The Haitian Trilogy: Plays
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Foreword
Henri Christophe
Drums and Colours
The Haitian Earth
Also by Derek Walcott
About the Author
Copyright
FOREWORD
The writing of these plays spans an arc of nearly forty years. Henri Christophe, privately printed in 1948, deals with the struggle between two guerrilla generals, afterwards kings of Haiti, Christophe and Dessalines, following the imprisonment and death in exile of Toussaint L’Ouverture, whose name meant “the breach” or “the opening.” It was written on the invitation of my brother, Roderick, and performed by a young group called the Arts Guild.
The theme of the slave revolt against French rule in Saint Domingue is also a pivotal part of the expansive design of Drums and Colours, commissioned for the first and only West Indian Federation, with emblematic images from Caribbean history: Columbus in chains, Millais’s painting The Boyhood of Raleigh, the coachman of the Breda family Toussaint L’Ouverture, and the martyrdom of George William Gordon for Jamaican independence. The Haitian Earth includes a scene from Drums and Colours, a repetition seen in a slightly altered context.
The Haitian revolution, as sordidly tyrannical as so many of its subsequent regimes tragically became, was an upheaval, a necessary rejection of the debasements endured under a civilized empire, that achieved independence. The revolution is as central to the plays as it is to the history of the island.
My debt to all those involved in their production, many no longer here, to the Arts Guild of Saint Lucia, and to the Trinidad Theatre Workshop remains incalculable. This book is for the memory of my brother.
D.W.
2001
HENRI CHRISTOPHE
A Chronicle in Seven Scenes
The play was first produced by the St. Lucia Arts Guild at St. Joseph’s Convent in Castries, St. Lucia, in 1949. Directed by Derek Walcott. Costumes by Alix Walcott.
It was later produced at Hans Crescent, London, in 1952. Directed by Errol Hill and designed by Carlyle Chang.
The cast was as follows:
GENERAL SYLLA—Sam Morris
GENERAL PÉTION—Frank Pilgrim
JEAN JACQUES DESSALINES—Victor Patterson
CORNEILLE BRELLE—John Nunez
HENRI CHRISTOPHE—Errol John
VASTEY—Errol Hill
NARRATOR—George Lamming
Also, MURDERERS, SOLDIERS, CROWD—Roy Augier, Fred Debedin, Edric Roberts, George Griffith, Reggie Hill, Elesto Cortes, Ray Robinson, Maurice Mason, Eileen Stewart, Kenneth Monplaisir, Eustace Pollard, Lionel Ngakane, Charles Appia (DRUMMER)
CAST OF CHARACTERS
GENERAL SYLLA
GENERAL PÉTION
JEAN JACQUES DESSALINES; later Jacques I, King of Haiti
CORNEILLE BRELLE, a priest; afterwards archbishop
HENRI CHRISTOPHE, a general; later Henri I, King of Haiti
VASTEY, his secretary; afterwards a baron
NUMEROUS ATTENDANTS, GENERALS, MESSENGERS, SOLDIERS, AND TWO MURDERERS
The setting is Haiti after 1803.
PART ONE
The cease of majesty
Dies not alone but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near it with it; it is a massy wheel
Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin.
—Hamlet
Scene 1
An interior of the Government Palace at Cap Haitien. Present are GENERALS SYLLA and PÉTION. SYLLA is an old, tired general with a wry, senile sense of humour. PÉTION is active and middle-aged.
SYLLA
This waiting is exhausting. It’s almost contradictory
That anything so sad can happen
In a broad afternoon.
Where’s Dessalines?
PÉTION
Dressing in the inner room,
Preparing to be valedictory
To this peace that holds its breath, to hear
What happened to Toussaint.
Today a ship arrived from France;
Anchoring in the roads, she looked sullen;
Fearing the worst, Dessalines would look decorous
To suit the occasion. But if he really dressed his hope,
It would wear black; he would like Toussaint dead.
This country that stretched, crowing to greet
The sun of history rising, will have its throat cut;
That’s the truth.
SYLLA
There’s a kind of rustle in the lower hall;
It looks like the messenger from Napoleon, but
Where is Dessalines?
PÉTION
No doubt decorating his drawers
With epaulettes. He considers kingship;
Vanity will undo him.
Here’s the messenger.
(Enter MESSENGER.)
What is the sum of the news, good or bad?
SYLLA
What is Napoleon doing?
Patience will drive us mad.
(Enter DESSALINES.)
