The Comedians

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose a body to love. As my mother had.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘God knows. Isn’t that enough for what’s left of a lifetime? I’m nearly sixty now.’

  ‘Your mother was a Catholic.’

  ‘Not much of one.’

  ‘I retain a faith, even if it’s only the truth of certain economic laws, but you’ve lost yours.’

  ‘Have I? Perhaps I never had one. Anyway it’s a limitation to believe, isn’t it?’

  We sat in silence for a while with empty glasses. Then Doctor Magiot said, ‘I had a message from Philipot. He’s in the mountains behind Aux Cayes, but he plans to move north. He has a dozen men with him, including Joseph. I hope the others aren’t cripples. Two lame men are enough. He wants to join with the guerrillas near the Dominican border – there are said to be thirty men there.’

  ‘What an army! Forty-two men.’

  ‘Castro had twelve.’

  ‘But you can’t tell me that Philipot is a Castro.’

  ‘He thinks he can establish a base near the frontier for training . . . Papa Doc has chased the peasants away for a depth of ten kilometres, so there is a possibility of secrecy, if not of recruits . . . He needs Jones.’

  ‘Why Jones?’

  ‘He has a great belief in Jones.’

  ‘He would do much better to find himself a Bren.’

  ‘Training is more important than weapons at the start. You can always take weapons from the dead, but first you have to learn how to kill.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Doctor Magiot?’

  ‘At times they have to trust even one of us.’

  ‘One of you?’

  ‘A Communist.’

  ‘It’s a wonder you survive.’

  ‘If there were no Communists – most of our names are on the C.I.A. list – Papa Doc would cease to be a bulwark of the free world. There may be another reason too. I’m a good doctor. The day might arrive . . . he’s not immune . . .’

  ‘If only you could convert your stethoscope into something fatal.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve thought of that. But he will probably outlive me.’

  ‘French medicine is fond of suppositories and piqûres?’

  ‘They would be tested first by someone of no importance.’

  ‘And you really think that Jones . . . He’s only good to make a woman laugh.’

  ‘He had the right experience in Burma. The Japanese were cleverer than the Tontons Macoute.’

  ‘Oh yes, he boasts about that time. I hear he holds them spellbound in the embassy. He sings for his supper.’

  ‘He can’t want to spend his whole life in the embassy.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to die on the doorstep either.’

  ‘There are always means of evasion.’

  ‘He’d never risk it.’

  ‘He was risking a lot when he tried to swindle Papa Doc. Don’t underrate him. Just because he boasts a lot . . . And you can trap a man who boasts. You can call his bluff.’

  ‘Oh, don’t mistake me, Doctor Magiot. I want him out of the embassy every bit as much as Philipot can.’

  ‘And yet you put him there.’

  ‘I didn’t realize.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, that’s quite a different matter. I’d do anything . . .’

  Somebody was walking up the drive. The footsteps squealed on the wet leaves and the scraps of old coconut-shells. We both sat silent, waiting . . . In Port-au-Prince nobody walked at night. I wondered whether Doctor Magiot carried a gun. But it wasn’t in his character. Somebody halted at the edge of the trees where the drive turned. A voice called, ‘Mr Brown.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Have you no light?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Petit Pierre.’

  I was suddenly aware that Doctor Magiot was no longer with me. It was extraordinary how silently the big man could move when he chose.

  ‘I’ll fetch one,’ I called. ‘I am alone.’

  I felt my way back into the bar. I knew where I would find a torch. When I turned it on. I saw that the door into the kitchen-quarters was open. I came back with a lamp and Petit Pierre climbed the steps. It was weeks since I had seen those sharp ambiguous features. His jacket was sopping wet and he hung it on the back of a chair. I helped him to a glass of rum and awaited an explanation – it was unusual to see him after sundown.

  ‘My car broke down,’ he said, ‘I waited till the worst rain was over. The lights are late tonight in coming on.’

  I said mechanically – it was part of the small talk of Port-au-Prince, ‘Did they search you at the block?’

  ‘Not in this rain,’ he said. ‘There are no road-blocks when it rains. you can’t expect a militiaman to work in a storm.’

  ‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen you, Petit Pierre.’

  ‘I’ve been very busy.’

  ‘Surely there’s not much for your gossip-column?’

  He giggled in the dark. ‘There’s always something. Mr Brown, today is a great day in the history of Petit Pierre.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got married?’

  ‘No, no, no. Guess again.’

  ‘You’ve inherited a fortune?’

  ‘A fortune in Port-au-Prince? Oh no. Mr Brown, today I have installed a Hi-Fi-Stereo.’

  ‘Congratulations. Does it work?’

  ‘I haven’t bought any discs yet, so I cannot tell. I have ordered discs from Hamit of Juliette Greco, Françoise Hardy, Johnny Halliday . . .’

  ‘I’ve heard that Hamit isn’t with us any more.’

  ‘Why? What has happened?’

  ‘He’s disappeared.’

  ‘For once,’ Petit Pierre said, ‘you are ahead of me with the news. Who told you?’

  ‘I guard my sources.’

  ‘He went too often to the foreign embassies. It wasn’t wise.’

  Suddenly the lights came on, and for the first time I caught Petit Pierre off guard, brooding, disquieted, before he reacted to the light and said with his habitual gaiety, ‘I shall have to wait for my discs then.’

  ‘I have some records in the office I can lend you. I used to keep them for the guests.’

  ‘I was at the airport tonight,’ Petit Pierre said.

  ‘Did anyone get off?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. I didn’t expect to see him. People sometimes stay longer than they have planned in Miami and he has been away a long time, and what with all the trouble . . .’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Captain Concasseur.’

  I thought I knew now why Petit Pierre had made his friendly call – it was not just to tell me about the purchase of his Hi-Fi-Stereo. He had a warning to convey.

  ‘Has he been in trouble?’

  ‘Anyone who touches Major Jones is in trouble,’ Petit Pierre said. ‘The captain is very angry. He was much insulted in Miami – they say he spent two nights in a police station. Think of it! Captain Concasseur! He wants to rehabilitate himself.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By getting Major Jones somehow.’

  ‘Jones is safe in the embassy.’

  ‘He should stay there as long as he can. He had better not trust any safe-conduct. But who knows what attitude a new ambassador might take?’

  ‘What new ambassador?’

  ‘There is a rumour that the President has told Señor Pineda’s government that he is no longer persona grata. Of course there may be no truth in it. May I see your discs please? The rain is over and I must be going.’

  ‘Where have you left your car?’

  ‘At the side of the road below the block.’

  ‘I will drive you home,’ I said. I fetched my car from the garage. When I turned on the headlights I could see Doctor Magiot sitting patiently in his car. We didn’t speak.

  III

  After I had left Petit Pierre at the shack which he called his home I drove to the embassy. The guard at th
e gate stopped my car and peered inside before he let me through the gates. When I rang the bell I could hear the dog barking in the hall and Jones’s voice saying with the tone of an owner, ‘Quiet, Midge, quiet.’

  They were alone that night, the ambassador, Martha and Jones, and I had the impression of a family party. Pineda and Jones were playing gin-rummy – needless to say Jones was well ahead, while Martha sat in an armchair sewing. I had never before seen her with a needle in her fingers; it was as though Jones had brought into the house with him a kind of domesticity. Midge sat down at his feet as though he were the master, and Pineda raised his wounded unwelcoming eyes and said, ‘You will excuse us if we finish this party.’

  ‘Come and see Angel,’ Martha said; we went up the stairs together, and half-way up I heard Jones say, ‘I stop at two.’ On the landing we turned left, into the room of our quarrel, and she kissed me freely and happily. I told her of Petit Pierre’s rumour. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘no. It can’t be true,’ and then she added, ‘Luis has been worried about something the last few days.’

  ‘But if it should be true . . .’

  Martha said, ‘The new ambassador would have to keep Jones just the same. He couldn’t turn him out.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of Jones. I was thinking of ourselves.’ Could a woman continue to call a man by his surname, I wondered, if she were sleeping with him?

