soul that rejects its cure and remains attached to its numbness. All the usual writerly qualities of Greene are there, location, climate, character, simple prose. It’s a good novel for our present retreat.

Dr. Colin examines a patient:

 Patient after patient exposed his body to him; in all the years he had never become quite accustomed to the sweet gangrenous smell of certain leprous skins, and it had become to him the smell of Africa. He ran his fingers over the diseased surface, and made his notes almost mechanically. The notes had small value, but his fingers, he knew, gave the patients comfort: they realised that they were not untouchable. Now that a cure had been found for the physical disease, he had always to remember that leprosy remained a psychological problem.