Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene Page B

alone.’
    But speed was impossible at this evening hour. Obispo was a solid block of traffic, and it was half an hour before Wormold reached the undistinguished block in which Hasselbacher lived, twelve storeys high of livid stone. Twenty years ago it had been modern, but the new steel architecture to the West outsoared and outshone it. It belonged to the age of tubular chairs, and a tubular chair was what Wormold saw first when Dr Hasselbacher let him in. That and an old colour print of some castle on the Rhine.
    Dr Hasselbacher like his voice had grown suddenly old. It was not a question of colour. That seamed and sanguine skin could change no more than a tortoise’s and nothing could bleach his hair whiter than the years had already done. It was the expression which had altered. A whole mood of life had suffered violence: Dr Hasselbacher was no longer an optimist. He said humbly, ‘It is good of you to come, Mr Wormold.’ Wormold remembered the day when the old man had led him away from the Paseo and filled him with drink in the Wonder Bar, talking all the time, cauterizing the pain with alcohol and laughter and irresistible hope. He asked, ‘What has happened, Hasselbacher?’
    ‘Come inside,’ Hasselbacher said.
    The sitting-room was in confusion; it was as though a malevolent child had been at work among the tubular chairs, opening this, upsetting that, smashing and sparing at the dictate of some irrational impulse. A photograph of a group of young men holding beer mugs had been taken from the frame and torn apart; a coloured reproduction of the Laughing Cavalier hung still on the wall over the sofa where one cushion out of three had been ripped open. The contents of a cupboard – old letters and bills – were scattered over the floor and a strand of very fair hair tied with black ribbon lay like a washed-up fish among the debris.
    ‘Why?’ Wormold asked.
    ‘This does not matter so much,’ Hasselbacher said, ‘but come here.’
    A small room, which had been converted into a laboratory, was now reconverted into chaos. A gas-jet burnt yet among the ruins. Dr Hasselbacher turned it off. He held up a test tube; the contents were smeared over the sink. He said, ‘You won’t understand. I was trying to make a culture from – never mind. I knew nothing would come of it. It was a dream only.’ He sat heavily down on a tall tubular adjustable chair, which shortened suddenly under his weight and spilt him on the floor. Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of a tragedy. Hasselbacher got up and dusted his trousers.
    ‘When did it happen?’
    ‘Somebody telephoned to me – a sick call. I felt there was something wrong, but I had to go. I could not risk not going. When I came back there was
this
.’
    ‘Who did it?’
    ‘I don’t know. A week ago somebody called on me. A stranger. He wanted me to help him. It was not a doctor’s job. I said no. He asked me whether my sympathies were with the East or the West. I tried to joke with him. I said they were in the middle.’ Dr Hasselbacher said accusingly, ‘Once a few weeks ago you asked me the same question.’
    ‘I was only joking, Hasselbacher.’
    ‘I know. Forgive me. The worst thing they do is making all this suspicion.’ He stared into the sink. ‘An infantile dream. Of course I know that. Fleming discovered penicillin by an inspired accident. But an accident has to be inspired. An old second-rate doctor would never have an accident like that, but it was no business of theirs – was it? – if I wanted to dream.’
    ‘I don’t understand. What’s behind it? Something political? What nationality was this man?’
    ‘He spoke English like I do, with an accent. Nowadays, all the world over, people speak with accents.’
    ‘Have you rung up the police?’
    ‘For all I know,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘he
was
the police.’
    ‘Have they taken anything?’
    ‘Yes. Some papers.’
    ‘Important?’
    ‘I should never have kept them. They