The Haitian Trilogy: Plays

by Derek Walcott

  (He sketches the campaign on the ground.)

  Look. The King is coming, we are here. He is with his calvary and going to Port-au-Prince. The soldiers throw him from his horse; they must not touch him, that is our job; they take his sword, he wanders off the road, while the dark settles, and here by the road we are going to wait, sharp and clean …

  (He raises his head, listening.)

  I hear horses. We can take his finery. You ever see an easier job? What is the matter with you? Where is your instrument? You mean you came here without an instrument? Boy, you are a shame to your father …

  SECOND MURDERER (In a frightened whisper)

  You not scared about … God or death?

  (Sound of horses, distantly, and voices.)

  We should not kill. Is that what my father used to do? We ca—

  FIRST MURDERER

  Keep quiet … keep quiet, boy, we must not think …

  SECOND MURDERER

  But to kill a man …

  FIRST MURDERER

  Ask the generals of the wars that are supposed to buy liberty and peace; ask them why they use ordinary people, workmen, niggers, and smiling boys with sonnets in their eyes dying like Greece on vulgar cannons; ask the man who hired us. I am his hand, he is his conscience.

  SECOND MURDERER

  And what about God?

  FIRST MURDERER

  Ask God why He killed His son, and what good it did us since …

  SECOND MURDERER

  You are a heretic and a murderer … He is coming …

  (FIRST MURDERER crouches, waiting; the other stands dazed, watching an opening in the bushes; the older man pulls him and strikes him silent.)

  FIRST MURDERER

  Poor boy, yet what he says …

  I have no authority to cut the throat of light,

  I am tired of washing the blood from my hands, but

  Who can pardon the hawk its instincts, the gull

  Its flight from the storm, the vulture on the corpses that stink?

  Who will pardon the hunter, not the friend, dead between three

  Trees?

  (DESSALINES enters, dishevelled.)

  DESSALINES

  Who are you?

  (Then he realizes.)

  Of course, so ordinary and professional …

  No … please, please …

  (He is not in panic but trying to talk sense.)

  Listen …

  (Meanwhile, the SECOND MURDERER, on his knees, watches with fascination the horror that is about to be enacted.)

  FIRST MURDERER

  Sir, let’s be quiet about this …

  (He advances calmly and draws a knife with terrible leisure. The SECOND MURDERER buries his face in his hands and begins to mumble a kind of prayer, hardly audible, as the lights fade out.)

  PART TWO

  The first that there did greet my stranger soul,

  Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick;

  Who cried aloud “What scourge for perjury

  Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?”

  —Richard III

  Scene 1

  Before the cathedral at Cap Haitien. SYLLA, VASTEY, other GENERALS, and BRELLE are on the cathedral steps. The mitre of the archbishop makes the apex for the triangular arrangement of the scene; on either side of the steps a CROWD is lined, all facing offstage.

  SYLLA

  This paupered love in the lazaretto

  Of my grey-haired heart had anticipated

  Peace and penance when we cracked them at Crête-à-Pierrot

  When history sucked the last sail out of vision;

  Now impossible, it seems, with

  Jealousies snarling, greed

  Plotting, with Pétion fighting Christophe:

  Look now, a civil war.

  BRELLE

  What had you thought of?

  SYLLA

  I had hoped for, first, faith,

  People singing, eating leisurely

  Under the green ease of councils, a federation

  Of complexions; but Haiti will never be normal;

  Not I either, dying blind,

  Will see it.

  BRELLE

  I see, Henri would prefer us to think

  This fight for the presidency against Pétion

  Necessary for us to get on;

  But no poison is a necessary drink.

  But Monsieur Vastey must think differently.

  VASTEY

  Of course, ingratitude.

  Who would be President on Pétion’s terms?

  He had framed the Senate to a stronger constitution;

  The President would have been the figurehead of an institution

  He could not control, no more than I can halt storms.

  The Senate was the body; he could not be the mouthpiece

  Of factious members of a corrupted office;

  If he had done nothing, he would be straw to their weathers,

  A feather blown by their inclinations.

  SYLLA

  Well recited, schoolboy.

  BRELLE

  Well, why did he not present the cabinet their protestations?

  Why settle by war what quarrels would?

  VASTEY

  The general believes the price of freedom is blood.

  SYLLA

  No one is more generous than generals;

  I, one once, know that;

  War is cheap.

  VASTEY

  How can you live with enemies around you,

  Betrayal on the tongues of those who surround you

  Ready to play cat and mouse?

  Must Christophe not strengthen the floors of his house,

  Before the whole collapse in dust?

  SYLLA

  While industry and the plough rust?

  And the people murmur against this slaughter?

  Was it not merely to appease an affront

  That Christophe takes blood for an expense account:

  “Tell Pétion I am going south

  To ram his constitution down his mouth”?

