The Comedians

by Graham Greene

  ‘They can pretend it to be whatever suits them,’ he replied. ‘Do not deceive yourself.’ He began to empty the contents of the Minister’s left pocket which was exposed by the position of the body. He said, ‘He was one of the better ones,’ and looked with care at each scrap of paper like a bank clerk checking notes for forgery, holding them close to his eyes and his big globular spectacles which he wore for reading only. ‘We took our anatomy course together in Paris. But in those days even Papa Doc was a good enough man. I remember Duvalier in the typhoid outbreak in the twenties . . .’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Anything which could identify him with you. In this island the Catholic prayer is very apt – “The devil is like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour”.’

  ‘He hasn’t devoured you.’

  ‘Give him time.’ He put a notebook in his pocket. ‘We haven’t the leisure to go through all this now.’ Then he turned the body over. It was heavy to move even for Doctor Magiot. ‘I’m glad your mother died when she did. She had borne enough. One Hitler is sufficient experience for a lifetime.’ We talked in whispers for fear of disturbing the Smiths. ‘A rabbit’s foot,’ he said, ‘for luck.’ He put the object back. ‘And here is something heavy.’ He took out my brass paper-weight in the shape of a coffin marked R.I.P. ‘I never knew he had a sense of humour.’

  ‘That’s mine. He must have taken it from my office.’

  ‘Put it back in the same place.’

  ‘Shall I send Joseph for the police?’

  ‘No, no. We can’t leave the body here.’

  ‘They can hardly blame me for a suicide.’

  ‘They can blame you because he chose this house to hide in.’

  ‘Why did he? I never knew him. I met him once at a reception. That’s all.’

  ‘The embassies are closely guarded. I suppose he believed in your English phrase, “An Englishman’s home is his castle”. He had so little hope he sought safety in a catchword.’

  ‘It’s the hell of a thing to find on my first night home.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is. Tchekov wrote, “Suicide is an undesirable phenomenon”.’

  Doctor Magiot stood up and looked down at the body. A coloured man has a great sense of occasion – it isn’t ruined by Western education: education only changes the form of its expression. Doctor Magiot’s great-grandfather might have wailed in the slave-compound to the unanswering stars: Doctor Magiot pronounced a short carefully phrased discourse over the dead. ‘However great a man’s fear of life,’ Doctor Magiot said, ‘suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance – so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.’

  ‘I thought that as a Catholic you would have utterly condemned . . .’

  ‘I am not a practising Catholic, and in any case you are thinking of theological despair. In this despair there was nothing theological. Poor fellow, he was breaking a rule. He was eating meat on Friday. In his case the sense of survival did not put forward a commandment of God as an excuse for inaction.’ He said, ‘You must come down and take the legs. We have to remove him from here.’ The lecture was finished, the funeral oration spoken.

  It was a comfort to feel myself in the large square hands of Doctor Magiot. I was like a patient who accepts without question the strict régime required for a cure. We lifted the Secretary for Social Welfare out of the bathing-pool and carried him towards the drive where Doctor Magiot’s car stood without lights. ‘When you get back,’ Doctor Magiot said, ‘you must turn on the water and wash away the blood.’

  ‘I’ll turn it on all right, but whether the water will come . . .’

  We propped him on the back seat. In detective stories a corpse is always so easily made to look like a drunken man, but this dead thing was unmistakably dead – the blood had ceased to flow, but one glance into the car would note the monstrous wound. Luckily no one dared move on the roads at night; it was the hour when only zombies worked or else the Tontons Macoute. As for the Tontons they were certainly abroad; we heard the approach of their car – no other car would be out so late – before we reached the end of the drive. We switched our headlights off and waited. The car was being driven slowly uphill from the capital; we could hear the voices of the occupants arguing above the grind of the third gear. I had the impression of an old car which would never make the grade up the long slope to Pétionville. What would we do if it gave up the ghost at the entrance of the drive? The men would certainly come to the hotel for help and some free drinks, whatever the hour. We seemed to wait a long time before the sound of the engine passed the drive and receded.

