The Comedians

  ‘I hesitated to come – you must be glad of an evening sometimes to yourselves.’

  ‘I’m always glad to see my friends,’ he said and lapsed into silence. I wondered whether he suspected our relationship or whether indeed he knew.

  ‘I was sorry to hear that your boy had caught mumps.’

  ‘Yes. It is still at the painful stage. It’s terrible, isn’t it, to watch a child suffering?’

  ‘I suppose so. I’ve never had a child.’

  ‘Ah.’

  I looked at the portrait of the general. I felt that at least I should have been here on a cultural mission. He wore a row of medals and he had his hand on his sword-hilt.

  ‘How did you find New York?’ the ambassador asked.

  ‘Much as usual.’

  ‘I would like to see New York. I know only the airport.’

  ‘Perhaps one day you’ll be posted to Washington.’ It was an ill-considered compliment; there was little chance of such a posting if at his age – which I judged to be near fifty – he had stuck so long in Port-au-Prince.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said seriously, ‘I can never go there. You see my wife is German.’

  ‘I know that – but surely now . . .’

  He said, as though it were a natural occurrence in our kind of world, ‘Her father was hanged in the American zone. During the occupation.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Her mother brought her to South America. They had relations. She was only a child, of course.’

  ‘But she knows?’

  ‘Oh yes, she knows. There’s no secret about it. She remembers him with tenderness, but the authorities had good reason . . .’

  I wondered whether the world would ever again sail with such serenity through space as it seemed to do a hundred years ago. Then the Victorians kept skeletons in cupboards – but who cares about a mere skeleton now? Haiti was not an exception in a sane world: it was a small slice of everyday taken at random. Baron Samedi walked in all our graveyards. I remembered the hanged man in the Tarot pack. It must feel a little odd, I thought, to have a son called Angel whose grandfather had been hanged, and then I wondered how I might feel . . . We were never very careful about taking precautions, it could easily happen that my child . . . A grandchild too of a Tarot card.

  ‘After all, the children are innocent,’ he said. ‘Martin Bormann’s son is a priest now in the Congo.’

  But why, I wondered, tell me this fact about Martha? Sooner or later one always feels the need of a weapon against a mistress: he had slipped a knife up my sleeve to use against his wife when the moment of anger came.

  The man-servant opened the door and ushered in another visitor. I didn’t catch the name, but as he padded across the carpet I recognized the Syrian from whom a year ago we had rented a room. He gave me a smile of complicity and said, ‘Of course I know Mr Brown well. I did not know you had returned. And how did you find New York?’

  ‘Any news in town, Hamit?’ the ambassador asked.

  ‘The Venezuelan Embassy has another refugee.’

  ‘They will all be coming to me one day, I suppose,’ the ambassador said, ‘but misery likes company.’

  ‘A terrible thing happened this morning, Excellency. They stopped Doctor Philipot’s funeral and stole the coffin.’

  ‘I heard rumours. I didn’t believe them.’

  ‘They are true enough,’ I said. ‘I was there. I saw the whole . . .’

  ‘Monsieur Henri Philipot,’ the man-servant announced, and a young man advanced towards us through the silence with a slight polio limp. I recognized him. He was the nephew of the ex-Minister, and I had met him once before in happier days, one of a little group of writers and artists who used to gather at the Trianon. I remembered him reading aloud some poems of his own – well-phrased, melodious, a little decadent and vieux jeu, with echoes of Baudelaire. How far away those times seemed now. All that was left to recall them were the rum punches of Joseph.

  ‘Your first refugee, Excellency,’ Hamit said. ‘I was half expecting you, Monsieur Philipot.’

  ‘Oh no,’ the young man said, ‘not that. Not yet. I understand when you claim asylum you have to make a promise not to indulge in political action.’

  ‘What political action are you proposing to take?’ I asked.

  ‘I am melting down some old family silver.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the ambassador said. ‘Have one of my cigars, Henri. They are real Havana.’

