The Comedians

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by Graham Greene


  ‘We need technicians, even white technicians,’ Concasseur said.

  ‘The Emperor Christophe did without them.’

  ‘We’re more modern than Christophe.’

  ‘An ice-skating rink instead of a castle?’

  ‘I think I have borne with you nearly enough,’ Captain Concasseur said, and I knew I had gone too far. I had touched his raw wound and I was a little scared. If I had made love to Martha what a different night this would have been; I would have been sleeping deeply in my own bed at the hotel, unconcerned with politics and the corruption of power. The captain took the revolver out of his holster and laid it on the table, beside his empty glass. His chin dropped against his shirt of white and blue stripes. He sat in a lugubrious silence as though he were weighing carefully the advantages and the disadvantages of a quick shot between the eyes. I could see no disadvantages so far as he was concerned.

  Mère Catherine came and stood behind me and deposited two glasses of rum. She said, ‘Your friend has been more than half an hour with Tin Tin. It is time . . .’

  ‘He must be allowed,’ the captain said, ‘whatever time he wants. He is an important man. A very important man.’ Small bubbles of spittle gathered at the corners of his lips like venom. He touched the revolver with the tips of his fingers. He said, ‘An ice-rink is very modern.’ His fingers played between the rum and the revolver. I was glad when he picked up the glass. He said, ‘An ice-rink is chic. It is snob.’

  Mère Catherine said, ‘Your payment was for half an hour.’

  ‘My watch keeps a different time,’ the captain said. ‘You lose nothing. There are no other customers.’

  ‘There is Monsieur Brown.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know how to follow such an important guest.’

  ‘Then why are you staying here?’ the captain asked.

  ‘I’m thirsty. And curious. It’s not often in Haiti we have important visitors. Is he financing your ice-rink?’ The captain looked at his revolver, but the moment of spontaneity, which was the moment of real danger, had passed. Only signs of it remained like traces of old sickness: the streak of blood across the yellow eye-balls, the striped tie which had somehow gone vertically askew. I said, ‘You wouldn’t like your important foreign guest to come in and find a white corpse. It would be bad for business.’

  ‘That can always be arranged later . . .’ he said with sombre truth, and then an extraordinary smile opened his face like a crack in the cement of his own ice-rink, a smile of civility, even of humility. He stood up and, hearing the door of the salle close behind me, I turned and saw Tin Tin all in white, smiling too, modestly, like a bride at a church door. But Concasseur and she were not smiling at each other, both their smiles were directed at the guest of great importance on whose arm she had entered. It was Mr Jones.

  IV

  ‘Jones,’ I exclaimed. There were still the relics of battle on his face, but they were neatly covered now with pieces of sticking-plaster.

  ‘Why, if it isn’t Brown,’ he said. He came and shook my hand with great warmth. ‘It’s good to see one of the old lot,’ he said as though we were veterans at some regimental reunion who had not met since the last war but one.

  ‘You saw me yesterday,’ I said, and I detected a slight embarrassment – when an unpleasantness was over Jones forgot it as quickly as possible. He explained to Captain Concasseur, ‘Mr Brown and I were shipmates on the Medea. And how is Mr Smith?’

  ‘Much as he was yesterday when he visited you. He has been anxious about you.’

  ‘About me? But why?’ He said, ‘Forgive me. I haven’t introduced my young friend here.’

  ‘Tin Tin and I know each other well.’

  ‘That’s fine, fine. Sit down, dear, and we’ll all have a snifter.’ He pulled out a chair for her and then took my arm and led me a little aside. He said in a low voice, ‘You know all that business is past history now.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you safely out.’

  He explained vaguely, ‘My note did it. I thought it would. I was never really worried. Mistakes on both sides. I wouldn’t want the girls to know about it though.’

  ‘You would find them very sympathetic. But doesn’t he know?’

  ‘Oh yes, but he’s bound to secrecy. I would have told you tomorrow how things had gone, but tonight I badly needed a roll in the hay. So you know Tin Tin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s a sweet girl. I’m glad I chose her. The captain wanted me to take that girl with the flower.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d have noticed the difference. Mère Catherine caters for a sweet tooth. What are you doing with him?’

  ‘We’re in a bit of business together.’

  ‘Not an ice-rink?’

  ‘No. Why an ice-rink?’

  ‘Be careful, Jones. He’s dangerous.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Jones said, ‘I know the world.’ Mère Catherine passed: her tray was loaded with rum and what was probably the last of the Seven-Ups and Jones grabbed a glass. ‘Tomorrow they are finding me transport. I’ll come and see you when I’ve got my car.’ He waved to Tin Tin; to the captain he called ‘Salut.’ ‘I like it here,’ he said. ‘I’ve landed on my feet.’

  I left the salle, my mouth cloyed with too much Seven-Up, and shook the sentry by the shoulder as I passed – I might as well do someone a good turn. I felt my way past the jeep to my own car, and heard footsteps behind me and dodged sideways. It might be the captain come to preserve the honour of his ice-rink, but it was only Tin Tin.

  She said, ‘I told them I go faire pipi.’

  ‘How are you, Tin Tin?’

