Orient Express

Published 1931

Also published as Stamboul Train

What binds people together and what causes them to hold on to those connections? A continent-wide train ride is certainly one way to be bound together. But trains come to a stop and a lasting connection must be founded on something deeper, more primary, than a train ticket or a shared berth. This book is much more ambitious than Greene’s first novel. Identity, as perceived by oneself, as perceived by others, as oneself perceives others perceiving oneself, is a focal point in the novel. And Greene provides us a spread of different identities, each of which provides a lens through which to understand the world for its possessor. The most sympathetic character lacks a coherent identity and her ability to have agency and make sense of the world is thus compromised.

The book follows a route of the Orient Express from Ostend (on the coast of Belgium) to Istanbul. Boarding at Ostend, we have the most important characters: Carleton Myatt, currant merchant and Jewish, Coral Musker, chorus girl, Dr. Richard Czinner, under-cover Serbian Communist leader, and forgettable fifth wheel: Quinn Savory, a successful English author with a Cockney style. Carleton and Coral immediately establish a connection, feeling they know each other already.

Boarding in Cologne, we have Mabel Warren, English journalist and lesbian, and Janet Prudoe, Mabel’s vapid and uninterested paid companion. Janet is going to spend some time with her uncle in Istanbul and Mabel is certain that she won’t come back. She accompanies her to the station intending only to interview Quinn Savory for a small blurb, but spots Dr. Czinner and recognizes him. Realizing that he is a much bigger story, she buys a ticket.

Finally, boarding in Vienna, we have Josef Grünlich, a thief-just-turned-murderer looking to get out of dodge. Grünlich has never spent time in jail and will do anything to keep it that way.

Snow and a crackdown after an abortive Communist uprising will delay the train in Serbia, causing one missed connection and resolving two others.

Myatt’s Jewishness is both a source of anxiety to him and a strength that structures his life. He is acutely aware of how others perceive him, which makes his interactions with others often stiff and distant, and he has to be alert to the possibilities of violence against himself. However, fitting himself into a Jewish community, found through business or chance encounters, provides him stability and a clear path forward. Similarly, Mabel’s identity as an independent woman defines the terms within which she must operate. As a goad, she must be successful enough in her career to be beholden to no man, which success provides a reward: her ability to maintain a companion on her salary. Dr. Czinner’s Communism provides him a North (Red) Star that guides all of his actions. Although free from common prejudices, he cares only minimally for the individual human beings around him, but is willing to lay down his life for the Poor. The case of Grünlich is perhaps the strangest, his identity being entirely of his own design: a thief who does not get caught. A tautological identity, as the need to ensure that he maintains this identity provides him the psychological resources he needs to maintain it.

Greene’s description of some of these identities makes one cringe at times. Although his description of Mabel’s lesbianism seems to belie a naïve ignorance, the description of Myatt is more troubling to read. It is to be noted that the character of Myatt is the most fleshed out of all the book’s characters and thus, per Greene’s style, we hear Myatt’s thoughts the most. These self-consciously “Jewish thoughts”, using constant reference to Jewish experience in stereotyped biblical terms also seem to belie ignorance, but of a more sinister sort, particularly in light of what would happen over the next fifteen years in Europe. That said, Carleton Myatt is the strongest character in the book, one with the greatest grasp of reality, and the one with whom I related the most.