The Comedians (16 page)

‘The sun will dry me quickly enough, dear,' Mr Smith called back.

‘Put the towel round your shoulders or you'll burn.'

Mr Smith obeyed her. I said, ‘Mr Jones has been arrested by the police.'

‘My goodness. You don't say. What has he done?'

‘He hasn't necessarily done anything.'

‘Has he seen a lawyer?'

‘That's not possible here. The police wouldn't allow it.'

Mr Smith gave me an obstinate look. ‘The police are the same everywhere. It happens often enough at home,' he said, ‘in the south. Coloured men shut up in jail, refused a lawyer. But two wrongs don't make a right.'

‘I've been to the embassy. They don't think they can do much.'

‘Now that
is
scandalous,' Mr Smith said. He was referring to the attitude of the embassy rather than to the conditions of Jones's arrest.

‘Petit Pierre thinks that the best thing at the moment would be for you to intervene, to see the Secretary of State perhaps.'

‘I'll do anything I can for Mr Jones. There's obviously been a mistake. But why does he suppose I would have any influence?'

‘You were a presidential candidate,' I said, as Joseph brought the glasses.

‘I'll do anything I can,' Mr Smith repeated, brooding into his Coca-Cola. ‘I very much took to Mr Jones. (I don't know why it is I can't get round to calling him Major – after all there are some good men in all armies.) He seemed to me the best type of Britisher. There must have been a foolish mistake somewhere.'

‘I don't want to get you into any trouble with the authorities.'

‘I'm not afraid of trouble,' Mr Smith said, ‘with any authorities.'

III

The office of the Secretary of State was in one of the exhibition buildings near the port and the Columbus statue. We passed the musical fountain that never played now, the public park with its Bourbon pronouncement: ‘
Je suis le drapeau Haïtien, Uni et Indivisible, François Duvalier
', and came at last to the long modern building of cement and glass, the wide staircase, the great lounge with many comfortable armchairs lined with the murals of Haitian artists. It bore as little relation to the beggars of the Post Office square and the shanty-town as Christophe's palace of Sans Souci, but it would make a much less picturesque ruin.

The lounge contained more than a dozen middle-class people, fat and prosperous. The women in their best dresses of electric blues and acid greens chattered happily to each other as though they were taking their morning coffee, looking sharply up at every newcomer. Even a suppliant in this lounge bore himself with importance in an air filled with the slow tap of typewriters. Ten minutes after we arrived Señor Pineda walked heavily through with the certitude of diplomatic privilege. He smoked a cigar and looked at no one and without asking a by-your-leave passed through one of the doors which opened on to an inner balcony.

‘The Secretary's private office,' I explained. ‘The South American ambassadors are still
persona grata
. Especially Pineda. He hasn't any political refugees in his embassy. Not yet.'

We waited for three-quarters of an hour, but Mr Smith showed no impatience. ‘It seems very well organized,' he said once, when the suppliants were reduced by two after a brief conference with a clerk. ‘A minister has to be protected.'

At last Pineda passed out through the lounge, still smoking a cigar – it was a fresh one. The band was on it: he never removed his bands because they were stamped with his monogram. This time he gave me a bow of recognition – for a moment I thought he was going to pause and speak to me; his bow must have attracted the attention of the young man who accompanied him to the head of the stairs, for he returned and asked us with courtesy what we wanted.

‘The Secretary of State,' I said.

‘He is very busy with the foreign ambassadors. There is a great deal to discuss. You see tomorrow he is leaving for the United Nations.'

‘Then I think he should see Mr Smith at once.'

‘Mr Smith?'

‘You haven't read today's paper?'

‘We have been very busy.'

‘Mr Smith arrived yesterday. He is the Presidential Candidate.'

‘The Presidential Candidate?' the young man said with incredulity. ‘In Haiti?'

‘He has business in Haiti – but that is a matter for your President. Now he would like to see the Minister before he leaves for New York.'

