Joseph came to my office after breakfast, when I was reading Mr Smith's article, to tell me the whole story of the discovery of Doctor Philipot's body as it was now known to the stall-holders in the market, if not yet to the police. It was one chance in a thousand which had led the police to the corpse that Doctor Magiot and I had expected to lie concealed for weeks in the ex-astrologer's garden: a bizarre chance, and the story made it hard for me to pay much attention to Mr Smith's manuscript. One of the militiamen on the road-block below the hotel had taken a fancy to a peasant woman who was on her way up to the big market at Kenscoff early that morning. He wouldn't let her pass, for he claimed she was carrying something concealed underneath her layers of petticoat. She offered to show him what she had there and they went off together down the side-road and into the astrologer's deserted garden. She was in a hurry to complete the long road to Kenscoff, so she went quickly down upon her knees, flung up her petticoats, rested her head on the ground, and found herself staring into the wide glazed eyes of the ex-Minister for Social Welfare. She recognized him, for in the days before he came to political office he had attended her daughter in a difficult accouchement.
The gardener was outside the window, so I tried not to show undue interest in Josephs narrative. Instead I turned a page of Mr Smiths article.
'Mrs Smith and I,' he had written, 'left Philadelphia with much regret after we had been entertained by the Henry S. Ochs's whom many readers will remember for their hospitable New Year parties at the time they occupied 2041 DeLancey Place, but the sorrow of leaving our good friends was soon lost in the pleasure of making new ones on the S.S. Medea …'
'Why did they go to the police?' I asked. The natural thing for the couple to have done after the discovery was to slip away and say nothing.
'She scream so loud the other militiaman he come,'
I skipped a page or two of Mrs Smith's typewriting and came to the arrival of the Medea at Port-au-Prince. 'A black republic - and a black republic with a history, an art and a literature. It was as if I were watching the future of all the new African republics, with their teething troubles over.'
(He had no intention, I am sure, of appearing pessimistic.) 'Of course a great deal remains to be done even here. Haiti has experienced monarchy, democracy and dictatorship, but we must not judge a coloured dictatorship as we judge a white one. History in Haiti is a matter of a few centuries, and if we still make mistakes, after two thousand years, how much more right have these people to make similar mistakes and to learn from them perhaps better than we have done? There is poverty here, there are beggars in the streets, there is some evidence of police authoritarianism' (he had not forgotten Mr Jones in his cell), 'but I wonder whether a coloured man landing for the first time in New York would have received the courtesy and friendly help which Mrs Smith and I enjoyed at the immigration office of Port-au-Prince.' I seemed to be reading about a different country. I said to Joseph, 'What are they doing with the body?'
The police wanted to keep it, he said, but the ice-plant at the mortuary was not working.
'Does Madame Philipot know?'
'Oh yes, she has him in Monsieur Hercule Dupont's funeral parlour. I think they bury him, double-quick.'
I couldn't help a feeling of responsibility for Doctor Philipot's last rites - he had died in my hotel. 'Let me know what the arrangements are,' I said to Joseph and turned back to Mr Smith's travelogue.
'For an unknown stranger like myself to be given an interview by the Secretary of State on my first day in Port-au-Prince was another example of the astonishing courtesy which I have met everywhere here. The Secretary of State was about to leave for New York to attend the conference of the United Nations; nonetheless he gave me half an hour of his precious time and enabled me, through his personal intervention with the Secretary for the Interior, to visit an Englishman in prison, a fellow-passenger on the Medea who had unfortunately - through some bureaucratic mistake liable to happen in much older countries than Haiti - fallen foul of the authorities. I am following the case up, but I have small fear of the result. Two qualities which I have always found strongly implanted in my coloured friends - whether living in the relative freedom of New York or the undisguised tyranny of Mississippi - are a regard for justice and a sense of human dignity.' In reading Churchill's prose works one is aware of an orator addressing an historic chamber, and in reading Mr Smith I was conscious of a lecturer in the hall of a provincial town. I felt surrounded by well-meaning middle-aged women in hats who had paid five dollars to a good cause.
'I look forward,' Mr Smith continued, 'to meeting the new Secretary for Social Welfare and discussing with him the subject which readers of this paper will have long regarded as my King Charles's head - the establishment of a vegetarian centre. Unfortunately Doctor Philipot, the former Minister to whom I carried a personal introduction from a Haitian diplomat attached to the United Nations, is not at the moment in Port-au-Prince, but I can assure my readers that my enthusiasm will carry me through all obstacles, if necessary to the President himself. From him I can expect a sympathetic hearing, for before he went into politics he won golden opinions as a doctor during the great typhoid epidemic some years ago. Like Mr Kenyatta, the Prime Minister of Kenya, he has also made his mark as an anthropologist'
('mark' was an understatement - I thought of Joseph's crippled legs). Later that morning Mr Smith came shyly in to hear what I thought of his article. 'It would please the authorities,' I said.
'They'll never read it. The paper has no circulation outside Wisconsin.'
'I wouldn't bank on their not reading it. Not many letters leave here nowadays. It's easy enough to censor them if they want to.'
'You mean they'd open it?' he asked with incredulity, but he added quickly, 'Oh well, it's been known to happen even in the U.S.A.'
'If I were you - just in case - I'd leave out all reference to Doctor Philipot.'
'But I've said nothing wrong.'
'They may be sensitive about him at the moment. You see, he's killed himself.'
'Oh the poor man, the poor man,' Mr Smith exclaimed. 'What on earth could have driven him to that?'
'Fear.'
'Had he done something wrong?'
'Who hasn't? He had spoken ill of the President.'
The old blue eyes turned away. He was determined to show no doubt to a stranger - a fellow white man, one of the slaver's race. He said, 'I would like to see his widow - there might be something I could do. At least Mrs Smith and I ought to send flowers.' However much he loved the blacks, it was in a white world he lived; he knew no other.
'I wouldn't if I were you.'
'Why
not?'
I despaired of explaining, and at that moment, as bad luck would have it, Joseph entered. The body had already left Monsieur Dupont's funeral parlour; they were taking the coffin up to Pйtionville for burial and were halted now at the road block below the hotel.
'They seem in a hurry.'
'They very worried,' Joseph explained.
'There's nothing to fear now surely,' Mr Smith said.