This is the messenger from Napoleon
That we sent on the last ship; a veiled intensity
Inflates his bearing.
DESSALINES
Thanks. There is a crowd of marchands, fishermen
At the front gates. Are they converged in a rebellious murmur
For bread again, or waiting for news?
PÉTION
They want, as is only natural, to hear
About Toussaint.
DESSALINES
If they are rabble, make them orderly.
You smile, I do not.
PÉTION
About Toussaint … General …
DESSALINES
Of course, proceed. Be eloquent without elaboration;
Talk quickly …
MESSENGER
I have leave to speak?
After the general and liberator left his country,
By force and treachery of his ruined captains
He was taken, without satisfaction of audience or justice,
To a sullen castle, situated near the border,
Flung in a dungeon; he fretted there,
Complained of discomfort, protesting, not pleading,
As it suits a soldier, not a state buffoon.
But the black mountains and snow in the tight winter,
Whose sharpness, although cautionary in October,
Hurt his teeth, cramped in pains …
DESSALINES
Well?…
MESSENGER
He would look out past where the snow, like bread,
Settled without sound on the barred window edge
In brittle heaps. A mountain’s iron aspect, the sky
Grey as soiled milk, imprisoned his exile more.
One day he rose to stretch his bones and died.
They buried him. The cleric who did the obsequies
Informed me that he died, grace on his lips;
But that is no comfort, he is dead …
You have heard his fate …
DESSALINES
I’ll talk of fat
e. Have you letters
From Napoleon? How was his death received?
MESSENGER
Somewhat with courtesy, unlike the court
I see here. I expected to move iron men to tears;
You look as if I had discussed the weather.
Haiti is in the Saturday of honour, she
Is rudderless.
SYLLA
There are several captains, son.
Here is the priest. Thank you.
(Enter BRELLE as the MESSENGER leaves.)
Good evening, Père Brelle.
BRELLE
I caught the mood from the tossing murmur outside;
I can read that the man is dead.
How they loved him …
DESSALINES
We have all loved him.
We must not profane his memory with idleness.
You have done well to come, Priest.
Have a proclamation issued; I’ll append
My signature; declare a day of mourning, toll bells;
Inform your archbishop, Father Brelle, of an opulent
Obsequy for the man’s memory. As for Christophe,
Tell him I have assumed temporary rule;
Temporary—see that the word is out before he chokes
The messenger. I am now in control.
Christophe must learn to cage the jaguar hope
In the bars of restraint. You all respect
My wish?… General Pétion? Sylla? Father Brelle?
Good. Tragedy threatens me with being great,
After this little condolence, the state …
BRELLE
This is a cursory mourning;
Do tears dry up so very quickly?
DESSALINES
Habit makes a boredom of tragedy.
Even in our eyes we hold death’s annunciation,
Like Sylla, getting blind, deaths of twin light.
Let us proceed. We will enlarge our conscience, spread it
Like an open map in Father Brelle’s presence.
There are no more French:
We have dispersed their broken units, they cannot lift a finger
Against us; the country, now, is ours;
But we must not talk, delay, malinger
With words, words, not action.
SYLLA
Then you appreciate the position
That a long war, an internal, cormorant war, has left
Our treasury in?
The peasants have identified liberty with idleness;
The fallow fields cropless; the old plantations,
Plaine du Nord, Morne Rouge, Quartier Morin,
Are like grass widows, unweeded, growing thorns
And bristles, dry seeds in a parching wind.
We do not seem to be able to drive them back to work;
They speak of slavery, murmur against measures,
Strict, but satisfactory to the able administrator.
PÉTION
Give a man an education or a gun
And you lose an honest labourer.
BRELLE
Since Toussaint’s exile, I have observed the country
Has grown lax in spiritual matters, perplexing the clergy;
The ancient cults are growing like an unweeded garden over
Our pruned labours;
A stern but gentle hand is needed,
As long as the Church is not superseded.
SYLLA
We must remember Christophe;
He needs watching.
BRELLE
I do not descend to a question of enmity, I prefer
That the present holders of the keys of authority
Do not consider
Who must open the door first, rather,
Work in an amity to put our rooms in order.
PÉTION
I agree with what Brelle says;
We should transcend these partisan rages …
DESSALINES
Cackling of old women, talking politics to savages,
You still persist in framing gentle laws?
I have seen virgin debauchery, bacchanals, heresies, shouting
Under a swaying moon, drinking goat’s death and wine,
A shriek ahead of spinsterish piety.
We should know better, not be merciful.
