Thanks. Well, be quick.
(He sits on the throne.)
What is it you want, Commissioner?
CHRISTOPHE
Patience, Yo … Jean … I mean Your Majesty.
(Laughter.)
DESSALINES
You are rude, Henri, I am a king, no political toy.
CHRISTOPHE
And I was a general before I was a schoolboy.
PÉTION
Please, please.
DESSALINES
You envy me, you wear a hurt pride.
CHRISTOPHE
I consider the articles expressed
In your constitution, and I find,
Hidden in your assembly’s salad of words, dressed
In a kind of poison to any freedom,
An evidence of autocracy.
You have decided to assume a monarchy
Before Toussaint’s breath faded from the glass of history;
You consulted a clique only, a class
With twisted personal interests at its mind’s end.
In this rule there is an end
Of democracy, only a long exploitation
And a bitter harvest, an expiration
Of the breath of decency, financial depression;
And I was never asked to give my impression.
DESSALINES
You see what it amounts to, gentlemen; Christophe’s advice
On a subject we all have agreed on twice;
Consider the popular petition:
I rule because of the people’s decision.
CHRISTOPHE
Nonsense, rubbish.
(They are all shocked to an electric silence.)
DESSALINES
I am the King! Henri, never
Forget that. Sit back in your places.
CHRISTOPHE
Then rule like one,
With a king’s grace, not a king’s grimaces,
You keep your own people in virtual slavery.
DESSALINES
I am the King. Your present bravery
Goes well on my battlefields, not in my chambers.
CHRISTOPHE
Haiti must suffer from those who hate her.
DESSALINES
Mind you do not go too far.
So I hate Haiti? I wish you were King.
CHRISTOPHE
That is not my wish.
DESSALINES
Every slave dreams in extremes,
And we were both, Henri.
You think I am tricking you? I am your friend.
CHRISTOPHE
I am the friend of the people.
We must avoid opportunities of separation;
You kill offenders because of their complexion;
Where is the ultimate direction of this nation,
An abattoir of war?
DESSALINES
I who was a slave am now a king,
And being a king, remember I was slave;
What shall I live as now, a slave or king?
Being this King chains me to public breath
Worse than chains. I cannot have a masque
Before some slave scoops up a gutter tale
To fling into my face; I cannot drink
Red wine unless the linen rustles blood; I cannot break bread
Before an archbishop canonizes a body
Broken, stuck like an albatross on the hill of skulls.
Well, I will not listen.
White men are here; for every scar
(He bares his tunic.)
Raw on my unforgiving stomach, I’ll murder children,
I’ll riot. I have not grown lunatic, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.
You think I am not aware of your intrigues,
Mulattos and whites, Brelle and Pétion;
I am a king: Argue with history.
Ask history and the white cruelties
Who broke Boukmann, Ogé, Chavannes; ask Rochambeau.
If you will not comply, I’ll go.
(He exits.)
CHRISTOPHE
That is the crazy graph of power,
The zenith of his climb; he thinks himself colossus, but size
Spells ruin, the earth is cracking now under his girth.
We must look after us, or he will …
A lunatic king.
SYLLA
If I could only warn, a grey-haired harbinger,
Helpless as time to warn her pupils;
There is nothing more to life, gentlemen,
Than to find a positive function for the money in the blood
To culture peace.
The meeting is over,
Nothing gained again. Good night. Brelle
Will be amused and terrified.
(Exit all but CHRISTOPHE and PÉTION.)
CHRISTOPHE
Sylla hangs to the archbishop
Like an innocent child; with wagging tongue
Around a father’s knee, preparing for death
By logic and loves.
PÉTION
What is it you want, Henri?
(CHRISTOPHE closes the door.)
CHRISTOPHE
Sit down.
PÉTION
Yes?
CHRISTOPHE
I think it is boredom that has put him so;
Blood grows into a habit with a born butcher;
He has grown into something monstrous
From thirteen years of war …
PÉTION
I am not as gentle as he thinks;
War has begun to crease my face with savagery;
It is worn like an old cavalry boot;
But if he thinks a king’s authority
Beggars morality, he had better reject priests.
CHRISTOPHE
However, he has never sought to harm the clergy;
Although he does not find much favour with the archbishop,
He has never killed a priest.
PÉTION
To think that for two days now he has been
Martyring children with a tired sword! He is a model
Of horror. Dessalines is only a beast;
He goes to blood with the joy that I go to a feast.
There must be some revision
Of his absurd and useless decision.
CHRISTOPHE (Slyly)
You are thinking of treason and anarchy.
