The Comedians (26 page)

‘I am an admirer,' Doctor Magiot said, ‘of Mr Truman for some of his internal policies, but you will forgive me if I cannot pretend to be his supporter over the Korean war. I am honoured in any case to meet his opponent.'

‘Not a very important opponent,' Mr Smith said. ‘It was not specifically on the Korean war we differed – though it goes without saying I'm against all wars, whatever excuses politicians may find for them. It was for the sake of vegetarianism I ran against him.'

‘I had not realized,' Doctor Magiot said, ‘that vegetarianism was an issue in the election.'

‘I'm afraid it wasn't, except in one state.'

‘We polled ten thousand votes,' Mrs Smith said. ‘My husband's name was printed on the ballot.'

She opened her bag and after a little search among the Kleenex pulled out a ballot-paper. Like most Europeans I knew little of the American electoral system: I had a vague idea that there were two or three candidates, at the most, and that all voters everywhere voted for their presidential choice. I hadn't realized that on the ballot-papers of most states the name of the presidential candidate was not even shown, only the names of the presidential electors for whom the votes were actually cast. In the State of Wisconsin, however, the name of Mr Smith was clearly printed under a big black square containing an emblem, which, I think, must have represented a cabbage. I was surprised at the number of parties: even the socialists were split in two, and there were Liberal and Conservative candidates for minor offices. I could see from Doctor Magiot's expression that he was as lost as myself. If an English election is less complex than an American, a Haitian is simpler than either. In Haiti, if one put any value on one's skin, one stayed at home, even during the relatively peaceful days of Doctor Duvalier's predecessor.

We handed the ballot-paper from one to the other under the eyes of Mrs Smith who watched it as closely as a hundred-dollar note.

‘Vegetarianism is an interesting idea,' Doctor Magiot said. ‘I am not sure it is suited to all mammals. I doubt for example whether a lion would flourish on green things.'

‘Mrs Smith once had a vegetarian bulldog,' Mr Smith said with pride. ‘Of course it took some training.'

‘It took authority,' Mrs Smith said and her eyes challenged Doctor Magiot to deny it.

I told him of the vegetarian centre and of our journey to Duvalierville.

‘I had a patient from Duvalierville once,' Doctor Magiot said. ‘He had been working on the site – I think it was on the cockpit, and he was sacked because one of the Tontons Macoute there wanted the job for a member of his family. My patient made a very foolish mistake. He appealed to the Tonton on the grounds of his poverty, and the Tonton shot him once through the stomach and once through the thigh. I saved his life, but he is a paralysed beggar by the Post Office now. I wouldn't settle in Duvalierville if I were you. It is not the right
ambiance
for vegetarianism.'

‘Is there no law in this country?' Mrs Smith demanded.

‘The Tontons Macoute are the only law. The words, you know, mean bogey-men.'

‘Is there no religion?' Mr Smith asked in his turn.

‘Oh yes, we are a very religious people. The State religion is the Catholic Church – the Archbishop's in exile, the Papal Nuncio is in Rome and the President is excommunicated. The popular religion is Voodoo which has been taxed almost out of existence. The President was a strong Voodooist once, but since he has been excommunicated he can take no part – you have to be a Catholic communicant to take part in Voodoo.'

‘But it's heathenism,' Mrs Smith said.

‘Who am I to say? I believe no more in the Christian God than I do in the gods of Dahomey. The Voodooists believe in both.'

‘Then what do you believe in, doctor?'

‘I believe in certain economic laws.'

‘Religion is the opium of the people?' I quoted flippantly at him.

‘I don't know where Marx wrote that,' Doctor Magiot said with disapproval, ‘if he ever did, but since you were born a Catholic, as I was, you should be pleased to read in
Das Kapital
what Marx has to say of the Reformation. He approved of the monasteries in that state of society. Religion can be an excellent means of therapy for many states of mind – melancholy, despair, cowardice. Opium, remember, is used in medicine. I'm not against opium. Certainly I am not against Voodoo. How lonely my people would be with Papa Doc as the only power in the land.'

‘But it's paganism,' Mrs Smith persisted.

