The Comedians

'What difference can Jones make if he's a fake?'

'Perhaps after all he isn't. Philipot believes in him. Perhaps he did fight the Japs.'

'If he was a fake he wouldn't want to go, would he?'

'He committed himself too far in front of you.'

'I'm not that important to him.'

'Then what is? Did he ever speak to you about a golf club?'

'Yes, but you don't risk death for a golf club. He wants to go.'

'Do you believe that?'

'He asked me to lend him back his cocktail-shaker. He said it's a mascot. He always had it with him in Burma. He says he'll return it when the guerrillas enter Port-au-Prince.'

'He certainly has his dreams,' I said. 'Perhaps he's an innocent too.'

'Don't be angry,' she implored me, 'if I go home early. I promised him a party - of gin-rummy, I mean, before Angel comes back from school. He's so good with Angel. They play commandos and unarmed combat. There may not be time for many more gin-rummies. You do understand, don't you?

I want to be kind.'

I felt weariness more than anger when she left me, weariness of myself most of all. Was I incapable of trust? But when I poured myself out a whisky and heard the vast inundation of silence flooding round, venom returned; venom was an antidote to fear. I thought, why should I trust a German, the child of a hanged man?

5

A few days later I received a letter from Mr Smith - it had taken more than a week to come from Santo Domingo. They had stopped off, he wrote to me, for a few days to look around and see the tomb of Columbus, and who did I think they had met? I could answer that without even turning the page. Mr Fernandez, of course. He happened to be at the airport when they arrived. (I wondered whether his profession made him stand by on the airfield like an ambulance.) Mr Fernandez had shown them so much, so interestingly, that they had decided to stay on longer. Apparently Mr Fernandez' vocabulary had increased. In the Medea he had been suffering from a great grief, and that was the reason he had broken down at the concert; his mother had been seriously ill, but she had recovered. The cancer had proved to be no more than a fibrome, and Mrs Smith had converted her to a vegetarian diet. Mr Fernandez even thought that there were possibilities for a vegetarian centre in the Dominican Republic. 'I must admit,' he wrote, 'that conditions here are more peaceful, although there is a great deal of poverty. Mrs Smith has met a friend from Wisconsin.' He sent his cordial best wishes to Major Jones and thanked me for all my help and hospitality. He was an old man with beautiful manners, and suddenly I realized how much I missed him. In the school chapel at Monte Carlo we prayed every Sunday, ' Dona nobis pacem,'

but I doubt whether that prayer was answered for many in the life that followed. Mr Smith had no need to pray for peace. He had been born with peace in his heart instead of the splinter of ice. That afternoon Hamit's body was found in an open sewer on the edge of Port-au-Prince. I drove out to Mère Catherine's (why not if Martha was at home with Jones?), but none of the girls had ventured out that evening from their homes. The story of Hamit was probably circulating by this time all over town, and they feared that one body was not sufficient to make a feast-day for Baron Samedi. Madame Philipot and her child had joined the other refugees at the Venezuelan Embassy, and there was a feeling of uncertainty everywhere. (I noticed, driving by, that two guards were now outside Martha's embassy.) I was stopped at the road-block below the hotel and searched, although the rain had begun. I wondered whether some of the activity was due to Concasseur's return - he had to prove himself loyal. At the Trianon I found Doctor Magiot's boy waiting with a note - an invitation to dine with him. It was already past the hour of dinner and we drove accompanied by thunder to his house. This time we were not stopped - the rain was falling too heavily now and the militiaman crouched in his shelter of old sacks. The Norfolk pine dripped beside the drive like a broken umbrella, and Doctor Magiot waited for me in his Victorian sitting-room with a decanter of port.

'Have you heard about Hamit?' I asked. The two glasses stood on little bead-mats with floral designs to protect a papier mâché table.

'Yes, poor man.'

'What had they got against him?'

'He was one of Philipot's post-boxes. And he didn't talk.'

'And you are another?'

He poured out the port. I have never learned to enjoy port as an aperitif, but I took it that night without protest; I was in the mood for any drink. He didn't answer my question, so I asked him another. 'How do you know he didn't talk?'

He gave me the obvious answer, 'I am here.' The old woman called Madame Ferry who looked after the house and cooked his meals opened the door and reminded us that dinner was ready. She wore a black dress and had a white cap on her head. It might seem an odd setting for a Marxist, but I remembered hearing of the lace curtains and the china cabinets in the early Ilyushin jets. Like her they gave a sense of security. We had an excellent steak and creamed potatoes with a touch of garlic and as good a claret as could be expected so far away from Bordeaux. Doctor Magiot was not in a humour to talk, but his silence was as monumental as his conversation. When he said 'Another glass?' the phrase was like a simple name carved on a tombstone. When dinner was finished, he said, 'The American Ambassador is returning.'

'Are you sure?'

'And friendly discussions are to be opened with the Dominican Republic. We are abandoned again.'

The old lady came in with coffee and he was silent. His face was hidden from me by the glass dome which covered an arrangement of wax flowers. I felt that after dinner we should have joined other members of the Browning Society for a discussion of the Sonnets from the Portuguese. Hamit lay in his drain a very long way from here.

'I have some Curaçao or there is a little Benedictine left if you prefer it.'

'Curaçao,

please.'

'The

Curaçao,

Madame

Ferry,' and again silence settled except for the

thunder outside. I wondered why he had summoned me and at last when Madame Ferry had come and gone I heard. 'I've received a reply from Philipot.'

'A good thing it came to you and not to Hamit.'

'He says he will be at the rendezvous for three nights running next week. Beginning on Monday.'

'The

cemetery?'

'Yes. On those nights there should be hardly any moon.'

'But suppose there's no storm either?'

'Have you ever known three nights without a storm at this time of year?'

'No. But my pass is for one day only - Monday.'

'A detail. Few policemen can read. You leave Jones and drive on. If something goes wrong and you are suspected I'll try and warn you at Aux Cayes. You might possibly get away by fishing-boat.'

'I hope to God nothing does go wrong. I have no wish to be on the run. My life's here.'

'You will have to get beyond Petit Goave before the storm is over or they'll search your car there. After Petit Goave there should be no trouble before Aquin and you'll be alone again when you reach Aquin.'

'I wish to God I had a jeep.'

'So do I.'

'What about the guards at the embassy?'

'Don't bother about them. During the storm they will take rum in the kitchen.'

'We must warn Jones to be ready. I have an idea he may back out.'

Doctor Magiot said, 'I don't want you to visit the embassy between now and the night you leave. I shall go there tomorrow - to treat Jones. Mumps is a dangerous disease at his age; it may cause sterility or even impotence. The incubation period after the child's attack might seem curiously long to a doctor, but the servants won't realize that. He will have to be isolated and kept very quiet. You should be back from Aux Cayes a long time before anyone knows he's gone.'