The Comedians (36 page)

I drove out to Mère Catherine's (why not if Martha was at home with Jones?), but none of the girls had ventured out that evening from their homes. The story of Hamit was probably circulating by this time all over town, and they feared that one body was not sufficient to make a feast-day for Baron Samedi. Madame Philipot and her child had joined the other refugees at the Venezuelan Embassy, and there was a feeling of uncertainty everywhere. (I noticed, driving by, that two guards were now outside Martha's embassy.) I was stopped at the road-block below the hotel and searched, although the rain had begun. I wondered whether some of the activity was due to Concasseur's return – he had to prove himself loyal.

At the Trianon I found Doctor Magiot's boy waiting with a note – an invitation to dine with him. It was already past the hour of dinner and we drove accompanied by thunder to his house. This time we were not stopped – the rain was falling too heavily now and the militiaman crouched in his shelter of old sacks. The Norfolk pine dripped beside the drive like a broken umbrella, and Doctor Magiot waited for me in his Victorian sitting-room with a decanter of port.

‘Have you heard about Hamit?' I asked. The two glasses stood on little bead-mats with floral designs to protect a
papier máché
table.

‘Yes, poor man.'

‘What had they got against him?'

‘He was one of Philipot's post-boxes. And he didn't talk.'

‘And you are another?'

He poured out the port. I have never learned to enjoy port as an aperitif, but I took it that night without protest; I was in the mood for any drink. He didn't answer my question, so I asked him another. ‘How do you know he didn't talk?'

He gave me the obvious answer, ‘I am here.' The old woman called Madame Ferry who looked after the house and cooked his meals opened the door and reminded us that dinner was ready. She wore a black dress and had a white cap on her head. It might seem an odd setting for a Marxist, but I remembered hearing of the lace curtains and the china cabinets in the early Ilyushin jets. Like her they gave a sense of security.

We had an excellent steak and creamed potatoes with a touch of garlic and as good a claret as could be expected so far away from Bordeaux. Doctor Magiot was not in a humour to talk, but his silence was as monumental as his conversation. When he said ‘Another glass?' the phrase was like a simple name carved on a tombstone. When dinner was finished, he said, ‘The American Ambassador is returning.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘And friendly discussions are to be opened with the Dominican Republic. We are abandoned again.'

The old lady came in with coffee and he was silent. His face was hidden from me by the glass dome which covered an arrangement of wax flowers. I felt that after dinner we should have joined other members of the Browning Society for a discussion of the
Sonnets from the Portuguese
. Hamit lay in his drain a very long way from here.

‘I have some Curaçao or there is a little Benedictine left if you prefer it.'

‘Curaçao, please.'

‘The Curaçao, Madame Ferry,' and again silence settled except for the thunder outside. I wondered why he had summoned me and at last when Madame Ferry had come and gone I heard. ‘I've received a reply from Philipot.'

‘A good thing it came to you and not to Hamit.'

‘He says he will be at the rendezvous for three nights running next week. Beginning on Monday.'

‘The cemetery?'

‘Yes. On those nights there should be hardly any moon.'

‘But suppose there's no storm either?'

‘Have you ever known three nights without a storm at this time of year?'

‘No. But my pass is for one day only – Monday.'

‘A detail. Few policemen can read. You leave Jones and drive on. If something goes wrong and you are suspected I'll try and warn you at Aux Cayes. You might possibly get away by fishing-boat.'

‘I hope to God nothing does go wrong. I have no wish to be on the run. My life's here.'

‘You will have to get beyond Petit Goave before the storm is over or they'll search your car there. After Petit Goave there should be no trouble before Aquin and you'll be alone again when you reach Aquin.'

‘I wish to God I had a jeep.'

‘So do I.'

‘What about the guards at the embassy?'

‘Don't bother about them. During the storm they will take rum in the kitchen.'

‘We must warn Jones to be ready. I have an idea he may back out.'

