The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, Post #3

This is the third post on my reading of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.

You can read Post #1 here.  

Post#2 here.  

 

Another important pairing is the priest with Coral Fellows.  Coral is thirteen, just prior to puberty.  But she is profoundly intelligent, precocious in her empathy, and maybe even prescient in the sense that she seems to understand things in a way beyond limitations.  When her mother tells her father Coral has been entertaining a policeman at the house, her father goes to interrogate her.  Here’s her introduction to the scene.

 

She stood in the doorway watching them with a look of immense responsibility. Before her serious gaze they became a boy you couldn’t trust and a ghost you could almost puff away, a piece of frightened air. She was very young—about thirteen—and at that age you are not afraid of many things, age and death, all the things which may turn up, snake-bite and fever and rats and a bad smell. Life hadn’t got at her yet; she had a false air of impregnability. But she had been reduced already, as it were, to the smallest terms—everything was there but on the thinnest lines. That was what the sun did to a child, reduced it to a framework. The gold bangle on the bony wrist was like a padlock on a canvas door which a fist could break.  (p. 33)

She carries an air of responsibility (her parents stand as a “boy” before, that is she becomes their parent), is unafraid, and “reduced” from the sun which I take to mean thin and smallish.  But she comes across as “impregnable” because “life hadn’t got at her yet.”  Despite her intelligence and sense of responsibility—after all she takes care of her emotionally debilitated mother—there is a quality of innocence.  All these qualities and with perhaps a certain providential grace, she understands and gets correct the moral situation before her.  She keeps the priest hidden from the police.

What we learn is that she has lied to the lieutenant about a priest on their property and has hidden the priest while kept the lieutenant at bay.  It is through her directives that first she resolves the situation with the lingering policeman, then explains to her father there really is a priest hidden, and finally she takes her father to him.  The father has absolutely no empathy for the priest.  He is the exact opposite of Coral, refusing to give him drink and food, and insists he leave as soon as it gets dark. 

What is astonishing is that the “politics” of the situation is completely irrelevant to Coral.  As they are walking to the barn, her father snaps at the girl, “We’ve no business interfering with politics.”  But Coral responds: This isn’t politics. I know about politics. Mother and I are doing the Reform Bill” (37).  Her father is completely configured to the politics.  Coral is configured differently.  So she sneaks back out later.

 

Coral put down the chicken legs and tortillas on the ground and unlocked the door. She carried a bottle of Cerveza Moctezuma under her arm. There was the same scuffle in the dark: the noise of a frightened man. She said, ‘It’s me,’ to quieten him, but she didn’t turn on the torch. She said, ‘There’s a bottle of beer here, and some food.’

 

‘Thank you. Thank you.’

 

‘The police have gone from the village—south. You had better go north.’

 

He said nothing.

 

She asked, with the cold curiosity of a child, ‘What would they do to you if they found you?’

 

‘Shoot me.’

 

‘You must be very frightened,’ she said with interest.

 

He felt his way across the barn towards the door and the pale starlight. He said, ‘I am frightened,’ and stumbled on a bunch of bananas. (39)

She feels his hunger, and feeds him secretly.  Not only has she lied to the police, she has disobeyed her father.  Why?  She doesn’t really know whether he’s innocent.  She helps him because there is a suffering man who seems to have his dignity reduced.  If the whisky priest is on a passion narrative in this novel—and that is one way to look at the story—Coral is Veronica wiping the face of Jesus at the sixth station of the cross.  Her reaction when he tells her of the consequences of being caught is empathy: “You must be very frightened.”  She looks into his heart and connects with it.  The politics of the world crumble when faced with the humanity before her.

They continue this heart to heart conversation.  At one point she offers a solution to his situation.

She said, ‘Of course you could—renounce.’

 

‘I don’t understand.’

 

‘Renounce your faith,’ she explained, using the words of her European History.

 

He said, ‘It’s impossible. There’s no way. I’m a priest. It’s out of my power.’

 

The child listened intently. She said, ‘Like a birthmark.’ (40)

“Like a birthmark,” she intuits the sacrament of Holy Orders.  Like Baptism, Holy Orders is a mark on your soul that cannot be taken away (see Ps 110:4 “The Lord has sworn and will not waver: "You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek” and echoed in Heb 7:17).  She understands his existential predicament.  And so she offers him to return any time to hide out.  She tries to tech him Morse code and asks him when he comes to signal with two longs and one short (41).  It is interesting that two longs and one short in Morse code stand for the letter “G.”  Why “G”?  Perhaps standing for God?

The conversation then turns toward God.  He asks her if she believes in God, and she says she has “lost her faith” at the age of ten.  Here now it is the whisky priest’s turn to talk to her heart.  He tells her twice he will pray for her and gives her hope that with a little brandy he can “defy the devil.” 

