The Comedians

He made a movement with his hand across the desk and laughed. 'I shall never lose the habit of picking up a telephone.'

He was the perfect spectator - the spectator of whom every actor must sometimes dream, intelligent, watchful, amused and critical in just the right way, a lesson he had learnt from having seen so many performances good and bad in different plays. For some reason I thought of my mother's words to me, when I saw her for the last time, 'What part are you playing now?' I suppose I was playing a part - the part of an Englishman concerned over the fate of a fellow-countryman, of a responsible business man who saw his duty clearly and who came to consult the representative of his Sovereign. I temporarily forgot the tangle of legs in the Peugeot. I am quite sure that the chargй would have disapproved of my cuckolding a member of the diplomatic corps. The act belonged too closely to the theatre of farce. He said, 'I doubt if my inquiries will do much good. I shall be told by the Secretary for the Interior that the affair is in the hands of the police. He will probably give me a lecture on the separation of the judicial and executive functions. Did I ever tell you about my cook? It happened while you were away. I was giving a dinner for my colleagues and my cook simply disappeared. No marketing had been done. He had been picked up in the street on the way to market. My wife had to open the tins we keep for an emergency. Your Seсor Pineda did not appreciate a soufflй of tinned salmon.' Why did he say my Seсor Pineda? 'Later I heard that he was in a police cell. They released him the next day when it was too late. He had been questioned about what guests I entertained. I protested, of course, to the Secretary for the Interior. I said I should have been told, and I would have arranged for him to go to the police station at a convenient hour. The Minister simply said that he was a Haitian and he could do what he liked with a Haitian.'

'But Jones is English.'

'I assume so, but I doubt all the same whether our Government in these days will send a frigate. Of course, I'm anxious to help to the best of my ability, but I think Petit Pierre's advice is quite sound. Try other means first. If you get nowhere, of course I'll protest - tomorrow morning. I have a feeling that this is not the first police cell Major Jones has known. We mustn't exaggerate the situation.' I felt a little like the player king rebuked by Hamlet for exaggerating his part.

When I got back to the hotel the swimming-pool was full, the gardener was pretending to occupy himself by raking a few leaves off the surface of the water, I heard the voice of the cook in the kitchen, everything was near to normal again. I even had guests, for there in the pool, avoiding the gardener's rake, swam Mr Smith, wearing a pair of dark grey nylon bathingpants which billowed out behind him in the water, giving him the huge hindquarters of some prehistoric beast. He swam slowly up and down using the breaststroke and grunting rhythmically. When he saw me he stood up in the water like a myth. His breasts were covered with long strands of white hair.

I sat down by the pool and called out to Joseph to bring a rum punch and a Coca-Cola. I was uneasy when Mr Smith trundled to the deep end before he emerged - he was passing so close to the spot where the Secretary for Social Welfare had died. I thought of Holyrood and the indelible mark of Rizzio's blood. Mr Smith shook himself and sat down beside me. Mrs Smith appeared on the balcony of the John Barrymore suite and called down to him, 'Dry yourself, dear, or you might catch cold.'

'The sun will dry me quickly enough, dear,' Mr Smith called back.

'Put the towel round your shoulders or you'll burn.'

Mr Smith obeyed her. I said, 'Mr Jones has been arrested by the police.'

'My goodness. You don't say. What has he done?'

'He hasn't necessarily done anything.'

'Has he seen a lawyer?'

'That's not possible here. The police wouldn't allow it.'

Mr Smith gave me an obstinate look. 'The police are the same everywhere. It happens often enough at home,' he said, 'in the south. Coloured men shut up in jail, refused a lawyer. But two wrongs don't make a right.'

'I've been to the embassy. They don't think they can do much.'

'Now

that

is scandalous,' Mr Smith said. He was referring to the attitude of the embassy rather than to the conditions of Jones's arrest.

'Petit Pierre thinks that the best thing at the moment would be for you to intervene, to see the Secretary of State perhaps.'

'I'll do anything I can for Mr Jones. There's obviously been a mistake. But why does he suppose I would have any influence?'

'You were a presidential candidate,' I said, as Joseph brought the glasses.

'I'll do anything I can,' Mr Smith repeated, brooding into his Coca-Cola. 'I very much took to Mr Jones. (I don't know why it is I can't get round to calling him Major - after all there are some good men in all armies.) He seemed to me the best type of Britisher. There must have been a foolish mistake somewhere.'

'I don't want to get you into any trouble with the authorities.'

'I'm not afraid of trouble,' Mr Smith said, 'with any authorities.'

3

The office of the Secretary of State was in one of the exhibition buildings near the port and the Columbus statue. We passed the musical fountain that never played now, the public park with its Bourbon pronouncement: 'Je suis le drapeau Haпtien, Uni et Indivisible, Franзois Duvalier' , and came at last to the long modern building of cement and glass, the wide staircase, the great lounge with many comfortable armchairs lined with the murals of Haitian artists. It bore as little relation to the beggars of the Post Office square and the shanty-town as Christophe's palace of Sans Souci, but it would make a much less picturesque ruin.

The lounge contained more than a dozen middle-class people, fat and prosperous. The women in their best dresses of electric blues and acid greens chattered happily to each other as though they were taking their morning coffee, looking sharply up at every newcomer. Even a suppliant in this lounge bore himself with importance in an air filled with the slow tap of typewriters. Ten minutes after we arrived Seсor Pineda walked heavily through with the certitude of diplomatic privilege. He smoked a cigar and looked at no one and without asking a by-your-leave passed through one of the doors which opened on to an inner balcony.

'The Secretary's private office,' I explained. 'The South American ambassadors are still persona grata. Especially Pineda. He hasn't any political refugees in his embassy. Not yet.'

We waited for three-quarters of an hour, but Mr Smith showed no impatience. 'It seems very well organized,' he said once, when the suppliants were reduced by two after a brief conference with a clerk. 'A minister has to be protected.'

At last Pineda passed out through the lounge, still smoking a cigar - it was a fresh one. The band was on it: he never removed his bands because they were stamped with his monogram. This time he gave me a bow of recognition - for a moment I thought he was going to pause and speak to me; his bow must have attracted the attention of the young man who accompanied him to the head of the stairs, for he returned and asked us with courtesy what we wanted.

'The Secretary of State,' I said.

'He is very busy with the foreign ambassadors. There is a great deal to discuss. You see tomorrow he is leaving for the United Nations.'

'Then I think he should see Mr Smith at once.'

'Mr

Smith?'

'You haven't read today's paper?'

'We have been very busy.'

'Mr Smith arrived yesterday. He is the Presidential Candidate.'

'The Presidential Candidate?' the young man said with incredulity. 'In Haiti?'

'He has business in Haiti - but that is a matter for your President. Now he would like to see the Minister before he leaves for New York.'