JACKO
They say you was dead. They say they burn you.
DESSALINES
Black magic, boy. Black magic. Keep walking.
What could be safer than this? Don’t worry.
Tonight you’ll be free. I’m walking to my throne.
SOLDIER
No disorder there. You! Fall back!
(The SOLDIER yanks JACKO forward and starts trotting his horse so that JACKO has to trot. DESSALINES laughs, shouts.)
DESSALINES
Courir! Courir! Run, nigger, run,
I betting on you.
(Some of the SLAVES join in the laughter. DESSALINES’s expression changes slowly. Down the road, the SOLDIER galloping, and JACKO, trying to keep up, is dragged for some length in the dirt.
ANTON and the BARONESS. TOUSSAINT comes towards them. He pauses. He is in coachman’s livery.)
ANTON
What is it, Toussaint? There, you saw what happened?
TOUSSAINT
Perhaps he deserved it. The carriage.
How many will there be to go to Le Cap?
ANTON
All of us. Harness four. Wait. Toussaint … You do not have to go. You know that?
TOUSSAINT
Four. Excusez moi, madame, m’sieu.
(TOUSSAINT bows. The BARON, ANTON, the BARONESS, M. CALIXTE-BREDA, a matronly WOMAN.)
CALIXTE-BREDA
Mirabeau, Robespierre, Rousseau, Voltaire,
What are all these metropolitan names, Baron?
They’re romantics overcome by the odour of the mob.
MATRON
Bouquet d’Afrique.
(The guests laugh.)
A man’s origins hides in his linen.
(More laughter.)
CALIXTE-BREDA
And this man … Ogé … He’s a mulatto.
He was a member of the Friends of the Negro …
He is, was, my son Anton’s very good friend.
BARON
Was? He isn’t dead yet. That’s tomorrow, no?
CALIXTE-BREDA
He’s as good as dead. Maybe just as well.
Rights for the mulattos today means rights
For the slaves tomorrow. Well, there’s damned
Little entertainment here apart from executions.
MATRON
I had a surly cook once. Very rude. Finally,
Desolated, I threw him into the oven.
(Laughter.)
That was after my husband died.
No. It’s true. Don’t be shocked, Baron.
It is funny now I come to think of it.
CALIXTE-BREDA
Their trial has lasted two months. It has been fair.
They began an insurrection. Chavannes killed my friends.
I have no feeling of revenge. You must write that
In your esteemed style, Baron.
You must see that Anton, my adopted son,
Is a mulatto. But I treat him like my own.
So we aren’t all that cruel.
MATRON
You should display more gratitude, Anton.
(CHORUS enters, marching at funeral step, to a single drumbeat on her drum, CHORUS sings.)
CHORUS
I
C’était bel jour comme ’jourd’hui.
Eux prendre les deux mulattres:
Ogé avec Chavannes.
Eux ’taient aller Paris
En culottes et cravates
Eux pas ’taient Nègre savannes
Pour demander leur droit,
Leur droit, leur droit, mulattres.
II
Mais mulattres trop couillons,
Pis eux ni grands cabanes.
Eux croient eux c’est gens blanc
Et, Nègres ka rester cabrits
Z’animaux et moutons,
Alors jourd’hui, jourd’hui
Bon Dieu fait eux pardon
Eux prend Ogé ec Chavannes
Pour faire crucifixion.
III
Bon Dieu, toute moune c’est même
Mulattres, bechés et Nègres,
Mais nous sourds, nous aveugles
Tout n’omme eux c’est une race
Messieurs bi-dim, bam-bam
La guerre kai commencer
A’ nous aller la place
A’ nous La Place des Armes.
I
It was a lovely day,
A day just like this one.
They took the two mulattos
Named Ogé and Chavannes
And stretched them in the sun.
The two, they went to Paris
In trousers and in ties
To plead the mulattos’ cause
Before the French Assembly,
And what they did to them
You will see, you will see!
II
These two men they were fools
Because they had good beds.
They thought that they were free,
They had a right to ask it,
Brotherhood, liberty.
They learnt good French in schools
But what was in their heads
Will roll into a basket.
III
God, all men are one race
But men are deaf and blind,
They pleaded for their case
But now their plea is wind,
Wind in the marketplace.
And Justice, she so blind!
And Justice, she so blind!
Scene 3
Night. The city of Le Cap. Crowds in the street. A carnival atmosphere. The gang of SLAVES, DESSALINES among them, being herded along to an open square, where there is a platform and two wheels. Kettledrum rolls.
A CLERK mounts the platform and reads, by the light of a torch held by a SOLDIER, the death sentence.
CLERK
They are to be taken to the Place des Armes,
And the opposite side to that appointed
For the execution of white criminals, and
Have their arms, legs, and ribs broken
While alive, upon a …
(DESSALINES sits among the gang of SLAVES in the square, watching the gibbet. The square is filling with SLAVES from other estates, SOLDIERS guarding them.
