Our Man in Havana

Highlights

Page 430

‘Not always. I remember at school—’ He stopped. ‘What do you remember, Father?’ ‘Oh, a lot of things.’ Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it. But somehow, through no virtue of his own, he had never taken that course. Lack of character perhaps. Schools were said to construct character by chipping off the edges. His edges had been chipped, but the result had not, he thought, been character only shapelessness, like an exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art.

Page 482

By the corner of Virdudes Dr Hasselbacher hailed him from the Wonder Bar. ‘Mr Wormold, where are you off to in such a hurry?’ ‘An appointment.’ ‘There is always time for a Scotch.’ It was obvious from the way he pronounced Scotch that Dr Hasselbacher had already had time for a great many.

Page 535

Only the high proof of Dr Hasselbacher’s spirits could not be quenched.

Note: I like this metaphor

Page 749

‘Beatrice needs some practical experience that is really all that is amiss. The post would suit her. She is not too young. She is fond of children.’ ‘What this station will need,’ Hawthorne said, ‘is someone who speaks Spanish. The love of children is not essential.’ ‘Beatrice is half-French. She speaks French really better than she does English.’ ‘I said Spanish.’ ‘It’s much the same. They’re both Latin tongues.’

Note: I’m dying here 😂

Page 864

‘They have no money except what they take from men like you and me.’ He pushed open the half-door and was gone. Dr Hasselbacher never talked in terms of morality; it was outside the province of a doctor.

Page 982

He began to realize what the criminal class knows so well, the impossibility of explaining anything to a man with power.

Page 110

Wormold called Lopez from the shop. He handed him twenty-five pesos. He said, ‘This is your first month’s pay in advance.’ He knew Lopez too well to expect any gratitude for the extra five pesos, but all the same he was a little taken aback when Lopez said, ‘Thirty pesos would be a living wage.’ ‘What do you mean, a living wage? The agency pays you very well as it is.’ ‘This will mean a great deal of work,’ Lopez said. ‘It will, will it? What work?’ ‘Personal service.’ ‘What personal service?’ ‘It must obviously be a great deal of work or you wouldn’t pay me twenty-five pesos.’ He had never been able to get the better of Lopez in a financial argument.

Page 585

‘No, really. I don’t drink at this hour.’ ‘It was the English who made hours for drinking, not the Scotch. They’ll be making hours for dying next.’

Page 783

They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like the pain of an amputated leg no longer there. It was time, Wormold thought, to pack up and go and leave the ruins of Havana.

Note: Holy shit. An incredibly beautiful paragraph out of nowhere. And the beauty comes from how true it is.

Page 207

‘Milly would never have married you, Segura. She doesn’t really like cigarette- cases made of human skin.’ ‘Did you ever hear whose skin?’ ‘No.’ ‘A police-officer who tortured my father to death. You see, he was a poor man. He belonged to the torturable class.’

Note: I kinda see why it’s necessary for him to flaunt his sports car. It’s to indicate to others that he’s not from their class.

I feel like I’m blind to these indicators, like watches or expensive clothes. I don’t notice them, but others notice it in me and make judgements.

It’s fine, I’m happy the way I am.

Page 286

‘What on earth did you say?’ ‘I told them even if I’d known I wouldn’t have stopped you. I said you were working for something important, not for someone’s notion of a global war that may never happen. That fool dressed up as a Colonel said something about your country. I said, What do you mean by his country? A flag someone invented two hundred years ago? The Bench of Bishops arguing about divorce and the House of Commons shouting Ya at each other across the floor? Or do you mean the T.U.C. and British Railways and the Co-op? You probably think it’s your regiment if you ever stop to think, but we haven’t got a regiment—he and I. They tried to interrupt and I said, Oh, I forgot. There’s something greater than one’s country, isn’t there? You taught us that with your League of Nations and your Atlantic Pact, NATO and UNO and SEATO. But they don’t mean any more to most of us than all the other letters, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. And we don’t believe you any more when you say you want peace and justice and freedom. What kind of freedom? You want your careers. I said I sympathized with the French officers in 1940 who looked after their families; they didn’t anyway put their careers first. A country is more a family than a Parliamentary system.’ ‘My God, you said all that?’ ‘Yes. It was quite a speech.’ ‘Did you believe it?’ ‘Not all of it. They haven’t left us much to believe, have they?—even disbelief. I can’t believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.’ ‘Any human being?’

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