The Tenth Man

Published 1985

This book includes two brief film sketches and a film treatment called The Tenth Man. Greene wrote this latter piece during WWII while under contract to MGM, where it disappeared in their archives and was forgotten. So much forgotten, in fact, that when Greene heard that MGM was auctioning off the story he didn’t think much of it because he thought it was just a couple of pages of ideas. He discovered to his chagrin when he received a copy of it from the purchaser that it was a complete story and is quite compelling. Although Greene didn’t have the rights to it, he agreed to write an introduction and made a couple of minor revisions for publication.

The two sketches are plot outlines and so are not complete treatments, but they are entertaining. Jim Braddon and the War Criminal uses the trope of a person with amnesia after an accident trying to discover who they are. In Jim Braddon’s case, he discovers to his horror that he is a wanted Nazi war criminal. But, looks can be deceiving… The second sketch, Nobody to Blame, is an earlier version of Our Man in Havana, but set in Tallinn in the late 1930s. The story follows a similar arc, although several changes to the plot in Our Man in Havana make that book a more interesting version of this story.

*

The Tenth Man opens with a group of French prisoners of the Nazis who are to undergo a decimation in revenge for a attack by French Partisans. Two of them must be executed in the morning and it’s up to the prisoners to choose who the two will be. They draw lots. The first person who draws a chit of death is quiet but resigned. The second person, a lawyer named Chavel, breaks down. He offers money to anyone who will take his place. But that doesn’t make sense. Finally, he offers everything he owns, including his family’s house in St. Jean de Brinac, not far from Paris. A quiet young man accepts the offer, on condition that he gets to write a will leaving the house and money to his sister and mother. Chavel draws up a will for himself and for the young man. The morning comes and goes and, along with it, the two men chosen for execution.

The War is over. People wander the French countryside, some trying to return to their previous lives, some trying to avoid reprisal for collaboration with the Nazis. Chavel is wandering, but doesn’t fall into either category. He has papers issued by the prison, but using a false name. If he wants to go back to his previous profession, he will have to get correct papers. But he won’t do that. He will not explain to anyone how he lost his money. His moment of cowardice saved his life but cost him any life to go back to. Having nowhere else to go, his feet lead him back to the place he missed most while in prison, St. Jean de Brinac.

The young lady who answers the door thinks he is another beggar and offers him a meal. After the lady and her mother get to know him they let him stay on as a groundskeeper. He knows the house and grounds well already and so this is a job that he can do. He and the young lady grow fond of each other. Over time she explains how they inherited the house from her brother because some coward in prison traded his house and money for her brother’s life. She would spit in the face of that man if she met him.

The story of Chavel’s cowardice has spread beyond the prisoners. Wandering the roads are many who need money and a new identity. With the legality of the transfer between Chavel and the young man in doubt, a man appears at the door of the house claiming to be Chavel and demanding to take back the house, although if the young lady would consent to be his wife, she would be welcome to stay. What will Chavel and “Chavel” do?

*

The Tenth Man is short but well-constructed novel. I find the era in which the novel is set, the immediate post-War period, when people wandered across Europe, the war economy over, but the post-War economy not yet started, to be interesting. Primo Levi covered this period in his amazing autobiographical book La Tregua (The Truce). In Greene’s case, it is the complete uncertainty that pervaded that era that allows for the possibility, perhaps the necessity, to assume a different identity. Although they are historians’ terms, pre-War and post-War Europe define an epochal shift that all felt in Europe in 1939 and in 1945.

Three of Greene’s greatest film treatments take place in this post-War era. Most famous is The Third Man, in a Vienna split between the Allied powers. The other two treatments never saw the silver screen and were not published until much later. Yet, The Tenth Man is a better story than The Third Man. No Man’s Land also touches on this theme, although several years later, when the immediate post-War was becoming the Cold War.