The Comedians (6 page)

‘Have you written much else?' I asked.

‘Nothing, sir. Oh, except once – about the funeral of a child.'

‘And now, gentlemen,' the purser announced, ‘if you will look at our programme you will see that we have come to a very special turn promised us by Mr Fernandez.'

And a very special turn it proved to be, for Mr Fernandez broke as suddenly into tears as Mr Baxter had broken into the trembles. Had he drunk too much champagne? Or had he been moved genuinely by Mr Baxter's recitation? I doubted that, for he seemed to have no words of English except his yes and no. But now he wept, sitting straight upright in his chair; he wept with great dignity, and I thought: ‘I have never seen a coloured man weep before.' I had seen them laughing, angry, frightened, but never overcome like this man with inexplicable grief. We sat silent and watched him; there was nothing any of us could do, we couldn't communicate. His body shook slightly, just as the saloon shook with the vibration of the ship's engines, and I thought that this, after all, was a more suitable way than music and songs to approach the dark republic. There was plenty for all of us to weep for where we were going.

Then I saw the Smiths for the first time at their best. I had disliked the quick rap Mrs Smith had given poor Baxter – I suppose that any poem about war was offensive to her; but she was the only one of us now to move to Mr Fernandez' help. She sat down beside him, saying not a word, and took his hand in hers; with the other she stroked his pink palm. She might have been a mother comforting her child among strangers. Mr Smith followed her and sat down on Mr Fernandez' other side, so that they formed a little group apart. Mrs Smith made small clucking noises as she might have done to her child, and, as suddenly as he had begun, Mr Fernandez ceased to weep. He stood up, lifted Mrs Smith's old horny hand to his lips, and strode out of the saloon.

‘Well,' Baxter exclaimed, ‘what on earth do you suppose . . . ?'

‘Very strange,' the purser said. ‘Very strange indeed.'

‘A bit of a damper,' Jones said. He held up the champagne bottle, but it was empty and he put it down again. The conductor picked up his toasting-fork and returned to the kitchen.

‘The poor man has troubles,' Mrs Smith said; it was all the explanation needed, and she looked at her hand as though she expected to see on the skin the impress of Mr Fernandez' full lips.

‘A real damper,' Jones repeated.

Mr Smith said, ‘If I may make a suggestion, perhaps we should bring the entertainment to a close now with Auld Lang Syne. Midnight is not far off. I wouldn't like Mr Fernandez, all alone down there, to think that we continued – skylarking.' It was hardly the word I would have used to describe our celebrations so far, but I agreed with the principle. We had no orchestra now to accompany us, but Mr Jones sat down at the piano and picked out a fair rendering of the awful tune. Rather self-consciously we joined hands and sang. Without the cook and Jones and Mr Fernandez we made a very small circle. We had hardly yet experienced ‘Old Acquaintance', and yet our cups were already exhausted.

VII

It was well after midnight when Jones rapped on my cabin door. I was going through some papers with the idea of destroying anything which might be unfavourably interpreted by the authorities – for instance there had been an exchange of letters concerning the possible sale of my hotel and in some of them there were dangerous references to the political situation. I was sunk in my thoughts and I responded nervously to his knock as though I were already back in the republic and a Tonton Macoute might be at the door.

‘I'm not keeping you awake?' he asked.

‘I haven't started undressing.'

‘I was sorry about tonight – it didn't go as well as I wished. Of course the material was limited. You know, I have a kind of thing about a last night on board – one may never see each other again. It's like New Year's Eve, when you want the old codger to go out well. Isn't there something they call a good death? I didn't like that black fellow crying that way. It was as though he saw things. In the future. Of course I'm not a religious man.' He looked at me shrewdly. ‘You neither I would say.'

I had the impression he had come to my cabin for a purpose – not merely to express his disappointment at the entertainment, but perhaps to make a request or to ask a question. If he had been in a position to threaten me, I would even have suspected he had come for that. He wore his ambiguity like a loud suit and he seemed proud of it, like a man who says ‘You must take me as you find me.' He continued, ‘The purser says you really own that hotel . . .'