Again, as in the conversation with Mr. Tench, what we have is heart speaking to heart.  In these and other pired conversations with the priest throughout the novel, what I find is heart speaking to heart.  Now this recalls St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s episcopal motto, “Cor Ad Cor Loquitur,” Heart Speaks to Heart.  Newman took the phrase from a letter from Saint Francis de Sales, but today it’s identified with Newman.  Now Cor Ad Cor Loquitur could be referring to God’s heart speaking to man’s heart, or vice versa.  Or it could mean a human heart speaking to another human heart with God’s language.  For a full understanding of the motto see this article, “Cor ad cor loquitur” John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Coat of Arms” from the he International Centre of Newman Friends.   From the article, “The Church is the communion of Christians who are “one heart and one soul” (Acts 4:32), speaking the new language inspired by the Word of God: cor ad cor.” 

The priest speaks in this language of the heart, and all the characters respond in some measure also with their hearts, but that measure is perhaps a level of grace granted to the character.  Mr. Tench receives the language of the heart and is touched enough to break his apathy and write to his wife, who writes back granting him a divorce.  He is touched enough to feel the heartache of the priest’s death at the end of the novel. 

Coral responds the most, as I’ve pointed out here.  Later we see she has been touched by the priest when she brings up God and faith to her mother.  The priest’s conversation, heart, and, indeed, his prayers have been working on the girl.  In his dream of the night before the execution, the priest dreams of Coral.  She is there at the feast in heaven, where he sees himself eating hungrily just like he did when Coral fed him in the barn.  In the dream she, who we learn in the course of the novel has died, taps out Morse code for the priest.  Notice also that in heaven she taps out differently than what she proposed in the barn.  In the dream she taps out three longs and one short.  There is no single letter in Morse code for three longs and a short.  Three longs stand for “O” and one short stands for “E.”  I could be off base here but could those be the vowels surrounding the word “love”?  Of course that’s speculation, but the one thing for sure is that she communicates with him from heaven.  Heart speaks to heart.

###

The next paired conversation with the whisky priest that leads to more insight of the novel is that with Brigitta, his illegitimate daughter.  Of all the people in the entire novel, we know that Brigitta is special to him.  It is almost the first thing he brings up when he comes to his village and sees her mother, Maria.

 

He said gently, not looking at her, with the same embarrassed smile, ‘How’s Brigitta?’ His heart jumped at the name: a sin may have enormous consequences: it was six years since he had been—home.

 

‘She’s as well as the rest of us. What did you expect?’

 

He had his satisfaction, but it was connected with his crime; he had no business to feel pleasure at anything attached to that past.  (p. 61-62)

And so we see here the paradox of pain and joy.  Later children come by to kiss the hand of a priest, and he looks for his daughter among them, though he has no idea what she looks like.

 

The real children were coming up now to kiss his hand, one by one, under the pressure of their parents. They were too young to remember the old days when the priests dressed in black and wore Roman collars and had soft superior patronizing hands; he could see they were mystified at the show of respect to a peasant like their parents. He didn’t look at them directly, but he was watching them closely all the same. Two were girls—a thin washed-out child—of five, six, seven? he couldn’t tell, and one who had been sharpened by hunger into an appearance of devilry and malice beyond her age. A young woman stared out of the child’s eyes. He watched them disperse again, saying nothing: they were strangers.  (62-63)

The continuity of faith between generations has been atrophied.  They don’t know the significance of a priest now that the persecution has been going on since before they were born.  It is the girl with the appearance of devilry that turns out to be his daughter.  In her eyes he sees a “young woman,” not a child.  It is also important to note that he attributes hunger (the “one who had been sharpened by hunger”) for what I’ll call a loss of innocence.  Yes, she is only seven but there is a lack of innocence in Brigitta that was there with Coral who was twice her age.  In fact, when the priest has a moment of personal anguish, it is Brigitta who laughs at him.  The anguish is in reaction to hearing that a man was executed from not turning in the priest.

 

He gave a little yapping cry like a dog’s—the absurd shorthand of grief. The old-young child laughed. He said, ‘Why don’t they catch me? The fools. Why don’t they catch me?’ The little girl laughed again; he stared at her sightlessly, as if he could hear the sound but couldn’t see the face. Happiness was dead again before it had had time to breathe; he was like a woman with a stillborn child—bury it quickly and forget and begin again. Perhaps the next would live.  (63-64)

At this point he still doesn’t know that this is his daughter.  Later he specifically asks for her.

 

He said shyly, ‘And Brigitta … is she … well?’

 

‘You saw her just now.’

