The Comedians (18 page)

‘But I've said nothing wrong.'

‘They may be sensitive about him at the moment. You see, he's killed himself.'

‘Oh the poor man, the poor man,' Mr Smith exclaimed. ‘What on earth could have driven him to that?'

‘Fear.'

‘Had he done something wrong?'

‘Who hasn't? He had spoken ill of the President.'

The old blue eyes turned away. He was determined to show no doubt to a stranger – a fellow white man, one of the slaver's race. He said, ‘I would like to see his widow – there might be something I could do. At least Mrs Smith and I ought to send flowers.' However much he loved the blacks, it was in a white world he lived; he knew no other.

‘I wouldn't if I were you.'

‘Why not?'

I despaired of explaining, and at that moment, as bad luck would have it, Joseph entered. The body had already left Monsieur Dupont's funeral parlour; they were taking the coffin up to Pétionville for burial and were halted now at the road block below the hotel.

‘They seem in a hurry.'

‘They very worried,' Joseph explained.

‘There's nothing to fear now surely,' Mr Smith said.

‘Except the heat,' I added.

‘I shall join the cortège,' Mr Smith said.

‘Don't you dream of it.'

Suddenly I was aware of the anger those blue eyes were capable of showing. ‘Mr Brown, you are not my keeper. I am going to call Mrs Smith and we shall both . . .'

‘At least leave her behind. Don't you really understand the danger . . . ?' And it was on that dangerous word ‘danger' that Mrs Smith entered.

‘What danger?' she demanded.

‘My dear, that poor Doctor Philipot to whom we had an introduction has killed himself.'

‘Why?'

‘The reasons seem obscure. They are taking him for burial to Pétionville. I think we should join the cortège. Joseph please,
s'il vous plaît
, taxi . . .'

‘What danger were you talking about?' Mrs Smith demanded.

‘Do neither of you realize the kind of country this is? Anything can happen.'

‘Mr Brown, dear, was saying he thought I ought to go alone.'

‘I don't think either of you should go,' I said. ‘It would be madness.'

‘But – Mr Smith told you – we had a letter of introduction to Doctor Philipot. He is a friend of a friend.'

‘It will be taken as a political gesture.'

‘Mr Smith and I have never been afraid of political gestures. Dear, I have a dark dress . . . Give me two minutes.'

‘He can't give you even one,' I said. ‘Listen.' Even from my office we could hear the sound of voices on the hill, but it didn't sound to me like a normal funeral. There was not the wild music of peasant
pompes funèbres
, nor the sobriety of a bourgeois interment. Voices didn't wail: they argued, they shouted. A woman's cry rose above the din. Before I could attempt to stop them Mr and Mrs Smith were running down the drive. The Presidential Candidate had a slight lead. Perhaps he maintained it more by protocol than effort, for Mrs Smith certainly had the better gait. I followed them more slowly, and with reluctance.

The Hotel Trianon had sheltered Doctor Philipot both alive and dead, and we were still not rid of him: at the very entrance of the drive I saw the hearse. It had apparently backed in so as to turn away from Pétionville, in retreat towards the city. One of the hungry unowned cats which haunted that end of the drive had leapt, in fear of the intrusion, on to the top of the hearse and it stood there arched and shivering like something struck by lightning. No one attempted to drive it away – the Haitians may well have believed it to contain the soul of the ex-Minister himself.

Madame Philipot, whom I had met once at some embassy reception, stood in front of the hearse and defied the driver to turn. She was a beautiful woman – not yet forty – with an olive skin, and she stood with her arms out like a bad patriotic monument to a forgotten war. Mr Smith repeated over and over again, ‘What's the matter?' The driver of the hearse, which was black and expensive and encrusted with the emblems of death, sounded his horn – I had not realized before that hearses possessed horns. Two men in black suits argued with him one on either side; they had got out of a tumble-down taxi which was also parked in my drive, and in the road stood another taxi pointing up the hill to Pétionville. It contained a small boy whose face was pressed to the window. That was all the cortège amounted to.

‘What's going on here?' Mr Smith cried again in his distress and the cat spat at him from the glass roof.

Madame Philipot shouted ‘
Salaud
' at the driver and ‘
Cochon
,' then she flung her eyes like dark flowers at Mr Smith. She had understood English. ‘
Vous êtes américain?
'

Mr Smith, expanding his knowledge of French nearly to its outer limit, said, ‘
Oui
.'

‘This
cochon
, this
salaud
,' Madame Philipot said, still barring the way to the hearse, ‘wants to drive back into the city.'

‘But why?'

‘The militia at the barrier up the road will not let us pass.'

‘But why, why?' Mr Smith repeated with bewilderment and the two men, leaving their taxi in the drive, began to walk down the hill towards the city with an air of purpose. They had put on top-hats.

‘They murdered him,' Madame Philipot said, ‘and now they will not even allow him to be buried in our own plot of ground.'

‘There must be some mistake,' Mr Smith said, ‘surely.'

‘I told that
salaud
to drive on through the barrier. Let them shoot. Let them kill his wife and child.' She added with illogical contempt, ‘They probably have no bullets in any case for their rifles.'

‘Maman, maman,'
the child cried from the taxi.

‘Chéri?'

‘Tu m'as promis une glace à la vanille.'

‘Attends un petit peu, chéri.'

I said, ‘Then you got through the first road-block without being questioned?'

‘Yes, yes. You understand – with a little payment.'

‘They wouldn't accept payment up the road?'

She said, ‘Oh, he had orders. He was afraid.'

‘There must be a mistake,' I said, repeating Mr Smith, but unlike him I was thinking of the bribe which had been refused.

‘You live here. Do you really believe that?' She turned on the driver and said, ‘Drive on. Up the road.
Salaud
,' and the cat, as though it took the insult to itself, leapt at the nearest tree: its claws scrabbled in the bark and held. It spat once more over its shoulder, at all of us, with hungry hatred and dropped into the bougainvillaea.

The two men in black returned slowly up the hill. They had an intimidated air. I had time to look at the coffin – it was a luxurious one, worthy of the hearse, but it bore only a single wreath of flowers and a single card; the ex-Minister was doomed to have an interment almost as lonely as his death. The two men who had now rejoined us were almost indistinguishable one from the other, except that one was a centimetre or so the taller – or perhaps it was his hat. The taller one explained, ‘We have been to the lower road-block, Madame Philipot. They say we cannot return with the coffin. Not without the authorization of the authorities.'

‘What authorities?' I asked.

‘The Secretary for Social Welfare.'

We all with one accord looked at the handsome coffin with its gleaming brass handles.

‘
There
is the Secretary for Social Welfare,' I said.

‘Not since this morning.'

‘Are you Monsieur Hercule Dupont?'

‘I am Monsieur Clément Dupont. This is Monsieur Hercule.' Monsieur Hercule removed his top-hat and bowed from the hips.

‘What's happening?' Mr Smith asked. I told him.

‘But that's absurd,' Mrs Smith interrupted me. ‘Does the coffin have to wait here till some fool mistake has been cleared up?'

‘I'm beginning to fear it was no mistake.'

‘What else could it be?'

‘Revenge. They failed to catch him alive.' I said to Madame Philipot, ‘They will arrive soon. That's certain. Better go to the hotel with the child.'

‘And leave my husband stranded by the road? No.'

‘At least tell your child to go and Joseph will give him a vanilla ice.'

The sun was almost vertically above us now: splinters of light darted here and there from the glass of the hearse and the bright brass-work of the coffin. The driver turned off his engine and we could hear the sudden silence extending a long long way to where a dog whined on the fringes of the capital.

Madame Philipot opened the taxi door and lifted the little boy out. He was blacker than she was and the whites of his eyes were enormous like eggs. She told him to find Joseph and his ice, but he didn't want to go. He clung to her dress.

‘Mrs Smith,' I said, ‘take him to the hotel.'

She hesitated. She said, ‘If there's going to be trouble, I think I ought to stay here with Madame Phili – Phili – you take him, dear.'

‘And leave you, dear?' Mr Smith said. ‘No.'

I hadn't noticed the taxi-drivers where they sat motionless in the shadow of the trees. Now, as though they had been exchanging signals with each other while we talked, they started simultaneously to life. One swung his taxi out of the drive, the other reversed and turned. With a grinding of gears they skidded together like decrepit racing-motorists down the hill towards Port-au-Prince. We heard the taxis halt at the road-block and then start off again and fade into the silence.

Monsieur Hercule Dupont cleared his throat. He said, ‘You are quite right. I and Monsieur Clément will take the child . . .' Each seized a hand, but the little boy dragged to get away.

‘Go
chéri
,' his mother said, ‘and find a vanilla ice.'

‘Avec de la crème au chocolat?'

‘Oui, oui, bien sûr, avec de la crème au chocolat.'

They made an odd procession, the three of them going up the drive under the palms, between the bougainvillaeas, two top-hatted middle-aged twins with the child between. The Hotel Trianon was not an embassy, but I suppose that the brothers Dupont considered it was perhaps the next best thing – a foreigner's property. The driver of the hearse too – we had forgotten him – abruptly climbed down and ran to catch them up. Madame Philipot, the Smiths and I were alone with the hearse and the coffin, and we listened in silence to the other silence on the road.

‘What happens next?' Mr Smith asked after a while.

‘It's not in our hands. We wait. That's all.'

‘For what?'

‘For them.'

Our situation reminded me of that nightmare of childhood when something in a cupboard prepares to come out. None of us was anxious to look at another and see his private nightmare reflected, so we looked instead through the glass wall of the hearse at the new shining coffin with the brass handles which was the cause of all the trouble. Far away, in the land where the barking dog belonged, a car was taking the first gradients of the long hill. ‘They're coming,' I said. Madame Philipot leant her forehead against the glass of the hearse, and the car climbed slowly up towards us.

‘I wish you'd go in,' I said to her. ‘It would be better for all of us if we all went in.'

‘I don't understand,' Mr Smith said. He put out his hand and gripped his wife's wrist.

The car had halted at the barrier down the road – we could hear the engine running; then it came slowly on in bottom gear, and now it was in view, a big Cadillac dating from the days of American aid for the poor of Haiti. It drew alongside us and four men got out. They wore soft hats and very dark sun-glasses; they carried guns on their hips, but only one of them bothered to draw, and he didn't draw his gun against us. He went to the side of the hearse and began to smash the glass with it, methodically. Madame Philipot didn't move or speak, and there was nothing I could do. One cannot argue with four guns. We were witnesses, but there was no court which would ever hear our testimony. The glass side of the hearse was smashed now, but the leader continued to chip the jagged edges with his gun. There was no hurry and he didn't want any one to scratch his hands.

Mrs Smith suddenly darted forward and seized the Tonton Macoute's shoulder. He turned his head and I recognized him. It was the man whom Mr Smith had out-stared in the police station. He shook himself free from her grip and putting his gloved hand firmly and deliberately against her face he sent her reeling back into the bushes of bougainvillaea. I had to put my arms round Mr Smith and hold him.

‘They can't do that to my wife,' he shouted over my shoulder.

‘Oh yes, they can.'

‘Let me go,' he shouted, struggling to be free. I've never seen a man so suddenly transformed. ‘Swine,' he yelled. It was the worst expression he could find, but the Tonton Macoute spoke no English. Mr Smith twisted and nearly got free from me. He was a strong old man.

‘It won't do any good to anyone if you get shot,' I said. Mrs Smith sat among the bushes; for once in her life she looked bewildered.

They lifted the coffin out of the hearse and carried it to the car. They wedged it into the boot, but it stuck several feet out, so they tied it securely with a piece of rope, taking their time. There was no need to hurry; they were secure; they were the law. Madame Philipot with a humility which shamed us – but there was no choice between humility and violence and only Mrs Smith had essayed violence – went over to the Cadillac and pleaded with them to take her too. Her gestures told me that; her voice was too low for me to hear what she said. Perhaps she was offering them money for her dead: in a dictatorship one owns nothing, not even a dead husband. They slammed the door in her face and drove up the road, the coffin poking out of the boot, like a box of fruit on the way to market. Then they found a place to turn and came back. Mrs Smith was on her feet now; we stood in a little group and we looked guilty. An innocent victim nearly always looks guilty, like the scapegoat in the desert. They stopped the car and the officer – I assumed he was an officer, for the black glasses and the soft hats and the revolvers were all the uniform they wore – swung the car door open and beckoned to me. I am no hero. I obeyed and crossed the road to him.