The Comedians (21 page)

‘Yes. If you want to call yourself an adventure.'

Many months later when the affair was over, I realized and appreciated her directness. She played no part. She answered exactly what I asked. She never claimed to like a thing that she disliked or to love something to which she was indifferent. If I had failed to understand her, it was because I failed to ask her the right questions, that was all. It was true that she was no comedian. She had kept the virtue of innocence, and I know now why I loved her. In the end the only quality but beauty which attracts me in a woman is that vague thing, ‘goodness'. The woman in Monte Carlo had betrayed her husband with a schoolboy, but her motive had been generous. Martha too had betrayed her husband, but it was not Martha's love for me which held me, if she did love, it was her blind unselfish attachment to her child. With goodness one can feel secure; why wasn't I satisfied with goodness, why did I always ask her the wrong questions?

‘Why not one adventure to last?' I asked as I released her.

‘How can I tell?'

I remembered the only real letter which I had ever received from her, apart from notes for rendezvous made ambiguous in case they fell into the wrong hands. It was while I was waiting in New York, and I must have written to her grudgingly, suspiciously, jealously. (I had found a call-girl on East 56th Street, and so I assumed, of course, that she had found an equivalent resource to fill the empty months.) She wrote back to me with tenderness, without rancour. Perhaps having one's father hanged for monstrous crimes puts all our petty grievances into proportion. She wrote of Angel and his cleverness in mathematics, she wrote a great deal about Angel and the nightmares he was having – ‘I stay in with him nearly every night now,' and at once I began to wonder what she did when she did
not
stay in, with whom she passed the evening hours. It was useless to tell myself that she was with her husband, or at the casino where I had first met her.

And suddenly, as though she knew how my thoughts would turn, she wrote – or words to that effect: ‘Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination . . . then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.'

At that moment I found in what she wrote a pretentiousness, a lack of sincerity. I was angry with myself; and so I was angry with her. I tore the letter up in spite of its tenderness, in spite of the fact that it was the only one I had. I thought she was preaching at me because I had spent two hours that afternoon in the apartment on East 56th Street, though how could she possibly have known? That is the reason why of all my jackdaw-relics – the paper-weight from Miami, an entrance-ticket from Monte Carlo – I have no scrap of her writing with me now. And yet I can remember her writing very clearly, rounded and childish, though I can't remember the tones of her voice.

‘Well,' I said, ‘we may as well go downstairs.' The room we stood in was cold and unoccupied; the pictures on the wall were probably chosen by an office of works.

‘You go. I don't want to see those people.'

‘The Colombus statue when he's better?'

‘The Columbus statue.'

Just as I was expecting nothing she put her arms round me. She said, ‘Poor darling. What a homecoming.'

‘It's not your fault.'

She said, ‘Let's do it. Let's do it quickly.' She lay on the edge of the bed and pulled me towards her, and I heard the voice of Angel down the passage calling, ‘Papa. Papa.'

‘Don't listen,' she said. She had drawn up her knees and I was reminded of Doctor Philipot's body under the diving-board: birth, love and death in their positions closely resemble each other. I found I could do nothing, nothing at all, no white bird flew in to save my pride. Instead there were the footsteps of the ambassador mounting the stairs.

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘He won't come here,' but it wasn't the ambassador who had chilled me. I stood up and she said, ‘It doesn't matter. It was a bad idea of mine, that's all.'

‘The Columbus statue?'

‘No. I'll find something better, I swear I will.'

She went out of the room in front of me and called, ‘Luis.'

‘Yes, dear?' He came to the door of their room carrying Angel's puzzle.

‘I'm just showing Mr Brown the rooms up here. He says we could do with a few refugees.' There was not a false note in her voice; she was perfectly at ease, and I thought of her anger when we talked of comedians, although now she proved to be the best comedian of us all. I played my part less well; there was a dryness in my voice which betrayed anxiety and I said, ‘I must go.'

‘Why? It's still quite early,' Martha said. ‘We haven't seen you for a long time, have we, Luis?'

‘There's a rendezvous I have to keep,' I told her without knowing that I spoke the truth.

III

The long long day was not yet over: midnight was an hour or an age away. I took my car and drove along the edge of the sea, the road pitted with holes. There were very few people about; perhaps they had not realized the curfew was raised or they feared a trap. On my right hand were a line of wooden huts in little fenced saucers of earth where a few palm trees grew and slithers of water gleamed between, like scrap-iron on a dump. An occasional candle burned over a little group bowed above their rum like mourners over a coffin. Sometimes there were furtive sounds of music. An old man danced in the middle of the road – I had to brake my car to a standstill. He came and giggled at me through the glass – at least there was one man in Port-au-Prince that night who was not afraid. I couldn't make out the meaning of his
patois
and I drove on. It was two years or more since I had been to Mère Catherine's, but tonight I needed her services. My impotence lay in my body like a curse which it needed a witch to raise. I thought of the girl on East 56th Street, and when reluctantly I thought of Martha I whipped up my anger. If she had made love to me when I had wanted her, this would not be happening.

Just before Mère Catherine's the road branched – the tarmac, if you could call it tarmac, came to an abrupt end (money had run out or someone hadn't received his cut). To the left was the main southern highway, almost impassable except by jeep. I was surprised to find a road-block there, for no one expected invasion from the south. I stood, while they searched me more carefully than usual, under a great placard which announced ‘U.S.A.-Haitian Joint Five-Year Plan. Great Southern Highway', but the Americans had left and nothing remained of all the five-year plan but the notice-board, over the stagnant pools, the channels in the road, the rocks and the carcass of a dredger which nobody had bothered to rescue from the mud.