  She sat down on the bed and stared at the wall with a look of amazement as though the wall had suddenly come closer. ‘I don’t believe it’s true,’ she said. ‘I won’t believe it.’

  ‘It was bound to happen one day.’

  ‘I always thought . . . when Angel was old enough to understand . . .’

  ‘How old would I be by then?’

  ‘You’ve thought about it too,’ she accused me.

  ‘Yes, I’ve thought a lot about it. It was one of the reasons why I tried to sell the hotel in New York. I wanted money to go after you wherever you were sent. But nobody will ever buy the hotel now.’

  She said, ‘Darling, we’ll manage somehow, but Jones – it’s life or death for him.’

  ‘I suppose if we were still young we’d think it was life or death for us too. But now – “men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love”.’

  Jones called out from below, ‘The game’s finished’; his voice came into the room like a tactless stranger. ‘We’d better go,’ Martha said. ‘Don’t say anything, not until we know.’

  Pineda sat with the awful dog on his knees, stroking it; it accepted his caresses listlessly as though it wanted to be elsewhere, and it watched Jones with bleary devotion where he sat adding up the score. ‘I’m 1200 up,’ he said. ‘I’ll send to Hamit’s in the morning and buy bourbon biscuits for Angel.’

  ‘You spoil him,’ Martha said. ‘Buy something for yourself. To remember us by.’

  ‘As if I could ever forget,’ Jones said, and he looked at her, just as the dog on Pineda’s knees looked at Jones, with an expression mournful, dewy and a bit false at the same time.

  ‘Your information seems to be bad,’ I said. ‘Hamit has disappeared.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard,’ Pineda said. ‘Why . . . ?’

  ‘Petit Pierre thinks he has too many foreign friends.’

  ‘You must do something,’ Martha said. ‘Hamit helped us in so many ways.’ I remembered one of them, the small room with the brass bedstead and the mauve silk coverlet and the hard eastern chairs ranged against the wall. Those afternoons belonged to our easiest days.

  ‘What can I do?’ Pineda said. ‘The Secretary of the Interior will accept two of my cigars and tell me politely that Hamit is a citizen of Haiti.’

  ‘Give me my old company back,’ Jones said, ‘and I’d go through the police station like a dose of salts till I found him.’

  I couldn’t have asked for a quicker or better response: Magiot had said, ‘You can trap a man who boasts.’ When Jones spoke he looked at Martha with the expression of a young man seeking approval, and I could imagine all those domestic evenings when he had amused them with his stories of Burma. It was true he wasn’t young, but there was nearly ten years between us all the same.

  ‘There are a lot of police,’ I said.

  ‘If I had fifty of my own men I could take over the country. The Japs outnumbered us, and they knew how to fight . . .’

  Martha moved towards the door, but I stopped her. ‘Please don’t go.’ I needed her as a witness. She stayed, and Jones went on, suspecting nothing at all. ‘Of course they had us on the run at first in Malaya. We didn’t know a thing about guerrilla war then, but we learnt.’

  ‘Wingate,’ I said encouragingly, for fear he wouldn’t go far enough.

  ‘He was one of the best, but there are others I could name. I was proud enough of some of my own tricks.’

  ‘You could smell water,’ I reminded him.

  ‘That was something I hadn’t got to learn,’ he said. ‘It was born in me. Why, as a child . . .’

  ‘What a tragedy it is you are shut up here,’ I interrupted him. His childhood was too distant for my purpose. ‘There are men in the mountains now who only need to learn. Of course they’ve got Philipot.’

  It was like a duet between the two of us. ‘Philipot,’ he exclaimed, ‘he hasn’t a clue, old man. Do you know he came to see me? He wanted my help in training . . . He offered . . .’

  ‘Weren’t you tempted?’ I said.

  ‘I certainly was. One misses the old Burmese days. You can understand that. But, old man, I was in the government service. I hadn’t seen through them then. Perhaps I’m innocent, but a man’s only got to be straight with me . . . I trusted them . . . If I’d known what I know now . . .’

