Graham Greene Quote

He went upstairs and opened the telegram; it was addressed to a department in the British Consulate, and the figures which followed had an ugly look like the lottery tickets that remained unsold on the last day of a draw. There was 2674 and then a string of five-figure numerals: 42811 79145 72312 59200 80947 62533 10605 and so on. It was his first telegram and he noticed that it was addressed from London. He was not even certain (so long ago his lesson seemed) that he could decode it, but he recognised a single group, 59200, which had an abrupt and monitory appearance as though Hawthorne that moment had come accusingly up the stairs. Gloomily he took down Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare' - how he had always detested Elia and the essay on Roast Pork. The first group of figures, he remembered, indicated the page, the line and the word with which the coding began. 'Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon,' he read, 'met with an end proportionable to her deserts'. He began to decode from 'deserts'. To his surprise something really did emerge. It was rather as though some strange inherited parrot had begun to speak.

Graham Greene

He went upstairs and opened the telegram; it was addressed to a department in the British Consulate, and the figures which followed had an ugly look like the lottery tickets that remained unsold on the last day of a draw. There was 2674 and then a string of five-figure numerals: 42811 79145 72312 59200 80947 62533 10605 and so on. It was his first telegram and he noticed that it was addressed from London. He was not even certain (so long ago his lesson seemed) that he could decode it, but he recognised a single group, 59200, which had an abrupt and monitory appearance as though Hawthorne that moment had come accusingly up the stairs. Gloomily he took down Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare' - how he had always detested Elia and the essay on Roast Pork. The first group of figures, he remembered, indicated the page, the line and the word with which the coding began. 'Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon,' he read, 'met with an end proportionable to her deserts'. He began to decode from 'deserts'. To his surprise something really did emerge. It was rather as though some strange inherited parrot had begun to speak.

Tags: decoding, spy

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About Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. He was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize.
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic".
He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland.