The Comedians (15 page)

‘I woke up only once,' Mr Smith said, ‘and I thought that I heard voices. Perhaps Mr Jones has arrived?'

‘No.'

‘Odd. The last thing he said to me in the customs was “We'll meet tonight at Mr Brown's”.'

‘He was probably shanghaied to another hotel.'

‘I had hoped to take a dip before breakfast,' Mrs Smith said, ‘but I found Joseph was cleaning the pool. He seems to be a man of all work.'

‘Yes. He's invaluable. I'm sure the pool will be ready for you before lunch.'

‘And the beggar?' Mr Smith asked.

‘Oh, he went away before morning.'

‘Not with an empty stomach, I hope?' He gave me a smile as much as to say: ‘I'm only joking, I know you are a man of goodwill.'

‘Joseph would certainly have seen to that.'

Mr Smith took another piece of toast. He said, ‘I thought that this morning Mrs Smith and I would write our names in the embassy book.'

‘It would be wise.'

‘I thought it would be courteous. Afterwards perhaps I could present my letter of introduction to the Secretary for Social Welfare.'

‘If I were you I would ask at the embassy whether there has been any change. That is, if the letter is addressed to someone personally.'

‘A Doctor Philipot, I think.'

‘I would certainly ask then. Changes happen very quickly here.'

‘But his successor, I suppose, would receive me? What I have come here to propose would be of great interest to any minister concerned with health.'

‘I don't think you ever told me what you were planning . . .'

‘I come here as a representative,' Mr Smith said.

‘Of the vegetarians of America,' Mrs Smith added. ‘The true vegetarians.'

‘Are there false vegetarians?'

‘Of course. There are even some who eat fertilized eggs.'

‘Heretics and schismatics have splintered every great movement,' Mr Smith said sadly, ‘in human history.'

‘And what do the vegetarians propose to do here?'

‘Apart from the distribution of free literature – translated, of course, into French – we plan to open a centre of vegetarian cooking in the heart of the capital.'

‘The heart of the capital is a shanty-town.'

‘In a suitable site then. We want the President and some of his ministers to attend the gala opening and take the first vegetarian meal. As an example to the people.'

‘But he's afraid to leave the palace.'

Mr Smith laughed politely at what he considered my picturesque exaggeration. Mrs Smith said, ‘You can hardly expect much encouragement from Mr Brown. He is not one of us.'

‘Now, now, my dear, Mr Brown was only having a little joke with us. Perhaps after breakfast I could ring up my embassy.'

‘The telephone doesn't work. But I could send Joseph with a note.'

‘No, in that case we'll take a taxi. If you'll get us a taxi.'

‘I'll send Joseph to find one.'

‘He surely is a man of all work,' Mrs Smith said to me harshly, as though I were a southern plantation-owner. I saw Petit Pierre walking up the drive and I left them.

‘Ah, Mr Brown,' Petit Pierre cried, ‘a very very good morning.' He waved a copy of the local paper and said, ‘You'll see what I have written about you. How are your guests? They have slept well, I hope.' He mounted the steps, bowed to the Smiths at their table and breathed in the sweet flowery smell of Port-au-Prince as though he were a stranger to the place. ‘What a view,' he said, ‘the trees, the flowers, the bay, the palace.' He giggled. ‘Distance lends enchantment to the view. Mr William Wordsworth.'

Petit Pierre had not come for the view, I was certain, and at this hour he would hardly have come for a free glass of rum. Presumably he wanted to receive information, unless perhaps he wished to impart it. His gay manner did not necessarily mean good news for Petit Pierre was always gay. It was as though he had tossed a coin to decide between the only two possible attitudes in Port-au-Prince, the rational and the irrational, misery or gaiety; Papa Doc's head had fallen earthwards and he had plumped for the gaiety of despair.

‘Let me see what you've written,' I said.

I opened the paper at his gossip-column – which always appeared on page four – and read how, among the many distinguished visitors who had arrived yesterday in the
Medea
, was the Honourable Mr Smith who had been narrowly defeated in the American Presidential elections of 1948 by Mr Truman. He was accompanied by his elegant and amiable wife who, under happier circumstances, would have been America's First Lady, an adornment to the White House. Among the many other passengers was the well-loved patron of that intellectual centre, the Hotel Trianon, who was returning from a business visit to New York . . . I looked afterwards at the principal news page. The Secretary for Education was announcing a six-year plan to eliminate illiteracy in the north – why the north in particular? No details were given. Perhaps he was depending on a satisfactory hurricane. Hurricane Hazel in '54 had eliminated a great deal of illiteracy in the interior – the extent of the death-roll had never been disclosed. There was a small paragraph about a party of rebels who had crossed the Dominican frontier: they had been driven back, and two prisoners had been taken carrying American arms. If the President had not quarrelled with the American Mission, the arms would probably have been described as Czech or Cuban.

I said. ‘There are rumours about a new Secretary for Social Welfare.'

‘You can never trust rumours,' Petit Pierre said.

‘Mr Smith has brought an introduction to Doctor Philipot. I don't want him to make a mistake.'

‘Perhaps he ought to wait a few days. I hear that Doctor Philipot is in Cap Haïtien – or somewhere in the north.'

‘Where the fighting is?'

‘I do not believe there is really much fighting.'

‘What kind of a man is Doctor Philipot?' I felt an itch of curiosity to know more of someone who had become a kind of distant relative by dying in my pool.

‘A man,' Petit Pierre said, ‘who suffers very much from his nerves.'

I closed the paper and handed it back to him. ‘I see you don't mention the arrival of our friend Jones.'

‘Ah yes, Jones. Who exactly is Major Jones?' I was sure then that he had come with the purpose of receiving rather than giving information.

‘A fellow-passenger. That's all I know.'

‘He claims to be a friend of Mr Smith's.'

‘In that case, I suppose he must be.'

Petit Pierre imperceptibly moved me away down the verandah until we turned the corner out of sight of the Smiths. His white cuffs fell a long way out of his sleeves on to his black hands. ‘If you would be frank with me,' he said, ‘I might perhaps be of a little help.'

‘Frank about what?'

‘About Major Jones.'

‘I wish you wouldn't call him Major. Somehow it doesn't suit him.'

‘You think perhaps he is not . . . ?'

‘I know nothing about him. Nothing at all.'

‘He was going to stay at your hotel.'

‘He seems to have found a lodging elsewhere.'

‘Yes. At the police station.'

‘Why on earth . . . ?'

‘I think they found something incriminating in his baggage. I don't know what.'

‘Does the British Embassy know?'

‘No. But I do not think they can help very much. These things have to take their course. They are not ill-treating him as yet.'

‘What would you advise, Petit Pierre?'

‘It is probably a misunderstanding – but then there is always the question of
amour propre
. The chief of police suffers a great deal from
amour propre
. Perhaps if Mr Smith spoke to Doctor Philipot, Doctor Philipot might speak to the Secretary for the Interior. Major Jones could then be fined for a merely technical offence.'

‘But what is his offence?'

‘That question is in itself a technicality,' he said.

‘But you have just told me Doctor Philipot is in the north.'

‘True. Perhaps Mr Smith ought rather to see the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.' He waved the papers proudly. ‘He will know how important Mr Smith is, for he will undoubtedly have read my article.'

‘I shall go at once and see our chargé.'

‘It is the wrong method,' Petit Pierre said. ‘It is far easier to satisfy the
amour propre
of the chief of police than to satisfy national pride. The Haitian Government does not accept protests from foreigners.'

It was much the same advice as the chargé gave me later that morning. He was a hollow-chested man with sensitive features which reminded me the first time I met him of Robert Louis Stevenson. He spoke with many hesitations and an amused air of defeat – it was the conditions of life in the capital that had defeated him, not the inroads of tuberculosis. He had the courage and the humour of the defeated. For example he carried a pair of black glasses in his pocket which he always put on when he saw a member of the Tontons Macoute, who wore them as a uniform, to terrify. He collected books on Caribbean flora, but he had sent all but the most common of them home, just as he had sent his children, for there was always the risk of sudden fire aided by a tin of petrol.

He listened to me without interruption or impatience while I told him of Jones's predicament and Petit Pierre's advice. I felt sure he would have shown no more surprise if I had told him of the Secretary for Social Welfare dead in my bathing-pool and the way in which I had disposed of the body, but I think he would have been secretly grateful to me that I had not called him in. When I finished my story, he said, ‘I had a cable from London about Jones.'

‘So did the captain of the
Medea
. His cable came from the owners in Philadelphia. It wasn't very specific.'

‘Mine you might say was cautionary. I was not to be unduly helpful. I suspect some consulate somewhere has been taken for a ride.'

‘All the same a British subject in prison . . . ?'

‘Oh, I agree that is a little too steep. Only we have to remember, don't we, that even these bastards may have acted with good reason. Officially I shall proceed with caution – as the cable suggests. A formal inquiry to begin with.' He made a movement with his hand across the desk and laughed. ‘I shall never lose the habit of picking up a telephone.'

He was the perfect spectator – the spectator of whom every actor must sometimes dream, intelligent, watchful, amused and critical in just the right way, a lesson he had learnt from having seen so many performances good and bad in different plays. For some reason I thought of my mother's words to me, when I saw her for the last time, ‘What part are you playing now?' I suppose I
was
playing a part – the part of an Englishman concerned over the fate of a fellow-countryman, of a responsible business man who saw his duty clearly and who came to consult the representative of his Sovereign. I temporarily forgot the tangle of legs in the Peugeot. I am quite sure that the chargé would have disapproved of my cuckolding a member of the diplomatic corps. The act belonged too closely to the theatre of farce.

He said, ‘I doubt if my inquiries will do much good. I shall be told by the Secretary for the Interior that the affair is in the hands of the police. He will probably give me a lecture on the separation of the judicial and executive functions. Did I ever tell you about my cook? It happened while you were away. I was giving a dinner for my colleagues and my cook simply disappeared. No marketing had been done. He had been picked up in the street on the way to market. My wife had to open the tins we keep for an emergency. Your Señor Pineda did not appreciate a soufflé of tinned salmon.' Why did he say
my
Señor Pineda? ‘Later I heard that he was in a police cell. They released him the next day when it was too late. He had been questioned about what guests I entertained. I protested, of course, to the Secretary for the Interior. I said I should have been told, and I would have arranged for him to go to the police station at a convenient hour. The Minister simply said that he was a Haitian and he could do what he liked with a Haitian.'

‘But Jones is English.'

‘I assume so, but I doubt all the same whether our Government in these days will send a frigate. Of course, I'm anxious to help to the best of my ability, but I think Petit Pierre's advice is quite sound. Try other means first. If you get nowhere, of course I'll protest – tomorrow morning. I have a feeling that this is not the first police cell Major Jones has known. We mustn't exaggerate the situation.' I felt a little like the player king rebuked by Hamlet for exaggerating his part.

When I got back to the hotel the swimming-pool was full, the gardener was pretending to occupy himself by raking a few leaves off the surface of the water, I heard the voice of the cook in the kitchen, everything was near to normal again. I even had guests, for there in the pool, avoiding the gardener's rake, swam Mr Smith, wearing a pair of dark grey nylon bathing-pants which billowed out behind him in the water, giving him the huge hindquarters of some prehistoric beast. He swam slowly up and down using the breaststroke and grunting rhythmically. When he saw me he stood up in the water like a myth. His breasts were covered with long strands of white hair.

I sat down by the pool and called out to Joseph to bring a rum punch and a Coca-Cola. I was uneasy when Mr Smith trundled to the deep end before he emerged – he was passing so close to the spot where the Secretary for Social Welfare had died. I thought of Holyrood and the indelible mark of Rizzio's blood. Mr Smith shook himself and sat down beside me. Mrs Smith appeared on the balcony of the John Barrymore suite and called down to him, ‘Dry yourself, dear, or you might catch cold.'