Has he not good reason to adopt a monarchy?
PÉTION
Because he fought to protect his country
Does he think he has bought its soul and its duty?
For my part I do not care who rules,
As long as he loves his country and rules
Well. But he commands a tyranny of fools,
Who spell wounds, not words, their sabres their schools;
I will not be one and stain
The memory of Toussaint’s intention;
I will resist tyranny on pain of expulsion.
CHRISTOPHE
His last deeds fill me to the brim with revulsion.
He is not fit to rule, but on revision,
I find that our patriotism leaps the boundary
Of duty, and this is our quandary:
Whether our duty is to country or King;
This is the problem, between the spirit
Of love and the material duty: that is the thing.
PÉTION
His death is for his country’s merit.
CHRISTOPHE
And when he is dead, who shall inherit?
You of course are more fit.
PÉTION
That is a matter solved after the riddle;
You want to begin somewhere in the middle.
As for myself, I halt at assuming
A blood-whispering cloak, gripping the sceptre he gripped,
Squatting on the throne from which he slipped.
Besides, you are better equipped.
I am a mulatto, the Negroes are in the majority,
Present rule
is only your authority.
Or, after he is dead, with a twin constituency
We could contest rule.
CHRISTOPHE
You mean one of us King?
PÉTION
I was thinking
Rather in terms of a presidency.
CHRISTOPHE
You would have the public vote.
PÉTION
I’m sure I would not.
Mon Dieu, look how time has made us politicians
Rather than soldiers!
CHRISTOPHE
So I must kill my friend. How will we do it?
On a matter of a massacre, I’m one of the expert technicians.
But to kill a friend …
PÉTION
That is only the only means to an end.
CHRISTOPHE
It is true that the country is ruined.
And the French may return. It will have to be done
Secretly, not in an open rebellion.
One of my soldiers … Pétion, you must go south
To avoid suspicion; please do not mistake my purpose.
Besides, he swears that he will deal with the mulattos
After he slaughters the whites;
Wait at Les Cayes, or stay near Port-au-Prince;
I will arm your forces to seize the sceptre from him.
Meanwhile, I will remain here and hide the snake
In my pawn’s fawning; he still considers me.
Mass power in the South; I will weaken
Him by duplicity. I think the time is ripe:
The fruit is going to be wrenched from the stalk.
PÉTION
And the other generals, Sylla, Paul Prompt, Blondin—can
They be trusted to a man?
CHRISTOPHE
Each of them thinks nightly of being a king.
It is a peasant’s vanities.
We will tell them nothing.
PÉTION
And if they know …
CHRISTOPHE
To know is nothing; to hinder is execution.
PÉTION
You are firm in your dreams as in your solution.
CHRISTOPHE
What do you know of my dreams?
PÉTION
Nothing except that by hiding them you admit
Their existence. Excuse me. I must go south.
God help us in our purposes as in our ambitions.
CHRISTOPHE
God help our ambitions to the gates of our purposes.
(PÉTION shakes his hand and leaves.)
I must do it.
(A knock.)
Who is it?
Come in.
(A MESSENGER enters.)
Speak, soldier, why are you so dirty?
MESSENGER
I am all out of breath, General.
CHRISTOPHE
Not general, commissioner. Next time gather,
Please, your breath in the yard, rather
Than enter scared to death.
MESSENGER
The King sent me in anger.
He says that now there is no more danger.
CHRISTOPHE
Give me the message in the rough.
MESSENGER
Well, sir,
The soldiers, idle in their narrow barracks,
Tired already of thirteen years of war,
Had planned a liberation from their captains.
Next day the Emperor came riding through the ranks,
Waving a sword that sparkled in the sun,
Commanding all his blacks to slaughter whites.
And there were some of us who, tasting blood,
Hearing this trumpet summon like a wound,
Felt the old call: we leapt into his arms,
And held our smoking rifles by the paws;
He held us burning through the sleeping streets,
Meeting a herd of idlers, who raggedly conjured
A vomit from the horn of plenty.
Two hours we raged the city, raping, rioting,
Turning with slaughter the chapels into brothels.
I skewered a white martyr under an altar,
We flung one girl in an uncertain arc
Into the bloody bosom of the pier, and over us
This King rode, looking as though he chewed his corpses,
His eyes all arson. And now that massacre
Tires him, he comes home to his bed,
To tell the generals that Haiti,
Thank him, is safe,
From prejudice, from pain.
CHRISTOPHE
You have done your duty, I must do mine.
(The MESSENGER exits.)
I cannot kill my friend.
