The Comedians (2 page)

I was almost as embarrassed as he was. On a cargo-steamer there are few passengers and it is uncomfortable to nourish a resentment. The steward with his hands folded said to him righteously, ‘There's really nothing I can do, sir. The cabin was reserved for this gentleman. For Mr Brown.' Smith, Jones and Brown – the situation was improbable. I had a half-right to my drab name, but had he? I smiled at his predicament, but Jones's sense of humour, as I was to find, was of a simpler order. He looked at me with grave attention and said, ‘This is really your cabin, sir?'

‘I have an idea it is.'

‘Someone told me it was unoccupied.' He shifted slightly so that his back was turned to my too obvious cabin-trunk standing just inside. The bills had disappeared, perhaps up his sleeve, for I had seen no movement towards his pocket.

‘Have they given you a bad cabin?' I asked.

‘Oh, it's only that I prefer the starboard side.'

‘Yes, so do I, on this particular run. One can leave the porthole open,' and as though to emphasize the truth of what I said the boat began a slow roll as it moved further into the open sea.

‘Time for a pink gin,' Jones said promptly, and we went upstairs together to find the small saloon and the black steward who took the first opportunity as he added water to my gin to whisper in my ear, ‘I'm a British subject, sah.' I noticed that he made no such claim to Jones.

The door of the saloon swung open and the Presidential Candidate appeared, an impressive figure in spite of the innocent ears: he had to lower his head in the doorway. Then he looked all round the saloon before he stood aside so that his wife could enter under the arch of his arm, like a bride under a sword. It was as though he wanted to satisfy himself first that there was no unsuitable company present. His eyes were of clear washed blue and he had homely sprouts of grey hair from his nose and ears. He was a genuine article, if ever there was one, a complete contrast to Mr Jones. If I had troubled to think of them then at all, I would have thought that they could mix together no better than oil and water.

‘Come in,' Mr Jones said (I somehow couldn't bring myself to think of him as Major Jones), ‘come in and take a snifter.' His slang, I was to find, was always a little out of date as though he had studied it in a dictionary of popular usage, but not in the latest edition.

‘You must forgive me,' Mr Smith replied with courtesy, ‘but I don't touch alcohol.'

‘I don't touch it myself,' Jones said, ‘I drink it,' and he suited the action to the words. ‘The name is Jones,' he added, ‘Major Jones.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Major. My name's Smith. William Abel Smith. My wife, Major Jones.' He looked at me inquiringly, and I realized that somehow I had lagged behind in the introductions.

‘Brown,' I said shyly. I felt as though I were making a bad joke, but neither of them saw the point.

‘Ring the bell again,' Jones said, ‘there's a good chap.' I had already graduated into the position of the old friend, and, although Mr Smith was nearer the bell, I crossed the saloon to touch it; in any case he was busy wrapping the travelling-rug around his wife's knees, though the saloon was well enough warmed (perhaps it was a marital habit). It was then, in reply to Jones's affirmation that there was nothing like a pink gin to keep away sea-sickness, Mr Smith made his statement of faith. ‘I've never suffered from
mal de mer
, no sir . . . I've been a vegetarian all my life,' and his wife capped it. ‘We campaigned on that issue.'

‘Campaigned?' Jones asked sharply as though the word had woken the major within him.

‘In the Presidential Election of 1948.'

‘You were a candidate?'

‘I'm afraid,' Mr Smith said with a gentle smile, ‘that I stood very little chance. The two great parties . . .'

‘It was a gesture,' his wife interrupted fiercely. ‘We showed our flag.'

Jones was silent. Perhaps he was impressed, or perhaps like myself he was trying to recall who the main contestants had been. Then he tried the phrase over on his tongue as though he liked the taste of it: ‘Presidential Candidate in '48.' He added, ‘I'm very proud to meet you.'

‘We had no organization,' Mrs Smith said. ‘We couldn't afford it. But all the same we polled more than ten thousand votes.'

‘I never anticipated so much support,' the Presidential Candidate said.

‘We were not at the bottom of the poll. There was a candidate – something to do with agriculture, dear?'

‘Yes, I have forgotten the exact name of his party. He was a disciple of Henry George, I think.'

‘I must admit,' I said, ‘that I thought the only candidates were Republican and Democrat – oh, and there was a Socialist too, wasn't there?'