Auberge de la Couronne. Laughter, drunken CITIZENS, PROPRIETOR. CHRISTOPHE, as a waiter, serving drinks to a table of MULATTOS sitting apart. A STUDENT, VASTEY BARON. The sound of the inn growing louder.)
CLERK’S VOICE
Scaffold erected for that purpose, and
Placed by the executioner upon wheels,
With their faces turned towards heaven,
There to remain as long as it shall
Please God to preserve life; after
This, their heads to be severed from
Their bodies and exposed upon stakes.
PROPRIETOR
I say if it happen, it happen, and life must go on!
You know who have the pure philosophy?
These women!
(GRACES, three handsome, light-skinned women in republican costumes.)
Our three girls, Marie, Thérèse, and Yette,
Egalité, fraternité,
So to forget the horror
A little music, and
A nous! The three Graces!
(The three GRACES, YETTE among them, dressed as La Liberté. The GRACES begin their worn routine. This comprises a ballet of revolution, around a chained NEGRO.)
GRACES (Singing.)
Allons, enfants, allons, messieurs,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
(A grimy tableau on a platform. A chained half-naked NEGRO; around him the three costumed GRACES, holding up a sign: LA LIBERTÉ DE SAINT DOMINGUE.)
YETTE (To STUDENT)
You working damn hard for a free coffee, garçon.
STUDENT
Paix chou’ous. I am an intellectual whore. I admit.
VASTEY
You taught us the art of atrocity,
civilisation.
The science of massacre. There were once in this place
A million Indians. Today there are six hundred.
Their slaughter was in the interest of science?
STUDENT
I have studied philosophy in Paris itself.
I don’t know why you should feel so confused.
The torture is of no consequence, here is the reason:
This is hot. This is black. There’s no milk in it.
You know what coffee is? A slave is pure coffee.
But what’s a mulatto like her? Café au lait.
I am in a café; I am a Catholic, a colonial, look.
If I mix coffee with milk, it’s no longer coffee.
(He indicates.)
It is sentimental to base a civilisation
Upon a peasantry, culture is based on intellect,
On hierarchy and order, the Church herself,
The spangled, dizzying definition of angels,
Archangels, saints, canonical decrees
Admit the ascent towards that radiance
Of utter thought, for what’s the Supreme Being
If not the Utmost Intellect?
YETTE
True. True.
STUDENT
And since, in nature,
We see the evolutions of power and servitude,
How one system sharks into another’s maw,
How everything is gloved in appetite
To feed the major beasts, how there is difference
Even in the affects of nature, in cities,
Blizzards; in jungles: dark rain, it follows
That there is size, and scale, and service,
And that at the bottom of the pyramid,
The apex, of every sane society, the peasant,
And lower than the peasant, the slave;
The slave, who even in his own family,
No less than the obscurest beetle,
Gives orders as the father to his spawn,
Or you might as well chuck the whole thing in a ditch
And call confusion order, and not chaos.
Saint Domingue, therefore, despite its slaves,
Remains an excellent example of natural order,
Obedience to the Church in servitude,
Protection of the slaves, its children,
Harvest, and in the New World, in terms of example,
Is more than Europe, an earthly paradise.
Even Paradise had its revolutionary angel,
And it was the first revolt, wasn’t it,
That flared up that order? It was the light-bringer
That tried to make the celestial order chaos
And, out of heaven, made hell. It is for this
And not for their politics these men are punished.
(He exits.)
PROPRIETOR
Makes plenty sense to me. Coffee is coffee.
Coffee with milk is not coffee, but café au lait.
Therefore, sir, you are not a cup of coffee.
VASTEY
Don’t talk to me about Paris.
You see what they do to mulattos who go to Paris …
BARON
That is one arrogant nigger over there. The waiter.
He was born in Saint Christopher, so
He calls himself Christophe.
(He suddenly begins to sob, dryly. No one notices. CHRISTOPHE refills the mug of rum.)
VASTEY
Why was I born into this tribe of mongrels?
You hear them? They torture two of their people,
And they come here and get drunk.
(CHRISTOPHE turns, assessing the smoky, raucous crowd.)
CHRISTOPHE
Just now they’ll start singing,
Give them enough rum, then someone
Will pull out a knife.
(Some singing begins with the CHORUS of the three GRACES.)
The nigger blood will show.
They remind me of monkeys.
VASTEY
I am one of them. Do I remind you
Of a monkey also?
CHRISTOPHE
A philosophical monkey,
Always pronouncing big words
Imported on the last boat.
VASTEY (Rising.)
Ape … you illiterate black ape!
(Silence. CHRISTOPHE takes the drink and goes to the rum barrel, grins, fills the mug, and returns with it. He places it before the BARON. All now watch. CHRISTOPHE extends the napkin.)
CHRISTOPHE
Tell me more, Excellency.
I am here to learn, mulatto.
Because the French, they know you!
They know they dealing with monkeys,
Monkeys with foulards, you don’t want to be free,
You just don’t want to be black. Right?
