The Comedians

'The Anti-Blood Sports League too,' Mrs Smith said. 'Not officially, of course, as a League. But many members voted for Mr Smith.'

'With so much support …' I began, 'I'm surprised …'

'The progressives will always be in a minority,' Mrs Smith said, 'in our lifetime, but at least we made our protest.'

And then of course the usual wearisome wrangle began. The traveller in pharmaceutical products started it - I would like to give him capital initials like those of the Presidential Candidate, for he seemed truly representative, but in his case of a baser world. As a former air-raid warden he regarded himself as a combatant. Besides, he had a grievance; his bomb reminiscences had been interrupted. 'I can't understand pacifists,' he said,

'they consent to be protected by men like us …'

'You do not consult us,' Mr Smith gently corrected him.

'It's hard for most of us to distinguish between a conscientious objector and a shirker.'

'At least they do not shirk prison,' Mr Smith said. Jones came unexpectedly to his support. 'Many served very gallantly in the Red Cross,' he said. 'Some of us owe our lives to them.'

'You won't find many pacifists where you are going,' the purser said. The chemist persisted, his voice high with his own grievance, 'And what if someone attacks your wife, what then?'

The Presidential Candidate stared down the length of the table at the stout pale unhealthy traveller and addressed him as though he were a heckler at a political meeting, with weight and gravity. 'I have never claimed, sir, that with removal of acidity we remove all passion. If Mrs Smith were attacked I had a weapon in my hand, I cannot promise that I would not use it. We have standards to which we do not always rise.'

'Bravo, Mr Smith,' Jones cried.

'But I would deplore my passion, sir. I would deplore it.'

5

That evening I went to the purser's cabin before dinner, I forget on what errand. I found him seated at his desk. He was blowing up a French letter till it was the size of a policeman's truncheon. He tied the end up with ribbon and removed it from his mouth. His desk was littered with great swollen phalluses. It was like a massacre of pigs.

'Tomorrow is the ship's concert,' he explained to me, 'and we have no balloons. It was Mr Jones's idea that we should use these.' I saw that he had decorated some of the sheaths with comic faces in coloured ink. 'We have only one lady on board,' he said, 'and I do not think she will realize the nature …'

'You forget she is a progressive.'

'In that case she will not mind. These are surely the symbols of progress.'

'Suffering as we do from acidity, at least we need not pass it on to our children.'

He giggled and set to work with a coloured crayon on one of his monstrous faces. The texture of the skin whined under his fingers.

'What time, do you think, we'll arrive on Wednesday?'

'The captain expects to tie up by the early evening.'

'I hope we get in before the lights go out. I suppose they still go out?'

'Yes. You will find nothing has changed for the better. Only for the worse. It is impossible to leave the city now without a police-permit. There are barricades on every road out of Port-au-Prince. I doubt if you will be able to reach your hotel without being searched. We have warned the crew that they leave the harbour only at their own risk. Of course they will go just the same. Mиre Catherine will always stay open.'

'Any news of the Baron?' It was the name some gave to the President as an alternative to Papa Doc - we dignified his shambling shabby figure with the title of Baron Samedi, who in the Voodoo mythology haunts the cemeteries in his top-hat and tails, smoking his big cigar.

'They say he hasn't been seen for three months. He doesn't even come to a window of the palace to watch the band. He might be dead for all anyone knows. If he can die without a silver bullet. We've had to cancel our call at Cap Haпtien the last two trips. The town is under martial law. It's too close to the Dominican border, and we aren't allowed in.' He drew a deep breath and began to inflate another French letter. The teat stood out like a tumour on the skull, and a hospital smell of rubber filled the cabin. He said, 'What makes you go back?'

'One can't just leave a hotel one owns …'

'But you did leave it.'

I wasn't going to confide my reasons to the purser. They were too private and too serious, if one can describe as serious the confused comedy of our lives. He blew up another capote anglaise, and I thought: Surely there must be a power which always arranges things to happen in the most humiliating circumstances. When I was a boy I had faith in the Christian God. Life under his shadow was a very serious affair; I saw Him incarnated in every tragedy. He belonged to the lacrimae rerum like a gigantic figure looming through a Scottish mist. Now that I approached the end of life it was only my sense of humour that enabled me sometimes to believe in Him. Life was a comedy, not the tragedy for which I had been prepared, and it seemed to me that we were all, on this boat with a Greek name (why should a Dutch line name its boats in Greek?), driven by an authoritative practical joker towards the extreme point of comedy. How often, in the crowd on Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway, after the theatres closed, have I heard the phrase -'I laughed till the tears came.'

'What do you think of Mr Jones?' the purser asked.

'Major Jones? I leave such questions to you and the captain.' It was obvious that he had been consulted as well as I. Perhaps the fact that my name was Brown made me more sensitive to the comedy of Jones. I picked up one of the great sausages of fish-skin and said, 'Do you ever put one of these to a proper use?'

The purser sighed. 'Alas, no. I have reached an age … Inevitably I get a crise de foie. Whenever my emotions are upset.'

The purser had admitted me to an intimacy and now he required an intimacy in return, or perhaps the captain had demanded information on me too and the purser saw an opportunity of providing it. He asked me, 'How did a man like you ever come to settle in Port-au-Prince? How did you ever become an hфtelier. You don't look like an hфtelier. You look like - like …'

but his imagination failed him.

I laughed. He had asked the pertinent question all right, but the answer was one I preferred to keep to myself.

6

The captain honoured us the next night with his presence at dinner, and so did the chief engineer. I suppose there must always be a rivalry between captain and chief, as their responsibilities are equal. So long as the captain had taken his meals alone the chief had done the same. Now one at the head of the table and the other at the foot, they sat with equality under the dubious balloons. There was an extra course in honour of our last night at sea, and, with the exception of the Smiths, passengers drank champagne. The purser was unusually restrained in the presence of his superior officers (I think he would have liked to join the first officer on the bridge in the freedom of the windy dark), and the captain and chief were a little bowed under the sense of occasion, like priests serving at a major feast. Mrs Smith sat on the captain's right and I on his left, and the mere presence of Jones precluded easy conversation. Even the menu was an added difficulty, for on this occasion the Dutch feeling for heavy meat dishes was given full rein and Mrs Smith's plate too often reproached us with its bareness. The Smiths, however, had carried with them from the States a number of cartons and bottles which like buoys always marked their places, and perhaps because they felt they had surrendered their principles in drinking something as doubtful in its ingredients as Coca-Cola, they mixed their own beverages tonight with the aid of hot water.

'I understand,' the captain said gloomily, 'that after dinner there is to be an entertainment.'