  ‘Very well and you . . .’

  ‘Ça marche.’

  ‘Why not stay a little while in your car? They will go soon. The Englishman is tout à fait épuisé.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but I’m tired. I’ve got to go. Tin Tin, did he behave all right to you?’

  ‘Oh yes. I liked him. I liked him a lot.’

  ‘What did you like so much?’

  ‘He made me laugh,’ she said. It was a sentence which was to be repeated to me disquietingly in other circumstances. I had learnt in a disorganized life many tricks, but not the trick of laughter.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 1

  I

  JONES fell from view for a while as completely as the body of the Secretary for Social Welfare. No one ever learnt what was done with his corpse, though the Presidential Candidate made more than one attempt to discover. He penetrated to the bureau of the new Secretary where he was received with celerity and politeness. Petit Pierre had done his best to spread his fame as ‘Truman’s opponent’, and the Minister had heard of Truman.

  He was a small fat man who wore, for some reason, a fraternity pin, and his teeth were very big and white and separate, like tombstones designed for a much larger cemetery. A curious smell crossed his desk as though one grave had stayed open. I accompanied Mr Smith in case a translator were needed, but the new Minister spoke good English with a slight twang which went some way to support the fraternity pin (I learnt later that he had served for a while as ‘the small boy’ at the American Embassy. It might have been a rare example of merit rising if he had not served an interim period in the Tontons Macoute where he had been a special assistant to Colonel Gracia – known as Fat Gracia).

  Mr Smith excused the fact that his letter of introduction was addressed to Doctor Philipot.

  ‘Poor Philipot,’ the Minister said, and I wondered whether at last we were to receive the official version of his end.

  ‘What happend to him?’ Mr Smith asked with admirable directness.

  ‘We will probably never know. He was a strange moody man, and I must confess to you, Professor, his accounts were not in good order. There was the matter of a water-pump in Desaix Street.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he killed himself?’ I had underrated Mr Smith. In a good cause he could show cunning and now he played his cards
close to his chest.

  ‘Perhaps, or perhaps he has been the victim of the people’s vengeance. We Haitians have a tradition of removing a tyrant in our own way, Professor.’

  ‘Was Doctor Philipot a tyrant?’

  ‘The people in Desaix Street were sadly deceived about their water.’

  ‘So the pump will be set working now?’ I asked.

  ‘It will be one of my first projects.’ He waved his hand at the files on the shelves behind him. ‘But as you see I have many cares.’ I noticed that the steel grips on many of his ‘cares’ had been rusted by a long succession of rainy seasons: a ‘care’ was not quickly disposed of.

  Mr Smith came smartly back at him. ‘So Doctor Philipot is still missing?’

  ‘As your war-communiqués used to put it, “missing believed killed”.’

  ‘But I attended his funeral,’ Mr Smith said.

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His funeral.’

  I watched the Minister. He showed no embarrassment. He gave a short bark, which was meant to be a laugh (I was reminded of a French bulldog) and said, ‘There was no funeral.’

  ‘It was interrupted.’

  ‘You cannot imagine, Professor, the unscrupulous propaganda put about by our opponents.’

  ‘I am not a professor and I saw the coffin with my own eyes.’

  ‘That coffin was filled with stones, Professor – I am sorry, Mr Smith.’

  ‘Stones?’

  ‘Bricks to be exact, brought from Duvalierville where we are constructing our beautiful new city. Stolen bricks. I would like to show you Duvalierville one morning when you are free. It is our answer to Brasilia.’

  ‘But his wife was there.’

  ‘Poor woman, she was used, I hope innocently, by unscrupulous men. The morticians have been arrested.’

  I gave him full marks for readiness and imagination. Mr Smith was temporarily silenced.

  ‘When are they to be tried?’ I asked.

  ‘The inquiries will take some time. The plot has many ramifications.’

  ‘Then it’s not true what the people think – that the body of Doctor Philipot is in the palace working as a zombie?’

  ‘All that is Voodoo stuff, Mr Brown. Luckily our President has rid the country of Voodoo.’

  ‘Then he has done more than the Jesuits could do.’

  Mr Smith broke in with impatience. He had done his best in the cause of Doctor Philipot and now it was his mission which demanded full attention. He was anxious not to antagonize the Minister with such irrelevancies as zombies and Voodoo. The Minister listened to him with great courtesy, doodling at the same time with a pencil. Perhaps it was not a sign of inattention, for I noticed the doodle took the form of innumerable percentage-marks and crosses – so far as I could see there were no minus-signs.

  Mr Smith spoke of a building which would contain a restaurant, kitchen, a library and a lecture hall. If possible there should be enough room for extensions. Even a theatre and cinema might be possible, one day; already his organization could supply documentary films, and he hoped that soon – given the opportunities for production – there might arise a school of vegetarian dramatists. ‘In the meanwhile,’ he said, ‘we can always fall back on Bernard Shaw.’

  ‘It is a great project,’ the Minister said.