But this King is not my friend; our ambitions rub,
They want to sit on an only throne.
(Enter DESSALINES, dishevelled, sword in his hand.)
DESSALINES
Henri, my friend, you look ill.
CHRISTOPHE
I am not as ruddy as you.
DESSALINES
You mock my colour.
You cannot think a black king real.
CHRISTOPHE
I am black, too, but today I am ashamed.
You have red work on your hands.
DESSALINES
It was a necessary horror,
A crop of murders, necessary
Like death. I know it will not let me sleep from now.
CHRISTOPHE
You have no soul, no thought
Of paying afterwards?
DESSALINES
No, Henri, this is politics.
I cannot wear, Christ-like, an albatross
Around my neck; the wounds in my sides
Were dug by innocent white hands; a king
Makes them pay for it.
CHRISTOPHE
No twinge of soul?
DESSALINES
I act like a king; a king is whole;
A king’s wrongs are a king’s privileges.
CHRISTOPHE
You wound and use authority for bandages.
You are sick, a peevish king with terrible whims.
Sit down, you are tired.
Scarcely an hour ago, it seems,
I was plotting with Pétion to assassinate you,
But I know now I cannot hate you.
I will admit our treason,
But it is past now, and your condition is the reason:
You are sick. We planned Pétion’s going south,
Rebellion against you with me in the north,
But no more. What is it, Jacques?…
DESSALINES
I carved a passage, rigorous as a dolphin
Through the red fun. Oh, three wars cannot size
Yesterday’s horror.
And yet I had no purpose for this fighting.
Have I gone mad, after long war?
Does murder grow like habit in the hand, infection
In the fingers and the skull?
Henri, I am mad …
CHRISTOPHE
Something will be done.
DESSALINES
Yes …
CHRISTOPHE
For your own good.
But we must watch Pétion. Tomorrow you ride south
To stall the insurrection.
Tonight I will see the light in your
Room is put out.
DESSALINES
You are my friend, you understand
What I need most.
CHRISTOPHE (Dimly)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
(Slow fade-out.)
Scene 4
A wood at twilight, outside the city. Two MURDERERS onstage, arguing.
FIRST MURDERER
What you want to think about it for? Hold the knife so. Then get somewhere soft and mortal, put the blade in, and think you cutting meat, and don’t bother your head about religion. What wrong in that?…
SECOND MURDERER
It’s only I am not ’custom
…
FIRST MURDERER
You don’t want to become a professional?
SECOND MURDERER
Yes, sir … but …
FIRST MURDERER
Well, you shaming your father. I remember how he was always saying you would make such a good apprentice. What is the matter, you are scared of a little blood? You never kill a crab, or a chicken, or an old woman? You all are funny, yes! You kill a man who was an evil king, marry him to the tall dust he grew from; you kill him intelligently, cleanly, no disfiguration; you give him time to pray, and if he does not want, you can say it for him after, just a few Ave Marias, and the act of contrition, and then you know you can leave that grey King slain under the red trees and know you do a good job. You don’t even have to worry ’bout the grass growing out of his sockets, the dead leaves rusting for days over his quiet lips, and the tall grass lecturing in whispers about what good all this thing is for … But then you think that after you kill him everything done? You think people glad for it? Listen …
(He goes into an elaborate pantomime.)
Finish? No, it isn’t. “Soldiers, ladies and gentlemen! A murder has been done, murder, ladies, murder, gentlemen, against the law of gods. Murder? We must—quiet, ladies, quiet, gentlemen—we must apprehend the killer. Apprehend him.” And then you run, your mouth open, your eyes streaming, with hounds and humans in an inhuman comedy chasing you to sanctuary … Sanctuary? What, in an abbey where they eat chicken, in a stable where they shoot horses, in gaol where they break your neck?
(He grows quiet, impressing the young man.)
And then they take you to treat you to the same argument they use against you. Thou shalt not kill. God has given no man right to kill, tell that to the lawyer, and the gaoler, and the warder, and particularly to the rope that cannot understand logic and argument. What will the priest say … “My boy, it was murder that hung Christ like an albatross around the neck of Golgotha; my boy, you must not kill; take him away and God have mercy on his soul…” This place is an arena, a human arena of lions and laughter; only the wicked and those who do not think can survive. What are you laughing at?
SECOND MURDERER
Sorry, sir. Now, sir, what would you say are the best hints to become a professional murderer?
FIRST MURDERER
First, be a vegetarian; second, be kind to animals; third, keep in practice. Now you see this King, this Dessalines, watch me handle him. Now you must plan, and I will have already planned. Let us see what will happen. All right …