The Comedians

'I thought that as a Catholic you would have utterly condemned …'

'I am not a practising Catholic, and in any case you are thinking of theological despair. In this despair there was nothing theological. Poor fellow, he was breaking a rule. He was eating meat on Friday. In his case the sense of survival did not put forward a commandment of God as an excuse for inaction.' He said, 'You must come down and take the legs. We have to remove him from here.' The lecture was finished, the funeral oration spoken. It was a comfort to feel myself in the large square hands of Doctor Magiot. I was like a patient who accepts without question the strict rйgime required for a cure. We lifted the Secretary for Social Welfare out of the bathing-pool and carried him towards the drive where Doctor Magiot's car stood without lights. 'When you get back,' Doctor Magiot said, 'you must turn on the water and wash away the blood.'

'I'll turn it on all right, but whether the water will come …'

We propped him on the back seat. In detective stories a corpse is always so easily made to look like a drunken man, but this dead thing was unmistakably dead - the blood had ceased to flow, but one glance into the car would note the monstrous wound. Luckily no one dared move on the roads at night; it was the hour when only zombies worked or else the Tontons Macoute. As for the Tontons they were certainly abroad; we heard the approach of their car - no other car would be out so late - before we reached the end of the drive. We switched our headlights off and waited. The car was being driven slowly uphill from the capital; we could hear the voices of the occupants arguing above the grind of the third gear. I had the impression of an old car which would never make the grade up the long slope to Pйtionville. What would we do if it gave up the ghost at the entrance of the drive? The men would certainly come to the hotel for help and some free drinks, whatever the hour. We seemed to wait a long time before the sound of the engine passed the drive and receded. I asked Doctor Magiot, 'Where do we take him?'

'We can't go far either up or down,' he said, 'without reaching a block. This is the road to the north and the militia daren't sleep for fear of inspection. That's probably what the Tontons are doing now. They'll go as far as the police-post at Kenscoff if the car doesn't break down.'

'You had to pass a road-block to get here. How did you explain … ?'

'I said there was a woman sick after a childbirth. It's too common a case for the man to report, if I am lucky.'

'And if he does report?'

'I shall say I could not find the hut.'

We drove out on to the main road. Doctor Magiot put on the headlights again. 'If anyone should be out and see us,' he said, 'he will take us for the Tontons.'

Our choice of terrain was severely limited by the barrier up the road and the barrier down. We drove two hundred yards uphill - 'That will show that he passed the Trianon: he was not on the way there' - and turned into the second lane on the left. It was an area of small houses and abandoned gardens. Here had lived in the old days the vain and the insufficiently successful; they were on the road to Pйtionville, but they had not quite arrived there: the advocate who picked up the unconsidered cases, the failed astrologer and the doctor who preferred his rum to his patients. Doctor Magiot knew exactly which of them still occupied his house and who had fled to escape the forced levies that the Tontons Macoute collected at night for the construction of the new city, Duvalierville. I had contributed a hundred gourdes myself. To me the houses and gardens seemed all equally unlived in and uncared for.

'In here,' Doctor Magiot directed. He drove the car a few yards off the road. We had to keep the headlights burning, for we had no hand free to hold a torch. They shone on a broken board which now announced only '... pont. Your Future by …'

'So he's gone,' I said.

'He

died.'

'A

natural

death?'

'Violent deaths are natural deaths here. He died of his environment.'

We got the body of Doctor Philipot out of the car and dragged it behind an overgrown bougainvillaea where it could not be seen from the road. Doctor Magiot twisted a handkerchief round his right hand and took from the dead man's pocket a small kitchen knife for cutting steaks. His eye had been sharper than mine at the pool. He laid it a few inches from the Minister's left hand. He said, 'Doctor Philipot was left-handed.'

'You seem to know everything.'

'You forget we took anatomy together. You must remember to buy another steak-knife.'

'Has he a family?'

'A wife and a boy of six. I suppose he thought that suicide was safer for them.'

We got back into the car and reversed into the road. At the entrance of my drive I got out. 'All depends now on the servants,' I said.

'They'll be afraid to talk,' Doctor Magiot said. 'A witness here can suffer just as much as the accused.'

2

Mr and Mrs Smith came down to breakfast on the verandah. It was almost the first time I had seen him without a rug over his arm. They had slept well and they ate with appetite the grapefruit, the toast and the marmalade: I was afraid they might require some strange beverage with a name chosen by a public relations firm, but they accepted coffee and even praised its quality.

'I woke up only once,' Mr Smith said, 'and I thought that I heard voices. Perhaps Mr Jones has arrived?'

'No.'

'Odd. The last thing he said to me in the customs was "We'll meet tonight at Mr Brown's".'

'He was probably shanghaied to another hotel.'

'I had hoped to take a dip before breakfast,' Mrs Smith said, 'but I found Joseph was cleaning the pool. He seems to be a man of all work.'

'Yes. He's invaluable. I'm sure the pool will be ready for you before lunch.'

'And the beggar?' Mr Smith asked.

'Oh, he went away before morning.'

'Not with an empty stomach, I hope?' He gave me a smile as much as to say: 'I'm only joking, I know you are a man of goodwill.'

'Joseph would certainly have seen to that.'

Mr Smith took another piece of toast. He said, 'I thought that this morning Mrs Smith and I would write our names in the embassy book.'

'It would be wise.'

'I thought it would be courteous. Afterwards perhaps I could present my letter of introduction to the Secretary for Social Welfare.'

'If I were you I would ask at the embassy whether there has been any change. That is, if the letter is addressed to someone personally.'

'A Doctor Philipot, I think.'

'I would certainly ask then. Changes happen very quickly here.'

'But his successor, I suppose, would receive me? What I have come here to propose would be of great interest to any minister concerned with health.'

'I don't think you ever told me what you were planning …'

'I come here as a representative,' Mr Smith said.

'Of the vegetarians of America,' Mrs Smith added. 'The true vegetarians.'

'Are there false vegetarians?'

'Of course. There are even some who eat fertilized eggs.'

'Heretics and schismatics have splintered every great movement,' Mr Smith said sadly, 'in human history.'

'And what do the vegetarians propose to do here?'

'Apart from the distribution of free literature - translated, of course, into French - we plan to open a centre of vegetarian cooking in the heart of the capital.'