The Haitian Trilogy: Plays

by Derek Walcott

  Thanks. Well, be quick.

  (He sits on the throne.)

  What is it you want, Commissioner?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Patience, Yo … Jean … I mean Your Majesty.

  (Laughter.)

  DESSALINES

  You are rude, Henri, I am a king, no political toy.

  CHRISTOPHE

  And I was a general before I was a schoolboy.

  PÉTION

  Please, please.

  DESSALINES

  You envy me, you wear a hurt pride.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I consider the articles expressed

  In your constitution, and I find,

  Hidden in your assembly’s salad of words, dressed

  In a kind of poison to any freedom,

  An evidence of autocracy.

  You have decided to assume a monarchy

  Before Toussaint’s breath faded from the glass of history;

  You consulted a clique only, a class

  With twisted personal interests at its mind’s end.

  In this rule there is an end

  Of democracy, only a long exploitation

  And a bitter harvest, an expiration

  Of the breath of decency, financial depression;

  And I was never asked to give my impression.

  DESSALINES

  You see what it amounts to, gentlemen; Christophe’s advice

  On a subject we all have agreed on twice;

  Consider the popular petition:

  I rule because of the people’s decision.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Nonsense, rubbish.

  (They are all shocked to an electric silence.)

  DESSALINES

  I am the King! Henri, never

  Forget that. Sit back in your places.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Then rule like one,

  With a king’s grace, not a king’s grimaces,

  You keep your own people in virtual slavery.

  DESSALINES

  I am the King. Your present bravery

  Goes well on my battlefields, not in my chambers.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Haiti must suffer from those who hate her.

  DESSALINES

  Mind you do not go too far.

  So I hate Haiti? I wish you were King.

  CHRISTOPHE

  That is not my wish.

  DESSALINES

  Every slave dreams in extremes,

  And we were both, Henri.

  You think I am tricking you? I am your friend.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I am the friend of the people.

  We must avoid opportunities of separation;

  You kill offenders because of their complexion;

  Where is the ultimate direction of this nation,

  An abattoir of war?

  DESSALINES

  I who was a slave am now a king,

  And being a king, remember I was slave;

  What shall I live as now, a slave or king?

  Being this King chains me to public breath

  Worse than chains. I cannot have a masque

  Before some slave scoops up a gutter tale

  To fling into my face; I cannot drink

  Red wine unless the linen rustles blood; I cannot break bread

  Before an archbishop canonizes a body

  Broken, stuck like an albatross on the hill of skulls.

  Well, I will not listen.

  White men are here; for every scar

  (He bares his tunic.)

  Raw on my unforgiving stomach, I’ll murder children,

  I’ll riot. I have not grown lunatic, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.

  You think I am not aware of your intrigues,

  Mulattos and whites, Brelle and Pétion;

  I am a king: Argue with history.

  Ask history and the white cruelties

  Who broke Boukmann, Ogé, Chavannes; ask Rochambeau.

  If you will not comply, I’ll go.

  (He exits.)

  CHRISTOPHE

  That is the crazy graph of power,

  The zenith of his climb; he thinks himself colossus, but size

  Spells ruin, the earth is cracking now under his girth.

  We must look after us, or he will …

  A lunatic king.

  SYLLA

  If I could only warn, a grey-haired harbinger,

  Helpless as time to warn her pupils;

  There is nothing more to life, gentlemen,

  Than to find a positive function for the money in the blood

  To culture peace.

  The meeting is over,

  Nothing gained again. Good night. Brelle

  Will be amused and terrified.

  (Exit all but CHRISTOPHE and PÉTION.)

  CHRISTOPHE

  Sylla hangs to the archbishop

  Like an innocent child; with wagging tongue

  Around a father’s knee, preparing for death

  By logic and loves.

  PÉTION

  What is it you want, Henri?

  (CHRISTOPHE closes the door.)

  CHRISTOPHE

  Sit down.

  PÉTION

  Yes?

  CHRISTOPHE

  I think it is boredom that has put him so;

  Blood grows into a habit with a born butcher;

  He has grown into something monstrous

  From thirteen years of war …

  PÉTION

  I am not as gentle as he thinks;

  War has begun to crease my face with savagery;

  It is worn like an old cavalry boot;

  But if he thinks a king’s authority

  Beggars morality, he had better reject priests.

  CHRISTOPHE

  However, he has never sought to harm the clergy;

  Although he does not find much favour with the archbishop,

  He has never killed a priest.

  PÉTION

  To think that for two days now he has been

  Martyring children with a tired sword! He is a model

  Of horror. Dessalines is only a beast;

  He goes to blood with the joy that I go to a feast.

  There must be some revision

  Of his absurd and useless decision.

  CHRISTOPHE (Slyly)

  You are thinking of treason and anarchy.

