The Haitian Trilogy: Plays

  CHRISTOPHE (With mounting anger)

  Stand?

  You cannot stand for this? You speak to the one who is here

  To stand for this black country; it is not yours to stand

  Or understand. I am the King, I am the state,

  I shall work for the state as I am King

  Against what any archbishop will stand for.

  BRELLE

  Then there will always be strife

  Between us; there will always be the knife

  Dividing the spiritual from the temporal,

  Dividing even to the point of blood …

  CHRISTOPHE

  Look here, white man, do you threaten me?

  BRELLE

  Or perhaps my blood, as you killed Dessalines.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I killed Dessalines and you smiled.

  BRELLE (Softly)

  I have not been a good priest.

  But I was not archbishop then, and only blood

  Could buy this comfort, and your graph to authority.

  I was a poor priest,

  But then I wanted too much; that is why

  To stop is better, Henri, than to waste. No one will pity.

  I am old, and act

  In this arena of sanity; my purposes are broad and open

  As the blue air. This is the ambition

  That drives me to the ground with hard grey hairs;

  I toyed and threatened God, demanding more than a simple death and life.

  You think me hypocrite; I wanted honour, comfort

  Beyond this muttering in the dark; that was the hope

  I had before time put on wrinkles, and now I wear

  The stubborn motley of a peevish priest.

  Henri, we are fools.

  CHRISTOPHE

  What about these letters?

  What about Pétion?

  BRELLE

  I hear many rumours.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I can kill rumours easily;

  You only have to throw a threat in their direction

  And tongues and fears fly up like a throw of birds;

  Suspicions and plots are easily brought to light:

  Truth crouches in the dark.

  The letters …

  BRELLE (Cautiously)

  What have they to do with me?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Who said anything?

  BRELLE

  Come, come, Henri, what new plot is this?

  CHRISTOPHE

  But I refuse to be caught by you into accusing.

  My accusation would mean only your refusing,

  Then what?

  (He gestures in mock helplessness.)

  BRELLE

  What am I supposed to have done?

  Write these letters?

  Whose idea, Vastey’s?

  CHRISTOPHE (Bewildered)

  Ah …

  BRELLE

  What am I guilty of?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Choose any treason.

  BRELLE

  I have one chronic treason

  Which no death can eat, and that is love.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I am not a civilised man, Father;

  I am at heart very primitive; there is that urge—

  A beast in the jungle among primitive angers

  Clawing down opposition; what is the expression—

  The instinct?

  BRELLE

  I do not know.

  I know only this love

  I have for peace, religion, and the suffering people.

  CHRISTOPHE (Tearing the letters, screaming.)

  Oh, shut that hypocrite heart,

  Gabbling of love while you mock our complexions,

  Inviting death to grow taller after dying;

  You wrote those letters, are guilty of treason.

  Old man, you have arrived at the end of a season;

  I rule now. Take your hoax,

  Your statues, and your warnings, and blessing saints

  Out of my house, and Haiti.

  BRELLE

  This is the curse of the nation,

  Eating your own stomach, where the sickness is;

  Your smell of blood offends the nostrils of God.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Perhaps the smell of sweat under my arms

  Offend that God, too, quivering His white crooked nostrils.

  Well, tell Him after death that it is honest

  As the seven words of blood broken on His flesh; tell Him

  The nigger smell, that even kings must wear,

  Is bread and wine to life.

  I am proud, I have worked and grown

  This country to its stature: tell Him that.

  BRELLE

  With hammer and hatred breaking

  What Toussaint built, exploding

  Where he created. How many dead

  Children has your love considered?

  Will you never learn the lesson

  You taught your best friend in the grammar death?

  You broke his breath like a stalk; and now you walk,

  A subtle monster lost in rooms of himself;

  Your hate walks out of screens

  With fifty murders smiling in its hand.

  You have become worse than your Dessalines;

  You have grown mad with satisfaction and despair.

  How long, King, will you continue to wear

  A cloak of blood around an ex-slave shoulder?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Slave, eh? You have never forgotten that.

  Will that never dissolve?

  I have not a conscience but a memory.

  Brelle, you have gone too far.

  BRELLE (Feeling his success.)

  Not far enough.

  We must all suffer, even you, eh, King?

  The anatomy of pity, the pearl of pain, is common suffering.

  A unity of wounds transcends the agony.

  Think how the world is suffering and you will smile;

  Think how so many kings were killed and you will feel lucky.

  You think a slave is shame …

  When I was in a seminary in Provence,

  Meditating martyrdom among the poplars,

  I thought and toyed of a bright martyrdom,

  Selling my faith for death, to blacks …

  CHRISTOPHE

  I have told you myself

  Not to refer contemptuously to my people.