‘Did you doubt it?'

‘Not exactly. But you didn't seem the type. We don't always put the right descriptions on our passports,' he exclaimed in a tone sweetly reasonable.

‘What have you got on yours?'

‘Company director. And that's quite true – in a way,' he admitted.

‘Anyway it's vague enough,' I said.

‘And what's on yours?'

‘Business man.'

‘That's even vaguer,' he exclaimed triumphantly.

Interrogation, partly concealed, was to be the basis of our relationship in the short time it lasted: we would snatch at small clues, though in great matters we would usually pretend to accept the other's story. I suppose those of us who spend a large part of our lives in dissembling, whether to a woman, to a partner, even to our own selves, begin to smell each other out. Jones and I learnt a lot about one another before the end, for one uses a little truth whenever one can. It is a form of economy.

He said, ‘You've lived in Port-au-Prince. You must know some of the big boys there?'

‘They come and go.'

‘In the army, for example?'

‘They've all gone. Papa Doc doesn't trust the army. The chief-of-staff, I believe, is hiding in the Venezuelan Embassy. The general's safe in Santo Domingo. There are some colonels left in the Dominican Embassy, and there are three colonels and two majors in prison – if they are alive. Did you have introductions to any of them?'

‘Not exactly,' he said, but he looked uneasy.

‘It is well not to present introductions till you are sure your man is still alive.'

‘I have a chit from the Haitian consul-general in New York recommending me . . .'

‘We've been at sea three days, remember. A lot can happen in that time. The consul-general may have sought asylum . . .'

He said as the purser had done, ‘I wonder what brings
you
back, conditions being what they are.'

The truth was less fatiguing than invention and the hour was late. ‘I found I missed the place,' I said. ‘Security can get on the nerves just as much as danger.'

He said, ‘Yes, I thought I had had my fill of danger in the war.'

‘What unit were you in?'

He grinned at me; I had played a card too obviously. ‘Oh, I was a bit of a drifter in those days,' he said. ‘I moved around. Tell me, what kind of chap's our ambassador?'

‘We haven't got one. He was expelled more than a year ago.'

‘The chargé then.'

‘He does what he can. When he can.'

‘We seem to be sailing towards a strange country.'

He went to the porthole as though he expected to be able to see the land across the last two hundred miles of sea, but there was nothing to be observed except the light of the cabin lying on the surface of the dark swell like yellow oil. ‘Not exactly a tourist paradise any longer?'

‘No. It never really was.'

‘But perhaps a few opportunities for a man of imagination?'

‘It depends.'

‘On what?'

‘The kind of scruples you have.'

‘Scruples?' He looked out into the rolling night and he seemed to be weighing the question with some care. ‘Oh, well . . . scruples cost a lot . . . Why did you suppose that nigger really wept?'

‘I've no idea.'

‘It was an odd evening. I hope we do better next time.'

‘Next time?'

‘I was thinking of when this year ends. Wherever we may be.' He came away from the porthole and said, ‘Oh well, it's time for shut-eye, isn't it? And Smith, what do you suppose
he's
up to?'

‘Why should he be up to anything?'

‘You may be right. Don't mind me. I'm going now. The trip's over. No getting out of it now.' He added with his hand on the door, ‘I tried to cheer things up, but it wasn't much of a success. Shut-eye's the answer to all, isn't it? Or that's how I see it.'

CHAPTER
2

I
WAS
returning without much hope to a country of fear and frustration, and yet every familiar feature as the
Medea
drew in gave me a kind of happiness. The huge mass of Kenscoff leaning over the town was as usual half in deep shadow; there was a glassy sparkle of late sun off the new buildings near the port which had been built for an international exhibition in so-called modern style. A stone Columbus watched us coming in – it was there Martha and I used to rendezvous at night until the curfew closed us in separate prisons, I in my hotel, she in her embassy, without even a telephone which worked to communicate by. She would sit in her husband's car in the dark and flash her headlights on at the sound of my Humber. I wondered whether in the last month, now that the curfew was over, she had chosen a different rendezvous, and I wondered with whom. That she had found a substitute I had no doubt. No one banks on fidelity nowadays.