  Has he not good reason to adopt a monarchy?

  PÉTION

  Because he fought to protect his country

  Does he think he has bought its soul and its duty?

  For my part I do not care who rules,

  As long as he loves his country and rules

  Well. But he commands a tyranny of fools,

  Who spell wounds, not words, their sabres their schools;

  I will not be one and stain

  The memory of Toussaint’s intention;

  I will resist tyranny on pain of expulsion.

  CHRISTOPHE

  His last deeds fill me to the brim with revulsion.

  He is not fit to rule, but on revision,

  I find that our patriotism leaps the boundary

  Of duty, and this is our quandary:

  Whether our duty is to country or King;

  This is the problem, between the spirit

  Of love and the material duty: that is the thing.

  PÉTION

  His death is for his country’s merit.

  CHRISTOPHE

  And when he is dead, who shall inherit?

  You of course are more fit.

  PÉTION

  That is a matter solved after the riddle;

  You want to begin somewhere in the middle.

  As for myself, I halt at assuming

  A blood-whispering cloak, gripping the sceptre he gripped,

  Squatting on the throne from which he slipped.

  Besides, you are better equipped.

  I am a mulatto, the Negroes are in the majority,

  Present rule
is only your authority.

  Or, after he is dead, with a twin constituency

  We could contest rule.

  CHRISTOPHE

  You mean one of us King?

  PÉTION

  I was thinking

  Rather in terms of a presidency.

  CHRISTOPHE

  You would have the public vote.

  PÉTION

  I’m sure I would not.

  Mon Dieu, look how time has made us politicians

  Rather than soldiers!

  CHRISTOPHE

  So I must kill my friend. How will we do it?

  On a matter of a massacre, I’m one of the expert technicians.

  But to kill a friend …

  PÉTION

  That is only the only means to an end.

  CHRISTOPHE

  It is true that the country is ruined.

  And the French may return. It will have to be done

  Secretly, not in an open rebellion.

  One of my soldiers … Pétion, you must go south

  To avoid suspicion; please do not mistake my purpose.

  Besides, he swears that he will deal with the mulattos

  After he slaughters the whites;

  Wait at Les Cayes, or stay near Port-au-Prince;

  I will arm your forces to seize the sceptre from him.

  Meanwhile, I will remain here and hide the snake

  In my pawn’s fawning; he still considers me.

  Mass power in the South; I will weaken

  Him by duplicity. I think the time is ripe:

  The fruit is going to be wrenched from the stalk.

  PÉTION

  And the other generals, Sylla, Paul Prompt, Blondin—can

  They be trusted to a man?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Each of them thinks nightly of being a king.

  It is a peasant’s vanities.

  We will tell them nothing.

  PÉTION

  And if they know …

  CHRISTOPHE

  To know is nothing; to hinder is execution.

  PÉTION

  You are firm in your dreams as in your solution.

  CHRISTOPHE

  What do you know of my dreams?

  PÉTION

  Nothing except that by hiding them you admit

  Their existence. Excuse me. I must go south.

  God help us in our purposes as in our ambitions.

  CHRISTOPHE

  God help our ambitions to the gates of our purposes.

  (PÉTION shakes his hand and leaves.)

  I must do it.

  (A knock.)

  Who is it?

  Come in.

  (A MESSENGER enters.)

  Speak, soldier, why are you so dirty?

  MESSENGER

  I am all out of breath, General.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Not general, commissioner. Next time gather,

  Please, your breath in the yard, rather

  Than enter scared to death.

  MESSENGER

  The King sent me in anger.

  He says that now there is no more danger.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Give me the message in the rough.

  MESSENGER

  Well, sir,

  The soldiers, idle in their narrow barracks,

  Tired already of thirteen years of war,

  Had planned a liberation from their captains.

  Next day the Emperor came riding through the ranks,

  Waving a sword that sparkled in the sun,

  Commanding all his blacks to slaughter whites.

  And there were some of us who, tasting blood,

  Hearing this trumpet summon like a wound,

  Felt the old call: we leapt into his arms,

  And held our smoking rifles by the paws;

  He held us burning through the sleeping streets,

  Meeting a herd of idlers, who raggedly conjured

  A vomit from the horn of plenty.

  Two hours we raged the city, raping, rioting,

  Turning with slaughter the chapels into brothels.

  I skewered a white martyr under an altar,

  We flung one girl in an uncertain arc

  Into the bloody bosom of the pier, and over us

  This King rode, looking as though he chewed his corpses,

  His eyes all arson. And now that massacre

  Tires him, he comes home to his bed,

  To tell the generals that Haiti,

  Thank him, is safe,

  From prejudice, from pain.

  CHRISTOPHE

  You have done your duty, I must do mine.

  (The MESSENGER exits.)