‘The right therapy for Haitians. The American Marines tried to destroy Voodoo. The Jesuits tried. But the celebrations go on yet when a man can be found rich enough to pay the priest and the tax. I wouldn't advise you to go.'

‘She's not easily frightened,' Mr Smith replied. ‘You should have seen her in Nashville.'

‘I don't question her courage, but there are features that for a vegetarian . . .'

Mrs Smith asked sternly, ‘Are you a Communist, Doctor Magiot?'

It was a question I had wanted to ask many times and I wondered how he would answer.

‘I believe, madame, in the future of Communism.'

‘I asked if you were a Communist.'

‘My dear,' Mr Smith said, ‘we have no right . . .' He tried to distract her. ‘Let me give you a little more Yeastrel.'

‘To be a Communist here, madame, is illegal. But since American aid stopped we have been allowed to study Communism. Communist
propaganda
is forbidden, but the works of Marx and Lenin are not – a fine distinction. So I may say I believe in the future of Communism; that is a philosophical outlook.'

I had drunk too much. I said, ‘As young Philipot believes in the future of the Bren gun.'

Doctor Magiot said, ‘You cannot stop martyrs. You can only try to reduce their number. If I had known a Christian in the days of Nero I would have tried to save him from the lions. I would have said, “Go on living with your belief, don't die with it.”'

‘Surely very timid advice, doctor,' Mrs Smith said.

‘I cannot agree, Mrs Smith. In the western hemisphere, in Haiti and elsewhere, we live under the shadow of your great and prosperous country. Much courage and patience is needed to keep one's head. I admire the Cubans, but I wish I could believe in their heads – and in their final victory.'

CHAPTER
2

I

I
HAD
not told them at dinner that a rich man had been found and a Voodoo ceremony was to take place that night somewhere on the mountains above Kenscoff. It was Joseph's secret and he had only confided in me because he needed a lift in my car. If I had refused I am sure he would have tried to drag his damaged limb the whole way. The hour was past midnight; we drove some twelve kilometres and when we left the car on the road behind Kenscoff we could hear the drums beating very gently like a labouring pulse. It was as though the hot night lay there out of breath. Ahead was a thatched hut open to the winds, a flicker of candles, a splash of white.

This was the first and the last ceremony I was to see. During the two years of prosperity, I had watched, as a matter of duty, the Voodoo dances performed for tourists. To me who had been born a Catholic they seemed as distasteful as the ceremony of the Eucharist would have seemed performed as a ballet on Broadway. I only went now because I owed it to Joseph, and it is not the Voodoo ceremony I remember with most vividness but the face of Philipot, on the opposite side of the
tonnelle
, paler and younger than the negro faces around him; with his eyes closed, he listened to the drums which were beaten softly, clandestinely, insistently, by a choir of girls in white. Between us stood the pole of the temple, stuck up, like an aerial, to catch the passage of the gods. A whip hung there in memory of yesterday's slavery, and, a new legal requirement, a cabinet-photograph of Papa Doc, a reminder of today's. I remembered how young Philipot had said to me in reply to my accusation, ‘The gods of Dahomey may be what we need.' Governments had failed him, I had failed him, Jones had failed him – he had no Bren gun; he was here, listening to the drums, waiting, for strenght, for courage, for a decision. On the earth-floor, around a small brazier, a design had been drawn in ashes, the summons to a god. Was it a summons to Legba, the gay seducer of women, to sweet Erzulie, the virgin of purity and love, to Ogoun Ferraille, the patron of warriors, or to Baron Samedi in his black clothes and his black Tonton glasses, hungry for the dead? The priest knew, and perhaps the man who paid for the ceremony, and I suppose the initiates could read the hieroglyphics of ash.

The ceremony went on for hours before the climax; it was the face of Philipot that kept me awake through the chanting and the drum-beats. Among the prayers were little oases of familiarity, ‘
Libera nos a malo', ‘Agnus dei
', holy banners swayed past inscribed to the saints, ‘
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie
'. Once I looked at the dial of my watch and saw in pale phosphorescence the hands approaching three.

