The Comedians Read online

  The captain was a thin unapproachable Hollander scrubbed clean like a piece of his own brass rail who only appeared once at table, and in contrast the purser was untidy and ebulliently gay with a great liking for Bols gin and Haitian rum. On the second day at sea he invited us to drink with him in his cabin. We all squashed in except for the traveller in pharmaceutical products who said that he must always be in bed by nine. Even the gentleman from Santo Domingo joined us and answered, ‘No,’ when the purser asked him how he found the weather.

  The purser had a jovial habit of exaggerating everything, and his natural gaiety was only a little damped when the Smiths demanded bitter lemon and, when that was unavailable, Coca-Cola. ‘You’re drinking your own deaths,’ he told them and began to explain his own theory of how the secret ingredients were manufactured. The Smiths were unimpressed and drank the Coca-Cola with evident pleasure. ‘You will need something stronger than that where you are going,’ the purser said.

  ‘My husband and I have never taken anything stronger,’ Mrs Smith replied.

  ‘The water is not to be trusted, and you will find no Coca-Cola now that the Americans have moved out. At night when you hear the shooting in the streets you will think perhaps that a strong glass of rum . . .’

  ‘Not rum,’ Mrs Smith said.

  ‘Shooting?’ Mr Smith inquired. ‘Is there shooting?’ He looked at his wife where she sat crouched under the travelling-rug (she was not warm enough even in the stuffy cabin) with a trace of anxiety. ‘Why shooting?’

  ‘Ask Mr Brown. He lives there.’

  I said, ‘I’ve not often heard shooting. They act more silently as a rule.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Mr Smith asked.

  ‘The Tontons Macoute,’ the purser broke in with wicked glee. ‘The President’s bogey-men. They wear dark glasses and they call on their victims after dark.’

  Mr Smith laid his hand on his wife’s knee. ‘The gentleman is trying to scare us, my dear,’ he said. ‘They told us nothing about this at the tourist bureau.’

  ‘He little knows,’ Mrs Smith said, ‘that we don’t scare easily,’ and somehow I believed her.

  ‘You understand what we’re talking about, Mr Fernandez?’ the purser called across the cabin in the high voice some people employ towards anyone of an alien race.

  Mr Fernandez had the glazed look of a man approaching sleep. ‘Yes,’ he said, but I think it had been an equal chance whether he replied yes or no. Jones, who had been sitting on the edge of the purser’s bunk, nursing a glass of rum, spoke for the first time. ‘Give me fifty commandos,’ he said, ‘and I’d go through the country like a dose of salts.’

  ‘Were you in the commandos?’ I asked with some surprise.

  He said ambiguously, ‘A different branch of the same outfit.’

  The Presidential Candidate said, ‘We have a personal introduction to the Minister for Social Welfare.’

  ‘Minister for what?’ the purser said. ‘Welfare? You won’t find any Welfare. You should see the rats, big as terriers . . .’

  ‘I was told at the tourist bureau that there were some very good hotels.’

  ‘I own one,’ I said. I took out my pocket-book and showed him three postcards. Although printed in bright vulgar colours they had the dignity of history, for they were relics of an epoch over for ever. On one a blue tiled bathing-pool was crowded with girls in bikinis: on the second a drummer famous throughout the Caribbean was playing under the thatched roof of the Creole bar, and on the third – a general view of the hotel – there were gables and balconies and towers, the fantastic nineteenth-century architecture of Port-au-Prince. They at least had not changed.

  ‘We had thought of something a little quieter,’ Mr Smith said.

  ‘We are quiet enough now.’

  ‘It would certainly be pleasant, wouldn’t it, dear, to be with a friend? If you have a room vacant with a bath or a shower.’

  ‘Every room has a bath. Don’t be afraid of noise. The drummer’s fled to New York, and all the bikini girls stay in Miami now. You’ll probably be the only guests I have.’

