Graham Greene has a way of describing these circumstances that makes me laugh, so when the story switches from comic desolation to real desolation, it is difficult to keep a straight face. Of course there may not have been any diamonds in the first place.

All Scobie can do to determine if the parrot is actually carrying diamonds is to cut the parrot up and see what is in its craw. One smuggling ruse is to get someone’s pet parrot to swallow the diamonds.

They report on each other, accusing each other of smuggling diamonds which is one of the main moneymaking opportunities here. There are two Syrian businessmen, Tallit and Yusef, who control most of the trade in the colony, and these two are very competitive. The actual natives of the colony all work as servants for the British for next to nothing, and the British colonials call all the native men ‘Boy’ no matter what age they are. There is really very little for anyone to do here except at the post clubhouse where the post bar and restaurant provide a refuge, except that you might run in to obnoxious British colonial types like Wilson. One of the favorite pastimes of the colonials is inventing games which involve killing bugs. Soon enough, small lizards and mice also get in. Termites and other wood-boring insects eat the exposed wood in the houses which then allow the cockroaches and many kinds of beetles to enter the rooms. It is extremely hot in this colony, a breeding ground for all kinds of bugs and vermin. Louise and Scobie have reached that stage in their marriage where they annoy each other constantly, but it is comfortable except when Louise calls Scobie by her pet name for him, ‘Ticky’. It doesn’t bother Scobie very much that he is passed by for promotion, but it upsets his wife Louise. Even when the number 1 man leaves, he does not get promoted, because then there would be no one who could do the important customs work that Scobie does. Major Scobie, our main character in “The Heart of the Matter”, is the number 2 man in the customs office. The war is far away the British empire is winding down, almost finished, but the people here, especially the British, don’t know it yet. I recently re-read one of his classic novels, “The Heart of the Matter” which takes place during World War II in a west African British colony which fortunately for it remains nameless. No writer did comic desolation better than Graham Greene. “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene (1948) – 255 pages

The heart of matter by graham greene