The Haitian Trilogy: Plays

by Derek Walcott

… to the first consul, etc., etc., from Commander … (cough) Commander in Chief, Army of Saint Domingue … etc., etc.… and the date … what is the date?

  ANOTHER VOICE

  … bruary ninth … eighteen nought two …

  LECLERC’S VOICE

  … nought two … I have great need of reinforcements. You must … (cough) … see how … (cough) … give me some water … (Images. The hospital. A SOLDIER in the gamboge dusk, looking out.) I have already six hundred sick, the majority of my troops having embarked five months ago. Above all, count on my devotion … I shall prove to France that you have made a good choice … I need more men … (Images. PAULINE over the SOLDIER. Watching. He is gasping for breath.) … three months before our arrival … Moise had sought to supplant Toussaint, and to do this, he had begun the massacre of six hundred to seven hundred white … (cough) … Toussaint had him shot and has rid us of him … I have already more than one thousand, two hundred men in hospital, but I myself … (cough), am in excellent health … (A SURGEON joins PAULINE. She goes to a window. The young SOLDIER’s face.) … (cough) … the rainy season has arrived … Your sister remains as devoted and as true as ever to me, her hus … band (cough). Your devoted brother-in-law and general of the armies … You will have to sign for me … I cannot manage even a pen … Victor-Emmanuel.

  SURGEON

  Madame Leclerc, we must go.

  We are moving this hospital.

  The fever is worse here.

  Anton Calixte just died.

  (PAULINE walking. She sees a black, half-naked CHILD and bends to it. She brings the CHILD to her caressingly. The army SURGEON emerges. PAULINE looks up. The SURGEON nods. PAULINE resumes playing quietly with the CHILD.)

  PAULINE

  What is your name, eh? Nom-ous? Ton nom?

  (The CHILD, bewildered, doesn’t answer. The bugle blowing. Fade-out.)

  Scene 3

  An army camp. DESSALINES, CHRISTOPHE. THREE PRISONERS, stripped, are waiting. TOUSSAINT crosses to the PRISONERS. He looks them over rapidly, his face a cold fury, then taps one on the chest.

  TOUSSAINT

  You remember my orders?

  Ous save ça ous fait?

  Ous songer mes ordres?

  You know what you did?

  (PRISONER spits. TOUSSAINT turns to him.)

  It amuses me. Tell my why you spat, comrade?

  PRISONER (Spitting.)

  You would not know me.

  I’m a nigger. I fought the French with you.

  Now look at this. Look at you.

  You are a busy man, General.

  (TOUSSAINT looks him up and down.)

  TOUSSAINT

  Pity. You are a good Haitian.

  Bad soldier. You had your orders.

  And this spitting business. Pas bon.

  Continue! Shoot them!

  (The PRISONERS are taken away. Orders ring out. The PRISONERS are shot.)

  … and we made this agreement with the French; I have made it, if you want, for the good of this new country, but that, not even that, is the business of this army. You disobeyed orders, you fought these dragoons when I ordered a cease-fire. Those men behind me there, those French dragoons, are our brother soldiers now, because I, yes I, moi, Toussaint, made this agreement with General Leclerc … (MOISE, in full dress but bareheaded, in the evening drizzle, in front of the brigade.) But General Moise decided that he would disobey. Who here does not know that Moise is my own nephew? But I do not love him more than I love this country … I have nothing to ask Moise. But I have something to ask of you. You will show these French dragoons what Haitian soldiers are … (Silence.) You will step forward, all of you, to a man, with your guns loaded, reversed, and you will shoot yourselves. Reverse arms! One step forward, march! Prepare to fire! (The ranks of SOLDIERS have stepped past MOISE. TOUSSAINT’s voice, hoarsely.) Fire! (The SOLDIERS fall. Silence. MOISE steps forward, looks TOUSSAINT in the eyes, removes his pistol.)

  MOISE

  I can shoot myself.