  These two clients, it had occurred to me, might be worth a good deal more than the money they paid. A presidential candidate surely had status; he would be under the protection of his embassy or what was left of it. (When I had left Port-au-Prince the embassy staff had already been reduced to a chargé, a secretary, and two Marine guards, who were all that remained of the military mission.) Perhaps the same thought occurred to Jones. ‘I might join you too,’ he said, ‘if no other arrangements have been made for me. It would be a bit like staying on shipboard if we stuck together.’

  ‘Safety in numbers,’ the purser agreed.

  ‘With three guests I shall be the most envied hôtelier in Port-au-Prince.’

  ‘It’s not very safe to be envied,’ the purser said. ‘You would do much better, all three of you, if you continued with us. Myself I don’t care to go fifty yards from the water-front. There is a fine hotel in Santo Domingo. A luxurious hotel. I can show you picture-postcards as good as his.’ He opened the drawer and I caught a brief glimpse of a dozen little square packets – French letters which he would sell at a profit to the crew when they went on shore to Mère Catherine’s or one of the cheaper establishments. (His sales talk, I felt certain, would consist of some grisly statistics.) ‘What have I done with them?’ he demanded uselessly of Mr Fernandez, who smiled and said, ‘Yes,’ and he began to search the desk littered with printed forms and paper-clips and bottles of red, green and blue ink, and some old-fashioned wooden pen-holders and nibs, before he discovered a few limp postcards of a bathing-pool exactly like mine and a Creole bar which was only distinguishable because it had a different drummer.

  ‘My husband is not on a vacation,’ Mrs Smith said with disdain.

  ‘I’d like to keep one if you don’t mind,’ Jones said, choosing the bathing-pool and the bikinis, ‘one never knows . . .’ That phrase represented, I think, his deepest research into the meaning of life.

  III

  Next day I sat in a deck-chair on the sheltered starboard side and let myself roll languidly in and out of the sun with the motions of the mauve-green sea. I tried to read a novel, but the heavy foreseeable progress of its characters down the uninteresting corridors of power made me drowsy, and when the book fell upon the deck, I did not bother to retrieve it. My eyes opened only when the traveller in pharmaceutical products passed by; he clung to the rail with two hands and seemed to climb along it as though it were a ladder. He was panting heavily and he had an expression of desperate purpose as though he knew to what the climb led and knew that it was worth his effort, but knew too that he would never have the strength to reach the end. Again I drowsed and found myself alone in a blacked-out room and someone touched me with a cold hand. I woke and it was Mr Fernandez who had, I suppose, been surprised by the steep roll of the boat and had steadied himself against me. I had the impression of a shower of gold dropping from a black sky as his spectacles caught the fitful sun. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes,’ smiling an apology as he lurched upon his way.

  It seemed as though a sudden desire for exercise had struck everyone except myself on the second day out. For next it was Mr Jones – I still couldn’t bring myself to call him Major – who passed steadily up the centre of the deck adjusting his gait to the movement of the ship. ‘Squally,’ he called to me as he went by, and again I had the impression that English was a language he had learnt from books – perhaps on this occasion from the work of Dickens. Then, unexpectedly, back came Mr Fernandez, skidding in a wild way, and after him, painfully, the pharmacist on his laborious climb. He had lost his place, but he stuck the race out stubbornly. I began to wonder when the Presidential Candidate would appear, he must have had a heavy handicap, and at that moment he emerged from the saloon beside me. He was alone and looked unnaturally detached like one of the figures in a weather-house without the other. ‘Breezy,’ he said, as though he were correcting Mr Jones’s English style
and sat down in the next chair.

  ‘I hope Mrs Smith is well.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ he said, ‘fine. She’s down there in the cabin getting up her French grammar. She said she couldn’t concentrate with me around.’

  ‘French grammar?’

  ‘They tell me that’s the language spoken where we are going. Mrs Smith is a wonderful linguist. Give her a few hours with a grammar and she’ll know everything except the pronunciation.’

  ‘French hasn’t come her way before?’

