Free A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene Page B

talking about Querry, the Querry,’ Rycker explained. ‘A man in that position burying himself in a leproserie, spending a night praying with a leper in the bush – you must admit, Monseigneur, that self-sacrifices like that are rare. What do you think?’
    ‘I am wondering, does he play bridge?’ Just as the Governor’s comment had given administrative approval to Querry’s conduct, so the Bishop’s question was taken to mean that the Church in her wise and traditional fashion reserved her opinion.
    The Bishop accepted a glass of orange juice. Marie Rycker looked at it sadly. She had parked her Perrier and didn’t know what to do with her hands. The Bishop said to her kindly, ‘You should learn bridge, Mme Rycker. We have too few players round here now.’
    ‘I am frightened of cards, Monseigneur.’
    ‘I will bless the pack and teach you myself.’ Marie Rycker was uncertain whether the Bishop was joking; she tried out an unnoticeable kind of smile.
    Rycker said, ‘I can’t imagine how a man of Querry’s calibre can work with that atheist Colin. That’s a man, you can take it from me, who doesn’t know the meaning of the word charity. Do you remember last year when I tried to organize a Lepers’ Day? He would have nothing to do with it. He said he couldn’t afford to accept charity. Four hundred dresses and suits had been accumulated and he refused to distribute them, just because there weren’t enough to go round. He said he would have had to buy the rest out of his own pocket to avoid jealousy – why should a leper be jealous? You should talk to him one day, Monseigneur, on the nature of charity.’
    But Monseigneur had moved on, his hand under Marie Rycker’s elbow.
    ‘Your husband seems very taken up with this man Querry,’ he said.
    ‘He thinks he may be somebody he can talk to.’
    ‘Are you so silent?’ the Bishop asked, teasing her gently as though he had indeed picked her up outside a café on the boulevards.
    ‘I can’t talk about his subjects.’
    ‘What subjects?’
    ‘Free Will and Grace and – Love.’
    ‘Come now – love . . . you know about that, don’t you?’
    ‘Not that kind of love,’ Marie Rycker said.
    II
    By the time the Ryckers came to go – they had to wait a long time for Mme Cassin – Rycker had drunk to the margin of what was dangerous; he had passed from excessive amiability to dissatisfaction, the kind of cosmic dissatisfaction which, after probing faults in others’ characters, went on to the examination of his own. Marie Rycker knew that if he could be induced at this stage to take a sleeping-pill all might yet be well; he would probably reach unconsciousness before he reached religion which, like the open doorway in a red-lamp district, led invariably to sex.
    ‘There are times,’ Rycker said, ‘when I wish we had a more spiritual bishop.’
    ‘He was kind to me,’ Marie Rycker said.
    ‘I suppose he talked to you of cards.’
    ‘He offered to teach me bridge.’
    ‘I suppose he knew that I had forbidden you to play.’
    ‘He couldn’t. I’ve told no one.’
    ‘I will not have my wife turned into a typical colon .’
    ‘I think I am one already.’ She added in a low voice, ‘I don’t want to be different.’
    He said sharply. ‘Spending all their time in small talk . . .’
    ‘I wish I could. How I wish I could. If anyone could only teach me that . . .’
    It was always the same. She drank nothing but Perrier, and yet the alcohol on his breath would make her talk as though the whisky had entered her own blood, and what she said then was always too close to the truth. Truth, which someone had once written made us free, irritated Rycker as much as one of his own hang-nails. He said, ‘What nonsense. Don’t talk like that for effect. There are times when you remind me of Mme Guelle.’ The night sang discordantly at them from either side of the road, and the noises from the forest were louder than the engine. She had a longing