  (He shoots himself.)

  TOUSSAINT

  Forward, march!

  (The army moves on.)

  (Fade-out.)

  Scene 4

  Exterior. Night. Le Cap: partially ruined buildings. POMPEY hitches his mule in the street, outside the decaying façade of a pension. He looks towards the windows. A half-naked WHORE screams at him and slams the jalousies.

  WHORE

  Maquereau!

  (Laughter within. POMPEY enters the salon. Dancing. SOLDIERS, some white, WHORES. POMPEY inquires. He climbs a stair cautiously, knocks at a door. A FRENCH GRENADIER opens it. He is finishing dressing.)

  GRENADIER

  Take your time, citizen.

  (Over his shoulder to YETTE in the bed beyond him.)

  I didn’t know you took niggers, too, empress.

  (He salutes POMPEY, exits. YETTE lies in bed. Jaded. Smoking. Silence. She turns her head away.)

  POMPEY

  Reviens, chérie, reviens. I beg you.

  It have nothing here for you, Yette.

  I don’t care how they mash you up.

  I know it is the war. I know it is all these people.

  Listen, they do not know you like I know you.

  (YETTE’s face. She rises, sits up on the bed.)

  YETTE

  I’m no good for you. This is where I belong.

  POMPEY

  You know how long I looking for you, Yette? Three months.

  And listen. The government, they give me in charge, me …

  Me. This big house. They make me responsible,

  Me, stupid Pompey that you use to laugh at “little boy.”

  Are you not tired, eh, Yette, my Yette? Don’t this life make

  You old? So come with me. You want me on my knees inside this place?

  I will kneel down. You want me to make jokes?

  I will make jokes. The land is a hard mother, but it can

  Make more children.

  (YETTE lies back in bed, her face in the pillows.)

  Well, laugh, non?

  YETTE

  I leave you. Why you want me for?

  A whore is all I can do. I hate the earth.

  I hate the Haitian earth. Why? Tell me.

  POMPEY

  Why I want you? Because I want to see you with your arms brown and shining picking the corn that will die if you do not come. I want to hear you laughing like the water when you washing the two clothes we have. Because it is the time of peace. The war will finish. The white soldiers who have money, they will go home. Then where you will go? It will have no more soldiers. I will walk by the mule I have outside one thousand hundred miles, and we will reach to the old house. And the high bed there, Yette, and the wind that coming from the mountains where you belong, so say yes, Yette. Or don’t say yes, just even shake your head, a little so, and we will go. Now. Or in a little while. But you and I, we is Haiti, Yette.

  YETTE (In tears, nodding.)

  I have a few little things I have to get. But yes.

  Yes, Ti-moune. I will come.

  POMPEY

  Our house. Merci, Bon Dieu.

  (YETTE dresses. They exit into the streets.)

  Scene 5

  GENERAL LECLERC at the window.

  LECLERC

  After he’s dead let them fight over him,

  Christophe the waiter, Dessalines the madman,

  Those two black buzzards circling his carcass.

  Scene 6

  A camp. Shacks. SOLDIERS.

  Interior. Night. A tent.

  DESSALINES (Shouting.)

  We did what we had to do. That is all!

  C’est tout, Henri. Fini! I want to hear nothing.

  We sold him to the Frenchmen. I don’t want to hear.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Well, you goddamn will hear!

  DESSALINES

  Qui qualité jurer ça?

  Goddamn. You will goddamn well hear! Gadez,

 
Me. Nègre. African. Not Eeenglesh. Comprend?

  I don’t got to goddamn well hear nothing, gentlemen.

  I got to goddamn eat.

  (CHRISTOPHE lunges, turns him around. DESSALINES pauses, disentangles himself.)

  You cannot be serious.

  CHRISTOPHE

  To feel it. That is all.

  To feel it. What we did him. You and me!

  Remorse! Jean Jacques.

  DESSALINES

  Remorse … bien. All right.