  (Cheering. Dimly.)

  He’s coming.

  BRELLE

  This victory should buy quiet.

  Adjust my mitre and my robes, I must learn to conduct

  Myself like a dutiful archbishop;

  But I am too old to change.

  Do I hear a trumpet?

  SYLLA

  The President has always been a vain man,

  But noble as kings.

  VASTEY

  Royalty frightens him, he is otherwise intentioned.

  Why do you two smile? It is as I mentioned.

  (Asennet.Enter CHRISTOPHE and LIEUTENANTS.)

  Hail!

  (The CROWD echoes this.)

  Today you free your country from her enemies

  With a new government cloaked in modesty

  In open sunlight; peace like blackbirds

  Shall settle on the season.

  (The CROWD applauds.)

  BRELLE

  Sprinkle the conqueror with holy hope,

  And pray he control the power given

  By God and history to his grip. Let war adjourn; we are tired

  Of bitter separations between complexions

  That grin above the skeleton. All flesh is similar;

  We have so little time for hooded prayers,

  The eremite mercy, the black regret.

  Let us live like servants

  To the inspired intentions history frames today,

  And pray that he directs his services straight to God

  As this breath, censers, smoke, and wish

  Rise crookedly to heaven. Kneel, President.

  (He blesses him.)

  Now rise gowned solely in Christian humility,

  And learn from this precious silver of my eyes that I

  Who should be beyond complexions

  Am proud of this dark brood of sorrows

  Who rise
to birth from blood; but blood that must no more be cheap,

  The currency of gain. Hold this life precious

  To tell history and children remembering us in queer languages

  By cracked columns, in dusty aisles where weeds

  Are memory’s signatures: our breed shall learn

  How men like you, Toussaint, Brelle, Dessalines, dead,

  Led their own people from embarrassment to insolence,

  Breaking their former masters on their knees.

  Rise and rule well, but never give cause

  To turn these children against themselves and you;

  Because if you do that, I shall betray you, too.

  Henri, I welcome you to the uncontested presidency.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I cannot speak from pride.

  VASTEY

  Speech, speech …

  (The CROWD picks this up.)

  BRELLE

  That is the politician’s nightmare.

  It is a wonder how they speak too often

  At the wrong time, then at the right time soften.

  (Laughter.)

  CHRISTOPHE

  I can only show my pride in promises;

  My tongue is only garrulous

  In dreams. But I will try to speak.

  I have beaten Pétion; he will not trouble us.

  It was a long campaign. The men, your husbands, sons, brothers,

  Are tired; we all want peace;

  I will send them home. I promise you my rule

  Shall burst the gourds of plenty;

  I will make history, richer than all kings.

  BRELLE

  Still plucking at an irritated string …

  King … King …

  VASTEY

  Citizens, should this man not be King?

  (The CROWD murmurs disappointedly.)

  Ingratitudes, so he must show his wounds,

  Bare his split shoulder like a harlot, to beg the purses

  Of your wish?

  (The CROWD grumbles.)

  FIRST VOICE

  Why must he be King? Is it an honour?

  SOLDIER

  But he is the liberator, and donor

  Of this peace; gratitude must give her feeling voice.

  SECOND VOICE

  In temporary forgetting you rejoice.

  I remember …

  SOLDIER

  This is history, titles and medals are toys …

  VASTEY

  Make him a king and joys shall fill your scenes

  With splendour, dignity, plenty.

  FIRST VOICE

  With all the splendour of a Dessalines,

  The palace glittering, our stomachs empty?

  SYLLA

  This is hardly the occasion.

  BRELLE

  Yet we cannot settle these things by evasion,

  With candles lowering in rustling chambers;

  This is a young energetic nation,

  And these are not the rabble but respectable members.

  What does the President say?

  CHRISTOPHE

  I will be King if the nation

  Wants, otherwise it has not been my inclination.

  BRELLE

  Do you speak as a man or as a politician?

  CHRISTOPHE

  I speak as my country’s physician,

  Admitting deceptions to restore her sanity.

  BRELLE

  You hear him? Offer a crown.

  Tear the veil of purpose from his ambition,

  Try him, offer some sort of crown.

  (The CROWD echoes this.)

  There is no crown. Vastey, here is my mitre.

  Present it to this servant of his country,

  Warn him of the implications that tighten

  Around this honour that seems an only indolent office.

  Only God makes kings.

  (VASTEY offers the mitre.)

  Wait.

  When you wear this mitre’s meaning on your skull,

  Remember the crude riots death must stage

  To amuse; it has in it the authority of the bishopric,

  A mortal right over the flesh’s province,

  The light imprisoned in the eye, the death of tongues;

  It expels the criminal and cripple without why—

  That’s more than I can do, and more

  Than God thinks worth His doing.