  Mr Smith had been in the republic a week now. He had seen the kidnapping of Doctor Philipot’s body; I had driven him through the worst of the shanty-town. That morning he had insisted against my advice in going to the Post Office himself to buy stamps. I had lost him momentarily in the crowd, and when I found him again he had not been able to approach a foot towards the guichet. Two one-armed men and three one-legged men hemmed him round. Two were trying to sell him dirty old envelopes containing out of date Haitian postage stamps: the others were more frankly begging. A man without legs at all had installed himself between his knees and removed his shoe-laces preparatory to cleaning his shoes. Others seeing a crowd collected were fighting to join in. A young fellow, with a hole where his nose should have been, lowered his head and tried to ram his way through towards the attraction at the centre. A man with no hands raised his pink polished stumps over the heads of the crowd to exhibit his infirmity to the foreigner. It was a typical scene in the Post Office except that foreigners were rare nowadays. I had to fight my way to reach him, and once my hand encountered a stiff inhuman stump, like a piece of hard rubber. I forced it on one side, and I felt revolted by myself, as though I were rejecting misery. The thought even came to me, What would the fathers of the Visitation have said to me? So deeply embedded are the disciplines and myths of childhood. It took me five minutes to get Mr Smith clear, and he had lost his shoe-laces. We had to replace them at Hamit’s before we called on the Secretary for Social Welfare.

  Mr Smith said to the Minister, ‘The centre, of course, would not be run at a profit, but I calculate we ought to give employment to a librarian, secretary, accountant, cook, waiters – and eventually of course the cinema-usherettes . . . At least twenty people. The film-shows would be educational and free of charge. As for the theatre – well, we mustn’t look too far ahead. All vegetarian products would be supplied at cost price, and the literature for the library would be gratis.’

  I listened to him with astonishment. The dream was intact. Reality could not touch him. Even the scene in the Post Office had not sullied his vision. The Haitians freed from acidity, poverty and passion would soon be bent happily over their nut cutlets.

  ‘This new city of yours, Duvalierville,’ Mr Smith said, ‘might provide an admirable situation. I’m not an opponent of modern architecture – not at all. New ideas need new shapes, and what I want to bring to your republic is a new idea.’

  ‘It might be arranged,’ the Minister said, ‘there are sites available.’ He was making a whole row of little crosses on his sheet, all plus-signs. ‘You have plenty of funds, I am sure.’

  ‘I thought a mutual project with the Government . . .’

  ‘Of course you realize, Mr Smith, we are not a socialist state. We believe in free enterprise. The building would have to be put up to tender.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Of course the Government would make the final decision between the tenders. It is not a mere matter of the lowest bid. There are the amenities of Duvalierville to be considered. And of course questions of sanitation are of first importance. For that reason I think the project might well come in the first place under the Ministry for Social Welfare.’

  ‘Fine,’ Mr Smith said. ‘Then I would be dealing with you.’

  ‘Later of course we would have to have discussions with the Treasury. And the Customs. Imports, of course, are the responsibility of the Customs.’

  ‘Surely there are no duties here on food?’

  ‘Films . . .’

  ‘Educational films?’

  ‘Oh well, let us talk about all that later. There is first the question of the site. And its cost.’

  ‘Don’t you think the Government might be inclined to contribute the site? In view of our investment in labour. I guess land here doesn’t fetch a high price anyway.’

  ‘The land belongs to the people, not the Government, Mr Smith,’ the Minister said with gentle reproof. ‘All the same you will find nothing is impossible in modern Haiti. I would myself suggest, if my opinion is asked, a contribution for the site equivalent to the cost of construction . . .’

  ‘But that’s absurd,’ Mr Smith said, ‘the two costs bear no relation.’

  ‘Returnable, of course, on completion of the work.’

  ‘So you mean the site would be free?’

  ‘Quite free.’

  ‘Then I don’t see the point of the contribution.’

  ‘To protect the workers, Mr Smith. Many foreign projects have come suddenly to an end, and the worker on pay day has found nothing in his envelope. A tragic thing for a poor family. We still have many poor families in Haiti.’

  ‘Perhaps a bank guarantee .
. .’

  ‘Cash is a better notion, Mr Smith. The gourde has remained stable for a generation, but there are pressures on the dollar.’

  ‘I would have to write home to my committee. I doubt . . .’

  ‘Write home, Mr Smith, and say that the Government welcomes all progressive projects and will do all it can.’ He rose from behind his desk to signify that the interview was at an end, and his wide toothy smile showed that he expected it to be beneficial to all parties. He even put his arm around Mr Smith’s shoulders to demonstrate that they were partners in the great work of progress.

  ‘And the site?’

  ‘You will have a great choice of sites, Mr Smith. Perhaps close to the cathedral? Or the college? Or the theatre? Anything which does not conflict with the amenities of Duvalierville. Such a beautiful city. You will see. I will show it to you myself. Tomorrow I am very busy. So many deputations. You know how it is in a democracy. But Thursday . . .’

  In the car Mr Smith said, ‘He seemed interested all right.’

  ‘I would be careful about that contribution.’

  ‘It’s returnable.’

  ‘Only when the building’s completed.’

  ‘His story about the bricks in the coffin. Do you suppose there’s something in that?’

 

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