Грэм Грин (Graham Green)One of the most significant representatives of critical realism. "The Quiet American", "The Comedians", "The Honorary Consul", "The Human Factor" and others are his well-known novels. They are closely connected not only with moral problems but also with the most critical political events in the not beds of the globe.
THE INVISIBLE JAPANESE GENTLEMEN
There were eight Japanese gentlemen having a fish dinner at Bendey's. They spoke to each other rarely in their incomprehensible tongue, but always with a courteous smile and often with a small bow. All but one of them wore glasses. Sometimes the pretty girl who sat in the window beyond gave them a passing glance, but her own problem seemed too serious for her to pay real attention to anyone in the world except herself and her companion.
She had thin blonde hair and her face was pretty and petite in a Regency way, oval like a miniature, though she had a harsh way of speaking — perhaps the accent of the school, Roedean or Cheltenham Ladie's College, which she had not long ago left. She wore a man's signet-ring on her engagement finger, and as I sat down at my table, with the Japanese gentlemen between us, she said, "So you see we could marry next week."
"Yes?"
Her companion appeared a little distraught. He refilled their glasses with Chablis and said. "Of course, but Mother..." I missed some of the conversation then, because the eldest Japanese gentleman leant across the table, with a smile and a little bow, and uttered a whole paragraph like the mutter from an aviary, while everyone bent towards him and smiled and listened, and I couldn't help attending to him myself.
The girl's fiance resembled her physically. I could see them as two miniatures hanging side by side on white wood panels. He should have been a young officer in Nelson's navy in the days when a certain weakness and sensitivity were no bar to promotion.
196
She said, "They are giving me an advance of five hundred pounds, and they've sold the paperback rights already." The hard commercial declaration came as a shock to me; it was a shock too that she was one of my own profession. She couldn't have been more than twenty. She deserved better of life.