  I asked Doctor Magiot, ‘Where do we take him?’

  ‘We can’t go far either up or down,’ he said, ‘without reaching a block. This is the road to the north and the militia daren’t sleep for fear of inspection. That’s probably what the Tontons are doing now. They’ll go as far as the police-post at Kenscoff if the car doesn’t break down.’

  ‘You had to pass a road-block to get here. How did you explain . . . ?’

  ‘I said there was a woman sick after a childbirth. It’s too common a case for the man to report, if I am lucky.’

  ‘And if he does report?’

  ‘I shall say I could not find the hut.’

  We drove out on to the main road. Doctor Magiot put on the headlights again. ‘If anyone should be out and see us,’ he said, ‘he will take us for the Tontons.’

  Our choice of terrain was severely limited by the barrier up the road and the barrier down. We drove two hundred yards uphill – That will show that he passed the Trianon: he was not on the way there – and turned into the second lane on the left. It was an area of small houses and abandoned gardens. Here had lived in the old days the vain and the insufficiently successful; they were on the road to Pétionville, but they had not quite arrived there: the advocate who picked up the unconsidered cases, the failed astrologer and the doctor who preferred his rum to his patients. Doctor Magiot knew exactly which of them still occupied his house and who had fled to escape the forced levies that the Tontons Macoute collected at night for the construction of the new city, Duvalierville. I had contributed a hundred gourdes myself. To me the houses and gardens seemed all equally unlived in and uncared for.

  ‘In here,’ Doctor Magiot directed. He drove the car a few yards off the road. We had to keep the headlights burning, for we had no hand free to hold a torch. They shone on a broken board which now announced only ‘. . . pont. Your Future by . . .’

  ‘So he’s gone,’ I said.

  ‘He died.’

  ‘A natural death?’

  ‘Violent deaths are natural deaths here. He died of his environment.’

  We got the body of Doctor Philipot out of the car and dragged it behind an overgrown bougainvillaea where it could not be seen from the road. Doctor Magiot twisted a handkerchief round his right hand and took from the dead man’s pocket a small kitchen knife for cutting steaks. His eye had been sharper than mine at the pool. He laid it a few inches from the Minister’s left hand. He said, ‘Doctor Philipot was left-handed.’

  ‘You seem to know everything.’

  ‘You forget we took anatomy together. You must remember to buy another steak-knife.’

  ‘Has he a family?’

  ‘A wife and a boy of six. I suppose he thought that suicide was safer for them.’

  We got back into the car and reversed into the road. At the entrance of my drive I got out. ‘All depends now on the servants,’ I said.

  ‘They’ll be afraid to talk,’ Doctor Magiot said. ‘A witness here can suffer just as much as the accused.’

  II

  Mr and Mrs Smith came down to breakfast on the verandah. It was almost
the first time I had seen him without a rug over his arm. They had slept well and they ate with appetite the grapefruit, the toast and the marmalade: I was afraid they might require some strange beverage with a name chosen by a public relations firm, but they accepted coffee and even praised its quality.

  ‘I woke up only once,’ Mr Smith said, ‘and I thought that I heard voices. Perhaps Mr Jones has arrived?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Odd. The last thing he said to me in the customs was “We’ll meet tonight at Mr Brown’s”.’

  ‘He was probably shanghaied to another hotel.’

  ‘I had hoped to take a dip before breakfast,’ Mrs Smith said, ‘but I found Joseph was cleaning the pool. He seems to be a man of all work.’

  ‘Yes. He’s invaluable. I’m sure the pool will be ready for you before lunch.’

  ‘And the beggar?’ Mr Smith asked.

  ‘Oh, he went away before morning.’

  ‘Not with an empty stomach, I hope?’ He gave me a smile as much as to say: ‘I’m only joking, I know you are a man of goodwill.’

  ‘Joseph would certainly have seen to that.’

  Mr Smith took another piece of toast. He said, ‘I thought that this morning Mrs Smith and I would write our names in the embassy book.’

