The Comedians (41 page)

I said to Philipot, ‘And Jones – is he dead?'

‘By this time.'

‘Was he wounded?'

‘No, but his feet gave out.'

I had to drag the information out of him. I thought at first that he wanted to forget, but he was just preoccupied. I said, ‘Was he all that you hoped for?'

‘He was a wonderful man. With him we began to learn, but he didn't have enough time. The men loved him. He made them laugh.'

‘But he spoke no Creole.'

‘He did not need words. How many men are there in this lunatic asylum?'

‘About twenty. All those you were looking for.'

‘When we can get arms again, we will go back.'

I said to comfort him. ‘Of course.'

‘I would like to find his body. I would like him to have a proper grave. I'm going to put up a stone where we crossed the frontier, and one day when Papa Doc is dead, we shall put a similar stone at the spot where he died. It will be a place of pilgrimage. I shall get the British Ambassador, perhaps a member of the Royal Family . . .'

‘I hope Papa Doc doesn't outlive us all.' We turned out of Elias Pinas on to the good road for San Juan. I said, ‘So after all he proved that he could do it.'

‘Do what?'

‘Lead a commando.'

‘He had proved that against the Japanese.'

‘Yes. I had forgotten.'

‘He was a cunning man. You know how he deceived Papa Doc?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you know that he could smell water a long way off?'

‘He really could?'

‘Of course, but as it happened, water was not a thing we ever lacked.'

‘Was he a good shot?'

‘Our weapons were so old, so out of date. I had to teach him. He was not a good shot, he went through Burma with a walking stick, he told me, but he knew how to lead.'

‘On his flat feet. How did the end come?'

‘We came up to the border to find the others, and we were ambushed. It was not his fault. Two men were killed. Joseph was badly hurt. There was nothing to do but escape. We could not go fast because of Joseph. He died coming down the last ravine.'

‘And Jones?'

‘He could hardly move because of his feet. He found what he called a good place. He said he'd keep the soldiers off till we had time to reach the road – not one of them was anxious to risk himself very close. He said he would follow slowly, but I knew he would never come.'

‘Why?'

‘He told me once that there was no room for him outside of Haiti.'

‘I wonder what he meant.'

‘He meant his heart was there.'

I thought of the captain's cable from the office in Philadelphia and the message that the chargé had received. There was more in his past than a cocktail-shaker stolen from Asprey's, that was certain.

Philipot said, ‘I had grown to love him. I would like to write about him to the Queen of England . . .'

IV

They held a Mass for Joseph and the other dead men (all three were Catholics), and Jones whose beliefs were not known, was included out of courtesy. I went to the small Franciscan church in a side street with Mr and Mrs Smith. It was a tiny congregation. One felt surrounded by the indifference of the world outside Haiti. Philipot led in the small company from the lunatic asylum, and at the last moment Martha entered with Angel at her side. A Haitian refugee-priest said the Mass, and of course Mr Fernandez was there – he looked professional and accustomed to such occasions.

Angel behaved well, and he seemed to be thinner than I remembered him. I wondered why in the past I had found him so detestable, and I wondered, too, looking at Martha two paces in front, why our semi-attached life had been so important. It seemed to belong now exclusively to Port-au-Prince, to the darkness and the terror of the curfew, to the telephones that didn't work, to the Tontons Macoute in their dark glasses, to violence, injustice and torture. Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.

The priest was a young man of Philipot's age with the light skin of a
métis
. He preached a very short sermon on some words of St Thomas the Apostle: ‘Let us go up to Jerusalem and die with him.' He said, ‘The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering in the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest's servant, our hearts go out in sympathy to all who are moved to violence by the suffering of others. The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfection of egoism. In the days of fear, doubt and confusion, the simplicity and loyalty of one apostle advocated a political solution. He was wrong, but I would rather be wrong with St Thomas than right with the cold and the craven. Let us go up to Jerusalem and die with him.'

Mr Smith shook his head sorrowfully; it was not a sermon which appealed to him. There was in it too much of the acidity of human passion.

I watched Philipot go up to the altar-rail to receive communion, followed by most of his little band. I wondered whether they had confessed their sins of violence to the priest; I doubted whether he had required of them a firm purpose of amendment. After Mass I found myself standing beside Martha and the child. I noticed that Angel had been crying. ‘He loved Jones,' Martha said. She took me by the hand and led me into a side-chapel: we were alone with a hideous statue of St Clare. She said, ‘I have bad news for you.'

‘I know already. Luis has been transferred to Lima.'

‘Is that really such bad news? We had reached an end, hadn't we, you and I?'

‘Had we? Jones is dead.'

‘He mattered more to Angel than to me. You made me angry that last night. If it hadn't been Jones you worried about it would have been someone else. You were looking for a way to finish. I never slept with Jones. You've got to believe that. I loved him – but in quite a different way.'

‘Yes. I can believe you now.'

‘But you wouldn't have believed me then.'

The fact that after all she had been faithful to me was ironic, but it seemed singularly unimportant now. I almost wished that Jones had had his ‘fun'. ‘What
is
your bad news?'

‘Doctor Magiot is dead.'

