The Captain And the Enemy [Paperback]

...I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The story centers around young Victor/Jim who is taken out of school by the Captain, who claims to have won Victor/Jim from his father in a game of Back-Gammon. The Captain is a true con artist, who has never held a decent job in his life. His true affection lies with Liza, whom he only wants to be happy. They met through Victor/Jim's father. The book is interestring in the way it describes the relationship between Victor/Jim, the Captain and Liza. The three of them are glued together whether they like it or not. And the Captain shady business in Central America is exposed, and maybe the Captain was more a hero than first thought?

The Captain and the Enemy was to be Graham Greene's final novel and, in some ways, it acts as a farewell to the literary stage. Many of the characteristics that define Greene's career are present: there's a lot of guilt; a lot of shady characters and a lot of very fine prose. Nothing in the novel is quite what it at first seems and, appropriately enough, none of the characters behave in quite the way one would expect. Victor, a young boy, is won by the Captain (also sometimes known as the Colonel, amongst a host of other aliases) in a game of backgammon, or was it chess, against the former's father (also known as the Devil). Victor, who later changes his name to Jim, goes to live with a friend of the Captain's called Liza - a shy, secretive woman who lives in the basement of a large house scheduled for demolition. The Captain occasionally visits and provides money, although nobody ever quite knows how he manages to get hold of such large sums. Everything in this novel is somehow opaque and transitory and yet such was Greene's genius as a writer that one swallows the story whole and is carried along by its sheer narrative drive. Greene was a master at pacing a story and The Captain and the Enemy shows that he maintained this ability right up to the close of the career.

What I particularly admired about the book was the way Greene used the enigmatic set-up, the fashion in which the names change and the motives of the various characters are never entirely made clear, to examine the nature of friendship, of love, of loyalty and of trust. Early in the novel the Captain takes Victor to the cinema where they watch King Kong. Victor is puzzled as to why the great ape doesn't simply drop the screaming female he holds in his giant hand as he climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. After all she kicks and yells and clearly doesn't want to be dragged about. The Captain points out that King Kong loves the girl and, therefore, he will not wish to harm her. Victor has learnt an important lesson but one that only becomes apparent to him much later. Love manifests itself in numerous ways; we can love people who hurt us; we can love without reason; we can love to destruction. As Victor grows up he looks back at the strange relationship between the Captain and Liza and sees love for what it really is - something that can grow unremarked and quietly beautiiful in the unlikeliest of places.

Much later in the book Victor goes in search of the Captain who appears to be up to something nefarious in Panama. Here we are almost back to the goings-on of an earlier novel - 'Our Man in Havana' - but the humour is slightly less successful and the ending, powerful and unexpected though it is, seems slightly rushed. The adventure aspect of the novel is, for me, less successful than the character study of Victor, Liza and the Captain. The shady activities are never quite explained - which ties in with the enigmatic quality of the rest of the novel - but this absence reduces some of the drama.

Taken as a whole The Captain and the Enemy can't really be seen in the same light masterpieces such as 'The Power and the Glory' and 'The End of the Affair' but, all the same, it still manages to say more about love, friendship, trust and the strange journeys of the heart than many an excellent novel three-times its length. Greene's powers may have waned with age but, right up until the end, he was still head and shoulders above most of his peers. Brilliant prose, fascinating characters and enigmatic plotting show that, right to the last, Greene was one of the finest novelists of his generation.

The Captain And The Enemy is one of Graham Greene's late works. Like most of his novels, it is quite short, deceptively intense and, despite what might appear to be a quite literal plot, highly enigmatic.

Then captain of the title is a man we hardly get to know. His name might be Smith, or Baxter, or even anything he might have noticed in passing that morning. His title might be captain, or colonel, or sergeant, or even plain mister. Doubtless he had been Lord at some point. He can become anyone he wants, but at heart he's a pirate, sailing alone through life in search of elusive treasure. One day he was whiling time away with an acquaintance, a man always called The Devil, playing backgammon (or was it chess?). The stakes rose and The Devil wagered his son. The colonel won. The book opens with the colonel claiming ownership of Victor Baxter, then a boy at a boarding school. The colonel abducts the boy. They both agree that Victor is a naff name and from then on the boy is called Jim.

At home, if home it be, is Lisa, the woman to whom the captain continues to devote his life, even if the norm is devotion from afar. Lisa gets irregular cash or cheques through the post to cover the housekeeping and never questions the source. The Captain, of course, never offers anything more. Jim, as the lad Victor has become, becomes part of the insoluble equation. He keeps a journal for some reason and, discovering it years later, he embarks upon an edit.

And then Jim is grown up and in search of the man he now calls his father. He left Lisa and the household years before in search of fortune. Jim tracks him down to Panama and discovers a strange life packed with intrigue. When they meet again, Jim finds a changed man, someone he hardly recognises. Jim's response is to lie to him.

The Colonel is eventually revealed as a man with principles, principles worth personal risk. At least that's what he says today, and who ever knows about tomorrow?

And so we are left with memories of people who live towards the edge of even their own lives. They adopt identities bestowed by circumstance and change apparently at will. Who cares about contradiction? I mean really cares?