Doctor Magiot said, ‘I don't want you to visit the embassy between now and the night you leave. I shall go there tomorrow – to treat Jones. Mumps is a dangerous disease at his age; it may cause sterility or even impotence. The incubation period after the child's attack might seem curiously long to a doctor, but the servants won't realize that. He will have to be isolated and kept very quiet. You should be back from Aux Cayes a long time before anyone knows he's gone.'

‘And you, doctor?'

‘I treated him for as long as was necessary. That period is your alibi. And my car will not leave Port-au-Prince – that is mine.'

‘I only hope he's worth all the trouble we are taking.'

‘Oh I assure you, so do I. So do I.'

CHAPTER
3

I

N
EXT
day I received a note from Martha that Jones had been taken ill and that Doctor Magiot feared complications. She was nursing him herself and couldn't at the moment leave the embassy. It was a note written for other people to read, a note to leave about, and yet it chilled me. Surely between the lines it would have been possible for her to have indicated some un-obtrusive sign of love. The danger was not all Jones's, it was mine as well, but all the comfort of her presence these last days was to belong to him. I pictured her sitting on his bed, while he made her laugh as he had made Tin Tin laugh in the stable at Mère Catherine's. Saturday came and passed, then Sunday began its long course. I was impatient to be finished.

On Sunday afternoon, as I was reading on the verandah, Captain Concasseur drove up in a jeep – I envied him the jeep. The driver who had been assigned to Jones, with the big belly and the gold teeth, sat beside him wearing a fixed grin like an ape being delivered at a zoo. Concasseur didn't get out; they both stared at me through their black glasses, and I stared at them in return, but they had the advantage – I couldn't see them blink.

After a long time Concasseur said, ‘I hear you're going to Aux Cayes.'

‘Yes.'

‘Which day?'

‘Tomorrow – I hope.'

‘Your pass is for a short trip only.'

‘I know that.'

‘A day to go and a day to return and one night at Aux Cayes.'

‘I know.'

‘Your business must be very important to take you on such an uncomfortable journey.'

‘I told my business at the police station.'

‘Philipot is in the mountains near Aux Cayes and your man Joseph too.'

‘You know more than I do. But it's your job.'

‘You are alone here now?'

‘Yes.'

‘No presidential candidate. No Madame Smith. Even your chargé is on leave. You are very isolated here. Are you frightened sometimes at night?'

‘I'm getting used to it by now.'

‘We'll be watching for you along the road, noting your arrival at each post. You will have to account to us for your time.' He said something to his chauffeur and the man laughed. ‘I said to him that he or I will ask you questions if you linger on the road.'

‘Just as you questioned Joseph?'

‘Yes. Exactly in the same way. How is Major Jones?'

‘Not well at all. He has caught mumps from the ambassador's son.'

‘They say there will be a new ambassador soon. The right of asylum ought not to be abused. Major Jones would be well advised to move to the British Embassy.'

‘Shall I tell him that you'll give him a safe-conduct?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll tell him when he's better. I'm not sure that I've had mumps and I don't want to take any risks.'

‘We can still be friends, Monsieur Brown. I feel certain you do not like Major Jones any more than I do.'

‘You may be right. Anyway I'll give him the message.'

Concasseur backed the jeep into the bougainvillaea, breaking branches with the same pleasure he felt in breaking limbs, turned and drove away. His visit was the only thing that interrupted the monotony of the long Sunday. For once the lights were turned out exactly on time, and the storm poured down the flanks of Kenscoff as though started by a stop-watch; I tried to read in a paperback volume of his short stories Henry James's
Great Good Place
which someone long ago had left behind; I wanted to forget that tomorrow was Monday, but I failed. ‘The wild waters of our horrible times,' James had written and I wondered what temporary break in the long enviable Victorian peace had so disturbed him. Had his butler given notice? I had built my life around this hotel – it represented stability more profoundly than the God whom the fathers of the Visitation had hoped I would serve; once it had represented success better than my travelling art-gallery with the phoney paintings; it was in a sense a family tomb. I put
The Great Good Place
down and went upstairs with a lamp. I thought it possible – if things went wrong – that this might be the last night I would spend in the Hotel Trianon.

