The Comedians (22 page)

‘My personal view of every white man is very low. I admit I am offended by the colour, which reminds me of turd. But we accept some of you – if you are useful to the State.'

‘You mean to the Doctor?'

With a very small inflexion of irony he quoted, ‘
Je suis le drapeau Haitien, Uni et Indivisible
.' He took a drink of rum. ‘Of course some white men are more tolerable than others. At least the French have a common culture with us. I admire the General. The President has written to him offering to join
la Communauté Européenne
.'

‘Has he received a reply?'

‘These things take time. There are conditions which we have to discuss. We understand diplomacy. We don't blunder like the Americans – and the British.'

I was haunted by the name Concasseur. Somewhere I had heard it before. The first syllable suited him well, and perhaps the whole name, with its suggestion of destructive power, had been adopted like that of Stalin and Hitler.

‘Haiti belongs by right to any Third Force,' Captain Concasseur said. ‘We are the true bastion against the Communists. No Castro can succeed here. We have a loyal peasantry.'

‘Or a terrified one.' I took a long drink of rum; drink helped to make his pretensions more supportable. ‘Your important visitor is taking his time.'

‘He told me he had been away from women for a long time.' He barked at Mère Catherine, ‘I want service. Service,' and stamped the floor. ‘Why is no one dancing?'

‘A bastion of the free world,' I said.

The four girls rose from their table, and one put on the gramophone. They began to dance together in a graceful slow old-fashioned style. Their balloon-skirts swung like silver censers and showed their slender legs the colour of young deer; they smiled gently at each other and held one another a little apart. They were beautiful and undifferentiated like birds of the same plumage. It was almost impossible to believe they were for sale. Like everyone else.

‘Of course the free world pays better,' I said, ‘and in dollars.'

Captain Concasseur saw where I was looking; he missed nothing through those black glasses. He said, ‘I will treat you to a woman. That small girl there, with a flower in her hair, Louise. She doesn't look at us. She is shy because she thinks I might be jealous. Jealous of a
putain
! What absurdity! She will serve you very well if I give her the word.'

‘I don't want a woman.' I could see through his apparent generosity. One flings a
putain
to a white man as one flings a bone to a dog.

‘Then why are you here?'

He had a right to ask the question. I could only say, ‘I've changed my mind,' as I watched the girls revolve, worthy of a better setting than the wooden shed, the rum-bar and the old advertisements for Coca-Cola.

I said, ‘Are you never afraid of Communists?'

‘Oh, there's no danger from them. The Americans would land marines if they ever became a danger. Of course we have a few Communists in Port-au-Prince. Their names are known. They are not dangerous. They meet in little study-groups and read Marx. Are you a Communist?'

‘How could I be? I own the Hotel Trianon. I depend on American tourists. I am a capitalist.'

‘Then you count as one of us,' he said with the nearest he ever came to courtesy, ‘except for your colour, of course.'

‘Don't insult me too far.'

‘Oh, you cannot help your colour,' he said.

‘I meant, don't say I'm one of you. When a capitalist state gets too repulsive, it is in danger of losing the loyalty even of the capitalists.'

‘A capitalist will always be loyal if he is allowed a cut of twenty-five per cent.'

‘A little humanity is necessary too.'

‘You speak like a Catholic.'

‘Yes. Perhaps. A Catholic who has lost his faith. But isn't there a danger that your capitalists may lose their faith too?'

‘They lose their lives but never their faith. Their money is their faith. They guard it to the end and leave it to their children.'