  ‘It would be wise.’

  ‘I thought it would be courteous. Afterwards perhaps I could present my letter of introduction to the Secretary for Social Welfare.’

  ‘If I were you I would ask at the embassy whether there has been any change. That is, if the letter is addressed to someone personally.’

  ‘A Doctor Philipot, I think.’

  ‘I would certainly ask then. Changes happen very quickly here.’

  ‘But his successor, I suppose, would receive me? What I have come here to propose would be of great interest to any minister concerned with health.’

  ‘I don’t think you ever told me what you were planning . . .’

  ‘I come here as a representative,’ Mr Smith said.

  ‘Of the vegetarians of America,’ Mrs Smith added. ‘The true vegetarians.’

  ‘Are there false vegetarians?’

  ‘Of course. There are even some who eat fertilized eggs.’

  ‘Heretics and schismatics have splintered every great movement,’ Mr Smith said sadly, ‘in human history.’

  ‘And what do the vegetarians propose to do here?’

  ‘Apart from the distribution of free literature – translated, of course, into French – we plan to open a centre of vegetarian cooking in the heart of the capital.’

  ‘The heart of the capital is a shanty-town.’

  ‘In a suitable site then. We want the President and some of his ministers to attend the gala opening and take the first vegetarian meal. As an example to the people.’

  ‘But he’s afraid to leave the palace.’

  Mr Smith laughed politely at what he considered my picturesque exaggeration. Mrs Smith said, ‘You can hardly expect much encouragement from Mr Brown. He is not one of us.’

  ‘Now, now, my dear, Mr Brown was only having a little joke with us. Perhaps after breakfast I could ring up my embassy.’

  ‘The telephone doesn’t work. But I could send Joseph with a note.’

  ‘No, in that case we’ll take a taxi. If you’ll get us a taxi.’

  ‘I’ll send Joseph to find one.’

  ‘He surely is a man of all work,’ Mrs Smith said to me harshly, as though I were a southern plantation-owner. I saw Petit Pierre walking up the drive and I left them.

  ‘Ah, Mr Brown,’ Petit Pierre cried, ‘a very very good morning.’ He waved a copy of the local paper and said, ‘You’ll see what I have written about you. How are your guests? They have slept well, I hope.’ He mounted the steps, bowed to the Smiths at their table and breathed in the sweet flowery smell of Port-au-Prince as though he were a stranger to the place. ‘What a view,’ he said, ‘the trees, the flowers, the bay, the palace.’ He giggled. ‘Distance lends enchantment to the view. Mr William Wordsworth.’

  Petit Pierre had not come for the view, I was certain, and at this hour he would hardly have come for a free glass of rum. Presumably he wanted to receive information, unless perhaps he wished to impart it. His gay manner did not necessarily mean good news for Petit Pierre was always gay. It was as though he had tossed a coin to decide between the only two possible attitudes in Port-au-Prince, the rational and the irrational, misery or gaiety; Papa Doc’s head had fallen earthwards and he had plumped for the gaiety of despair.

  ‘Let me see what you’ve written,’ I said.

  I opened the paper at his gossip-column – which always appeared on page four – and read how, among the many distinguished visitors who had arrived yesterday in the Medea, was the Honourable Mr Smith who had been narrowly defeated in the American Presidential elections of 1948 by Mr Truman. He was accompanied by his elegant and amiable wife who, under happier circumstances, would have been America’s First Lady, an adornment to the White House. Among the many other passengers was the well-loved patron of that intellectual centre, the Hotel Trianon, who was returning from a business visit to New York . . . I looked afterwards at the principal news page. The Secretary for Education was announcing a six-year plan to eliminate illiteracy in the north – why the north in particular? No details were given. Perhaps he was depending on a satisfactory hurricane. Hurricane Hazel in ’54 had eliminated a great deal of illiteracy in the interior – the extent of the death-roll had never been disclosed. There was a small paragraph about a party of rebels who had crossed the Dominican frontier: they had been driven back, and two prisoners had been taken carrying American arms. If the President had not quarrelled with the American Mission, the arms would probably have been described as Czech or Cuban.

