The Port
- Mr. Tench, an English dentist living in Mexico, braves the blazing sun to get the ether cylinder he ordered.
- Eying a few bored vultures and feeling rebellious against death, he tosses a wrenched piece of the road at the birds, but only one flies off. Death can't be scared away that easily!
- After passing a man with a gun and a treasury building that had once been a church, Mr. Tench forgets what he came outside for. Does he have amnesia? Is this a plot setup to Dark City in Mexico? Not exactly. It's the heat. Simply the heat. It's so blazingly hot that you forget what you're doing in the middle of doing it!
- Fortunately for him, he remembers. The boat is in with his ether cylinder. Onward to the port!
- Mr. Tench arrives at the port on the river and finds the General Obregon being unloaded.
- With nothing to do but wait, Mr. Tench sits upon a crate and again forgets why he's here. Yes, again. Yes, it's really that hot. At least for this poor dentist. But don't worry. Graham Greene knows where this is going, even if his Mr. Tench does not.
- "My God, a pretty one," Mr. Tench says to himself, in English, upon seeing a thin girl passenger on the bow of the boat. (1.1.8)
- Somebody nearby, also speaking English, asks what he said.
- Mr. Tench turns around and spots the questioner—a small, bearded man with a smutty book under his arm who's carrying an attaché case. This is our nameless protagonist, but we don't know that yet.
- Perhaps curious or perhaps just bored, Mr. Tench asks the man if he arrived on the boat or will be departing on it. The man says he's just looking, but asks in a roundabout way if it will be sailing soon.
- Undoubtedly thirsty, Mr. Tench asks the man if he has a drink in his case. He doesn't mean water. The man says he has only medicine.
- Wanting to get out of the sun and figuring he has some hours before the ship leaves and his cylinder is ready for pick-up, Mr. Tench invites the man back to his place. The man declines, saying he is expecting to meet someone named Lopez. Mr. Tench informs him that Lopez was shot and killed by the authorities for helping certain people get out of the state. This doesn't sound good!
- Believing a few hours remain before the boat sails, the man follows Mr. Tench back to his place. There Mr. Tench shows his guest a dentist drill he obtained from Japan and a piece of stained glass he got from a sacked church.
- They sit and drink some Brandy the stranger had with him. Mr. Tench reminisces about the nature of memory and his children, whom he hasn't seen in sixteen years. The stranger reminisces about the time, not long ago, before Catholicism had been so thoroughly suppressed by the government.
- The stranger asks Mr. Tench how much a ticket on the boat would cost. Mr. Tench tells him to ask the agent, Lopez, before remembering that Lopez has been shot.
- There's a knock at the door. At child asks for a doctor for his dying mother. Mr. Tench replies that he's a dentist, not a doctor, but suggests the stranger. The latter at first declines, saying he has a boat to catch, but then, in a rage born of frustration and nursed with brandy, he follows the boy. To himself more than anyone else, he says that he's meant to miss the boat.
- After the stranger has left with the child, Mr. Tench finds that he has left his novel, La Eterna Mártir. Opening it, he realizes that isn't not a novel at all, amorous or otherwise, but something written in Latin.
- Suddenly remembering the reason he went to the port to begin with, Mr. Tench bolts out of his home, but he arrives at the river too late. The General Obregon has left and his cylinder is nowhere to be found.
- We can almost hear him utter a Homer Simpson "D'oh!"
- Riding a mule and feeling unworthy of what he carries to the sick woman, the stranger prays that he will soon be caught. His attempt at escape had failed; he sees only one end to his struggle.
- Well, now, we're off to a frustrating start. Frustrating for the characters, that is. We're entertained.