The Comedians

'All the girls taken?'

'No, but the girl you like is busy.'

I hadn't been here for two years, but she remembered, and what was even more remarkable the girl was with her still - she would be close on eighteen by now. I hadn't expected to find her, and yet I was disappointed. In age one prefers old friends, even in a bordel.

'Are they in a dangerous mood?' I asked her.

'I don't think so. They are looking after someone important. He's out with Tin Tin now.'

I nearly went away, but my grudge against Martha worked like an infection.

'I'll come in,' I said. 'I'm thirsty. Give me a rum and coke.'

'There's no more coke.' I had forgotten that American aid was over.

'Rum and soda then.'

'I have a few bottles of Seven-Up left.'

'All right. Seven-Up.'

At the door of the salle a Tonton Macoute was asleep on a chair; his sunglasses had fallen into his lap and he looked quite harmless. The flies of his grey flannel trousers gaped from a lost button. Inside there was complete silence. Through the open door I saw a group of four girls dressed in white muslin with balloon-skirts. They were sucking orangeade through straws, not speaking. One of them took her empty glass and moved away, walking beautifully, the muslin swaying, like a little bronze by Degas.

'No customers at all?'

'They all left when the Tontons Macoute came.'

I went in, and there at a table by the wall with his eyes fixed on me as though I had never once escaped from them was the Tonton Macoute I had seen in the police station, who had smashed the windows of the hearse to get out the coffin of the ancien ministre. His soft hat lay on a chair, and he wore a striped bow-tie. I bowed to him and started towards another table. I was scared of him, and I wondered whom it could be - more important than this arrogant officer - that Tin Tin was consoling now. I hoped for her sake he was not a worse man as well.

The officer said, 'I seem to see you everywhere.'

'I try to be inconspicuous.'

'What do you want here tonight?'

'A rum and Seven-Up.'

He said to Mиre Catherine, who was bringing in my drink upon a tray,

'You said you had no Seven-Up left.' I noticed that there was an empty sodawater bottle on the tray beside my glass. The Tonton Macoute took my drink and tasted it. 'Seven-Up it is. You can bring this man a rum and soda. We need all the Seven-Up you have left for my friend when he returns.'

'It's so dark in the bar. The bottles must have got mixed.'

'You must learn to distinguish between your important customers and,' he hesitated and decided to be reasonably polite, 'the less important. You can sit down,' he said to me.

I turned away.

'You can sit down here. Sit down.'

I obeyed. He said, 'You were stopped at the cross-roads and searched?'

'Yes.'

'And at the door here? You were stopped at the door?'

'By

Mиre Catherine, yes.'

'By one of my men?'

'He

was

asleep.'

'Asleep?'

'Yes.'

I had no hesitation in telling tales. Let the Tontons Macoute destroy themselves. I was surprised when he said nothing and made no move towards the door. He only stared blankly through me with his black opaque lenses. He had decided something, but he would not let me know his decision. Mиre Catherine brought me in my drink. I tasted it. The rum was still mixed with Seven-Up. She was a brave woman.

I said, 'You seem to be taking a lot of precautions tonight.'

'I am in charge of a very important foreigner. I have to take precautions for his security. He asked to come here.'

'Is he safe with little Tin Tin? Or do you keep a guard in the bedroom, captain? Or is it commandant?'

'My name is Captain Concasseur. You have a sense of humour. I appreciate humour. I am in favour of jokes. They have political value. Jokes are a release for the cowardly and the impotent.'

'You said an important foreigner, captain? This morning I had the impression that you didn't like foreigners.'

'My personal view of every white man is very low. I admit I am offended by the colour, which reminds me of tuid. But we accept some of you - if you are useful to the State.'

'You mean to the Doctor?'

With a very small inflexion of irony he quoted, 'Je suis le drapeau Haпtien, Uni et Indivisible.' He took a drink of rum. 'Of course some white men are more tolerable than others. At least the French have a common culture with us. I admire the General. The President has written to him offering to join la Communautй Europйenne.'

'Has he received a reply?'

'These things take time. There are conditions which we have to discuss. We understand diplomacy. We don't blunder like the Americans - and the British.'

I was haunted by the name Concasseur. Somewhere I had heard it before. The first syllable suited him well, and perhaps the whole name, with its suggestion of destructive power, had been adopted like that of Stalin and Hitler.

'Haiti belongs by right to any Third Force,' Captain Concasseur said. 'We are the true bastion against the Communists. No Castro can succeed here. We have a loyal peasantry.'

'Or a terrified one.' I took a long drink of rum; drink helped to make his pretensions more supportable. 'Your important visitor is taking his time.'

'He told me he had been away from women for a long time.' He barked at Mиre Catherine, 'I want service. Service,' and stamped the floor. 'Why is no one dancing?'

'A bastion of the free world,' I said.

The four girls rose from their table, and one put on the gramophone. They began to dance together in a graceful slow old-fashioned style. Their balloon-skirts swung like silver censers and showed their slender legs the colour of young deer; they smiled gently at each other and held one another a little apart. They were beautiful and undifferentiated like birds of the same plumage. It was almost impossible to believe they were for sale. Like everyone else.

'Of course the free world pays better,' I said, 'and in dollars.'

Captain Concasseur saw where I was looking; he missed nothing through those black glasses. He said, 'I will treat you to a woman. That small girl there, with a flower in her hair, Louise. She doesn't look at us. She is shy because she thinks I might be jealous. Jealous of a putain! What absurdity!

She will serve you very well if I give her the word.'

'I don't want a woman.' I could see through his apparent generosity. One flings a putain to a white man as one flings a bone to a dog.

'Then why are you here?'

He had a right to ask the question. I could only say, 'I've changed my mind,' as I watched the girls revolve, worthy of a better setting than the wooden shed, the rum-bar and the old advertisements for Coca-Cola. I said, 'Are you never afraid of Communists?'