A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene

for all the shops which climbed uphill along the rue de Namur: she tried to look through the lighted dashboard into a window full of shoes. She stretched out her foot beside the brake and said in a whisper, ‘I take size six.’
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    In the light of the headlamp she saw the cage strutting by the road like a Martian.
    ‘You are getting into a bad habit of talking to yourself.’
    She said nothing. She couldn’t tell him, ‘There is no one else to speak to,’ about the pâtisserie at the corner, the day when Sister Thérèse broke her ankle, the plage in August with her parents.
    ‘A lot of it is my own fault,’ Rycker said, reaching his second stage. ‘I realize that. I have failed to teach you the real values as I see them. What can you expect from the manager of a palm-oil factory? I was not meant for this life. I should have thought even you could have seen that.’ His vain yellow face hung like a mask between her and Africa. He said, ‘When I was young I wanted to be a priest.’ He must have told her this, after drinks, at least once a month since they married, and every time he spoke she remembered their first night in the hotel at Antwerp, when he had lifted his body off her like a half-filled sack and dumped it at her side, and she, feeling some tenderness because she thought that in some way she had failed him, touched his shoulder (which was hard and round like a swede in the sack), and he asked her roughly, ‘Aren’t you satisfied? A man can’t go on and on.’ Then he had turned on his side away from her: the holy medal that he always wore had got twisted by their embrace and now lay in the small of his back, facing her like a reproach. She wanted to defend herself, ‘It was you who married me. I know about chastity too – the nuns taught me.’ But the chastity she had been taught was something which she connected with clean white garments and light and gentleness, while his was like old sackcloth in a desert.
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘You are not even interested when I tell you my deepest feelings.’
    She said miserably, ‘Perhaps it was a mistake.’
    ‘Mistake?’
    ‘Marrying me. I was too young.’
    ‘You mean I am too old to give you satisfaction.’
    ‘No – no. I didn’t mean . . .’
    ‘You know only one kind of love, don’t you? Do you suppose that’s the kind of love the saints feel?’
    ‘I don’t know any saints,’ she said desperately.
    ‘You don’t believe I am capable in my small way of going through the Dark Night of the Soul? I am only your husband who shares your bed . . .’
    She whispered. ‘I don’t understand. Please, I don’t understand.’
    ‘What don’t you understand?’
    ‘I thought that love was supposed to make you happy.’
    ‘Is that what they taught you in the convent?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He made a grimace at her, breathing heavily, and the coupé was filled momentarily with the scent of Vat 69. They passed beside the grim constructed figure in the chair; they were nearly home.
    ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
    She had been back in the shop in the rue de Namur watching an elderly man who was gently, so gently, easing her foot into a stiletto-heeled shoe. So she said, ‘Nothing.’
    Rycker said in a voice suddenly kind, ‘That is the opportunity for prayer.’
    ‘Prayer?’ She knew, but without relief, that the quarrel was over, for from experience she knew too that, after the rain had swept by, the lightning always came nearer.
    ‘When I have nothing else to think of, I mean that I have to think of, I always say a Pater Noster , an Ave Maria , or even an Act of Contrition.’
    ‘Contrition?’
    ‘That I have been unjustly angry with a dear child whom I love.’ His hand fell on her thigh and his fingers kneaded gently the silk of her skirt, as though they were seeking some muscle to fasten on. Outside the rusting abandoned cylinders showed they were approaching the house;