The Comedians

'I suppose he wanted company,' she said.

'He has you.'

'You know how little he has of me.'

'Have I got to feel sorry for him too.'

'It wouldn't do any of us harm,' she said, 'to feel sorry for someone.'

She was more astute than I at seeing the distant cloud of a quarrel when it was still no bigger than a man's hand, and she would usually take the right avoiding action, for when an embrace was over the quarrel was usually over too - for that occasion at least. Once she spoke of my mother and their friendship. 'Strange wasn't it? My father was a war-criminal and she was a heroine of the Resistance.'

'You really think she was?'

'Yes.'

'I found a medal in a piggy-bank, but I thought it might be the memento of a love-affair. There was a holy medal in the pig too, but that meant nothing - she was certainly not a pious woman. When she left me with the Jesuits it was for convenience only. They could afford an unpaid bill.'

'You were with the Jesuits?'

'Yes.'

'I remember now. I used to think you were - nothing.'

'I

am

nothing.'

'Yes, but a Protestant nothing, not a Catholic nothing. I am a Protestant nothing.'

I had a sense of coloured balls flying in the air, a different colour for every faith - or even every lack of faith. There was an existentialist ball, a logical-positivist ball. 'I even thought you might be a Communist nothing.' It was gay, it was fun so long as with great agility one patted the balls around: it was only when a ball fell to the ground one had the sense of an impersonal wound, like a dog dead on an arterial road.

'Doctor Magiot's a Communist,' she said.

'I suppose so. I envy him. He's lucky to believe. I left all such absolutes behind me in the chapel of the Visitation. Do you know they even thought once that I had a vocation?'

'Perhaps you are a prêtre manqué.'

'Me? You are laughing at me. Put your hand here. This has no theology.' I mocked myself while I made love. I flung myself into pleasure like a suicide on to a pavement.

What made us, after that short furious encounter, talk of Jones again?

I am confusing together in memory many afternoons, many love-makings, many discussions, many quarrels, all of them a curtain-raiser for the final quarrel of all. For example there was the afternoon when she left early and to my inquiry why she was going - Angel would not be back from school for a long time yet - she replied, 'I promised Jones that he could teach me ginrummy.' It was only ten days after I had deposited Jones under her roof, and when she told me that, I felt the premonition of jealousy like the first shiver which announces a fever.

'It must be an exciting game. You prefer it to making love?'

'Darling, we've made love all we can. I don't want to disappoint him. He's a good guest. Angel likes him. He plays a lot with Angel.'

And an afternoon much later the quarrel began in another way. She asked me suddenly - it was the first sentence she spoke after our bodies separated - what the word 'midge' meant.

'A kind of small mosquito. Why?'

'Jones always calls the dog Midge, and he answers to the name. His real name is Don Juan, but he's never learnt that.'

'I suppose you are going to tell me the dog likes Jones too.'

'Oh, but he does - better than he likes Luis. Luis always feeds him, he won't even allow Angel to do that, and yet Jones has only to call "Midge" …'

'What does Jones call you?'

'How do you mean?'

'You go to him when he calls. You leave early to play gin-rummy.'

'That was three weeks ago. I've never done it again.'

'We spend half our time now talking about that damned crook.'

'You brought the damned crook to our house.'

'I didn't know he was going to become such a friend of the family.'

'Darling, he makes us laugh, that's all.' She couldn't have chosen an explanation which worried me more. 'There isn't much to laugh about here.'

'Here?'

'You're twisting every word. I don't mean here in bed. I mean here in Port-au-Prince.'

'Two different languages cause misunderstanding. I should have taken lessons in German. Does Jones speak German?'

'Not even Luis does. Darling, when you want me I'm a woman, but when I hurt you, I'm always a German. What a pity Monaco never had a period of power.'

'It had. But the English beat the Prince's fleet in the Channel. Like the Luftwaffe.'

'I was ten years old when you beat the Luftwaffe.'

'I did no beating. I sat in an office translating propaganda against Vichy into French.'

'Jones had a more interesting war.'

'Oh

yes?'

Was it innocence which caused her so often to introduce his name or did she feel a compulsion to have it on her tongue?

'He was in Burma,' she said, 'fighting the Japs.'

'He's told you that?'

'He's very interesting when he talks about guerrilla fighting.'

'The resistance could have done with him here. But he preferred the Government to the resistance.'

'But he's seen through the Government now.'

'Or have they seen through him? Did he tell you about the lost platoon?'

'Yes.'

'And how he has a nose for water?'

'Yes.'

'Sometimes I wonder that he didn't end up at least a brigadier.'

'Darling, what's the matter?'

'Othello charmed Desdemona with his stories of adventure. It's an old technique. I ought to tell you how I was hounded by the People. It might win your sympathy.'

'What

people?'

'Never

mind.'

'A change of subject in an embassy is always something. The first secretary is an authority on turtles. It was interesting for a while in a naturalhistory way, but it palled all the same. And the second secretary is an admirer of Cervantes, but not of Don Quixote which he says was a bid for easy popularity.'

'I suppose the Burmese war too will become stale in time.'

'At least he doesn't repeat himself yet like the others.'

'Has he told you the history of his cocktail-case?'

'Yes. Indeed he has. Darling, you underrate him. He's a very generous man. You know how our shaker leaks, so he gave Luis his - in spite of all the memories attached. It's a very good one - it came from Asprey's in London. He said it was the only thing he had with which to return our hospitality. We said we'd borrow it - and do you know what he did? He gave money to one of the servants to take it to Hamit's and have it inscribed. So there it is - we can't give it back. Such a quaint inscription. "To Luis and Martha from their grateful guest, Jones." Like that. No christian name. No initials. Like a French actor.'

'And

your first name.'

'And Luis's. Darling, it's time I left.'

'What a long time we've spent, haven't we, talking about Jones?'

'I expect we'll spend a lot more. Papa Doc won't give him a safeconduct. Not even as far as the British Embassy. The Government makes a formal protest every week. They claim he's a common criminal, but, of course, that's nonsense. He was ready to work with them, but then his eyes were opened - by young Philipot.'

'Is that what he claims?'

'He tried to sabotage a supply of arms to the Tontons Macoute.'

'An ingenious story.'

'So that really does make him a political refugee.'

'He lives on his wits, that's all.'

'Don't we all to some extent?'

'How quickly you leap to his defence.'

Suddenly I had a grotesque vision of the two of them in bed, Martha naked as she was now, and Jones still in his female finery, his face yellow with pre-shave powder, lifting his great black velvet skirt above his thighs.

'Darling, what is it now?'

'It's so stupid. To think that I brought the little crook to live with you. And now there he stays - for life perhaps. Or until someone can get near enough to Papa Doc with a silver bullet. How long has Mindszenty stayed in the American Embassy in Budapest? A dozen years? Jones sees you all day long …'