(He tears off the BARON’s cravat.)
Fat mulatto monkeys that smoke five-franc cigars
And keep bawling for more wine,
And they’re killing two just now.
(He slaps the cigar from the BARON’s face, pours wine onto his shirt. He walks up to YETTE.)
Wouldn’t it be nice if your children were white?
But making children is not a whore’s business,
Any more than making revolution
Is a mulatto’s.
(YETTE spits at him, then looks away. CHRISTOPHE mounts the platform and unchains the frightened NEGRO, who is being used for the Dance of Liberty.)
Go. And run far.
(The NEGRO runs through the curtains and out of the room. CHRISTOPHE turns. VASTEY stands with a drawn knife.)
Comedian.
(VASTEY lunges at him. CHRISTOPHE does not move. VASTEY pauses.)
VASTEY
I am not an animal.
CHRISTOPHE
And those two out there, in the Place des Armes,
Ogé and Chavannes! They are animals?
Why don’t you fucking cowards do something?
(Suddenly, exasperated, he screams.)
Jokers! Jokers!
They should break every one of you.
Jokers! Bloody jokers?
Wipe your nose, Baron. One day you will all have
To make up your minds if you’re white or black.
(He moves out to the street. YETTE leaves the stage slowly. She enters a small room. She sits there, staring at her face in the mirror.)
Scene 4
Exterior: A street. Night. There is still a CROWD in the streets, but SOLDIERS among them, too, moving them on. CHRISTOPHE, shirt open, barefooted, strides among them. He meets his wife, MARIE-LOUISE, on the street.)
CHRISTOPHE
Marie. You leave the baby by herself?
MARIE-LOUISE
Yes. I was just coming to look for you.
CHRISTOPHE
Know why I am in the street? I leave my work.
You want to know why?
MARIE-LOUISE
I never ask you your business.
CHRISTOPHE
Go home. Pack everything.
Henri Christophe is a waiter no more.
From tomorrow, everything will be different.
You hear me? Different! Now run home!
(MARIE-LOUISE exits, running. CHRISTOPHE walks past the band of waiting SLAVES. Flambeaux and lanterns illuminate their bodies. DESSALINES sits up from sleeping.)
DESSALINES
They ready?
SLAVE
Almost. Soon is morning.
DESSALINES
Well, don’t wake me till they ready.
(He goes back to sleep. CHRISTOPHE watches him sleep.)
CHRISTOPHE (To SLAVE)
How can he sleep with all this business?
SLAVE
Him? He could sleep on his grandmother grave.
(CHRISTOPHE exits. Lights fade.)
Scene 5
Daybreak. The same. The balcony of the Auberge de la Couronne, crowded with MULATTO WHORES. YETTE, waving a
t the CROWD. They jeer at passersby. A gallows. The wheel. A hot, dusty square ringed by a crowd of SLAVES, FREE COLOUREDS, and a kind of summer pavilion for the WHITES. TOUSSAINT, in coachman’s livery; ANTON; the BARONESS, the BARON, CALIXTE-BREDA, the MATRON.
CALIXTE-BREDA
I hope the carriage is in a safe place, Toussaint.
Do you want an extra parasol, Baroness?
Ogé and Chavannes, yes. These dreamers.
They called themselves Friends of the Blacks.
I heard they offered six million in securities
To the National Debt. It’s an expensive dream.
They stated in their umpteenth petition
To the Assembly: “Protestants, comedians, Jews,
The relations of criminals ‘all’ have their civic
Rights, but not the Mulattos.” The Assembly has sworn
“Never to give rights to a bastard and degenerate race,”
So these two madmen begin a revolution.
Well, it’s the end of all that stuff today.
(TOUSSAINT unfurls a parasol over CALIXTE-BREDA. The WHORES, YETTE encouraging them, scream, wave.)
MATRON
Whores. They have no politics.
BARONESS
Please, madame. It is too hot. Shut up.
CALIXTE-BREDA
Those are our belles de nuit. I believe
Their sympathies are basically royalist.
She’s a pretty-looking number, isn’t she?
BARONESS
Their tastes are usually aristocratic.
BARON
They’re the true gauge of a country’s finances.
Their figures speak for themselves.
Of seven thousand mulatto women in Saint Domingue,
Five thousand are those or the mistresses of whites.
Now, isn’t that prosperity?
CALIXTE-BREDA
Baron, your mind continues to bewilder me.
What value is that fact?
(A scream, then another, rend the air. A hot, heavy silence. The execution begins. Two MULATTOS exhausted from torture. SLAVES, watching. Suddenly DESSALINES sits up.)
DESSALINES
I told you to wake me up. Shit!
ANTON
Unless all this has meaning, love
Is meaningless.
We would be animals, animals!
BARONESS
We are animals. Be a man and look.
(There are more screams.)
ANTON
I cannot bear this. Excuse me, gentlemen, please.
Madame Baroness, could we talk for a second?
The Haitian Trilogy: Plays Page 18
