The Comedians (33 page)

‘A kind of small mosquito. Why?'

‘Jones always calls the dog Midge, and he answers to the name. His real name is Don Juan, but he's never learnt that.'

‘I suppose you are going to tell me the dog likes Jones too.'

‘Oh, but he does – better than he likes Luis. Luis always feeds him, he won't even allow Angel to do that, and yet Jones has only to call “Midge” . . .'

‘What does Jones call you?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘You go to him when he calls. You leave early to play gin-rummy.'

‘That was three weeks ago. I've never done it again.'

‘We spend half our time now talking about that damned crook.'

‘You brought the damned crook to our house.'

‘I didn't know he was going to become such a friend of the family.'

‘Darling, he makes us laugh, that's all.' She couldn't have chosen an explanation which worried me more. ‘There isn't much to laugh about here.'

‘Here?'

‘You're twisting every word. I don't mean here in bed. I mean here in Port-au-Prince.'

‘Two different languages cause misunderstanding. I should have taken lessons in German. Does Jones speak German?'

‘Not even Luis does. Darling, when you want me I'm a woman, but when I hurt you, I'm always a German. What a pity Monaco never had a period of power.'

‘It had. But the English beat the Prince's fleet in the Channel. Like the Luftwaffe.'

‘I was ten years old when you beat the Luftwaffe.'

‘I did no beating. I sat in an office translating propaganda against Vichy into French.'

‘Jones had a more interesting war.'

‘Oh yes?'

Was it innocence which caused her so often to introduce his name or did she feel a compulsion to have it on her tongue?

‘He was in Burma,' she said, ‘fighting the Japs.'

‘He's told you that?'

‘He's very interesting when he talks about guerrilla fighting.'

‘The resistance could have done with him here. But he preferred the Government to the resistance.'

‘But he's seen through the Government now.'

‘Or have they seen through him? Did he tell you about the lost platoon?'

‘Yes.'

‘And how he has a nose for water?'

‘Yes.'

‘Sometimes I wonder that he didn't end up at least a brigadier.'

‘Darling, what's the matter?'

‘Othello charmed Desdemona with his stories of adventure. It's an old technique. I ought to tell you how I was hounded by the
People
. It might win your sympathy.'

‘What people?'

‘Never mind.'

‘A change of subject in an embassy is always something. The first secretary is an authority on turtles. It was interesting for a while in a natural-history way, but it palled all the same. And the second secretary is an admirer of Cervantes, but not of
Don Quixote
which he says was a bid for easy popularity.'

‘I suppose the Burmese war too will become stale in time.'

‘At least he doesn't repeat himself yet like the others.'

‘Has he told you the history of his cocktail-case?'

‘Yes. Indeed he has. Darling, you underrate him. He's a very generous man. You know how our shaker leaks, so he gave Luis his – in spite of all the memories attached. It's a very good one – it came from Asprey's in London. He said it was the only thing he had with which to return our hospitality. We said we'd borrow it – and do you know what he did? He gave money to one of the servants to take it to Hamit's and have it inscribed. So there it is – we can't give it back. Such a quaint inscription. “To Luis and Martha from their grateful guest, Jones.” Like that. No christian name. No initials. Like a French actor.'

‘And
your
first name.'

‘And Luis's. Darling, it's time I left.'

‘What a long time we've spent, haven't we, talking about Jones?'

‘I expect we'll spend a lot more. Papa Doc won't give him a safe-conduct. Not even as far as the British Embassy. The Government makes a formal protest every week. They claim he's a common criminal, but, of course, that's nonsense. He was ready to work with them, but then his eyes were opened – by young Philipot.'

‘Is that what he claims?'

‘He tried to sabotage a supply of arms to the Tontons Macoute.'

‘An ingenious story.'

‘So that really does make him a political refugee.'

‘He lives on his wits, that's all.'

‘Don't we all to some extent?'

‘How quickly you leap to his defence.'

Suddenly I had a grotesque vision of the two of them in bed, Martha naked as she was now, and Jones still in his female finery, his face yellow with pre-shave powder, lifting his great black velvet skirt above his thighs.

‘Darling, what is it now?'

‘It's so stupid. To think that I brought the little crook to live with you. And now there he stays – for life perhaps. Or until someone can get near enough to Papa Doc with a silver bullet. How long has Mindszenty stayed in the American Embassy in Budapest? A dozen years? Jones sees you all day long . . .'

‘Not in your way.'

‘Oh, Jones has to have his periodic woman – I know that. I've seen him in action. And as for me I can only see you for dinner, or cocktail parties of the second order.'

‘You're not at dinner now.'

‘He's climbed the wall. He's in the garden itself.'

‘You should have been a novelist,' she said, ‘then we would all have been your characters. We couldn't say to you we are not like that at all, we couldn't answer back. Darling, don't you see you are inventing us?'

‘I'm glad at least I've invented this bed.'

‘We can't even talk to you, can we? You won't listen if what we say is out of character – the character you've given us.'

‘What character? You're a woman I love. That's all.'

‘Oh yes, I'm classified. A woman you love.'

She got out of bed and began very rapidly to dress. She swore – ‘
merde!
' – when a suspender failed to snap, she got her dress twisted over her head and had to start again – she was like something escaping from a fire. She couldn't find the second stocking.

I said, ‘I'm going to get your guest away soon. Somehow.'

‘I don't mind if you do or not. As long as he's safe.'

‘Angel will miss him though.'

‘Yes.'

‘And Midge.'

‘Yes.'

‘And Luis.'

‘He amuses Luis.'

‘And you?'

She thrust her feet into her shoes and didn't answer.

‘We'll have peace together when he's gone. You won't be torn in two between us then.'