  I wondered what explanation he had given to Martha and Pineda for his flight. He had obviously elaborated a good deal on the story he had told me the night of his escape.

  ‘It’s a great pity you didn’t go with Philipot,’ I said.

  ‘A pity for both of us, old man. Of course, I’m not running him down. Philipot’s got courage. But I could have turned him, given the opportunity, into a first-rate commando. That attack on the police station – it was amateurish. He let most of them escape and the only arms he got . . .’

  ‘If another opportunity arose . . .’ No inexperienced mouse could have moved more recklessly towards the smell of cheese. ‘Oh, I’d go like a shot now,’ he said.

  I said, ‘If I could arrange for your escape . . . to join Philipot . . .’

  He hardly hesitated at all, for Martha’s eyes were on him. ‘Just show me the way, old man,’ he said. ‘Just show me the way.’

  Midge at that moment leapt upon his knees and licked his face, from nose to chin, as though to give the hero a long farewell; he made some obvious joke – for he was unaware then that the trap had really closed – which set Martha laughing, and I comforted myself that the days of laughter were numbered.

  ‘You have to be ready at a moment’s warning,’ I told him.

  ‘I travel light, old man,’ Jones said. ‘Not even a cocktail-case now.’ He could risk that reference; he was so sure of me . . .

  Doctor Magiot was sitting in my office, in the dark, although the lights had come on. I said, ‘I’ve hooked him. Nothing could have been easier.’

  ‘You sound very triumphant,’ he said. ‘But what is it after all? One man can’t win a war.’

  ‘No, I’ve other reasons for triumph.’

  Doctor Magiot spread a map out on my desk and we went over in detail the southern road to Aux Cayes. If I was to return alone I must appear to have no passenger.

  ‘But if they search the car?’

  ‘We will come to that.’

  I would need a police-pass for myself and a reason for my journey. ‘You must get a pass for Monday, the 12th . . .’ he told me. It would take the best part of a week for him to get a reply from Philipot, so the 12th was the earliest date possible – ‘there’s hardly any moon then and that’s in your favour. You le
ave him here by the cemetery before you reach Aquin and drive on to Aux Cayes.’

  ‘If the Tontons Macoute find him before Philipot . . .’

  ‘You won’t get there before midnight, and no one goes into a cemetery after dark. If anyone finds him it will be a bad lookout for you,’ Magiot said. ‘They’ll make him talk.’

  ‘I suppose there’s no other possible way . . .’

  ‘I would never get a pass to leave Port-au-Prince or I would have offered . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry. I have a personal score to settle with Concasseur.’

  ‘We all have that. At least there is one thing we can depend on . . .’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The weather.’

  IV

  There was a Catholic mission and a hospital at Aux Cayes and I had thought up some story to tell of a package of theological books and a parcel of medicines which I had promised to deliver there. The story as it happened hardly mattered; the police were only concerned with the dignity of their office. A pass to Aux Cayes cost so many hours of waiting, that was all, in the smell of the zoo, under the snapshots of the dead rebels, in the steam of the stove-like day. The door of the office in which Mr Smith and I had first seen Concasseur was closed. Perhaps he was already in disgrace and my score settled for me.

  Just before one o’clock struck, my name was called and I went to a policeman at the desk. He began to fill in the innumerable details, of myself and my car, from my birth in Monte Carlo to the colour of my Humber. A sergeant came and looked over his shoulder. ‘You are mad,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll never get to Aux Cayes without a jeep.’

  ‘The Great Southern Highway,’ I said.

  ‘A hundred and eighty kilometres of mud and pot-holes. Even with a jeep it takes eight hours.’

  That afternoon Martha came to see me. As we were resting side by side she said to me, ‘Jones takes you seriously.’

  ‘I meant him to.’

  ‘You know you wouldn’t get past the first road-block.’

  ‘Are you so anxious about him?’

  ‘You are such a fool,’ she said. ‘I think if I were going away for ever, you’d spoil the last moment . . .’

  ‘Are you going away?’

  ‘One day. Of course. It’s certain. One always moves on.’