I was lost in too many difficult thoughts to remember my fellow-passengers. There was no message waiting for me from the British Embassy, so I assumed that at the moment all was well. At immigration and customs there was the habitual confusion. We were the only boat, and yet the shed was full: porters, taxi-drivers who hadn't had a fare in weeks, police, and the occasional Tonton Macoute in his black glasses and his soft hat, and beggars, beggars everywhere. They seeped through every chink like water in the rainy season. A man without legs sat under the customs counter like a rabbit in a hutch, miming in silence.

A familiar figure forced his way towards me. As a rule, he haunted the airfield, and I had not expected to see him here. He was a journalist known to everyone as Petit Pierre – a
métis
in a country where the half-castes are the aristocrats waiting for the tumbrils to roll. He was believed by some to have connexions with the Tontons, for how otherwise had he escaped a beating-up or worse? And yet there were occasionally passages in his gossip-column that showed an odd satirical courage – perhaps he depended on the police not to read between the lines.

He seized me by the hands as if we were the oldest of friends and addressed me in English, ‘Why, Mr Brown, Mr Brown.'

‘How are you, Petit Pierre?'

He giggled up at me, standing on his pointed toe-caps, for he was a tiny figure of a man. He was just as I had remembered him, hilarious. Even the time of day was humorous to him. He had the quick movements of a monkey, and he seemed to swing from wall to wall on ropes of laughter. I had always thought that, when the time came, and surely it must one day come in his precarious defiant livelihood, he would laugh at his executioner, as a Chinaman is supposed to do.

‘It's good to see you, Mr Brown. How are the bright lights of Broadway? Marilyn Monroe, lots of good bourbon, speak-easies . . . ?' He was a little out of date, for he had not been further than Kingston, Jamaica, in thirty years. ‘Give me your passport, Mr Brown. Where are your luggage tickets?' He waved them above his head, pushing through the mob, arranging everything, for he knew everyone. Even the customs man allowed my baggage to pass unopened. He exchanged some words with a Tonton Macoute at the door and by the time I emerged he had found me a taxi. ‘Sit down, sit down, Mr Brown. Your luggage is just coming.'

‘How are things here?' I asked.

‘All as usual. All quiet.'

‘No curfew?'

‘Why should there be a curfew, Mr Brown?'

‘The papers reported rebels in the north.'

‘The papers? American papers? You don't believe what the American papers say, do you?' He leant his head in at the taxi door and said with his odd hilarity, ‘You can't think how happy I am, Mr Brown, to see you back.' I almost believed him.

‘Why not? Don't I belong here?'

‘Of course you belong here, Mr Brown. You are a true friend of Haiti.' He giggled again. ‘All the same many true friends have left us recently.' He lowered his voice just a tone, ‘The government has been forced to take over some empty hotels.'

‘Thanks for the warning.'

‘It would have been wrong to let the properties deteriorate.'

‘A kindly thought. Who lives in them now?'

He giggled. ‘Guests of the government.'

‘Do they run to guests now?'

‘There was a Polish mission, but they went away rather soon. Here comes your luggage, Mr Brown.'

‘Shall I get to the Trianon before the lights go out?'

‘Yes – if you go direct.'

‘Where else should I go?'

Petit Pierre chuckled and said, ‘Let me come with you, Mr Brown. There are road-blocks now between Port-au-Prince and Pétionville.'

‘All right. Get in. Anything to avoid trouble,' I said.

‘What were you doing in New York, Mr Brown?'

I replied truthfully, ‘I was trying to find someone to buy my hotel.'

‘You had no luck?'

‘No luck at all.'

‘No enterprise in such a great country?'