After they let me go I took the right fork and arrived at Mère Catherine's compound. All was so quiet. I wondered whether it was worth my while to leave the car. A long low hut like a stable divided into stalls was the quarters here for love. I could see a light burning in the main building where Mère Catherine received her guests and served them drinks, but there was no sound of music and dancing. For a moment fidelity became a temptation and I wanted to drive away. But I had carried my malady too far along the rough road to be put off now, and I moved cautiously across the dark compound towards the light, hating myself all the way. I had foolishly turned the car against the wall of the hut, so that I was in darkness, and almost at once I stumbled against a jeep, standing lightless; a man slept at the wheel. Again I nearly turned and went, for there were few jeeps in Port-au-Prince which were not owned by the Tontons Macoute, and if the Tontons Macoute were making a night of it with Mère Catherine's girls, there would be no room for outside custom.

But I was obstinate in my self-hatred, and I went on. Mère Catherine heard me stumbling and came to meet me on the threshold, holding up an oil-lamp. She had the face of a kind nanny in a film of the deep south, and a tiny delicate body which must once have been beautiful. Her face didn't belie her nature, for she was the kindest woman I knew in Port-au-Prince. She pretended that her girls came from good families, that she was only helping them to earn a little pin-money, and you could almost believe her, for she had taught them perfect manners in public. Till they reached the stalls her customers too had to behave with decorum, and to watch the couples dance you would almost have believed it to be an end-of-term celebration at a convent-school. On one occasion three years before I had seen her go in to rescue a girl from some brutality. I was drinking a glass of rum and I heard a scream from what we called the stable, but before I could decide what to do Mère Catherine had taken a hatchet from the kitchen and sailed out like the little
Revenge
prepared to take on a fleet. Her opponent was armed with a knife, he was twice her size, and he was drunk with rum. (He must have had a flask in his hip-pocket, for Mère Catherine would never have allowed him to go outside with a girl in that condition.) He turned and fled at her approach, and later when I left, I saw her through the windows of the kitchen, with the girl upon her knees, crooning to her as though she were a child, in a
patois
which I couldn't understand, and the girl slept against the little bony shoulder.

Mère Catherine whispered a warning to me, ‘The Tontons are here.'

‘All the girls taken?'

‘No, but the girl you like is busy.'

I hadn't been here for two years, but she remembered, and what was even more remarkable the girl was with her still – she would be close on eighteen by now. I hadn't expected to find her, and yet I was disappointed. In age one prefers old friends, even in a
bordel
.

‘Are they in a dangerous mood?' I asked her.

‘I don't think so. They are looking after someone important. He's out with Tin Tin now.'

I nearly went away, but my grudge against Martha worked like an infection.

‘I'll come in,' I said. ‘I'm thirsty. Give me a rum and coke.'

‘There's no more coke.' I had forgotten that American aid was over.

‘Rum and soda then.'

‘I have a few bottles of Seven-Up left.'

‘All right. Seven-Up.'

At the door of the
salle
a Tonton Macoute was asleep on a chair; his sun-glasses had fallen into his lap and he looked quite harmless. The flies of his grey flannel trousers gaped from a lost button. Inside there was complete silence. Through the open door I saw a group of four girls dressed in white muslin with balloon-skirts. They were sucking orangeade through straws, not speaking. One of them took her empty glass and moved away, walking beautifully, the muslin swaying, like a little bronze by Degas.

‘No customers at all?'

‘They all left when the Tontons Macoute came.'

I went in, and there at a table by the wall with his eyes fixed on me as though I had never once escaped from them was the Tonton Macoute I had seen in the police station, who had smashed the windows of the hearse to get out the coffin of the
ancien ministre
. His soft hat lay on a chair, and he wore a striped bow-tie. I bowed to him and started towards another table. I was scared of him, and I wondered whom it could be – more important than this arrogant officer – that Tin Tin was consoling now. I hoped for her sake he was not a worse man as well.

The officer said, ‘I seem to see you everywhere.'

‘I try to be inconspicuous.'

‘What do you want here tonight?'

‘A rum and Seven-Up.'

He said to Mére Catherine, who was bringing in my drink upon a tray, ‘You said you had no Seven-Up left.' I noticed that there was an empty soda-water bottle on the tray beside my glass. The Tonton Macoute took my drink and tasted it. ‘Seven-Up it is. You can bring this man a rum and soda. We need all the Seven-Up you have left for my friend when he returns.'

‘It's so dark in the bar. The bottles must have got mixed.'

‘You must learn to distinguish between your important customers and,' he hesitated and decided to be reasonably polite, ‘the less important. You can sit down,' he said to me.

I turned away.

‘You can sit down here. Sit down.'

I obeyed. He said, ‘You were stopped at the cross-roads and searched?'

‘Yes.'

‘And at the door here? You were stopped at the door?'

‘By Mère Catherine, yes.'

‘By one of my men?'

‘He was asleep.'

‘Asleep?'

‘Yes.'

I had no hesitation in telling tales. Let the Tontons Macoute destroy themselves. I was surprised when he said nothing and made no move towards the door. He only stared blankly through me with his black opaque lenses. He had decided something, but he would not let me know his decision. Mère Catherine brought me in my drink. I tasted it. The rum was still mixed with Seven-Up. She was a brave woman.

I said, ‘You seem to be taking a lot of precautions tonight.'

‘I am in charge of a very important foreigner. I have to take precautions for his security. He asked to come here.'

‘Is he safe with little Tin Tin? Or do you keep a guard in the bedroom, captain? Or is it commandant?'

‘My name is Captain Concasseur. You have a sense of humour. I appreciate humour. I am in favour of jokes. They have political value. Jokes are a release for the cowardly and the impotent.'

‘You said an important foreigner, captain? This morning I had the impression that you didn't like foreigners.'