  ‘My dear and beautiful aunt talks about a silver bullet. But one bullet might go astray. I think we need quite a number of them. Besides we have to deal with three devils not one. Papa Doc, the head of the Tontons Macoute and the colonel of the palace guard.’

  ‘It’s a good thing,’ the ambassador said, ‘that they bought arms and not microphones with American aid.’

  ‘Where were you this morning?’ I asked.

  ‘I arrived from Cap Haïtien too late for the funeral. Perhaps it was a lucky thing. I was stopped at every barrier on the road. I think they thought my land-rover was the first tank of an invading army.’

  ‘How is everything up there?’

  ‘Only too quiet. The place swarms with the Tontons Macoute. Judging by the sun-glasses you might be in Beverly Hills.’

  Martha came in while he spoke and I was angry when she looked first at him, though I knew it was prudent to ignore me. She greeted him a shade too warmly, it seemed to me. ‘Henri,’ she said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I was afraid for you. Stay with us for a few days.’

  ‘I must stay with my aunt, Martha.’

  ‘Bring her too. And the child.’

  ‘The time hasn’t come for that.’

  ‘Don’t leave it too late.’ She turned to me with a pretty meaningless smile which she kept in store for second secretaries and said, ‘We are a third-rate embassy, aren’t we, until we have a few refugees of our own?’

  ‘How is your boy?’ I asked. I meant the question to be as meaningless as her smile.

  ‘The pain is better now. He wants very much to see you.’

  ‘Why should he want that?’

  ‘He always likes to see our friends. Otherwise he feels left out.’

  Henri Philipot said, ‘If only we had white mercenaries as Tshombe had. We Haitians haven’t fought for forty years except with knives and broken bottles. We need a few men of guerrilla experience. We have mountains just as high as those in Cuba.’

  ‘But not the forests,’ I said, ‘to hide in. Your peasants have destroyed those.’

  ‘We held out a long time against the American Marines all the same.’ He added bitterly, ‘I say “we”, but I belong to a later generation. In my generation we have learnt to paint – you know they buy Benoit’s pictures now for the Museum of Modern Art (of course they cost far less than a European primitive). Our novelists are published in Paris – and now they live there too.’

  ‘And your poems?’

  ‘They were quite melodious, weren’t they, but they sang the Doctor into power. All our negatives made that one great black positive. I even voted for him. Do you know that I haven’t an idea how to use a Bren? Do you know how to use a Bren?’

  ‘It’s an easy weapon. You could learn in five minutes.’

  ‘Then teach me.’

  ‘First we would need a Bren.’

  ‘Teach me with diagrams and empty match-boxes, and perhaps one day I’ll find the Bren.’

  ‘I know someone better equipped than I am as a teacher, but he’s in prison at the moment.’ I told him about ‘Major’ Jones.

  ‘So they beat him up?’ he asked with satisfaction.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good. White men react badly to a beating-up.’

  ‘He seemed to take it very easily. I almost had the impression he was used to it.’

  ‘You think he has some real experience?’

  ‘He told me he had fought in Burma, but I’ve only got his word for that.’

  ‘And you don’t
believe it?’

  ‘There’s something about him I don’t believe, not altogether. I was reminded, when I talked to him, of a time when I was young and I persuaded a London restaurant to take me on because I could talk French – I said I’d been a waiter at Fouquet’s. I was expecting all the time that someone would call my bluff, but no one did. I made a quick sale of myself, like a reject with the price-label stuck over the flaw. And again, not so long ago, I sold myself just as successfully as an art expert – no one called my bluff then either. I wonder sometimes whether Jones isn’t playing the same game. I remember looking at him one night on the boat from America – it was after the ship’s concert – and wondering, are you and I both comedians?’

  ‘They can say that of most of us. Wasn’t I a comedian with my verses smelling of Les Fleurs du Mal, published on handmade paper at my own expense? I posted them to the leading French reviews. That was a mistake. My bluff was called. I never read a single criticism – except by Petit Pierre. The same money would have bought me a Bren perhaps.’ (It was a magic word to him now – Bren.)