‘The Conventions attract all the publicity,' Mrs Smith said, ‘vulgar rodeos though they are. Can you see Mr Smith with a lot of drum majorettes?'

‘Anyone can run for President,' the Candidate explained with gentleness and humility. ‘That is the pride of our democracy. I can tell you, it was a great experience for me. A great experience. One that I shall never forget.'

II

Ours was a very small boat. I believe that a full complement of passengers would have numbered only fourteen, and the
Medea
was by no means full. This was not the tourist season, and in any case the island to which we were bound was no longer an attraction for tourists.

There was a spick-and-span negro with a very high white collar and starched cuffs and gold-rimmed glasses who was bound for Santo Domingo; he kept very much to himself, and at table he answered politely and ambiguously in monosyllables. For instance when I asked him what was the principal cargo that the captain was likely to take aboard in Trujillo – I corrected myself, ‘I'm sorry. I mean Santo Domingo,' he nodded gravely and said, ‘Yes.' He never himself asked a question and his discretion seemed to rebuke our own idle curiosity. There was also a traveller for a firm of pharmaceutical manufacturers – I have forgotten the reason he gave for not travelling by air. I felt sure that it was not the correct reason, and that he suffered from a heart trouble which he kept to himself. His face had a tight papery look, above a body too big for the head, and he lay long hours in his berth.

My own reason for taking the boat – and I sometimes suspected that it might be Jones's too – was prudence. In an airport one is so swiftly separated on the tarmac from the crew of the plane; in a harbour one feels the safety of foreign boards under the feet – I counted as a citizen of Holland so long as I stayed on the
Medea
. I had booked my passage through to Santo Domingo and I told myself, however unconvincingly, that I had no intention of leaving the ship before I received certain assurances from the British chargé – or from Martha. The hotel which I owned on the hills above the capital had done without me for three months; it would certainly be void of clients, and I valued my life more highly than an empty bar and a corridor of empty bedrooms and a future empty of promise. As for the Smiths, I really think it was love of the sea which had brought them on board, but it was quite a while before I learnt why they had chosen to visit the republic of Haiti.

The captain was a thin unapproachable Hollander scrubbed clean like a piece of his own brass rail who only appeared once at table, and in contrast the purser was untidy and ebulliently gay with a great liking for Bols gin and Haitian rum. On the second day at sea he invited us to drink with him in his cabin. We all squashed in except for the traveller in pharmaceutical products who said that he must always be in bed by nine. Even the gentleman from Santo Domingo joined us and answered, ‘No,' when the purser asked him how he found the weather.

The purser had a jovial habit of exaggerating everything, and his natural gaiety was only a little damped when the Smiths demanded bitter lemon and, when that was unavailable, Coca-Cola. ‘You're drinking your own deaths,' he told them and began to explain his own theory of how the secret ingredients were manufactured. The Smiths were unimpressed and drank the Coca-Cola with evident pleasure. ‘You will need something stronger than that where you are going,' the purser said.

‘My husband and I have never taken anything stronger,' Mrs Smith replied.

‘The water is not to be trusted, and you will find no Coca-Cola now that the Americans have moved out. At night when you hear the shooting in the streets you will think perhaps that a strong glass of rum . . .'

‘Not rum,' Mrs Smith said.

‘Shooting?' Mr Smith inquired. ‘Is there shooting?' He looked at his wife where she sat crouched under the travelling-rug (she was not warm enough even in the stuffy cabin) with a trace of anxiety. ‘Why shooting?'

‘Ask Mr Brown. He lives there.'

I said, ‘I've not often heard shooting. They act more silently as a rule.'

‘Who are
they
?' Mr Smith asked.

‘The Tontons Macoute,' the purser broke in with wicked glee. ‘The President's bogey-men. They wear dark glasses and they call on their victims after dark.'

Mr Smith laid his hand on his wife's knee. ‘The gentleman is trying to scare us, my dear,' he said. ‘They told us nothing about this at the tourist bureau.'

‘He little knows,' Mrs Smith said, ‘that we don't scare easily,' and somehow I believed her.

‘You understand what we're talking about, Mr Fernandez?' the purser called across the cabin in the high voice some people employ towards anyone of an alien race.