  Why did you sell him to Leclerc?

  CHRISTOPHE (Hoarsely, wearily)

  For peace. I sold him, as you put it, monsieur,

  So that at least this country could have peace,

  Because my hand is weak from massacre,

  Because I cannot remember the last time I have seen

  An ordinary man, a man without a wound.

  Give him some honour.

  DESSALINES

  Honour?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Yes!

  DESSALINES

  Do you remember when he turned on that same nigger that gave him his command “The Brigadier” Biassou? That was after he joined the Spanish. You remember Moise? And how he loved Calixte? That was when he was for a king. We went with him, right? And then he turned against the Spanish, and we turn with him? So what is all this shit about dishonour?

  CHRISTOPHE

  Talk quietly. The officers will hear.

  DESSALINES

  I will speak quietly, compère, and now let me tell you what I remember: I remember Moise, his own nephew that he commanded to execute himself. I remember that smart little monkey of a coachman betraying his own country, his own country, to the Spanish, without a reason, none. I remember when you came up to his camp and he had packed his bag of monkey tricks and jumped over the border, to come back fighting his own people, for another set of whites, and if you and me had asked him, he would have said what you said: “I did it for the sake of peace.” So I do not give a particular fuck what the French do with him, whether Bonaparte puts him in a cage in his public gardens for little blond French children to throw bananas at. (Pause. The two watch each other.)

  Look, we have done it, we have a whole country to rule now, we begin again by betraying the French, after this! We divide it according to the campaigns. You are a general. Let us go back to work. Have a bad night. Have bad dreams if you want, but tomorrow: work.

  (They exit.)

  Scene 7

  Aboard ship. A cabin. Dusk. TOUSSAINT, LECLERC, others.

  LECLERC

  This letter is from my Emperor, who is now yours also.

  (He reads.)

  As regards the return of the blacks to the old regime, the bloody struggle out of which you have just come victorious with glory commands us to use the utmost caution … For some time yet vigilance, order, a discipline at once rural and military, must take the place of the positive and pronounced slavery of the coloured people of your colony. Especially the master’s good usage must reattach them to his rule. When they shall have felt by comparison the difference between a usurping and tyrannical yoke—And I think he means yours, Excellency—And that of the legitimate proprietor interested in their preservation—By which he means himself of course—then the moment will have arrived for making them return to their original condition—Naturally he means slavery—from which it was so disastrous to draw them. So then are my orders clear?

  TOUSSAINT

  General Leclerc, I was a slave. I understand.

  LECLERC

  Oh, we must clarify the distinction, General.

  You are not our slave exactly but our prisoner.

  A hostage to peace. A contract arranged

  Between France and your comrade generals.

  You may hoist sail, Captain.

  (The CAPTAIN looks in.)

  CAPTAIN

  Excellency …

  (He exits.)

  TOUSSAINT

  How far do I go, monsieur?

  LECLERC

  Quite far.

  TOUSSAINT

  For … for how long?

  (LECLERC. Silence. Then …)

  LECLERC

  I don’t manage these things. That’s up

  To the First Consul.

  TOUSSAINT

  I have served France.

  LECLERC (Wryly)

  You have served everybody.

  TOUSSAINT (At the window.)

  I served her.

  That place.

  LECLERC

  Why do we call countries women?

  We see them as wives or whores. It is a piece of earth.

  Frankly, I was hoping to avoid all of this sentiment.

  I was hoping that you would not have forced me

  To harden my heart. I admire your genius.

  So do your two generals, Dessalines and Christophe.

  TOUSSAINT

  They betrayed me to my enemy so that there could be peace?

  They aren’t Africans but slaves. Pets of your empire. Swine, not panthers!

  LECLERC

  Besides, I’m not sure that what protects you from tribal genocide

  Isn’t this very empire that you mock. Before it, you were hungry

  Wolves drinking the wind, tearing one another with your teeth.