‘And this important man of yours – is he a loyal capitalist or a right-wing politician?' While he chinked the ice in his glass I thought I remembered where I had heard the name Captain Concasseur before. It was Petit Pierre who had spoken of him, with some degree of awe. He had withdrawn all the dredges and pumps belonging to an American water company, after the employees had been evacuated and the Americans had withdrawn their ambassador, and he had sent them to work on a wild project of his own, at the mountain village of Kenscoff. He hadn't got very far, for the labourers had left him at the end of a month because they were unpaid; it was said too that he hadn't cleared himself satisfactorily with the chief of the Tontons Macoute who would have expected his proper cut. So Concasseur's folly stood on the slopes of Kenscoff – four cement columns and a cement floor already cracking in the heat and the rains. Perhaps the important man now playing with Tin Tin in the stables was a financier who was going to help him out? But what financier in his senses would think of lending money in this country, from which all the tourists had fled, in order to build an ice-skating rink on the slopes of Kenscoff?

‘We need technicians, even white technicians,' Concasseur said.

‘The Emperor Christophe did without them.'

‘We're more modern than Christophe.'

‘An ice-skating rink instead of a castle?'

‘I think I have borne with you nearly enough,' Captain Concasseur said, and I knew I had gone too far. I had touched his raw wound and I was a little scared. If I had made love to Martha what a different night this would have been; I would have been sleeping deeply in my own bed at the hotel, unconcerned with politics and the corruption of power. The captain took the revolver out of his holster and laid it on the table, beside his empty glass. His chin dropped against his shirt of white and blue stripes. He sat in a lugubrious silence as though he were weighing carefully the advantages and the disadvantages of a quick shot between the eyes. I could see no disadvantages so far as he was concerned.

Mère Catherine came and stood behind me and deposited two glasses of rum. She said, ‘Your friend has been more than half an hour with Tin Tin. It is time . . .'

‘He must be allowed,' the captain said, ‘whatever time he wants. He is an important man. A very important man.' Small bubbles of spittle gathered at the corners of his lips like venom. He touched the revolver with the tips of his fingers. He said, ‘An ice-rink is very modern.' His fingers played between the rum and the revolver. I was glad when he picked up the glass. He said, ‘An ice-rink is chic. It is snob.'

Mère Catherine said, ‘Your payment was for half an hour.'

‘My watch keeps a different time,' the captain said. ‘You lose nothing. There are no other customers.'

‘There is Monsieur Brown.'

‘Not tonight,' I said. ‘I wouldn't know how to follow such an important guest.'

‘Then why are you staying here?' the captain asked.

‘I'm thirsty. And curious. It's not often in Haiti we have important visitors. Is he financing your ice-rink?' The captain looked at his revolver, but the moment of spontaneity, which was the moment of real danger, had passed. Only signs of it remained like traces of old sickness: the streak of blood across the yellow eye-balls, the striped tie which had somehow gone vertically askew. I said, ‘You wouldn't like your important foreign guest to come in and find a white corpse. It would be bad for business.'

‘That can always be arranged later . . .' he said with sombre truth, and then an extraordinary smile opened his face like a crack in the cement of his own ice-rink, a smile of civility, even of humility. He stood up and, hearing the door of the
salle
close behind me, I turned and saw Tin Tin all in white, smiling too, modestly, like a bride at a church door. But Concasseur and she were not smiling at each other, both their smiles were directed at the guest of great importance on whose arm she had entered. It was Mr Jones.

IV

‘Jones,' I exclaimed. There were still the relics of battle on his face, but they were neatly covered now with pieces of sticking-plaster.

‘Why, if it isn't Brown,' he said. He came and shook my hand with great warmth. ‘It's good to see one of the old lot,' he said as though we were veterans at some regimental reunion who had not met since the last war but one.

‘You saw me yesterday,' I said, and I detected a slight embarrassment – when an unpleasantness was over Jones forgot it as quickly as possible. He explained to Captain Concasseur, ‘Mr Brown and I were shipmates on the
Medea
. And how is Mr Smith?'

‘Much as he was yesterday when he visited you. He has been anxious about you.'

‘About me? But why?' He said, ‘Forgive me. I haven't introduced my young friend here.'

‘Tin Tin and I know each other well.'

‘That's fine, fine. Sit down, dear, and we'll all have a snifter.' He pulled out a chair for her and then took my arm and led me a little aside. He said in a low voice, ‘You know all that business is past history now.'