  With this for signature, you can

  Break the built bone, make the eyes drink the dark.

  Why do you hesitate? This halt is dangerous—

  Why watch me so? You think I mock you, but you are my friend.

  Because I am your friend I mock you here.

  I do not like that dubious hesitation.

  Does temptation make you tremble, or is it ambition creeping

  Through lymph and vein like snakes to eat this offer?

  That hesitation …

  (Tired, he knocks the crown over.)

  The crowd sighs, Henri, with relief,

  I do, too.

  Return my mitre, it has made history.

  Say something, Henri.

  (CHRISTOPHE passes the CROWD and goes to the steps to speak.)

  CHRISTOPHE

  I am tired of many things,

  Chief, living. This ephemeral gesture

  Of a greying hero, with murders for his memory,

  I think this is the tiredness

  That threatened Dessalines before he died.

  Leave us. Go home.

  (The CROWD disperses raggedly.)

  I am very confused, Father.

  (SYLLA and GENERALS go; VASTEY and BRELLE stay.)

  I had no comfort; what I wanted

  Was memory, which no worm bites; this summer flesh

  Wrapped in comfort around the arctic bone

  Will crumble like my work; you understand, white man,

  This nigger search for fame

  Dragged like a meteor across my black rule.

  Apart from that I have no ease,

  No gods, Haitian or Christian; my primer is blood or honour;

  My pieces, cathedrals that I would build,

  Would have made brick biographies, green ruin,

  Played over by children and girls dressed like butterflies

  In a tropic summer. But you cannot understand, only Vastey.

  BRELLE

  You have no faith,

  You want to be King.

  You pray to a God of power and glory,

  No prayer is answerable till hands are meek.

  You think I am all faith.

  Our faiths, Henri, are only crooked divers crouched

  For leap into negation; spun on a world

  Then flung into the dark where horror rules,

  Guesses like stars whirl, hazardous in the dark;

  I too doubted that only temporal triumphed.

  This world is like a teardrop posed

  In the eyelid of eternity, then dropping down the dark,

  Round as a bubble, pricked by accident.

  Accept this harm, master

  The death of summer opening in the petal,

  The evil threatening your light:

  To be President is enough.

  VASTEY

  Must he break his back,

  Squatting on a soldier’s stool

  With failing eyes? He grows old.

  And now this desk, buried up to the neck

  With the flat white wishes of hope turned to paper,

  Dead hands, dead wishes around him,

  His eyes and veins all ink?

  Shame, Priest,

  It is religion that is our confusion.

  BRELLE

  I know you both bitterly resent my intrusion,

  But I know the emptiness of glory;

  It is not the amount of syllables that make the story

  But the sincerity.

  You think my intrusion to be severity:

  I have risen from acolyte to a
rchbishop.

  You from a slave in Grenada to this grandeur.

  Where is the honour? Pardon me, Henri.

  CHRISTOPHE

  A man does not like to be brought naked in the sun,

  Or have his hopes pilloried in the market.

  Leave us, Brelle.

  (BRELLE goes out.)

  My dreams are cracked, scudded like smoke.

  VASTEY

  I tried my best. I should have had

  More accomplices in the crowd:

  That soldier was not loud.

  CHRISTOPHE

  You did your best.

  There will be another chance.

  I will be King, a king flows in me. I am tired;

  Let us go in.

  To ride through shouts, crowned, insolent, to ride

  Under long arches.

  VASTEY (Leading him away.)

  Yes, General.

  We must try again.

  CHRISTOPHE (Laughing.)

  There is no “more.”

  The leaves rust in silence; rivers and tongues

  Are dry; my age is drought:

  Grey hairs and wrinkles and the senile clutch

  Of one dry grief to the anarchy of the bough.

  That’s how I feel, but to be King, only to be King; ah, Vastey,

  To rule in comfort … ah …

  Let us go in.

  (They are going out, when they hear the CROWD.)

  The crowd, their laughter, huge childish terrors,

  Like a river’s noise in history.

  Do not trust crowds, Vastey,

  Break them or they break you.

  (They go out. For a moment the stage is bare, the bunting and flags draping mockery when the CROWD returns.)

  SOLDIER

  And this gratitude we pay him? Shame!

  FIRST VOICE

  Honour and love are rich enough estates

  For any.

  SECOND VOICE

  It is certain that he is a good soldier,

  Loves his country; but why crave

  The crown and its dangers?

  FIRST VOICE

  We saw what the sceptre did to Dessalines;

  Do we want that repeated?

  SOLDIER

  Rubbish. Dessalines is dead and Pétion is defeated;

  No crow rules but a king

  Who is king except in name only.

  FIRST VOICE

  Then that should content him.

  (Laughter and jeering.)

  SOLDIER (Establishing quiet.)

  Is it for that in fear you sent him,

  To wear his wounds without reward,