Будущий писатель родился в семье директора привилегированной школы. Он рано пристрастился к чтению приключенческих романов Хаггарда и Конрада и впоследствии утверждал, что ему было трудно избавиться от литературного влияния этих писателей. В школе Грин не пользовался популярностью, не интересовался спортом, предпочитая чтение, и в результате, после нескольких попыток самоубийства, ушел оттуда и дальнейшее образование получил в Бэллиол-колледже Оксфордского университета.
В начале 1920-х годов Грэм Грин работал журналистом. В 1926 году он принял католицизм и в дальнейшем называл себя «пишущим католиком». В католицизме его привлекала не ортодоксальная религиозная доктрина, а проповедь нравственности и добра. Свои романы он делил на «развлекательные истории», основанные на детектив-ной интриге, и «серьезные романы» с мощным социальным подтекстом, хотя граница между ними зачастую условна.
В 50–80-е годы Грин создает произведения, сделавшие его писателем мирового уровня: «Тихий американец» (1955), «Конец любовной связи» (1955), «Комедианты» (1966), «Путешествие с тетушкой» (1969), «Почетный консул» (1973), «Человеческий фактор» (1978), «Доктор Фишер из Женевы, или Ужин с бомбой» (1980), «Монсеньор Кихот» (1982), «Знакомство с генералом» (1984), «Капитан и враг» (1991).
В жанровом отношении все романы Грина сочетают в себе элементы политического детектива с психологическим и социальным романом. Этические понятия нравственности и цинизма, борьба добра и зла воплощены в образах многих его героев. Грин полагал, что задача писателя заключается в выражении «сочувствия любому человеческому существу». Более всего Грина интересует состояние человека в момент трудного выбора. Его герой существует в легко узнаваемой социально-политической ситуации, а внешняя реальность вынуждает индивида принимать решения, исход которых зачастую трагичен.
Писатель неоднократно выдвигался на Нобелевскую премию, но так и не получил ее. Шведский академик Артур Лундквист как-то заявил, что этот автор детективов получит премию только через его труп. По иронии судьбы Лундквист умер через полгода после смерти Грэма Грина.
Part I
Chapter 1
I met my Aunt Augusta for the first time in more than half a century at my mother’s funeral. My mother was approaching eighty-six when she died, and my aunt was some eleven or twelve years younger. I had retired from the bank two years before with an adequate pension and a silver handshake[1]. There had been a take-over by the Westminster and my branch was considered redundant. Everyone thought me lucky, but I found it difficult to occupy my time. I have never married, I have always lived quietly, and, apart from my interest in dahlias, I have no hobby. For those reasons I found myself agreeably excited by my mother’s funeral.
My father had been dead for more than forty years.
He was a building contractor of a lethargic disposition who used to take afternoon naps in all sorts of curious places. This irritated my mother, who was an energetic woman, and she used to seek him out to disturb him. As a child I remember going to the bathroom – we lived in Highgate then – and finding my father asleep in the bath in his clothes. I am rather short-sighted and I thought that my mother had been cleaning an overcoat, until I heard my father whisper, “Bolt the door on the inside when you go out.” He was too lazy to get out of the bath and too sleepy, I suppose, to realize that his order was quite impossible to carry out. At another time, when he was responsible for a new block of flats in Lewisham, he would take his catnap in the cabin of the giant crane, and construction would be halted until he woke. My mother, who had a good head for heights[2], would climb ladders to the highest scaffolding in the hope of discovering him, when as like as not he would have found a corner in what was to be the underground garage. I had always thought of them as reasonably happy together: their twin roles of the hunter and the hunted probably suited them, for my mother by the time I first remembered her had developed an alert poise of the head and a wary trotting pace which reminded me of a gundog. I must be forgiven these memories of the past: at a funeral they are apt to come unbidden, there is so much waiting about.
Not many people attended the service, which took place at a famous crematorium, but there was that slight stirring of excited expectation which is never experienced at a graveside. Will the oven doors open? Will the coffin stick on the way to the flames? I heard a voice behind me saying in very clear old accents, “I was present once at a premature cremation.”
It was, as I recognized, with some difficulty, from a photograph in the family album, my Aunt Augusta, who had arrived late, dressed rather as the late Queen Mary[3] of beloved memory might have dressed if she had still been with us and had adapted herself a little bit towards the present mode. I was surprised by her brilliant red hair, monumentally piled, and her two big front teeth which gave her a vital Neanderthal air. Somebody said, “Hush,” and a clergyman began a prayer which I believe he must have composed himself. I had never heard it at any other funeral service, and I have attended a great number in my time. A bank manager is expected to pay his last respects to every old client who is not as we say “in the red,” and in any case I have a weakness for funerals. People are generally seen at their best on these occasions, serious and sober, and optimistic on the subject of personal immortality.
The funeral of my mother went without a hitch[4]. The flowers were removed economically from the coffin, which at the touch of a button slid away from us out of sight. Afterwards in the troubled sunlight I shook hands with a number of nephews and nieces and cousins whom I hadn’t seen for years and could not identify. It was understood that I had to wait for the ashes and wait I did, while the chimney of the crematorium gently smoked overhead.
“You must be Henry,” Aunt Augusta said, gazing reflectively at me with her sea-deep blue eyes.
“Yes,” I said, “and you must be Aunt Augusta.”
“It’s a very long time since 1 saw anything of your mother,” Aunt Augusta told me. “I hope that her death was an easy one.”
“Oh yes, you know, at her time of life – her heart just stopped. She died of old age.”
“Old age? She was only twelve years older than I am,” Aunt Augusta said accusingly.
We took a little walk together