Грэм Грин - The Comedians

'No. He said, "Come on. Have a Scotch, old man," but I wouldn't take the drink. I went down the front stairs, so that the driver could see me. I wanted him to see me.'

'Not very safe for you if they question Jones.'

'Without a Bren, the only weapon I have is distrust. I thought that if they began to distrust Jones something might happen …' There were tears in his voice; a poet's tears for a lost world or a child's tears for the Bren that no one would give him? I swam away to the shallow end that I mightn't see him weep. My lost world was the naked girl in the pool, and what was his? I remembered the evening when he read his derivative verses to me and to Petit Pierre and to the young beat-novelist who wanted to be the Kerouac of Haiti; there was an ageing painter too who drove a camion during the day and worked at night with his calloused fingers at the American art centre, where they gave him paints and canvases. Propped against the verandah was his latest picture — cows in a field, but not the kind of cows they sold south of Piccadilly, and a pig with his head stuck through a hoop, among green banana leaves darkened by the perpetual storm coming down the mountain. It had something which my art student failed to find.

I rejoined him by the end of the pool when I had given him time enough to check the tears. 'Do you remember,' I asked him, 'that young man who wrote a novel called La Route du Sud?'

'He is in San Francisco where he always wanted to be. He escaped after the massacre in Jacmel.'

'I was thinking of the evening when you read to us …'

'I don't regret those days. They were not real. The tourists and the dancing and the man dressed up as Baron Samedi. Baron Samedi is not an entertainment for visitors.'

'They brought money to the island.'

'Who saw the money? At least Papa Doc has taught us to live without money.'

'Come to dinner on Saturday, Philipot, and meet the only tourists here.'

'No, I have something to do that night.'

'Be careful at any rate. I wish you'd start writing poems again.'

He flashed white teeth at me in a malicious smile. 'The poem about Haiti has already been written once and for all. You know it, Monsieur Brown,' and he began to recite to me,

'Quelle est cette оle triste et no Ire? — C'est Cythйre,

Nous dit-on, un pays fameux dans les chansons,

Eldorado banal de tous les vieux garзons.

Regardez, aprиs tout, c'est une pauvre terre.'

A door opened overhead and one of les vieux garзons stepped out on to the balcony of the John Barrymore suite. Mr Smith picked his bathing-pants off the rail and looked down into the garden.' Mr Brown,' he called.

'Yes?'

'I've been talking to Mrs Smith. She thinks perhaps I was a bit hasty in my judgement. She thinks we ought to give the Minister the benefit of the doubt.'

'Yes?'

'So we shall stay on a while and try again.'

5

I had asked Doctor Magiot to dine that Saturday in order to meet the Smiths. I wanted the Smiths to know that all Haitians were not either politicians or torturers. Besides I had not seen the doctor since the night when we disposed of the body and I did not wish him to feel I had kept away from cowardice. He arrived just after the electricity had been cut, and Joseph was on the point of lighting the oil lamps. He turned the wick of one too high and the flames shooting up the chimney made the shadow of Doctor Magiot unroll down the verandah like a black carpet. He and the Smiths greeted each other with old-fashioned courtesy, and it seemed for a moment that we were back in the nineteenth century, when oil lamps shone softer than electric globes, and our passions — or so one believed — were gentler too.

'I am an admirer,' Doctor Magiot said, 'of Mr Truman for some of his internal policies, but you will forgive me if I cannot pretend to be his supporter over the Korean war. I am honoured in any case to meet his opponent.'

'Not a very important opponent,' Mr Smith said. 'It was not specifically on the Korean war we differed — though it goes without saying I'm against all wars, whatever excuses politicians may find for them. It was for the sake of vegetarianism I ran against him.'

'I had not realized,' Doctor Magiot said, 'that vegetarianism was an issue in the election.'

'I'm afraid it wasn't, except in one state.'

'We polled ten thousand votes,' Mrs Smith said. 'My husband's name was printed on the ballot.'

She opened her bag and after a little search among the Kleenex pulled out a ballot-paper. Like most Europeans I knew little of the American electoral system: I had a vague idea that there were two or three candidates, at the most, and that all voters everywhere voted for their presidential choice. I hadn't realized that on the ballot-papers of most states the name of the presidential candidate was not even shown, only the names of the presidential electors for whom the votes were actually cast. In the State of Wisconsin, however, the name of Mr Smith was clearly printed under a big black square containing an emblem, which, I think, must have represented a cabbage. I was surprised at the number of parties: even the socialists were split in two, and there were Liberal and Conservative candidates for minor offices. I could see from Doctor Magiot's expression that he was as lost as myself. If an English election is less complex than an American, a Haitian is simpler than either. In Haiti, if one put any value on one's skin, one stayed at home, even during the relatively peaceful days of Doctor Duvalier's predecessor.

We handed the ballot-paper from one to the other under the eyes of Mrs Smith who watched it as closely as a hundred-dollar note.

'Vegetarianism is an interesting idea,' Doctor Magiot said. 'I am not sure it is suited to all mammals. I doubt for example whether a lion would flourish on green things.'

'Mrs Smith once had a vegetarian bulldog,' Mr Smith said with pride. 'Of course it took some training.'

'It took authority,' Mrs Smith said and her eyes challenged Doctor Magiot to deny it.

I told him of the vegetarian centre and of our journey to Duvalierville.

'I had a patient from Duvalierville once,' Doctor Magiot said. 'He had been working on the site — I think it was on the cockpit, and he was sacked because one of the Tontons Macoute there wanted the job for a member of his family. My patient made a very foolish mistake. He appealed to the Tonton on the grounds of his poverty, and the Tonton shot him once through the stomach and once through the thigh. I saved his life, but he is a paralysed beggar by the Post Office now. I wouldn't settle in Duvalierville if I were you. It is not the right ambiance for vegetarianism.'

'Is there no law in this country?' Mrs Smith demanded.

'The Tontons Macoute are the only law. The words, you know, mean bogey-men.'

'Is there no religion?' Mr Smith asked in his turn,

'Oh yes, we are a very religious people. The State religion is the Catholic Church — the Archbishop's in exile, the Papal Nuncio is in Rome and the President is excommunicated. The popular religion is Voodoo which has been taxed almost out of existence. The President was a strong Voodooist once, but since he has been excommunicated he can take no part — you have to be a Catholic communicant to take part in Voodoo.'

'But it's heathenism,' Mrs Smith said.

'Who am I to say? I believe no more in the Christian God than I do in the gods of Dahomey. The Voodooists believe in both.'

'Then what do you believe in, doctor?'

'I believe in certain economic laws.'

'Religion is the opium of the people?' I quoted flippantly at him.

'I don't know where Marx wrote that,' Doctor Magiot said with disapproval, 'if he ever did, but since you were born a Catholic, as I was, you should be pleased to read in Das Kapital what Marx has to say of the Reformation. He approved of the monasteries in that state of society. Religion can be an excellent means of therapy for many states of mind — melancholy, despair, cowardice. Opium, remember, is used in medicine. I'm not against opium. Certainly I am not against Voodoo. How lonely my people would be with Papa Doc as the only power in the land!