Mr Fernandez had the glazed look of a man approaching sleep. ‘Yes,' he said, but I think it had been an equal chance whether he replied yes or no. Jones, who had been sitting on the edge of the purser's bunk, nursing a glass of rum, spoke for the first time. ‘Give me fifty commandos,' he said, ‘and I'd go through the country like a dose of salts.'

‘Were you in the commandos?' I asked with some surprise.

He said ambiguously, ‘A different branch of the same outfit.'

The Presidential Candidate said, ‘We have a personal introduction to the Minister for Social Welfare.'

‘Minister for what?' the purser said. ‘Welfare? You won't find any Welfare. You should see the rats, big as terriers . . .'

‘I was told at the tourist bureau that there were some very good hotels.'

‘I own one,' I said. I took out my pocket-book and showed him three postcards. Although printed in bright vulgar colours they had the dignity of history, for they were relics of an epoch over for ever. On one a blue tiled bathing-pool was crowded with girls in bikinis: on the second a drummer famous throughout the Caribbean was playing under the thatched roof of the Creole bar, and on the third – a general view of the hotel – there were gables and balconies and towers, the fantastic nineteenth-century architecture of Port-au-Prince. They at least had not changed.

‘We had thought of something a little quieter,' Mr Smith said.

‘We are quiet enough now.'

‘It would certainly be pleasant, wouldn't it, dear, to be with a friend? If you have a room vacant with a bath or a shower.'

‘Every room has a bath. Don't be afraid of noise. The drummer's fled to New York, and all the bikini girls stay in Miami now. You'll probably be the only guests I have.'

These two clients, it had occurred to me, might be worth a good deal more than the money they paid. A presidential candidate surely had status; he would be under the protection of his embassy or what was left of it. (When I had left Port-au-Prince the embassy staff had already been reduced to a chargé, a secretary, and two Marine guards, who were all that remained of the military mission.) Perhaps the same thought occurred to Jones. ‘I might join you too,' he said, ‘if no other arrangements have been made for me. It would be a bit like staying on shipboard if we stuck together.'

‘Safety in numbers,' the purser agreed.

‘With three guests I shall be the most envied
hôtelier
in Port-au-Prince.'

‘It's not very safe to be envied,' the purser said. ‘You would do much better, all three of you, if you continued with us. Myself I don't care to go fifty yards from the water-front. There is a fine hotel in Santo Domingo. A luxurious hotel. I can show you picture-postcards as good as his.' He opened the drawer and I caught a brief glimpse of a dozen little square packets – French letters which he would sell at a profit to the crew when they went on shore to Mère Catherine's or one of the cheaper establishments. (His sales talk, I felt certain, would consist of some grisly statistics.) ‘What have I done with them?' he demanded uselessly of Mr Fernandez, who smiled and said, ‘Yes,' and he began to search the desk littered with printed forms and paper-clips and bottles of red, green and blue ink, and some old-fashioned wooden pen-holders and nibs, before he discovered a few limp postcards of a bathing-pool exactly like mine and a Creole bar which was only distinguishable because it had a different drummer.

‘My husband is not on a vacation,' Mrs Smith said with disdain.

‘I'd like to keep one if you don't mind,' Jones said, choosing the bathing-pool and the bikinis, ‘one never knows . . .' That phrase represented, I think, his deepest research into the meaning of life.

III

Next day I sat in a deck-chair on the sheltered starboard side and let myself roll languidly in and out of the sun with the motions of the mauve-green sea. I tried to read a novel, but the heavy foreseeable progress of its characters down the uninteresting corridors of power made me drowsy, and when the book fell upon the deck, I did not bother to retrieve it. My eyes opened only when the traveller in pharmaceutical products passed by; he clung to the rail with two hands and seemed to climb along it as though it were a ladder. He was panting heavily and he had an expression of desperate purpose as though he knew to what the climb led and knew that it was worth his effort, but knew too that he would never have the strength to reach the end. Again I drowsed and found myself alone in a blacked-out room and someone touched me with a cold hand. I woke and it was Mr Fernandez who had, I suppose, been surprised by the steep roll of the boat and had steadied himself against me. I had the impression of a shower of gold dropping from a black sky as his spectacles caught the fitful sun. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘yes,' smiling an apology as he lurched upon his way.