Грэм Грин - The Comedians

I said, 'I'm going to get your guest away soon. Somehow.'

'I don't mind if you do or not. As long as he's safe.'

'Angel will miss him though.'

'Yes.'

'And Midge.'

'Yes.'

'And Luis.'

'He amuses Luis.'

'And you?'

She thrust her feet into her shoes and didn't answer.

'We'll have peace together when he's gone. You won't be torn in two between us then.'

She looked at me a moment as though I had said something that shocked her. Then she came up to the bed and took my hand as though I were a child who didn't understand the meaning of his words but who must be warned all the same not to repeat them. She said, 'My darling, be careful. Don't you understand? To you nothing exists except in your own thoughts. Not me, not Jones. We're what you choose to make us. You're a Berkeleyan. My God, what a Berkeleyan. You've turned poor Jones into a seducer and me into a wanton mistress. You can't even believe in your mother's medal, can you? You've written her a different part. My dear, try to believe we exist when you aren't there. We're independent of you. None of us is like you fancy we are. Perhaps it wouldn't matter much if your thoughts were not so dark, always so dark.'

I tried to kiss her mood away, but she turned quickly and standing at the door said to the empty passage, 'It's a dark Brown world you live in. I'm sorry for you. As I'm sorry for my father.'

I lay in bed a long while and wondered what I could possibly have in common with a war criminal responsible for so many unidentified deaths.

2

The headlights swept up between the palms and settled like a yellow moth over my face. I could see nothing clearly when they were switched off — only something large and black approaching the veranda. I had suffered one beating-up, I didn't want another. I shouted, 'Joseph,' but of course Joseph wasn't there. I had been sleeping over my glass of rum and I had forgotten.

'Is Joseph back?' It was a relief to hear Doctor Magiot's voice. He came slowly with his inexplicable dignity, up the broken verandah steps as though they were the marble steps of the senate house and he was a senator from the outer empire granted Roman citizenship.

'I was asleep. I wasn't thinking. Can I get you something, doctor? I am my own cook now, but I can easily beat you up an omelette.'

'No, I'm not hungry. May I put my car away in your garage in case anyone comes?'

'No one ever comes here at night.'

'You never know. In case …'

When he returned I repeated my offer of food, but he would take nothing. 'I wanted company, that's all.' He chose a hard straight chair to sit in. 'I used often to come and see your mother here — in the happier days. I find it lonely now after the sun sets.'

The lightning had began and the nightly deluge would soon descend. I drew my chair a little further into the shelter of the verandah. 'Do you see nothing of your colleagues?' I asked.

'What colleagues? Oh, there are a few old men left like myself behind their locked doors. In the last ten years three quarters of the doctors who graduated have preferred to go elsewhere as soon as they could buy an exit-permit. Here one buys an exit-permit not a practice. If you want to consult a Haitian doctor, better go to Ghana.' He lapsed into silence. It was company not conversation that he needed. The rain began to fall, tingling in the swimming-pool which was empty again; the night was so dark I couldn't see Doctor Magiot's face, only the tips of his fingers laid out on the arms of his chair, like carved wood.

'The other night,' Doctor Magiot said, 'I had an absurd dream. The telephone sounded — think of that, the telephone, how many years is it since I heard a telephone? I was summoned to the general hospital for a casualty. When I arrived I saw with satisfaction how clean the ward was, the nurses too were young and spotless (of course you will find they have all left for Africa as well). My colleague advanced to meet me, a young man in whom I had great hopes; he is fulfilling them now in Brazzaville. He told me that the opposition candidate (how old-fashioned even the words sound today) had been attacked by rowdies at a political meeting. There were complications. His left eye was in danger. I began to examine the eye, but it turned out not to be the eye at all but the cheek which was cut open to the bone. My colleague returned. He said, "The Chief of Police is on the telephone. The assailants have been arrested. The President is anxious to know the result of your examination. The President's wife has sent these flowers…" ' Doctor Magiot began to laugh softly in the dark. 'Even at the best,' he said, 'even under President Estimй it was never like that. Freud's wish-fulfilment dreams are usually not so obvious.'

'Not a very Marxist dream, Doctor Magiot. With an opposition candidate.'

'Perhaps the Marxist dream of a far far future. When the world state has withered away and there are only local elections. In the parish of Haiti.'

'When I came to your house I was surprised to find Das Kapital openly on a shelf. Is that safe?'

'I told you once before. Papa Doc makes a distinction between philosophy and propaganda. He wants to keep his window open towards the east until the Americans give arms to him again.'

'They'll never do that.'

'I will make you a bet of ten to one that, in a matter of months, relations are healed and the American Ambassador returns. You forget — Papa Doc is a bulwark against Communism. There will be no Cuba and no Bay of Pigs here. Of course there are other reasons. Papa Doc's lobbyist in Washington is the lobbyist for certain American-owned mills (they grind grey flour for the people out of imported surplus wheat — it is astonishing how much money can be made out of the poorest of the poor with a little ingenuity). And then there's the great beef-racket. The poor here can eat meat no more than they can eat cake, so I suppose they don't suffer when all the beef that exists goes to the American market — it doesn't matter to the importers that there are no standards here of cattle-raising — it goes into tins for underdeveloped countries paid for by American aid, of course. It wouldn't affect the Americans if this trade ceased, but it would affect the particular Washington politician who receives one cent for every pound exported.'

'Do you despair of any future?'

'No, I don't despair, I don't believe in despair, but our problems won't be solved by the Marines. We have had experience of the Marines. I'm not sure I wouldn't fight for Papa Doc if the Marines came. At least he's Haitian. No, the job has to be done with our own hands. We are an evil slum floating a few miles from Florida, and no American will help us with arms or money or counsel. We learned a few years back what their counsel meant. There was a resistance group here who were in touch with a sympathizer in the American Embassy: they were promised all kinds of moral support, but the information went straight back to the C.I.A. and from the C.I.A. by a very direct route to Papa Doc. You can imagine what happened to the group. The State Department didn't want any disturbance in the Caribbean.'

'And the Communists?'

'We are better organized and more discreet than the others, but, if we ever tried to take over, you can be certain the Marines would land and Papa Doc would remain in power. In Washington we seem a very stable country — not suitable for tourists, but tourists are a nuisance anyway. Sometimes they see too much and write to their senators. Your Mr Smith was very disturbed by the executions in the cemetery. By the way, Hamit has disappeared.'

'What happened?'

'I hope he's gone into hiding, but his car was found abandoned near the port.'

'He has a lot of American friends.'

'But he is not an American citizen. He is a Haitian. You can do what you like with Haitians. Trujillo murdered 20,000 of us in time of peace on the River Massacre, peasants who had come to his country for cane-cutting — men, women and children — but do you imagine there was one protest from Washington? He lived nearly twenty years afterwards fat on American aid.'