  The ambassador said, ‘Come on, cheer up, let us all be comedians together. Take one of my cigars. Help yourself at the bar. My Scotch is good. Perhaps even Papa Doc is a comedian.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Philipot said, ‘he is real. Horror is always real.’

  The ambassador said, ‘We mustn’t complain too much of being comedians – it’s an honourable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed – that’s all. We are bad comedians, we aren’t bad men.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Martha said in English, as though she were addressing me directly, ‘I’m no comedian.’ We had forgotten her. She beat with her hands on the back of the sofa and cried to them in French, ‘You talk so much. Such rubbish. My child vomited just now. You can smell it still on my hands. He was crying with pain. You talk about acting parts. I’m not acting any part. I do something. I fetch a basin. I fetch aspirin. I wipe his mouth. I take him into my bed.’

  She began to weep standing behind the sofa. ‘My dear,’ the ambassador said with embarrassment. I couldn’t even go to her or look at her too closely: Hamit watched me, ironic and comprehending. I remembered the stains we had left on his sheets, and I wondered whether he had changed them himself. He knew as many intimate things as a prostitute’s dog.

  ‘You put us all to shame,’ Philipot said.

  She turned and left us, but her heel came off on the edge of the carpet and she stumbled and nearly fell in the doorway. I followed her and put my hand under her elbow. I knew that Hamit was watching me, but the ambassador, if he noticed anything, covered up well. ‘Tell Angel I’ll be up in half an hour to say good-night.’ I closed the door behind me. She had taken off her shoes and was struggling to fasten the heel. I took it from her.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you another pair?’

  ‘I’ve twenty other pairs. Does he know, do you think?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

  ‘Will that make it any easier?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps we won’t have to be comedians any more.’

  ‘You said you were no comedian.’

  ‘I exaggerated, didn’t I? But all that talk irritated me. It made every one of us seem cheap and useless and self-pitying. Perhaps we are, but we needn’t revel in it. At least I do things, don’t I, even if they are bad things? I didn’t pretend not to want you. I didn’t pretend I loved you that first evening.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘I love Angel,’ she said defensively, walking up the wide Victorian staircase in her stockinged feet. We came to a long passage lined with numbered rooms.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of rooms for refugees.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Find a room for us now.’

  ‘It’s too risky.’

  ‘It’s as safe as the car. And what does it matter, if he knows . . . ?’

  ‘“In my own house” he would say, just as you would say “in our Peugeot”. Men always measure betrayal in degrees. You wouldn’t mind so much, would you, if it were someone else’s Cadillac?’

  ‘We’re wasting time. He gave us half an hour.’

  ‘You said you’d see Angel.’

  ‘Then afterwards . . . ?’

  ‘Perhaps – I don’t know. Let me think.’

  She opened the third door down, and I found myself where I never wanted to be, in the bedroom she shared with her husband. The two beds were both double beds: their rose-coloured sheets seemed to fill the room like a carpet. There was a tall pier-glass in which he could watch her prepare for bed. Now I had begun to feel a liking for the man I saw no reason why Martha should not like him too. He was fat, but there are women who love fat men, as they love hunchbacks or the one-legged. He was possessive, but there are women who enjoy slavery.

  Angel sat upright against two pink pillows; the mumps had not noticeably increased the fatness of his face. I said, ‘Hi!’ I don’t know how to talk to children. He had brown expressionless Latin eyes like his father – not the blue Saxon eyes of the hanged men. Martha had those.

  ‘I am ill,’ he said in a tone of moral superiority.

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘I sleep here with my mother. My father sleeps in the dressing-room. Until the fever has gone. I have a temperature of . . .’

  I said, ‘What’s that you’re playing with?’

  ‘A puzzle.’ He said to Martha, ‘Is there no one else downstairs?’

  ‘Monsieur Hamit is there and Henri.’

  ‘I would like them to come and see me too.’