Iron decisions make a Caesar, and a Caesar is what
This country needs.
I will assemble powers.
I plan a temporary amendment, call it enlargement
Of Toussaint’s constitution. If these men will not work,
Since we have their good in our intentions,
We will punish them like a stern father.
BRELLE
You will have to contend with the aristocracy.
SYLLA
What aristocracy? Treacherous white rags of flesh,
Dogs under skin, who sold his exile for the Judas kiss
Of comfort. Welcoming Toussaint when he routed Rigaud,
Throwing jewelry and laughter under his horse—
How many are left now? Not enough to spit on.
BRELLE
When will this eating another be over?
PÉTION
For you, that’s easy; your cassock makes you calm;
But I remember in these soft-edged voices,
In the waning sun, actions so fresh
The gutters seem to run like lymph; the smell
Of blood cooks in my nostrils, the blood sticks
Wet, very wet, on my memory.
BRELLE
We cannot answer vengeance on vengeance, because
As far as the eye can warn, the incision instruct,
The cycle will never end. Blood grows
Where blood is uprooted …
SYLLA
Father, a priest, you are safe.
Dessalines is right, we’d better watch the whites.
I saw them fawn on Leclerc, your very archbishop,
Who owed to Toussaint his ecclesiastic spiral,
Leaped nimbly to the side that wore his flesh, the whites:
His robes did not hinder him.
BRELLE
You seek to kill the founders of your country?
DESSALINES
Who are the founders of our country—the Big Whites?
Wild geese that, adopting a finer climate, assume
The white divinity of the swan; and all their brothers,
A babble of shopkeepers, murderers, dispossessed.
You say they founded this country. What did they found?
Bastardhoods whose existences they denied, privileges pruned,
Cruelties devised to adorn an indolent minute,
White Jesuit fathers built presbyteries from slavery,
Swinging annulling incense over wound-humped backs,
Tired with the weight of Africa,
Baptising with a tongue in cheek …
SYLLA
Stop, Jacques, this ordinary heresy …
PÉTION
Shut up, old man.
BRELLE
I too have seen much; the actions of the Church
Are not always exemplary, but the Church’s laws are perfect.
Messengers miscarry, fall prey to the time’s temptation,
And the Church has done grave wrongs in Haiti,
Or where it has not done, it has often allowed it.
I grant Archbishop Mainvielle treacherous, refractory,
And I condemn him as a man, but
I cannot question his right to bless his flock …
DESSALINES
I have decided.
Although it defy an old archbishop whose voice
Is weak as water.
BRELLE
The archbishop is ineffectual. If
I were archbishop …
DESSALINES
When you will be archbishop, I will not be King,
And if I am King, you will never be archbishop. So even priests
; Conceal ambitions?
PÉTION
You seek to exclude and deprive the whites?
DESSALINES
Be frank, I seek to cut them down.
BRELLE
Massacre would be more frank.
DESSALINES
Call it any name, the syllables do not matter.
BRELLE
Whose conscience do you ferret out on that?
Whose law? What love?
DESSALINES
My own, my conscience, and the memory
Of a red past.
BRELLE
Conscience is the jackass you ride to history on, the mule
You heap excuses on, but watch your step.
You defame Toussaint.
What is your alphabet, the bullet?
What is the bayonet, your bible?
You betrayed Toussaint to Leclerc,
Then you betrayed the peasants to Rochambeau.
What is your dictionary, only treason?
Then, when the tide changed, you betrayed the French.
If I had the authority …
DESSALINES
Priest, your cassock is your comfort; do not waste
Your safety, leave us.
BRELLE
So you must rule?
I hope Christophe contests it.
You throne yourself on cruelty. So you will rule?
We are embarrassment to our hopes, when
They are fulfilled. Ah, time, how men shame
The achievement of their whispers!
You are bald of mercy. But I warn all of you,
The extreme of tyranny happens when
The gaoled turn on their gaolers.
I’ve said my fill.
(He exits.)
DESSALINES
And overflowed the cup.
Now, gentlemen, to make our policy plain,
Our simple trick impedes Christophe:
The messenger hastens cautiously to his camp,
Days later will arrive too late.
Christophe will be helpless to prison power.
I assume a monarchy.
(There is consternation.)
PÉTION
Monarchy … Not even Toussaint …
SYLLA
Christophe will work a civil war against it.
DESSALINES
Who is Christophe? My victory over Rochambeau
Here at Cap Haitien rides freshly on my crest.