Грэм Грин - The Comedians

'I hesitated to come — you must be glad of an evening sometimes to yourselves.'

'I'm always glad to see my friends,' he said and lapsed into silence. I wondered whether he suspected our relationship or whether indeed he knew.

'I was sorry to hear that your boy had caught mumps.'

'Yes. It is still at the painful stage. It's terrible, isn't it, to watch a child suffering?'

'I suppose so. I've never had a child.'

I looked at the portrait of the general. I felt that at least I should have been here on a cultural mission. He wore a row of medals and he had his hand on his sword-hilt.

'How did you find New York?' the ambassador asked.

'Much as usual.'

'I would like to see New York. I know only the airport.'

'Perhaps one day you'll be posted to Washington.' It was an ill-considered compliment; there was little chance of such a posting if at his age — which I judged to be near fifty — he had stuck so long in Port-au-Prince.

'Oh, no,' he said seriously, 'I can never go there. You see my wife is German.'

'I know that — but surely now …'

He said, as though it were a natural occurrence in our kind of world, 'Her father was hanged in the American zone. During the occupation.'

'I see.'

'Her mother brought her to South America. They had relations. She was only a child, of course.'

'But she knows?'

'Oh yes, she knows. There's no secret about it. She remembers him with tenderness, but the authorities had good reason …'

I wondered whether the world would ever again sail with such serenity through space as it seemed to do a hundred years ago. Then the Victorians kept skeletons in cupboards — but who cares about a mere skeleton now? Haiti was not an exception in a sane world: it was a small slice of everyday taken at random. Baron Samedi walked in all our graveyards. I remembered the hanged man in the Tarot pack. It must feel a little odd, I thought, to have a son called Angel whose grandfather had been hanged, and then I wondered how I might feel … We were never very careful about taking precautions, it could easily happen that my child … A grandchild too of a Tarot card.

'After all, the children are innocent,' he said. 'Martin Bormann's son is a priest now in the Congo.'

But why, I wondered, tell me this fact about Martha? Sooner or later one always feels the need of a weapon against a mistress: he had slipped a knife up my sleeve to use against his wife when the moment of anger came.

The man-servant opened the door and ushered in another visitor. I didn't catch the name, but as he padded across the carpet I recognized the Syrian from whom a year ago we had rented a room. He gave me a smile of complicity and said, 'Of course I know Mr Brown well. I did not know you had returned. And how did you find New York?'

'Any news in town, Hamit?' the ambassador asked.

'The Venezuelan Embassy has another refugee.'

'They will all be coming to me one day, I suppose,' the ambassador said, 'but misery likes company.'

'A terrible thing happened this morning, Excellency. They stopped Doctor Philipot's funeral and stole the coffin.'

'I heard rumours. I didn't believe them.'

'They are true enough,' I said. 'I was there. I saw the whole …'

'Monsieur Henri Philipot,' the man-servant announced, and a young man advanced towards us through the silence with a slight polio limp. I recognized him. He was the nephew of the ex-Minister, and I had met him once before in happier days, one of a little group of writers and artists who used to gather at the Trianon. I remembered him reading aloud some poems of his own — well-phrased, melodious, a little decadent and vieux jeu, with echoes of Baudelaire. How far away those times seemed now. All that was left to recall them were the rum punches of Joseph.

'Your first refugee, Excellency,' Hamit said. 'I was half expecting you, Monsieur Philipot.'

'Oh no,' the young man said, 'not that. Not yet. I understand when you claim asylum you have to make a promise not to indulge in political action.'

'What political action are you proposing to take?' I asked.

'I am melting down some old family silver.'

'I don't understand,' the ambassador said. 'Have one of my cigars, Henri. They are real Havana.'

'My dear and beautiful aunt talks about a silver bullet. But one bullet might go astray. I think we need quite a number of them. Besides we have to deal with three devils not one. Papa Doc, the head of the Tontons Macoute and the colonel of the palace guard.'

'It's a good thing,' the ambassador said, 'that they bought arms and not microphones with American aid.'

'Where were you this moming?' I asked.

'I arrived from Cap Haпtien too late for the funeral. Perhaps it was a lucky thing. I was stopped at every barrier on the road. I think they thought my land-rover was the first tank of an invading army.'

'How is everything up there?'

'Only too quiet. The place swarms with the Tontons Macoute. Judging by the sun-glasses you might be in Beverly Hills.'

Martha came in while he spoke and I was angry when she looked first at him, though I knew it was prudent to ignore me. She greeted him a shade too warmly, it seemed to me. 'Henri,' she said, 'I'm so glad you're here. I was afraid for you. Stay with us for a few days.'

'I must stay with my aunt, Martha.'

'Bring her too. And the child.'

'The time hasn't come for that.'

'Don't leave it too late.' She turned to me with a pretty meaningless smile which she kept in store for second secretaries and said, 'We are a third-rate embassy, aren't we, until we have a few refugees of our own?'

'How is your boy?' I asked. I meant the question to be as meaningless as her smile.

'The pain is better now. He wants very much to see you.'

'Why should he want that?'

'He always likes to see our friends. Otherwise he feels left out.'

Henri Philipot said, 'If only we had white mercenaries as Tshombe had. We Haitians haven't fought for forty years except with knives and broken bottles. We need a few men of guerrilla experience. We have mountains just as high as those in Cuba.'

'But not the forests,' I said, 'to hide in. Your peasants have destroyed those.'

'We held out a long time against the American Marines all the same.' He added bitterly, 'I say "we", but I belong to a later generation. In my generation we have learnt to paint — you know they buy Benoit's pictures now for the Museum of Modem Art (of course they cost far less than a European primitive). Our novelists are published in Paris — and now they live there too.'

'And your poems?'

'They were quite melodious, weren't they, but they sang the Doctor into power. All our negatives made that one great black positive. I even voted for him. Do you know that I haven't an idea how to use a Bren? Do you know how to use a Bren?'

'It's an easy weapon. You could learn in five minutes.'

'Then teach me.'

'First we would need a Bren.'

'Teach me with diagrams and empty match-boxes, and perhaps one day I'll find the Bren.'

'I know someone better equipped than I am as a teacher, but he's in prison at the moment.' I told him about 'Major' Jones.

'So they beat him up?' he asked with satisfaction.

'Yes.'

'That's good. White men react badly to a beating-up.'

'He seemed to take it very easily. I almost had the impression he was used to it.'

'You think he has some real experience?'

'He told me he had fought in Burma, but I've only got his word for that.'

'And you don't believe it?'

'There's something about him I don't believe, not altogether. I was reminded, when I talked to him, of a time when I was young and I persuaded a London restaurant to take me on because I could talk French — I said I'd been a waiter at Fouquet's. I was expecting all the time that someone would call my bluff, but no one did. I made a quick sale of myself, like a reject with the price-label stuck over the flaw. And again, not so long ago, I sold myself just as successfully as an art expert — no one called my bluff then either. I wonder sometimes whether Jones isn't playing the same game. I remember looking at him one night on the boat from America — it was after the ship's concert — and wondering, are you and I both comedians?'