‘Please wait here a moment.' He passed into one of the offices on the inner court and came out, hurriedly, a minute later carrying a newspaper. He knocked on the Minister's door and went in.

‘You know, Mr Brown, that I'm no longer a presidential candidate. We made our gesture once and for all.'

‘There's no need to explain that here, Mr Smith. After all you belong to history.' I could see in those pale-blue honest eyes that perhaps I had gone a little too far. I added, ‘A gesture like yours is there for everyone to read' – I could not specify where. ‘It belongs to this year as much as to the past.'

The young man stood beside us – he had left the newspaper behind. ‘If you would come with me . . .'

The Secretary of State flashed his teeth at us with great amiability. I saw the newspaper lying at the corner of his desk. The palm he held out to us was large, square, pink and humid. He told us in excellent English how interested he had been to read of Mr Smith's arrival and how he had hardly hoped to have the honour, since he was leaving for New York tomorrow . . . There had been no word from the American Embassy, or else of course he would have arranged a time . . .

Since the President of the United States, I said, had seen fit to recall his ambassador, Mr Smith thought it better to make his visit unofficially.

The Secretary said he saw my point. He added to Mr Smith, ‘I understand you are seeing the President . . .'

‘Mr Smith has not yet asked for an audience. He was anxious to see you first – before you land in New York.'

‘I have to make my protest before the United Nations,' the Minister explained with pride. ‘Will you have a cigar, Mr Smith?' He offered his leather case and Mr Smith took one. I noticed that the band bore the monogram of Señor Pineda.

‘Protest?' Mr Smith asked.

‘The raids from the Dominican Republic. The rebels are being supplied with American arms. We have evidence.'

‘What evidence?'

‘Two men were captured carrying revolvers manufactured in the United States.'

‘I'm afraid you can buy such things anywhere in the world.'

‘I have been promised the support of Ghana. And I hope other Afro-Asian countries . . .'

‘Mr Smith has come about quite a different matter,' I interrupted them. ‘A great friend of his who was travelling with him was arrested yesterday by the police.'

‘An American?'

‘An Englishman called Jones.'

‘Has the British Embassy made inquiries? This is really a matter concerning the Secretary for the Interior.'

‘But a word from you, Your Excellency . . .'

‘I cannot interfere with another department. I'm sorry. Mr Smith will understand.'

Mr Smith pushed his way into our dialogue with a roughness I had not known him to possess. ‘You can find out what the charge is, can't you?'

‘Charge?

‘Charge.'

‘Oh – charge.'

‘Exactly,' Mr Smith said. ‘Charge.'

‘There will not necessarily be a charge. You are anticipating the worst.'

‘Then why keep him in prison?'

‘I know nothing about the case. I suppose there is something to be investigated.'

‘Then he ought to be brought before a magistrate and put on bail. I will stand bail for any reasonable amount.'

‘Bail?' the Minister said. ‘Bail?' He turned to me with a gesture of appeal from his cigar. ‘What is bail?'

‘A kind of gift to the state if a prisoner should not return for trial. It can be quite a substantial amount,' I added.

‘You've heard of Habeas Corpus, I suppose,' Mr Smith said.

‘Yes. Yes. Of course. But I have forgotten so much of my Latin. Virgil. Homer. I regret that I no longer have time to study.'

I said to Mr Smith, ‘The basis of the law here is supposed to be the
Code Napoléon
.'

‘The
Code Napoléon
?'

‘There are certain differences from the Anglo-Saxon law. Habeas Corpus is one of them.'

‘A man has to be charged surely.'

‘Yes. Eventually.' I spoke rapidly to the Minister in French. Mr Smith understood little French, even though Mrs Smith had reached the fourth lesson in Hugo's. I said, ‘I think a political mistake has been made. The Presidential Candidate is a personal friend of this man Jones. You ought not to alienate him just before your visit to New York. You know the importance in democratic countries of being friendly with the opposition. Unless the affair is of really great importance, I think you should let Mr Smith see his friend. Otherwise he will undoubtedly believe that he has been – perhaps – ill-treated.'