  I said. ‘There are rumours about a new Secretary for Social Welfare.’

  ‘You can never trust rumours,’ Petit Pierre said.

  ‘Mr Smith has brought an introduction to Doctor Philipot. I don’t want him to make a mistake.’

  ‘Perhaps he ought to wait a few days. I hear that Doctor Philipot is in Cap Haïtien – or somewhere in the north.’

  ‘Where the fighting is?’

  ‘I do not believe there is really much fighting.’

  ‘What kind of a man is Doctor Philipot?’ I felt an itch of curiosity to know more of someone who had become a kind of distant relative by dying in my pool.

  ‘A man,’ Petit Pierre said, ‘who suffers very much from his nerves.’

  I closed the paper and handed it back to him. ‘I see you don’t mention the arrival of our friend Jones.’

  ‘Ah yes, Jones. Who exactly is Major Jones?’ I was sure then that he had come with the purpose of receiving rather than giving information.

  ‘A fellow-passenger. That’s all I know.’

  ‘He claims to be a friend of Mr Smith’s.’

  ‘In that case, I suppose he must be.’

  Petit Pierre imperceptibly moved me away down the verandah until we turned the corner out of sight of the Smiths. His white cuffs fell a long way out of his sleeves on to his black hands. ‘If you would be frank with me,’ he said, ‘I might perhaps be of a little help.’

  ‘Frank about what?’

  ‘About Major Jones.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call him Major. Somehow it doesn’t suit him.’

  ‘You think perhaps he is not . . . ?’

  ‘I know nothing about him. Nothing at all.’

  ‘He was going to stay at your hotel.’

  ‘He seems to have found a lodging elsewhere.’

  ‘Yes. At the police station.’

  ‘Why on earth . . . ?’

  ‘I think they found something incriminating in his baggage. I don’t know what.’

  ‘Does the British Embassy know?’

  ‘No. But I do not think they can help very much. These things have to take their course. They are not ill-treating him as yet.’

  ‘What would you advise, Petit P
ierre?’

  ‘It is probably a misunderstanding – but then there is always the question of amour propre. The chief of police suffers a great deal from amour propre. Perhaps if Mr Smith spoke to Doctor Philipot, Doctor Philipot might speak to the Secretary for the Interior. Major Jones could then be fined for a merely technical offence.’

  ‘But what is his offence?’

  ‘That question is in itself a technicality,’ he said.

  ‘But you have just told me Doctor Philipot is in the north.’

  ‘True. Perhaps Mr Smith ought rather to see the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.’ He waved the papers proudly. ‘He will know how important Mr Smith is, for he will undoubtedly have read my article.’

  ‘I shall go at once and see our chargé.’

  ‘It is the wrong method,’ Petit Pierre said. ‘It is far easier to satisfy the amour propre of the chief of police than to satisfy national pride. The Haitian Government does not accept protests from foreigners.’

  It was much the same advice as the chargé gave me later that morning. He was a hollow-chested man with sensitive features which reminded me the first time I met him of Robert Louis Stevenson. He spoke with many hesitations and an amused air of defeat – it was the conditions of life in the capital that had defeated him, not the inroads of tuberculosis. He had the courage and the humour of the defeated. For example he carried a pair of black glasses in his pocket which he always put on when he saw a member of the Tontons Macoute, who wore them as a uniform, to terrify. He collected books on Caribbean flora, but he had sent all but the most common of them home, just as he had sent his children, for there was always the risk of sudden fire aided by a tin of petrol.

  He listened to me without interruption or impatience while I told him of Jones’s predicament and Petit Pierre’s advice. I felt sure he would have shown no more surprise if I had told him of the Secretary for Social Welfare dead in my bathing-pool and the way in which I had disposed of the body, but I think he would have been secretly grateful to me that I had not called him in. When I finished my story, he said, ‘I had a cable from London about Jones.’