‘I'm glad to see you safely out.'

He explained vaguely, ‘My note did it. I thought it would. I was never really worried. Mistakes on both sides. I wouldn't want the girls to know about it though.'

‘You would find them very sympathetic. But doesn't
he
know?'

‘Oh yes, but he's bound to secrecy. I would have told you tomorrow how things had gone, but tonight I badly needed a roll in the hay. So you know Tin Tin?'

‘Yes.'

‘She's a sweet girl. I'm glad I chose her. The captain wanted me to take that girl with the flower.'

‘I don't suppose you'd have noticed the difference. Mère Catherine caters for a sweet tooth. What are you doing with
him
?'

‘We're in a bit of business together.'

‘Not an ice-rink?'

‘No. Why an ice-rink?'

‘Be careful, Jones. He's dangerous.'

‘Don't worry about me,' Jones said, ‘I know the world.' Mère Catherine passed: her tray was loaded with rum and what was probably the last of the Seven-Ups and Jones grabbed a glass. ‘Tomorrow they are finding me transport. I'll come and see you when I've got my car.' He waved to Tin Tin; to the captain he called ‘
Salut
.' ‘I like it here,' he said. ‘I've landed on my feet.'

I left the
salle
, my mouth cloyed with too much Seven-Up, and shook the sentry by the shoulder as I passed – I might as well do someone a good turn. I felt my way past the jeep to my own car, and heard footsteps behind me and dodged sideways. It might be the captain come to preserve the honour of his ice-rink, but it was only Tin Tin.

She said, ‘I told them I go
faire pipi
.'

‘How are you, Tin Tin?'

‘Very well and you . . .'

‘Ça marche.'

‘Why not stay a little while in your car?
They
will go soon. The Englishman is
tout à fait épuisé
.'

‘I don't doubt it, but I'm tired. I've got to go. Tin Tin, did he behave all right to you?'

‘Oh yes. I liked him. I liked him a lot.'

‘What did you like so much?'

‘He made me laugh,' she said. It was a sentence which was to be repeated to me disquietingly in other circumstances. I had learnt in a disorganized life many tricks, but not the trick of laughter.

PART TWO

CHAPTER
1

I

J
ONES
fell from view for a while as completely as the body of the Secretary for Social Welfare. No one ever learnt what was done with
his
corpse, though the Presidential Candidate made more than one attempt to discover. He penetrated to the bureau of the new Secretary where he was received with celerity and politeness. Petit Pierre had done his best to spread his fame as ‘Truman's opponent', and the Minister had heard of Truman.

He was a small fat man who wore, for some reason, a fraternity pin, and his teeth were very big and white and separate, like tombstones designed for a much larger cemetery. A curious smell crossed his desk as though one grave had stayed open. I accompanied Mr Smith in case a translator were needed, but the new Minister spoke good English with a slight twang which went some way to support the fraternity pin (I learnt later that he had served for a while as ‘the small boy' at the American Embassy. It might have been a rare example of merit rising if he had not served an interim period in the Tontons Macoute where he had been a special assistant to Colonel Gracia – known as Fat Gracia).

Mr Smith excused the fact that his letter of introduction was addressed to Doctor Philipot.

‘Poor Philipot,' the Minister said, and I wondered whether at last we were to receive the official version of his end.

‘What happend to him?' Mr Smith asked with admirable directness.

‘We will probably never know. He was a strange moody man, and I must confess to you, Professor, his accounts were not in good order. There was the matter of a water-pump in Desaix Street.'

‘Are you suggesting he killed himself?' I had underrated Mr Smith. In a good cause he could show cunning and now he played his cards close to his chest.

‘Perhaps, or perhaps he has been the victim of the people's vengeance. We Haitians have a tradition of removing a tyrant in our own way, Professor.'

‘Was Doctor Philipot a tyrant?'

‘The people in Desaix Street were sadly deceived about their water.'