‘Does Mr Smith speak French?'

‘No.'

‘You see, there is always the possibility that the police may have exceeded their instructions. I wouldn't want Mr Smith to get a bad impression of our police procedure.'

‘Couldn't you send in a reliable doctor first – to tidy up?'

‘Of course there would be nothing really to conceal. It is only that sometimes a prisoner misbehaves. I am sure even in your own country . . .'

‘Then we can rely on you to have a word with your colleague? What I would suggest is that Mr Smith should leave with you a little compensation – in dollars, of course, not
gourdes
– for any damage Mr Jones may have inflicted on a policeman.'

‘I will do what I can. So long as the President is not involved. In that case there is nothing that any of us can do.'

‘No.'

Above his head hung the portrait of Papa Doc – the portrait of Baron Samedi. Clothed in the heavy black tail-suit of graveyards he peered out at us through the thick lenses of his spectacles with myopic and expressionless eyes. He was rumoured sometimes to watch personally the slow death of a Tonton victim. The eyes would not change. Presumably his interest in the death was medical.

‘Give me two hundred dollars,' I said to Mr Smith. He picked out two hundred-dollar notes from his case. In the other pocket I saw that he had a photograph of his wife wrapped in her rug. I laid the notes on the Minister's desk; I thought he looked at them with an air of disparagement, but I couldn't believe that Mr Jones was worth much more than that. At the door I turned, ‘And Doctor Philipot,' I asked, ‘is he here at the moment? There was something about the hotel I wanted to discuss with him – a drainage plan.'

‘I believe that he is in the south at Aux Cayes about a new hospital project.' Haiti was a great country for projects. Projects always mean money to the projectors so long as they are not begun.

‘We'll hear from you then?'

‘Of course. Of course. But I promise nothing.' He was now a little brusque. I have often noticed that a bribe (though, of course, this was not, strictly speaking, a bribe) has that effect – it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman. Perhaps I had made a mistake. Perhaps I should have left Mr Smith as an undefined menace. The blackmailer retains his superiority.

IV

All the same the Minister proved himself to be a man of his word; we were allowed in due course to see the prisoner.

At the police station the next afternoon the sergeant was the most important figure, far more important than the Minister's secretary who accompanied us there. He tried in vain to catch the eye of the great man, but he had to wait his turn at the counter with all the other suppliants. Mr Smith and I sat under the snapshots of the dead rebel which were still wilting on the wall after all these months. Mr Smith looked at them and hastily looked away. In a little room opposite us sat a tall negro in a natty civilian suit; he had his feet up on his desk and he stared at us continually through dark glasses. Perhaps it was only my nerves that lent him an expression of repulsive cruelty.

‘He'll remember us again,' Mr Smith said with a smile.

The man knew that we had spoken of him. He rang a bell on his desk and a policeman came. Without moving his feet or turning his gaze away from us he asked a question, and the policeman glanced at us and replied and the long stare went on. I turned my head, but inevitably after a little while I looked back into the two black circular lenses. They were like binoculars through which he was observing the habits of two insignificant animals.

‘An ugly customer,' I said uneasily. Then I noticed that Mr Smith was returning the stare. One couldn't see how often the man blinked because of the dark glasses; he might easily have closed his eyes and rested them and we would not have known, yet it was Mr Smith's blue relentless gaze which won the day. The man got up and closed the door of his office. ‘Bravo,' I said.

‘I shall remember him too,' Mr Smith said.

‘He probably suffers from acidity.'

‘It's highly possible, Mr Brown.'

We must have been there more than half an hour before the Foreign Minister's secretary got any attention. In a dictatorship ministers come and go; in Port-au-Prince only the chief of police, the head of the Tontons Macoute and the commander of the palace guard had any permanence – they alone could offer security to their employees. The Minister's secretary was dismissed by the sergeant like a small boy who has run an errand and a corporal led us down the long corridor of cells that smelt like a zoo.