TO CATHERINE WALSTON

Written over ten days (February 15 –24) travelling in the Congo, this letter is one of Greene’s longest; it includes observations made more gravely in his Congo Journal. Many details of the journey reappear in A Burnt-Out Case. His handwriting is here at its worst and the transcription is at several points tentative.

Sunday. | Feb. 15 [1959] 8.00 a.m.

On the river Momboyo.

Darling Catherine, I won’t be able to post this letter till I get back. Mass at 6 o’clock in the little deck house where there’s a slide-in altar on top of a cupboard with a panel of the Nativity behind. Since then breakfast & writing up my journal – which is also notes for the book. Then washed my brush & comb in soda water as the river water is a thick brown. Missed the sight of (boat stopped for a man in a canoe with a large fish for sale) a particularly big crocodile. The captain, Père Georges, who looks more like an officer of the Foreign Legion than a priest, tried to shoot it – his first instinct with any wild thing.

You would love this boat, a tiny version unpainted & decrepit of a Mississippi paddle steamer & very pretty. Apart from the crew with some wives & sweethearts – one very attractive – there is nobody on board but Père Georges, the captain, myself & Père Henri, a convalescent taking the trip for a rest, tall & cadaverous & a joker.¹²I have taught them to play 421. I have the Bishop’s cabin which is quite roomy with a nostalgic photo of a church covered in snow over the bed. Yesterday we looked in at Flantria where there is an Englishman (ex-Indian army) in charge of the Lever palm estate. His little girl excited by an English voice stood on her head & was sick. He looked awful but turned out nice & intelligent: his wife very pretty & intelligent too. I may spend a night on the way back.

Now we are on the way to Imbonga, where there is a leproserie some miles in the forest: very primitive: no doctor: looked after by Sisters. I probably shall spend two days there & then on for another 3 days to Wafanya for my third leproserie – then home to Yonda.

You would love this boat, the river is narrowing now to less than half a mile, unchanging forest. Very restful. I’m reading The Roots of Heaven (the film is on in London) about a man who makes war on the side of the elephants in this – more or less – part of the world. It would have been a very good book if Conrad had never existed, but the echoes are too strong.¹³I’ve also got: David Copperfield, Tawney’s new book, Business & Politics under James I, Belloc’s The Cruise of the Nona, & the first volume of a complete Casanova.

Last night I had one of my awful dreams about you: jealousy. You told me you had slept with Douglas Jay¹⁴& three other men since leaving home, & what right had I to be jealous anyway? In revenge I started making love to someone – not a bit like the person she was supposed to be – in bed in front of you. Then you became angry & the third person was amused & malicious. In the end we almost had made it up, & you said something profound about real love being always on the border of domesticity.

Dear, dear, dear.

We got to Imbonga before dark. Tomorrow a four mile walk each way to the leproserie. I’m in better condition than for a long time. If you were an X ray, you wouldn’t recognise my liver – 2 glasses of whisky at most after sundown, otherwise soda water. And I brought 10 bottles of whisky on this trip!

Feb. 18. 7.30 a.m.

We had two nights at Imbonga, & the first morning I walked over ten miles – good way in this climate. A far more primitive leproserie than Yonda, & I was glad to see around it alone without any white people. A nice leper brought me back through the forest carrying a dish of eggs – bad lesions on the face & one eye nearly gone, but chattered cheerfully in French. In spite of modern drugs there are still some horrors: an old man cheerily waving goodbye with hands & feet, but without fingers or toes. Half one hut was in complete darkness – one could just make out an enamel pot. My black companion called & one heard movements. Presently an old woman crawled into the half light like a dog out of a kennel – no fingers or toes or eyes of course & she couldn’t even raise her head.

It was odd last night 500 kilometres in the bush hearing of the disturbances at Brazzaville. One rather feels the end of European Africa is coming quickly. A lot of the people in Coquilhatville where there are about 300 whites are very nervous & sleep with guns beside them, & that’s the chief danger, that somebody in a panic will make an incident. Some of them are far more nervous than the lonely settlers were at the time of Mau Mau in Kenya. The French, after Algérie & Indo-China, a little laugh at them.

We should get to Wafanya tomorrow, stay a few days & then start back towards Paris & you. The current will be with us then & we’ll move quicker.

[…]

3 p.m.

It really is too hot. The river’s narrowed from about a mile & a half to fifty yards & there’s no air at all. And of course we eat roast meat & lots of boiled potatoes!

5 p.m.

Started rereading David Copperfield. My goodness, the first two chapters are perfect. I don’t believe there’s been anything better in the novel – & that includes Proust & Tolstoy. One dreads the moment of failure, for Dickens always sooner or later fails.

Fr. Georges, the captain, sits stringing a rosary, & Fr. Henri plays Patience. He & I will have our whisky in an hour & then I shall be beaten at 421. Rather like the University of Notre Dame at football, their daily communions seem to ensure their victory at dice.

Feb. 19

We’ve been going up the river now for a week & it’s about enough! We should arrive at journey’s end tonight – 8 days. A lot of tsetse flies, but few white people get sleeping sickness.

[…]

The frontier has been closed between Leopoldville & Brazzaville on the other side of the Congo River because of the troubles, & unless it’s opened again by March 5 I’ll have to find a different route to Douala or leave it out & come to Paris Sabena via Rome. But I’ll telegraph any change & I’ll aim to keep to March 13 unless I hear from you.

Père Georges has just shot a beautiful fishing eagle. He always shoots a sitting target & even then it’s only winged, so one of the crew swims ashore & finishes it off with the branch of a tree.

[…]

Feb. 21

So encouraged because I got through all I wanted & gained a day. We started back (for Paris!) after lunch – but then we hit a snag in the river, damaged the steering. We are tied up in the forest & Lord knows whether the thing can be mended. Frustrating! Too hot to write. All the more frustrating because I had a most erotic dream of you last night when I fell asleep in the middle of a tropical storm.

2 hours later – they’ve managed to get the rudder on shore & now they have to build a fire to bend it. No chance of getting on tonight.

Feb. 22. Sunday

They got the rudder straightened & on again – with a great deal of singing – just by dark. I was never so hot in my life as yesterday & it was wonderful when dark came, in spite of the big ‘vampire’ bats creaking away over the forest. This morning off again at 6 – towards Paris & you. At Mass I noticed that one of the crew, who had a prayer book, had a holy picture, when he was reading – but when I looked closer it was Tom Mix or another in a big cowboy hat!

[…]

9.15 a.m. It’s too dark to write. There’s going to be one hell of a storm in a few minutes.

There was!

Oh, how tired one gets of trying to speak French. Mine gets worse & worse. All the same I’m very well. Only I have to take a sleeping pill every night because otherwise it’s too hot to sleep. For a holiday I’d prefer Tahiti.

Even in this remote spot one has to sign books. A young planter came down to the shore with a cargo of oil & brought with him a copy of The Power & the G.! I don’t a bit mind signing in these remote places. He had had his first holiday in Europe after 12 years in the Congo & had visited Capri.

Feb. 23

We are making good time & I should be back in Yonda the day after tomorrow: tomorrow Imbonga. The day after Flandria where I’m spending the night with the English plantation manager & getting a lift next day by car.

Bad night last night owing to a cold, but in the middle of the night I woke up & wrote down the last sentences of the new novel. I wonder if I’ll ever get that far. (I’ve abandoned four in my time).

[…]

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 702