 

‘No.’ He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t recognized her. It was making light of his mortal sin: you couldn’t do a thing like that and then not even recognize …

 

‘Yes, she was there.’ Maria went to the door and called, ‘Brigitta, Brigitta,’ and the priest turned on his side and watched her come in out of the outside landscape of terror and lust—that small malicious child who had laughed at him. ‘Go and speak to the father,’ Maria said. ‘Go on.’

 

He made an attempt to hide the brandy bottle, but there was nowhere … he tried to minimize it in his hands, watching her, feeling the shock of human love.  (65)

“The shock of human love” is what makes the priest transcend his sins.  It is his love for all humanity—not just in a general sense but with every specific human being—that makes him a true Christian.  Jesus commands us to love our neighbor, but it is John in his first epistle that describes it as more than a commandment but of a thing of the heart.

 

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.  Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love... Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.  No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us…We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.  God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.  In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.  We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.  (1 Jn 4:7-21)

It is a long passage, and though I took out part through ellipses, but I think that passage is central to the novel.  It is through being in God’s love that makes us love, and then there is no room for hate.  You cannot hate your fellow human being if you are in God’s love.  But there is an implied corollary from this as well.  How can you love your brother in general if you don’t love someone specific?  Love of brother is not an abstraction of general humanity, but of specific persons.

Here the whisky priest loves his daughter in this specific way.  And so he feels that “shock” of love. His empathy goes out to her.  He protects her against her mother’s castigation (67) and wants to show her magic tricks (68).  He wants to come down to her level and speak heart to heart.  The child’s impudence prevents him.  Still the child saves his life when the lieutenant enters the town and child identifies him as her father, which should rule out being a priest (76).  Later he tells Maria “The next Mass I say will be for her” (79).  The priest has one more conversation with Brigitta after the lieutenant leaves.  At the garbage heap while looking for his thrown out papers, the child comes to him.  They talk heart to heart.  She tells him “they laugh at her” and that “everyone else has a father” (81).  He is taken aback.

 

He was appalled again by her maturity, as she whipped up a smile from a large and varied stock. She said, ‘Tell me—’ enticingly. She sat there on the trunk of the tree by the rubbish-tip with an effect of abandonment. The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. She was without protection—she had no grace, no charm to plead for her; his heart was shaken by the conviction of loss. He said, ‘My dear, be careful …’

 

‘What of? Why are you going away?’

 

He came a little nearer; he thought—a man may kiss his own daughter, but she started away from him.

 

‘Don’t you touch me,’ she screeched at him in her ancient voice and giggled. Every child was born with some kind of knowledge of love, he thought; they took it with the milk at the breast; but on parents and friends depended the kind of love they knew—the saving or the damning kind. Lust too was a kind of love. He saw her fixed in her life like a fly in amber—Maria’s hand raised to strike: Pedro talking prematurely in the dusk: and the police beating the forest—violence everywhere. He prayed silently, ‘O God, give me any kind of death—without contrition, in a state of sin—only save this child.’

And here we get more Christian anthropology: “Every child [is] born with some kind of knowledge of love” but “the world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.”  [Actually as I think on it, this is more Catholic anthropology then general Christian.  Some Protestant denominations believe in total depravity of humanity.  That doesn’t fit here.  Catholics believe we are born with the capacity for both.]  And so we see why Brigitta is alluded to as a “young woman” and not a child.  She has lost her innocence.  Hunger, her mother’s harshness, Pedro’s worldly diatribes have smudged her soul.  He makes one last effort to speak to her heart.  I can’t quote the entire scene, but it’s worth reading.  At one point he falls to his knees.

 

He went down on his knees and pulled her to him, while she giggled and struggled to be free: ‘I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that.’ He held her tightly by the wrist and suddenly she stayed still, looking up at him. He said, ‘I would give my life, that’s nothing, my soul … my dear, my dear, try to understand that you are—so important.’ (82)

I don’t think that giving up your soul for someone, which would be the ultimate death, is something the Catholic Church would approve (it smacks of making a deal with the devil) but he does say that several times in the novel.  And I think he’s sincere about it too.  It’s Greene trying to show he will die for his love.  Right after the priest says he loves her and she’s so important, we get this coming from the priest’s inner thoughts:

 

That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent.

And just like Coral, who separated the politics of a situation from the human connection, so too the whisky priest separates the politics of Mexico with his love for her.  The philosophic underpinnings are right out of John’s first epistle, the separation of the worldly with the love in God, as I quoted above.

Finally he tries again to reach her heart, manages a kiss, says goodbye, and when he departs can feel the “whole vile world coming round the child to ruin her.”  We never do hear about Brigitta again, but one hopes that just as the whisky priest’s heart to heart conversation and prayers effects Mr. Tench and his life, one hopes they will have a positive effect on Brigitta too in the future.