Books: Grace Notes the Tenth Man

Ordinary folks are likely to forget about letters, memos or grocery lists that they have jotted down; it takes someone a little unusual to lose all recollection of having written a book. That is what happened to Author Graham Greene, 80, who learned in 1983 that something of his called The Tenth Man had been unearthed from the archives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He remembered working under contract to MGM back in 1944 and thought he might have written a brief scenario of a story that could, conceivably, have borne that title. But when the discovered typescript was sent to him, as Greene notes in an introduction, he was astonished: “It proved to be not two pages of outline but a complete short novel of about 30,000 words. What surprised and aggravated me most of all was that I found this forgotten story very readable.”

Few of Greene’s constant readers will disagree. The Tenth Man offers, in small compass, the narrative combination that eventually became recognized as the author’s trademark; it is a smoothly plotted psychological thriller in which the hero must struggle not only for his life but for his soul.

Jean-Louis Chavel is one of 30 Frenchmen being held in a small prison block by the occupying German army. Chavel, a lawyer before the war, and his fellow detainees know exactly why their captors provide them food and shelter: the involuntary guests are hostages, meant to discourage local Resistance violence against the Nazis. This deterrent, of course, does not work. Two Germans are killed, and the order comes down from the prison commander: one out of every ten prisoners is to be executed at sunrise. The men themselves must choose the victims. Lots are drawn, and Chavel finds himself one of the three losers. As the only “man of position and property” among them, the lawyer keenly feels injustice and fear. He offers money and then all of his possessions, including his ancestral home, to the one who will take his place before the firing squad. Against all expectations he finds a taker, a young man who wants his sister and ailing mother to survive him as wealthy women.

Those who have spent time familiarizing themselves with the topography of Greeneland will have some idea of what must happen next. France is liberated and so is Chavel, who emerges from prison with papers that identify him as one Jean-Louis Charlot. Having lost everything but his life, the survivor feels driven inexorably toward the home he has relinquished. There he meets his unsuspecting inheritors: an old woman who knows nothing of the fate of her son and a sister who can think of little else. Therese gives the ragged visitor food and discusses the horrible man who bought her brother’s death: “I tell myself that one day he will come back here because he won’t be able to resist seeing what’s happened to his beautiful house.” And when he does? the uneasy Chavel wonders aloud. The reply: “I’d spit in his face.”

And there is worse. The young girl is, Chavel realizes, “one of the unlucky ones who believe.” On her own testimony, she feels herself damned in God’s eyes, unable to worship because of her inability to forgive an enemy. She confesses, “It’s the hate that keeps me away. Some people can drop their hate for an hour and pick it up again at the church door. I can’t. I wish I could.” Chavel, who has been asked to stay on as a handyman, falls in love with Therese and thinks he can both redeem his guilt and save her. By making her return the love of the person called Charlot, he will expiate her hatred for Chavel. Only subsequent and surprising twists of plot, including the appearance of a satanic seducer, inform Chavel of the true debt he owes eternity.

For a comparatively brief tale, evidently written with the prospect of filming firmly in view, The Tenth Man has more than its share of narrative grace notes and finesse. The weariness and dislocation that gripped Europe as the Nazis began retreating are suggested in a single sentence: “When a war ends one forgets how much older oneself and the world have become: it needs something like a piece of furniture or a woman’s hat to waken the sense of time.” A simple parish priest delivers a worldly homily: “All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.”

This novella dates from what is probably the most impressive stretch of Greene’s long career: the years between Brighton Rock (1938) and The Third Man (1950), during which he also produced such novels as The Power and the Glory (1940) and The Heart of the Matter (1948). The Tenth Man is too spare to rank as a full partner in such company, but it springs from the same haunting and entertainingly obsessed imagination.