  TOUSSAINT

  We have no wolves here. Wild boars, yes. Illiterate. Both of them.

  LECLERC

  Whichever predator you prefer. But with it, not only a common hate herded you together, but I’m tired of metaphor, I’m a rational man, a soldier with fever, not delirium, before it, wolves, boars; but with it, under it, under the French flag with its three colours, its three principles, you straightened up from animals to men. It is discipline that straightened your spine. It is our laws, our books, our courts, our language, our uniforms, our architecture that you would like to practise now, isn’t that correct? Then why be wolfish, why bite the hand that fed you? That taught you to add and write?

  TOUSSAINT

  I have always appreciated that. But those are ideals, as much as the Christian Church is an ideal. The empire wasn’t built on that, General.

  LECLERC

  I am talking about civilisation!

  TOUSSAINT

  I am remembering civilisation. All those glorious white marbles in your museums, all your Gothic arches, your embroidered books. What do they mean to a slave whose back is flayed so raw that, like a book, you can read the spine? I should be talking to your cousin-in-law the Emperor. We are not equals in rank. I wouldn’t discuss civilisation with my corporals.

  LECLERC

  Come, Commander General, you are more than that.

  (A sail is hoisted, creaking.)

  TOUSSAINT

  I am not the Commander General.

  My name is François-Dominique Toussaint,

  I am a coachman. I was employed under the kind care

  Of Monsieur Calixte-Breda. I also suffer from … hallucinations,

  Brought on by old age and the toothache,

  And I have had, Doctor, this persistent dream

  That all slaves, brothers, Africans, whatever,

  Would follow me, this coachman, towards … towards … towards …

  They have hoisted the sail. The longboat is ready.

  You must go. The earth is cracked. There is division among

  The soldiers. There must be peace.

  LECLERC

  Call yourself a hostage to peace, General.

  And you promise the First Consul to cooperate

  For the sake of peace; that when you are in exile

  You will not try to make use of your authority?

  TOUSSAINT

  My authority?

  When this voice had authority it lived

  In expectation of an echo. By the sea, armies!

  Breakers throwing their caps in the air!

  Lances of men bowed to it like the canes.

  Now it’s an old man’s cough. Rattling g
ravel

  In a riverbed. My tongue is a dry leaf. The sun has set

  In my throat. My authority is hoarse. A child

  Wouldn’t obey it. Much less hear it. No, sir,

  You needn’t worry about my authority.

  Any more than Moise.

  LECLERC

  You mean Moise, your general?

  Isn’t he dead?

  TOUSSAINT

  He lives in his uncle.

  When his uncle dies, General Moise will die.

  But they will die with me, every one of them

  Who believed I saved this country for myself.

  In those days when I had authority.

  LECLERC

  Don’t smile at me as if I laid a trap.

  It was your own generals who approached me.

  TOUSSAINT

  The thought is common, the execution expected.

  Nothing should startle a government, treaties, betrayals,

  And done out of expediency, not friendship.

  Once, I changed sides myself, and it surprised them.

  I often wonder why I fought this war.

  The war had all it needed, in campaigning.

  For strategy: Christophe, for fury: Dessalines.

  Why was I there? To curry-comb their horses?

  Now they have offered me a greater choice than war

  Without even my asking them. What a gift;

  What, ultimately, an exact compensation.

  To make myself a sacrifice, if not for war,

  But for the original intention: peace.

  I’ll go to my exile as Moise went to his,

  That one where there is no passport needed,

  No shadowy customs. He will say “Uncle,”

  I’ll embrace him.

  LECLERC

  I know. General …

  (He extends his hand.)

  Adieu.

  TOUSSAINT (Taking it.)

  We have been good enemies. Perhaps the First Consul

  Will treat me as you have.

  (LECLERC descends the ship’s side.)

  LECLERC

  Oh, I’m sure of that. Now,

  After this, you will be confined to your cabin.

  Take a long, last look at those mountains, General.