  ‘Perhaps they have never had mumps. They might be afraid of catching it.’

  ‘Has Monsieur Brown had mumps?’

  Martha hesitated, and he took note of her hesitation like a cross-examining counsel. I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does Monsieur Brown play cards?’ he asked with apparent irrelevance.

  ‘No. That is – I don’t know,’ she said as though she feared a trap.

  ‘I don’t like cards,’ I said.

  ‘My mother used to. She went out nearly every night playing cards – before you went away.’

  ‘We have to go now,’ Martha said. ‘Papa will be up in half an hour to say good-night.’

  He held out the puzzle to me and said, ‘Do this.’ It was one of those little rectangular boxes with glass sides that contain a picture of a clown and two sockets where his eyes should be and two little beads of steel which have to be shaken into the holes. I turned it this way and that way; I would get one bead in place and then in trying to fix the other I would dislodge the first. The child watched me with scorn and dislike.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m no good at this sort of thing. I can’t do it.’

  ‘You aren’t properly trying,’ he said. ‘Go on.’ I could feel the time I had left to be alone with Martha disappearing like sand in an egg-timer, and I could almost believe that he could see it too. The devilish beads chased each other round the edge of the box and ran across the eye-sockets without falling in; they took dives into corners. I would get them moving slowly downhill towards the sockets on a low gradient and then with the slightest tilt to guide them they plunged to the bottom of the box. All had to be begun again – I hardly moved the box at all now except by a quiver of my nerves.

  ‘I’ve got one in.’

  ‘That’s not enough,’ he said implacably.

  I flung the box back at him. ‘All right. You show me.’

  He gave me a treacherous, unfriendly grin. He picked the box up and holding it over his left hand he hardly seemed to move it at all. One bead even mounted against the slope, tarried on the edge of a socket and fell in.

  ‘One,’ he said.

  The other bead moved straight for the other eye, shaved the socket, turned and dropped into the hole. ‘Two,’ he said.

  ‘What’s in your left hand?’

  ‘
Nothing.’

  ‘Then show me nothing.’

  He opened his fist and showed a small magnet concealed there. ‘Promise you won’t tell,’ he said.

  ‘And what if I won’t?’

  We might have been adults quarrelling over a trick at cards. He said, ‘I can keep secrets if you can.’ His brown eyes gave nothing away.

  ‘I promise,’ I said.

  Martha kissed him and smoothed his pillows and laid him flat and turned on a small night-lamp beside the bed. ‘Will you come to bed soon?’ he asked.

  ‘When my guests have gone.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘How can I tell?’

  ‘You can always say that I am ill. I may vomit again. The aspirin isn’t working. I’m in pain.’

  ‘Just lie still. Close your eyes. Papa will be up soon. Then I expect they will all go away and I will come to bed.’

  ‘You haven’t said good-night,’ he accused me.

  ‘Good-night.’ I put a false friendly hand on his head and ruffled his tough dry hair. My hand smelt afterwards like a mouse.

  In the corridor I said to Martha, ‘Even he seems to know.’

  ‘How can he possibly?’

  ‘What did he mean then by keeping secrets?’

  ‘It’s a game all children play.’ But how difficult it was to consider him a child.

  She said, ‘He has suffered a great deal of pain. Don’t you think he’s behaving very well?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Very well.’

  ‘Quite like a grown-up?’

  ‘Oh yes. I thought that myself.’

  I took her wrist and drew her down the corridor. ‘Who sleeps in this room?’

  ‘No one.’

  I opened the door and pulled her in. Martha said, ‘No. Can’t you see it’s impossible?’

  ‘I’ve been away three months and we’ve made love only once since then.’

  ‘I didn’t make you go away to New York. Can’t you feel I’m not in the mood, not tonight?’

  ‘You asked me to come tonight.’

  ‘I wanted to see you. That’s all. Not to make love.’

  ‘You don’t love me, do you?’

  ‘You shouldn’t ask questions like that.’