  ‘That’s no problem for Mrs Smith. Once we had a German girl staying in the house – it wasn’t half a day before Mrs Smith was telling her to keep her room tidy in her own language. Another time we had a Finn. It took Mrs Smith nearly a week before she could get her hands on a Finnish grammar, but then there was no stopping her.’ He paused and said with a smile that touched his absurdity with a strange dignity, ‘I’ve been married for thirty-five years and I’ve never ceased to admire that woman.’

  ‘Do you often,’ I asked disingenuously, ‘take holidays in these parts?’

  ‘We try to combine a vacation,’ he said, ‘with our mission. Neither Mrs Smith nor I are ones for undiluted pleasure.’

  ‘I see, and your mission this time is bringing you . . . ?’

  ‘Once,’ he said, ‘we took our vacation in Tennessee. It was an unforgettable experience. You see, we went as freedom riders. There was an occasion in Nashville on the way down when I feared for Mrs Smith.’

  ‘It was a courageous way to spend a holiday.’

  He said, ‘We have a great love for coloured people.’ He seemed to think it was the only explanation needed.

  ‘I’m afraid they’ll prove a disappointment to you where you are going now.’

  ‘Most things disappoint till you look deeper.’

  ‘Coloured people can be as violent as the whites in Nashville.’

  ‘We have our troubles in the U.S.A. All the same I thought – perhaps – the purser was pulling my leg.’

  ‘He intended to. The joke’s against him. The reality’s worse than anything he can have seen from the waterfront. I doubt if he goes far into the town.’

  ‘You would advise us like he did – to go on to Santo Domingo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His eyes looked sadly out over the monotonous repetitive scape of sea. I thought I had made an impression. I said, ‘Let me give you an example of what life is like there.’

  I told Mr Smith of a man who was suspected of being concerned in an attempt to kidnap the President’s children on their way home from school. I don’t think there was any evidence against him, but he had been the prize sharpshooter of the republic at some international gathering in Panama, and perhaps they thought it needed a prize marksman to pick off the Presidential guard. So the Tontons Macoute surrounded his house – he wasn’t there – and set it on fire with petrol and then they machine-gunned anyone who tried to escape. They allowed the fire-brigade to keep the flames from spreading, and now you could see the gap in the street like a drawn tooth.

  Mr Smith listened with attention. He said, ‘Hitler did worse, didn’t he? And he was a white man. You can’t blame it on their colour.’

  ‘I don’t. The victim was coloured too.’

  ‘When you look properly at things, they are pretty bad everywhere. Mrs Smith wouldn’t like us to turn back just because . . .’

  ‘I’m not trying to persuade you. You asked me a question.’

  ‘Then why is it – if you’ll excuse another – that you are going back?’

  ‘Because the only thing I own is there. My hotel.’

  ‘I guess the only thing we own – Mrs Smith and me – is our mission.’ He sat staring at the sea, and at that moment Jones passed. He called at us over his shoulder, ‘Four times round,’ and went on.

  ‘He’s not afraid either,’ Mr Smith said, as though he had to apologize for showing courage, as a man might apologize for a rather loud tie which his wife had given him by pointing out that others wore the same.

  ‘I wonder if it’s courage in his case. Perhaps he’s like me and he hasn’t anywhere else to go.’

  ‘He’s been very friendly to us both,’ Mr Smith said firmly. It was obvious that he wished to change the subject.

  When I knew Mr Smith better I recognized that particular tone of voice. He was acutely uneasy if I spoke ill of anyone – even of a stranger or of an enemy. He would back away from the conversation like a horse from water. It amused me sometimes to draw him unsuspectingly to the very edge of the ditch and then suddenly urge him on, as it were, with whip and spurs. But I never managed to teach him how to jump. I think he soon began to divine what I was at, but he never spoke his displeasure aloud. That would have been to criticize a friend. He preferred just to edge away. This was one characteristic at least he did not share with his wife. I was to learn later how fiery and direct her nature could be – she was capable of attacking anyone, except of course the Presidential Candidate himself. I had many quarrels with her in the course of time, she suspected that I laughed a little at her husband, but she never knew how I envied them. I have never known in Europe a married couple with that kind of loyalty.