The priest came in from his inner room swinging a censer, but the censer which he swung in our faces was a trussed cock – the small stupid eyes peered into my eyes and the banner of St Lucy swayed after it. When he had completed the circle of the
tonnelle
the
houngan
put the head of the cock in his mouth and crunched it cleanly off; the wings continued to flap while the head lay on the dirt-floor like part of a broken toy. Then he bent down and squeezed the neck like a tube of tooth-paste and added the rusty colour of blood to the ash-grey patterns on the floor. When I looked to see how the delicate Philipot was accepting the religion of his people, I saw he was no longer there. I would have gone too, but I was tied to Joseph and Joseph was tied to the ceremony in the hut.

The drummers became more reckless as the night advanced. They no longer tried to muffle the beats. Something was happening in the inner room where the banners were stacked around an altar, and where a cross stood below a poker-work prayer, and presently a procession emerged. They were carrying what I thought at first was a corpse wrapped in a white sheet for burial – the head was covered and a black arm dangled free. The priest knelt beside the fire and blew the embers up into flames. They laid the corpse beside him, and he took the free arm and held it in the flames. As the body flinched I realized it was alive. Perhaps the neophyte screamed – I couldn't hear because of the drums and the chanting women, but I could smell the burning of the skin. The body was carried out and another took its place, and then another. The heat of the flames beat on my face as the night wind blew through the hut. The last body was surely a child's – it was less than three feet long, and on this occasion the
houngan
held the hand a few inches above the flame – he was not a cruel man. When I looked again across the
tonnelle
Philipot was back in his place, and I remembered that one arm which had been held in the flames appeared as light as a mulatto's. I told myself it could not possibly have been Philipot's. Philipot's poems had been published in an elegant limited edition, bound in vellum. He had been educated like myself by the Jesuits; he had attended the Sorbonne; I remembered how he had quoted the lines of Baudelaire to me at the swimmingpool. If Philipot was one of the initiates what a triumph that would represent for Papa Doc as he dragged his country down. The flames lit the photograph nailed on the pillar, the heavy spectacles, the eyes staring at the ground as though at a body ready for dissection. Once he had been a country doctor struggling successfully against typhoid; he had been a founder of the Ethnological Society. With my Jesuit training I could quote Latin as well as the
houngan
who was now praying for gods of Dahomey to arrive. ‘
Corruptio optimi
 . . .'

It wasn't sweet Erzulie who came to us that night, although for a moment her spirit seemed to enter the hut and touch a woman who sat near Philipot, for she rose and put her hands over her face and swayed gently this way, gently that. The priest went to her and tore away her hands. She had an expression of great sweetness in the candlelight, but the
houngan
would have none of her. Erzulie was not wanted. We had not assembled tonight to meet the goddess of love. He put his hands on her shoulders and thrust her back on her bench. He had scarcely time to turn before Joseph was in the ring.

Joseph moved in a circle, the pupils of his eyes turned up so high that I saw only the whites, his hands held out as though he were begging. He lurched upon his wounded hip and seemed on the point of falling. The people around me leant forward with grave attention as though they were watching for some sign to prove that the god was really there. The drums were silent: the singing stopped: only the
houngan
spoke in some language older than Creole, perhaps older than Latin, and Joseph paused and listened, staring up the wooden pillar, past the whip and Papa Doc's face, into the thatch where a rat moved, crackling the straw.

Then the
houngan
went to Joseph. He carried a red scarf, and he flung it across Joseph's shoulders. Ogoun Ferraille had been recognized. Someone came forward with a machete and clamped it in Joseph's wooden hand as though he were a statue waiting completion.

The statue began to move. It slowly raised an arm, then swung the machete in a wide arc so that everyone ducked for fear it would fly across the
tonnelle
. Joseph began to run, the machete flashing and cutting; those in the front row scrambled back, so that for a moment there was panic. Joseph was no longer Joseph. His face ran with sweat, his eyes looked blind or drunk as he stabbed and swung, and where was his injury now? He ran without a stumble. Once he paused and seized a bottle which had been abandoned on the dirt-floor when the people fled. He drank a long draught and then ran on.