  BRELLE

  They are my people too, King,

  And they are black;

  Spiritual power has never made me despotic,

  As temporal power has made you insane, neurotic;

  What kind of perverse kindness is it that denies

  Them white bread but will not let a friend call them blacks?

  CHRISTOPHE

  You say it again,

  Priest. I am tired of your complexion;

  I have had too much to do with this.

  Besides, you talk to no slave …

  BRELLE

  And you to God’s elect,

  An archbishop.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Because of my rule, and Dessalines’s dying.

  BRELLE

  What black ignorance in king and country …

  CHRISTOPHE

  Provoking me …

  But why?

  What comfort is your death,

  Perhaps you think … Oh, I see

  Rebellion, a trick with you and Pétion?

  BRELLE

  You are so lost.

  Good night.

  (BRELLE is going. He passes contemptuously by CHRISTOPHE. The stabbing is quiet and terrible, with a minimum amount of struggle.)

  CHRISTOPHE

  What fools! Assembling on the shelves of their lives

  Clay gods, and in a dusty room,

  Half-broken faiths that falsify,

  Building their need for comfort into religions!

  The one final thing is death,
and how you die. I die crowned!

  And you, white man,

  This death beats dying; I have built

  These châteaux of my past that no time eats.

  A slave, I survive.

  Vastey … Vastey …

  VASTEY (Who has been near.)

  Yes, Henri.

  CHRISTOPHE

  We are safe now.

  VASTEY

  I know.

  CHRISTOPHE

  We have strangled memory and regret,

  But this must be the last.

  I nearly could not kill him, but when he said …

  What drums are those?

  They are coming nearer.

  Oh, Vastey, my dreams …

  Ruin, ruin, O King, ruin and blood!

  Someone has blown out the candle of the sun.

  Ruin and blood.

  Stain my eyes, my linen, I walked alone in a wood

  Of skeletons and thorns where the leaves dripped blood.

  Get this mess cleaned.

  Do you hear drums?

  VASTEY

  Forget. Try to sleep;

  We are safe, you talk like old Sylla.

  What do you hear? The wind, that lost ghost

  Under the willows, with a thread for a voice; only

  The wind; I hear it, too.

  Do you think it is Pétion?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Ah, who is Pétion?…

  I want to sleep.

  VASTEY

  Yes.

  You know they really sound like drums …

  What’s the matter?

  CHRISTOPHE

  My legs, my legs …

  I always get these pains …

  A cramp I cannot stab away.

  Help me to the throne: it will pass.

  (Fade-out.)

  Scene 3

  The scene is the same as before. It is dim. CHRISTOPHE, wearing only his general’s cloak, torn open to show his bare chest, is sprawled on the throne, muttering to himself. VASTEY, near the throne, is watching a WITCH DOCTOR fuss over skull and incense in an elaborate, unconvincing ritual.

  VASTEY

  How are our legs now?

  CHRISTOPHE

  I cannot move them …

  VASTEY

  Henri, we must leave the citadel,

  Pétion is already a day near;

  Even here, La Ferrière, is not safe.

  You must …

  CHRISTOPHE

  I know, I know.

  (He indicates the WITCH DOCTOR.)

  What is he doing?

  Tell him to stop praying to wooded mercies and get

  Me erect; tell him it is useless.

  Christ and Damballa, or any god …

  VASTEY

  Wooden gods, they are not much good;

  If I stocked all the superstitions end to end,

  Or let now a crooked prayer climb, no god

  Would excuse guilt.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Tell him to try again the rub, that mixture,

  The old herbs, the antique magic,

  That breed abortions; the weeds and smoking herbs cropped,

  Hemlock-harmful, lethe-lulling,

  Flowers of forgetting, raped from their cradles

  In smoke, mists, and weathers …

  VASTEY

  He says it is wrong to rub you again so soon.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Ah … tell him to go.

  VASTEY (Touching the WITCH DOCTOR.)

  Allez.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Ask him to leave the skull and incense …

  But go, with his gods and their wooden smiles …

  (The WITCH DOCTOR goes.)

  Well, Brelle is dead …

  VASTEY

  I stumbled on his sprawled pride in the corridor,

  He has his martyrdom.

  No one to bury him. We are alone now.

  Pétion powerful, Sylla silent.

  Dessalines dead, Christophe … cramped …

  This cramp, where is it?

  CHRISTOPHE (Irritated)

  How many times must I say?

  I don’t know; all over.

  VASTEY

  My own paralysis

  Creeps somewhere between my will

  And my regret. There are broken statues

  On my tongue, dead stale civilizations

  Breeding in my brain. You, if you could walk,

  You could see the citadel, the soldiers have left it.