  I said, ‘You were talking about your mission just now.’

  ‘Was I? You must excuse me, talking about myself like that. Mission is too big a word.’

  ‘I’m interested.’

  ‘Call it a hope. But I guess a man in your profession wouldn’t find it very sympathetic.’

  ‘You mean it’s got something to do with vegetarianism?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not unsympathetic. My job is to please my guests. If my guests are vegetarian . . .’

  ‘Vegetarianism isn’t only a question of diet, Mr Brown. It touches life at many points. If we really eliminated acidity from the human body we would eliminate passion.’

  ‘Then the world would stop.’

  He reproved me gently, ‘I didn’t say love,’ and I felt a curious sense of shame. Cynicism is cheap – you can buy it at any Monoprix store – it’s built into all poor-quality goods.

  ‘Anyway you’re on the way to a vegetarian country,’ I said.

  ‘How do you mean, Mr Brown?’

  ‘Ninety-five per cent of the people can’t afford meat or fish or eggs.’

  ‘But hasn’t it occurred to you, Mr Brown, that it isn’t the poor who make the trouble in the world? Wars are made by politicians, by capitalists, by intellectuals, by bureaucrats, by Wall Street bosses or Communist bosses – they are none of them made by the poor.’

  ‘And the rich and powerful aren’t vegetarian, I suppose?’

  ‘No sir. Not usually.’ Again I felt ashamed of my cynicism. I could believe for a moment, as I looked at those pale blue eyes, unflinching and undoubting, that perhaps he had a point. A steward stood at my elbow. I said, ‘I don’t want soup.’

  ‘It’s not time for soup yet, sah. The captain asks you kindly to have a word with him, sah.’

  The captain was in his cabin – an apartment as bare and as scrubbed as himself, with nothing personal anywhere except for one cabinet-sized photograph of a middle-aged woman who looked as if she had emerged that instant from her hair-dresser’s where even her character had been capped under the drying helmet. ‘Sit down, Mr Brown. Will you take a cigar?’

  ‘No, no thank you.’

  The captain said, ‘I wish to come quickly to the point. I have to ask your cooperation. It is very embarrassing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He said in a tone heavy with gloom, ‘If there is one thing I do not like on a voyage it is the unexpected.’

  ‘I thought at sea . . . always . . . storms . . .’

  ‘Naturally I am not talking of the sea. The sea presents no problem.’ He altered the position of an ash-tray, of a cigar-box, and then he moved a centimetre closer to him the photograph of the blank-faced woman whose hair seemed set in grey cement. Perhaps she gave him confidence: she would have given me
a paralysis of the will. He said, ‘You have met this passenger Major Jones. He calls himself Major Jones.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him.’

  ‘What are your impressions?’

  ‘I hardly know . . . I hadn’t thought . . .’

  ‘I have just received a cable from my office in Philadelphia. They wish me to report by cable when and where he lands.’

  ‘Surely you know from his ticket . . .’

  ‘They wish to be sure that he does not alter his plans. We go on to Santo Domingo . . . You have yourself explained to me that you have booked to Santo Domingo, in case at Port-au-Prince . . . he may have the same intention.’

  ‘Is it a police question?’

  ‘It may be – it is my conjecture only – that the police are interested. I want you to understand that I have nothing against Major Jones. This is very possibly a routine inquiry set on foot because some filing-clerk . . . But I thought . . . you are a fellow Englishman, you live in Port-au-Prince, on my side a word of warning, and on yours . . .’

  I was irritated by his absolute discretion, absolute correctness, absolute rectitude. Had the captain never slipped up once, in his youth or in his cups, in the absence of that well coiffured wife of his? I said, ‘You make him sound like a card-sharper. I assure you that he hasn’t once suggested a game.’