The Comedians

'How are you, Tin Tin?'

'Very well and you...'

' Зa marche.'

'Why not stay a little while in your car? They will go soon. The Englishman is tout а fait йpuisй.'

'I don't doubt it, but I'm tired. I've got to go. Tin Tin, did he behave all right to you?'

'Oh yes. I liked him. I liked him a lot.'

'What did you like so much?'

'He made me laugh,' she said. It was a sentence which was to be repeated to me disquietingly in other circumstances. I had learnt in a disorganized life many tricks, but not the trick of laughter.

PART II

CHAPTER I

1

JONES fell from view for a while as completely as the body of the Secretary for Social Welfare. No one ever learnt what was done with his corpse, though the Presidential Candidate made more than one attempt to discover. He penetrated to the bureau of the new Secretary where he was received with celerity and politeness. Petit Pierre had done his best to spread his fame as 'Truman's opponent', and the minister had heard of Truman. He was a small fat man who wore, for some reason, a fraternity pin, and his teeth were very big and white and separate, like tombstones designed for a much larger cemetery. A curious smell crossed his desk as though one grave had stayed open. I accompanied Mr Smith in case a translator were needed, but the new Minister spoke good English with a slight twang which went some way to support the fraternity pin (I learnt later that he had served for a while as 'the small boy' at the American Embassy. It might have been a rare example of merit rising if he had not served an interim period in the Tontons Macoute where he had been a special assistant to Colonel Gracia - known as Fat Gracia).

Mr Smith excused the fact that his letter of introduction was addressed to Doctor Philipot.

'Poor Philipot,' the Minister said, and I wondered whether at last we were to receive the official version of his end.

'What happend to him?' Mr Smith asked with admirable directness.

'We will probably never know. He was a strange moody man, and I must confess to you, Professor, his accounts were not in good order. There was the matter of a water-pump in Desaix Street.'

'Are you suggesting he killed himself?' I had underrated Mr Smith. In a good cause he could show cunning and now he played his cards close to his chest.

'Perhaps, or perhaps he has been the victim of the people's vengeance. We Haitians have a tradition of removing a tyrant in our own way, Professor.'

'Was Doctor Philipot a tyrant?'

'The people in Desaix Street were sadly deceived about their water.'

'So the pump will be set working now?' I asked.

'It will be one of my first projects.' He waved his hand at the files on the shelves behind him. 'But as you see I have many cares.' I noticed that the steel grips on many of his 'cares' had been rusted by a long succession of rainy seasons: a 'care' was not quickly disposed of.

Mr Smith came smartly back at him. 'So Doctor Philipot is still missing?'

'As your war-communiqués used to put it, "missing believed killed".'

'But I attended his funeral,' Mr Smith said.

'His

what?'

'His

funeral.'

I watched the Minister. He showed no embarrassment. He gave a short bark, which was meant to be a laugh (I was reminded of a French bulldog) and said, 'There was no funeral.'

'It was interrupted.'

'You cannot imagine, Professor, the unscrupulous propaganda put about by our opponents.'

'I am not a professor and I saw the coffin with my own eyes.'

'That coffin was filled with stones, Professor - I am sorry, Mr Smith.'

'Stones?'

'Bricks to be exact, brought from Duvalierville where we are constructing our beautiful new city. Stolen bricks. I would like to show you Duvalierville one morning when you are free. It is our answer to Brasilia!

'But his wife was there.'

'Poor woman, she was used, I hope innocently, by unscrupulous men. The morticians have been arrested.'

I gave him full marks for readiness and imagination. Mr Smith was temporarily silenced.

'When are they to be tried?' I asked.

'The inquiries will take some time. The plot has many ramifications.'

'Then it's not true what the people think - that the body of Doctor Philipot is in the palace working as a zombie?'

'All that is Voodoo stuff, Mr Brown. Luckily our President has rid the country of Voodoo.'

'Then he has done more than the Jesuits could do.'

Mr Smith broke in with impatience. He had done his best in the cause of Doctor Philipot and now it was his mission which demanded full attention. He was anxious not to antagonize the Minister with such irrelevancies as zombies and Voodoo. The Minister listened to him with great courtesy, doodling at the same time with a pencil. Perhaps it was not a sign of inattention, for I noticed the doodle took the form of innumerable percentage-marks and crosses - so far as I could see there were no minussigns. Mr Smith spoke of a building which would contain a restaurant, kitchen, a library and a lecture hall. If possible there should be enough room for extensions. Even a theatre and cinema might be possible, one day; already his organization could supply documentary films, and he hoped that soon - given the opportunities for production - there might arise a school of vegetarian dramatists. 'In the meanwhile,' he said, we can always fall back on Bernard Shaw.'

'It is a great project,' the Minister said.

Mr Smith had been in the republic a week now. He had seen the kidnapping of Doctor Philipot's body; I had driven him through the worst of the shanty-town. That morning he had insisted against my advice in going to the Post Office himself to buy stamps. I had lost him momentarily in the crowd, and when I found him again he had not been able to approach a foot towards the guichet. Two one-armed men and three one-legged men hemmed him round. Two were trying to sell him dirty old envelopes containing out of date Haitian postage stamps: the others were more frankly begging. A man without legs at all had installed himself between his knees and removed his shoe-laces preparatory to cleaning his shoes. Others seeing a crowd collected were fighting to join in. A young fellow, with a hole where his nose should have been, lowered his head and tried to ram his way through towards the attraction at the centre. A man with no hands raised his pink polished stumps over the heads of the crowd to exhibit his infirmity to the foreigner. It was a typical scene in the Post Office except that foreigners were rare nowadays. I had to fight my way to reach him, and once my hand encountered a stiff inhuman stump, like a piece of hard rubber. I forced it on one side, and I felt revolted by myself, as though I were rejecting misery. The thought even came to me, What would the fathers of the Visitation have said to me? So deeply embedded are the disciplines and myths of childhood. It took me five minutes to get Mr Smith clear, and he had lost his shoe-laces. We had to replace them at Hamit's before we called on the Secretary for Social Welfare.

Mr Smith said to the Minister, 'The centre, of course, would not be run at a profit, but I calculate we ought to give employment to a librarian, secretary, accountant, cook, waiters - and eventually of course the cinemausherettes … At least twenty people. The film-shows would be educational and free of charge. As for the theatre - well, we mustn't look too far ahead. All vegetarian products would be supplied at cost price, and the literature for the library would be gratis.'

I listened to him with astonishment. The dream was intact. Reality could not touch him. Even the scene in the Post Office had not sullied his vision. The Haitians freed from acidity, poverty and passion would soon be bent happily over their nut cutlets.

'This new city of yours, Duvaliervifle,' Mr Smith said, 'might provide an admirable situation. I'm not an opponent of modern architecture - not at all. New ideas need new shapes, and what I want to bring to your republic is a new idea.'