I never knew the day when my father died, if he had died, so that I experienced for the first time the sense of sudden separation from someone on whom as a last resort I could depend. ‘How did it happen?'

‘The official version is he was killed resisting arrest. They accused him of being an agent of Castro's, a Communist.'

‘He was a Communist certainly, but I'm pretty sure he was no one's agent.'

‘The true story is that they sent a peasant to his door asking him to come and help a sick child. He came out on to the path and the Tontons Macoute shot him down from a car. There were witnesses. They killed the peasant too, but that was probably not intended.'

‘It had to happen. Papa Doc is a bulwark against Communism.'

‘Where are you staying?'

I told her the name of the small hotel in the city. ‘Shall I come to see you?' she asked. ‘I can this afternoon. Angel has friends.'

‘If you really want to.'

‘I leave for Lima tomorrow.'

‘If I were you,' I told her, ‘I know that I wouldn't come.'

‘Will you write and tell me how things go with you?'

‘Of course.'

I sat in the hotel through the whole afternoon in case she came, but I was glad she stayed away. I remembered how twice before our love-making had been disturbed by the dead – first Marcel and then the
ancien ministre
. Now it was Doctor Magiot who had joined the dignified and disciplined ranks; they rebuked our levity.

In the evening I had dinner with the Smiths and Mr Fernandez – Mrs Smith acted as my interpreter, she had learnt enough Spanish for that, but Mr Fernandez too was able to talk a little. It was agreed I should become a junior partner in the Fernandez business. I was to deal with the French and the Anglo-Saxon bereaved, and we were both promised an interest in Mr Smith's vegetarian centre when it was established. Mr Smith thought it only fair, since our business might be adversely affected by the success of vegetarianism. Perhaps the centre would really have been established if violence had not come in turn a few months later to Santo Domingo – violence which brought a measure of prosperity to Mr Fernandez and myself, though as usual in such cases the dead mainly belonged to Mr Fernandez' side of the business. Coloured people get killed more easily than Anglo-Saxons.

That night when I went back to my hotel room I found a letter on my pillow – a letter from the dead. I never learned who had brought it. The clerk could tell me nothing. The letter was not signed, but the writing was unmistakably Doctor Magiot's.

‘Dear friend,' I read, ‘I write to you because I loved your mother and in these last hours I want to communicate with her son. My hours are limited: I expect any moment that knock upon the door. They can hardly ring the bell, for the electricity as usual is off. The American Ambassador is about to come back and Baron Samedi will surely pay a little tribute in return. It happens like that all over the world. A few Communists can always be found, like Jews and Catholics. Chiang Kai-shek, the heroic defender of Formosa, fed us, you remember, into the boilers of railway-engines. God knows for what medical research Papa Doc may find me useful. I only ask you to remember
ce si gros neg
. Do you remember that evening when Mrs Smith accused me of being a Marxist? Accused is too strong a word. She is a kind woman who hates injustice. Yet I have grown to dislike the word “Marxist”. It is used so often to describe only a particular economic plan. I believe of course in that economic plan – in certain cases and in certain times, here in Haiti, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in India. But Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism – remember I was born a Catholic too – is more than the Roman Curia. There is a
mystique
as well as a
politique
. We are humanists, you and I. You won't admit it perhaps, but you are the son of your mother and you once took the dangerous journey which we all have to take before the end. Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate. I know you and love you well, and I am writing this letter with some care because it may be the last chance I have of communicating with you. It may never reach you, but I am sending it by what I believe to be a safe hand – though there is no guarantee of that in the wild world we live in now (I do not mean my poor insignificant little Haiti). I implore you – a knock on the door may not allow me to finish this sentence, so take it as the last request of a dying man – if you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?'

I remembered Martha saying, ‘You are a
prêtre manqué
.' How strangely one must appear to other people. I had left involvement behind me, I was certain, in the College of the Visitation: I had dropped it like the roulette-token in the offertory. I had felt myself not merely incapable of love – many are incapable of that, but even of guilt. There were no heights and no abysses in my world – I saw myself on a great plain, walking and walking on the interminable flats. Once I might have taken a different direction, but it was too late now. When I was a boy the fathers of the Visitation had told me that one test of a belief was this: that a man was ready to die for it. So Doctor Magiot thought too, but for what belief did Jones die?

Perhaps, under the circumstances, it was only natural that I should dream of Jones. He lay among the dry rocks on the flat plain beside me and he said, ‘Don't ask me to find water. I can't. I'm tired, Brown, tired. After the seven hundredth performance I sometimes dry up on my lines – and I've only two.'

I said to him, ‘Why are you dying, Jones?'

‘It's in my part, old man, it's in my part. But I've got this comic line – you should hear the whole theatre laugh when I say it. The ladies in particular.'

‘What is it?'

‘That's the trouble. I've forgotten it.'

‘Jones, you must remember.'

‘I've got it now. I have to say – just look at these bloody rocks – “This is a good place,” and everyone laughs till the tears come. Then you say, “To hold the bastards up?” and I reply, “I didn't mean that.”'

The ringing of the telephone woke me – I had overslept. The call came, so far as I could make out, from Mr Fernandez who was summoning me to my first assignment.