She looked at me a moment as though I had said something that shocked her. Then she came up to the bed and took my hand as though I were a child who didn't understand the meaning of his words but who must be warned all the same not to repeat them. She said, ‘My darling, be careful. Don't you understand? To you nothing exists except in your own thoughts. Not me, not Jones. We're what you choose to make us. You're a Berkeleyan. My God, what a Berkeleyan. You've turned poor Jones into a seducer and me into a wanton mistress. You can't even believe in your mother's medal, can you? You've written her a different part. My dear, try to believe we exist when you aren't there. We're independent of you. None of us is like you fancy we are. Perhaps it wouldn't matter much if your thoughts were not so dark, always so dark.'

I tried to kiss her mood away, but she turned quickly and standing at the door said to the empty passage, ‘It's a dark Brown world you live in. I'm sorry for you. As I'm sorry for my father.'

I lay in bed a long while and wondered what I could possibly have in common with a war criminal responsible for so many unidentified deaths.

II

The headlights swept up between the palms and settled like a yellow moth over my face. I could see nothing clearly when they were switched off – only something large and black approaching the veranda. I had suffered one beating-up, I didn't want another. I shouted, ‘Joseph,' but of course Joseph wasn't there. I had been sleeping over my glass of rum and I had forgotten.

‘Is Joseph back?' It was a relief to hear Doctor Magiot's voice. He came slowly with his inexplicable dignity, up the broken verandah steps as though they were the marble steps of the senate house and he was a senator from the outer empire granted Roman citizenship.

‘I was asleep. I wasn't thinking. Can I get you something, doctor? I am my own cook now, but I can easily beat you up an omelette.'

‘No, I'm not hungry. May I put my car away in your garage in case anyone comes?'

‘No one ever comes here at night.'

‘You never know. In case . . .'

When he returned I repeated my offer of food, but he would take nothing. ‘I wanted company, that's all.' He chose a hard straight chair to sit in. ‘I used often to come and see your mother here – in the happier days. I find it lonely now after the sun sets.'

The lightning had begun and the nightly deluge would soon descend. I drew my chair a little further into the shelter of the verandah. ‘Do you see nothing of your colleagues?' I asked.

‘What colleagues? Oh, there are a few old men left like myself behind their locked doors. In the last ten years three-quarters of the doctors who graduated have preferred to go elsewhere as soon as they could buy an exit-permit. Here one buys an exit-permit not a practice. If you want to consult a Haitian doctor, better go to Ghana.' He lapsed into silence. It was company not conversation that he needed. The rain began to fall, tingling in the swimming-pool which was empty again; the night was so dark I couldn't see Doctor Magiot's face, only the tips of his fingers laid out on the arms of his chair, like carved wood.

‘The other night,' Doctor Magiot said, ‘I had an absurd dream. The telephone sounded – think of that, the telephone, how many years is it since I heard a telephone? I was summoned to the general hospital for a casualty. When I arrived I saw with satisfaction how clean the ward was, the nurses too were young and spotless (of course you will find they have all left for Africa as well). My colleague advanced to meet me, a young man in whom I had great hopes; he is fulfilling them now in Brazzaville. He told me that the opposition candidate (how old-fashioned even the words sound today) had been attacked by rowdies at a political meeting. There were complications. His left eye was in danger. I began to examine the eye, but it turned out not to be the eye at all but the cheek which was cut open to the bone. My colleague returned. He said, “The Chief of Police is on the telephone. The assailants have been arrested. The President is anxious to know the result of your examination. The President's wife has sent these flowers . . .”' Doctor Magiot began to laugh softly in the dark. ‘Even at the best,' he said, ‘even under President Estimé it was never like that. Freud's wish-fulfilment dreams are usually not so obvious.'

‘Not a very Marxist dream, Doctor Magiot. With an opposition candidate.'

‘Perhaps the Marxist dream of a far far future. When the world state has withered away and there are only local elections. In the parish of Haiti.'

‘When I came to your house I was surprised to find
Das Kapital
openly on a shelf. Is that safe?'

‘I told you once before. Papa Doc makes a distinction between philosophy and propaganda. He wants to keep his window open towards the east until the Americans give arms to him again.'

‘They'll never do that.'

‘I will make you a bet of ten to one that, in a matter of months, relations are healed and the American Ambassador returns. You forget – Papa Doc is a bulwark against Communism. There will be no Cuba and no Bay of Pigs here. Of course there are other reasons. Papa Doc's lobbyist in Washington is the lobbyist for certain American-owned mills (they grind grey flour for the people out of imported surplus wheat – it is astonishing how much money can be made out of the poorest of the poor with a little ingenuity). And then there's the great beef-racket. The poor here can eat meat no more than they can eat cake, so I suppose they don't suffer when all the beef that exists goes to the American market – it doesn't matter to the importers that there are no standards here of cattle-raising – it goes into tins for underdeveloped countries paid for by American aid, of course. It wouldn't affect the Americans if this trade ceased, but it would affect the particular Washington politician who receives one cent for every pound exported.'

‘Do you despair of any future?'

‘No, I don't despair, I don't believe in despair, but our problems won't be solved by the Marines. We have had experience of the Marines. I'm not sure I wouldn't fight for Papa Doc if the Marines came. At least he's Haitian. No, the job has to be done with our own hands. We are an evil slum floating a few miles from Florida, and no American will help us with arms or money or counsel. We learned a few years back what their counsel meant. There was a resistance group here who were in touch with a sympathizer in the American Embassy: they were promised all kinds of moral support, but the information went straight back to the
C
.
I
.
A
. and from the
C
.
I
.
A
. by a very direct route to Papa Doc. You can imagine what happened to the group. The State Department didn't want any disturbance in the Caribbean.'