  There is dust settling on the armoury,

  Shafted beams with dust rising like history in the chapel,

  Cracked windows and the vocabulary of ruin

  Littered on lawns; the gardens and menagerie, the oleander

  Groves, dead or rotten.

  CHRISTOPHE

  But regret,

  Why do you regret?

  VASTEY

  For two days, with your paralysis,

  I have lived in my huge linen rooms, eating my fears

  Like the worm gnawing on the corner

  Of the shroud of silence;

  Drinking remorse in a spoonful of soup.

  Dust on the mirrors, and floors cracking …

  When I think of the past.

  God!

  CHRISTOPHE

  You cannot stop gabbling?

  If I had legs, and an army …

  VASTEY

  And Pétion is coming waving a new constitution.

  Ragged herds follow. Oh, if he knew, or they,

  How they were marching tall into the grave, murders, fevers,

  And what responsibility the crown tightens.

  Oh God, Henri!

  CHRISTOPHE

  Do not call gods, Vastey.

  The gods are monstered children; they build

  To break, or history

  Burning biographies like rubbish, while time

  Carries their smoke like memory past the nostrils.

  Those who die hoping are grey children;

  So death, selling his wares,

  Fooled the archbishop.

  VASTEY

  But, as you said of Sylla,

  He is safe now. Dead with dignity.

  CHRISTOPHE

  He was white.

  VASTEY

  In death, Henri, the bone is anonymous;

  Complexions only grin above the skeleton;

  Under the grass the dust is an anthology of creeds and skins.

  Who can tell what that skull was?

  Was it for that we quarreled?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Yes, fool; for that Haiti bled,

  And spilled the valuable aristocratic blood

  To build these citadels for this complexion

  Signed by the sun.

  Yes, for that we killed, because some were black,

  And some were spat on.

  For that I overturned the horn of plenty,

  And harvest grey hairs and calumny;

  It is I who, history, gave them this voice to shout anarchy

  Against the King. I made this King they hate,

  Shaped out of slaves …

  What have I done, what have I done, Vastey, to deserve all this?

  VASTEY

  Dessalines, Brelle,

  The violent love of self that kills the self.

  Cathedrals and cruelties;

  The apocalypse horsemen riding down starving ranks;

  Thanks, thanks, thanks,

  Forced to the King from bleeding lips;

  Cannon and cruelty poured from the sides of ships.

  Oh, Henri, we are guilty; admit, admit, it’s time.

  CHRISTOPHE

  How dare you assume

  Such a familiar tone?

  The only unguent I can rub on these bones

  Is I have done what I would do again.

  VASTEY

  Is it not possible that you are sinking

  In a quicksand of safety, thinking

  Corruptions safe as the
sand closes? It is not your house

  You must put in order but yourself.

  CHRISTOPHE

  You take advantage while I am weak;

  If I could flog these limbs to action—

  (The drums beat faintly, and the action, dim as it is, petrifies them both. CHRISTOPHE withdraws, slowly, a pistol from hiding, then settles it more accessibly.)

  Pétion is powerful. They are coming,

  They are coming, Vastey.

  If I could move …

  VASTEY

  You cannot tell how near they are,

  And it is thickening,

  And the châteaux are tall and dark. I must hide. I must hide.

  The light …

  Now it is dark.

  This is the room where Brelle, with music playing …

  Hither a new king, and another archbishop,

  Monotonies of history …

  We are finished, Majesty,

  We were a tragedy of success.

  CHRISTOPHE

  It was not a great life, Vastey,

  But the dying compensates it:

  No slave, but a king

  Whose exhalation is signed with meteors,

  Whose spilled blood canonizes its anarchy.

  Think of Brelle’s eyes with nothing in the pupils,

  His hands contorted on a crooked crucifix,

  Redemption, not riot, on his dusty lips;

  And consider how confessions, penultimate pieties,

  Are comical or forced. I cannot regret,

  I acted evenly.

  And I was often happy.

  VASTEY

  Happy, Henri?

  Then no contritions?

  (CHRISTOPHE picks up the pistol absently as the drums mount in tension.)

  CHRISTOPHE

  Happiness is sensual, my equerry;

  The fine meal, and the ready wife, the smile

  Between the waltzes and cadenzas, the leap of lechery

  In the wild ropes and rivers of the thighs.

  Grief with despair, ruin, the crack of time,

  Wreckage of several lives around our ankles, these lives

  Are hopes the sea rejects; time’s tidal griefs

  Rock with the moon’s knock, waves wreck our wraths,

  Hopes drown, and kings fade on the memory.

  These are the hard truths we cannot eat,

  The black anarchy of the night, with dawn

  Bleeding from its edges like a wound; the straw you hold,

  Whether it is religion, fame, or hope, the kiss, the dying action,

  Made by a huge mimer in an empty hall—

  All these are the rich agony of living.