On the stairs most of the paintings had been sold or returned to their owners. My mother had the wisdom in her early days in Haiti to buy an Hyppolite, and I had kept it against all American offers, through the good and the bad years, as an insurance-policy. There remained too a Benoit that represented the great Hurricane Hazel of 1954, a grey river in flood carrying down all kinds of strangely chosen objects, a dead pig floating on its back, a chair, the head of a horse, and a bedstead with floral decorations, while a soldier and a priest prayed on the bank and the gale beat the trees all one way. On the first landing there was a picture by Philippe Auguste of a carnival procession, men, women and children wearing bright masks. Of a morning, when the sunlight shone through the first-floor windows, the harsh colours gave an impression of gaiety, the drummers and the trumpeters seemed about to play a lively air. Only when you came closer you saw how ugly the masks were and how the masquers surrounded a cadaver in grave-clothes; then the primitive colours went flat as though the clouds had come down from Kenscoff and the thunder would soon follow. Wherever that picture hung, I thought, I would feel Haiti close to me. Baron Samedi would be walking in the nearest graveyard, even though the nearest graveyard was in Tooting Bec.

I went up first to the John Barrymore suite. When I looked out of the window I could see nothing; the city was in darkness, except for a cluster of lights in the palace and a line of lamps which marked the port. I noticed Mr Smith had left a vegetarian handbook by the bed. I wondered how many he carried with him for distribution. I opened it and found on the flyleaf a message written in his clear slanting American hand. ‘Dear Unknown Reader, do not close this Book, but read a little before you sleep. There is Wisdom here. Your Unknown Friend.' I envied him his assurance, yes, and the purity of his intention too. The capital initials gave the same impression as a Gideon Bible.

On the floor below was my mother's room (I slept there now), and among the closed guest rooms, which had known no visitors for a long time, was Marcel's room and the one in which I had lain that first night in Port-au-Prince. I remembered the clanging bell and the great black figure in the scarlet pyjamas and the monogram on the pocket and how he had said to me sadly and apologetically, ‘She wants me.'

I went into the two rooms in turn: they contained nothing of that remote past. I had changed the furniture, I had painted the walls, I had even altered their shapes, so that bathrooms could be added. Dust lay thick on the porcelain of the bidets and the hot-water taps ran no longer. I went into my room and sat down on the big bed which had been my mother's. I almost expected, even after all the intervening years, to find a thread on the pillows of that impossibly Titian hair. But nothing survived of her except what I had deliberately chosen to keep. On a table by the bed was a
papier mâché
box in which my mother had stored some improbable jewellery. The jewellery I had sold to Hamit for next to nothing, and the box now contained only that mysterious medal of the Resistance and the picture-postcard of the ruined citadel which carried the only writing I had of hers addressed to me – ‘Nice to see you if you come this way' and the signature that I had taken for Manon and the name she had never had the time to explain to me, ‘Comtesse de Lascot-Villiers'. There was also another message in the box written in her hand but not to me. I had found it in Marcel's pocket when I cut him down. I don't know why I preserved it, or why two or three times I had re-read it, for it only deepened my sense of being without parentage. ‘Marcel, I know I'm an old woman and as you say a bit of an actress. But please go on pretending. As long as we pretend we escape. Pretend that I love you like a mistress. Pretend that you love me like a lover. Pretend that I would die for you and that you would die for me.' I read the message again now; I thought it movingly phrased . . . And he had died for her, so perhaps he was no
comédien
after all. Death is a proof of sincerity.

II

Martha greeted me with a glass of whisky in her hand. She was wearing a gold linen dress and her shoulders were bare. She said, ‘Luis is out. I was taking a drink to Jones.'