  I cannot kill my friend.

  But this King is not my friend; our ambitions rub,

  They want to sit on an only throne.

  (Enter DESSALINES, dishevelled, sword in his hand.)

  DESSALINES

  Henri, my friend, you look ill.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I am not as ruddy as you.

  DESSALINES

  You mock my colour.

  You cannot think a black king real.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I am black, too, but today I am ashamed.

  You have red work on your hands.

  DESSALINES

  It was a necessary horror,

  A crop of murders, necessary

  Like death. I know it will not let me sleep from now.

  CHRISTOPHE

  You have no soul, no thought

  Of paying afterwards?

  DESSALINES

  No, Henri, this is politics.

  I cannot wear, Christ-like, an albatross

  Around my neck; the wounds in my sides

  Were dug by innocent white hands; a king

  Makes them pay for it.

  CHRISTOPHE

  No twinge of soul?

  DESSALINES

  I act like a king; a king is whole;

  A king’s wrongs are a king’s privileges.

  CHRISTOPHE

  You wound and use authority for bandages.

  You are sick, a peevish king with terrible whims.

  Sit down, you are tired.

  Scarcely an hour ago, it seems,

  I was plotting with Pétion to assassinate you,

  But I know now I cannot hate you.

  I will admit our treason,

  But it is past now, and your condition is the reason:

  You are sick. We planned Pétion’s going south,

  Rebellion against you with me in the north,

  But no more. What is it, Jacques?…

  DESSALINES

  I carved a passage, rigorous as a dolphin

  Through the red fun. Oh, three wars cannot size

  Yesterday’s horror.

  And yet I had no purpose for this fighting.

  Have I gone mad, after long war?

  Does murder grow like habit in the hand, infection

  In the fingers and the skull?

  Henri, I am mad …

  CHRISTOPHE

  Something will be done.

  DESSALINES

  Yes …

  CHRISTOPHE

  For your own good.

  But we must watch Pétion. Tomorrow you ride south

  To stall the insurrection.

  Tonight I will see the light in your

  Room is put out.

  DESSALINES

  You are my friend, you understand

  What I need most.

  CHRISTOPHE (Dimly)

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  (Slow fade-out.)

  Scene 4

  A wood at twilight, outside the city. Two MURDERERS onstage, arguing.

  FIRST MURDERER

  What you want to think about it for? Hold the knife so. Then get somewhere soft and mortal, put the blade in, and think you cutting meat, and don’t bother your head about religion. What wrong in that?…

  SECOND MURDERER

  It’s only I am not ’custom
…

  FIRST MURDERER

  You don’t want to become a professional?

  SECOND MURDERER

  Yes, sir … but …

  FIRST MURDERER

  Well, you shaming your father. I remember how he was always saying you would make such a good apprentice. What is the matter, you are scared of a little blood? You never kill a crab, or a chicken, or an old woman? You all are funny, yes! You kill a man who was an evil king, marry him to the tall dust he grew from; you kill him intelligently, cleanly, no disfiguration; you give him time to pray, and if he does not want, you can say it for him after, just a few Ave Marias, and the act of contrition, and then you know you can leave that grey King slain under the red trees and know you do a good job. You don’t even have to worry ’bout the grass growing out of his sockets, the dead leaves rusting for days over his quiet lips, and the tall grass lecturing in whispers about what good all this thing is for … But then you think that after you kill him everything done? You think people glad for it? Listen …

  (He goes into an elaborate pantomime.)

  Finish? No, it isn’t. “Soldiers, ladies and gentlemen! A murder has been done, murder, ladies, murder, gentlemen, against the law of gods. Murder? We must—quiet, ladies, quiet, gentlemen—we must apprehend the killer. Apprehend him.” And then you run, your mouth open, your eyes streaming, with hounds and humans in an inhuman comedy chasing you to sanctuary … Sanctuary? What, in an abbey where they eat chicken, in a stable where they shoot horses, in gaol where they break your neck?

  (He grows quiet, impressing the young man.)

  And then they take you to treat you to the same argument they use against you. Thou shalt not kill. God has given no man right to kill, tell that to the lawyer, and the gaoler, and the warder, and particularly to the rope that cannot understand logic and argument. What will the priest say … “My boy, it was murder that hung Christ like an albatross around the neck of Golgotha; my boy, you must not kill; take him away and God have mercy on his soul…” This place is an arena, a human arena of lions and laughter; only the wicked and those who do not think can survive. What are you laughing at?

  SECOND MURDERER

  Sorry, sir. Now, sir, what would you say are the best hints to become a professional murderer?

  FIRST MURDERER

  First, be a vegetarian; second, be kind to animals; third, keep in practice. Now you see this King, this Dessalines, watch me handle him. Now you must plan, and I will have already planned. Let us see what will happen. All right …