The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth (11 page)

PACO

The admiral, my officer; why do his own people

Do him this dishonour, what has he done?

QUADRADO

He disobeyed the Queen. Also, he harmed your people.

PACO

Hast thou not killed any savages, my officer?

QUADRADO

Why do you ask?

PACO

My father also was a Spanish soldier.

I remember him, that he was much like you.

QUADRADO

So you have learnt the value of our faith.

(
Removes a coin.
)

Do you know what this is, my little disciple?

PACO

It is gold, my officer, I have learnt that.

QUADRADO

In the Old World that men called civilization,

Acquire it if you wish to make some mark.

The true stamp of acquisitive man is here,

Compounded in his image, not his maker’s.

Study this coin, it gathers darkness around it,

And like the sun, brings its own darkness, guilt.

This barbarous metal, which has less iridescence

Now night descends than the star-crusted sea,

Induced our country, mercenaries, and gentlemen

To sell their souls, for this pus-coloured metal,

Spanish gold.

PACO

It is called money, my officer.

We did not call it that when in the ground.

(
GARCÍA
enters unobserved, listening.
)

QUADRADO

We gather this,
grometto,
with much devotion,

As peaceful Indians harvest yellow maize;

It makes our markets and controls the state

And sets up barriers that obscure that view

Where now the admiral achieves his degradation.

PACO

And that is why the admiral looked for these islands?

QUADRADO

You must ask him yourself. Here, keep the coin,

Since my own people taught you of its value,

See how it dims in the bewildering dusk,

But though you take it, please remember this,

That gold outlasts the wearer. Here, keep our God.

PACO

I thank you, my officer, I shall keep it always.

QUADRADO

Also, Paco, until this mutinous vessel reaches Spain,

Think of me not as your officer but as your father.

Now, go fetch the admiral his supper, go.

(
Exit
PACO
;
enter
FERNANDO
.)

FERNANDO

I have brought the lantern. It will be a rough night.

It will be different for them as cannot sleep.

But I say envy no man anything but his gold.

QUADRADO

Take up the lantern, where’s Bartolome?

BARTOLOME
(
Singing in hold.
)

There is a fount in Paradise,

A much distasteful place,

So high indeed that fountain jets,

It touches the far lunar sphere.

I can’t see a damn in this wet hellhole, move, move.

Here comes the prince of purgatory with his lanterns.

GARCÍA

Be careful with that fire, and plug your bung.

(
BARTOLOME
appears.
)

FERNANDO
(
Climbing steps to
COLUMBUS
.)

I have brought thee a lantern, grizzle gut,

And there’ll be food soon for your stomach.

And a sea high enough to quench the stars.

BARTOLOME
(
Hanging hammock.
)

O come with me, across the seas,

To where the gold flown is Cathay …

What’s in that darkened mind of yours, García?

GARCÍA

Gold is the lamp that leads us all to hell.

I saw the remorseful officer, Quadrado,

Give the mestizo a coin, his wealth to the poor.

FERNANDO
(
Descends, sets blankets on deck.
)

Well, God rest us all, and wake us for the watch.

Lower the tongue of the lantern, good Bartolome.

BARTOLOME

And God give us all good rest, and spare us envy,

And too much rattling of chains.

FERNANDO

When you pray, friend,

Turn your sour breath away from the wind.

(
They settle.
GARCÍA
lounges on steps, awake.
)

QUADRADO
(
Alone
)

Now I am left to walk the deck alone.

The wind is high, the guards are at their poles,

And on this minute, the ship boy should sing out.

BOY’S VOICE

One glass is gone and now the third floweth.

More shall run down, if my God willeth.

QUADRADO

These fellows sleep like brutes without a past.

Murders and theft, they shake them off as horses

Twitch flies from flesh, with a quick shudder.

García, Fernando, and Bartolome. And the admiral.

Only our two remorseful souls are vigilant.

You there on the watch, how is the passage?

LOOKOUT

An open passage, high seas, please God, Lieutenant.

QUADRADO

There are flies on the cordage, flies, flies on these dead.

And when I halt I hear their moans again.

FERNANDO
(
Whispering.
)

Bartolome, look, Quadrado …

QUADRADO

All of my nights I sweat beads for the slain,

Treading this deck as to a gallows tree.

The frightened moon has scurried into her cave.

The cold quicksilver sweat of fear breaks out

And ghosts creep from the deep slime of the sea.

(
MUSIC
:
figures of slaughtered Indians emerge from the shadows.
)

COLUMBUS

Light! Light!

QUADRADO

                        Who cried out there?

Look, now they come, O Mother of God, prevent them,

As rotten leaves are whirled in a black wind,

I hear the spectres of these slaughtered men

Wail in the wind, the autumn of their race.

One walks there like Sebastian, branched with arrows.

One brings his lantern like a bleeding head.

Mother of God.

(
The ghosts descend through a trapdoor.
)

BARTOLOME

Mother of God, this is most strange, preserve us.

GARCÍA

Get back to sleep. The moon is beautiful.

PACO
(
Running up from hold.
)

My officer, my officer, what is it?

QUADRADO

Nothing, nothing. I was at my prayers, a custom

You can put down to nothing and the troubled night.

Is that the admiral’s supper? Take it up. Wait!

(
GARCÍA
drops back.
)

Did you see nothing as you climbed the steps?

PACO

Nothing but the shadows from the swinging lamp.

QUADRADO

You have not lost the gold I gave you, boy?

PACO

No, my officer, I remember your catechism.

QUADRADO

Remember you have seen nothing, only a soldier

Who cannot sleep, and who has certain fears.

That is the way you will meet your admiral.

I must walk another section of the ship.

(
Exit.
PACO
goes up.
)

PACO

Your supper, Excellency. I have your supper.

COLUMBUS

You are half Indian, why are you on this ship?

PACO

I am a
grometto,
I sing the “Salve” and reverse the glass.

COLUMBUS

I am not very hungry, boy. I am not well.

PACO

Even a god must eat, my admiral.

COLUMBUS

I am not a god,
grometto.

PACO

Eat, and I will talk out through the night with thee.

(
Pause.
)

Dost thou know of an officer called Quadrado?

COLUMBUS

I knew many officers of several degrees. Why?

PACO

He was a soldier, now he prays for Spain.

COLUMBUS

I am sea-worn,
grometto,
I need some sleep.

There will be many nights ahead of this.

PACO

Weren’t thou afraid of the great sea, my admiral?

COLUMBUS

I see that you’ll have me talk no matter what.

Well, perhaps it is best, than to remember sins.

Yes, I had great fear,
grometto,
but I had trust.

PACO

Yes, my admiral, in the God who was nailed up.

BARTOLOME
(
Below.
)

It’s a bad passage. García, go to sleep.

GARCÍA

Be quiet; I’ll wake you for the watch.

COLUMBUS

There is a sea the Arabs knew, that scholars called

Mare tenebricosum,
the green sea of gloom.

There, pass me the flat plate and I’ll show thee, boy.

(
Holds up the plate.
)

Before me, men thought the world’s design

Was of this shape, the horizon, the plate’s edge,

And on the rim of the world was hell and darkness.

Now, assist me with this iron round my ankles.

This,
niño,
is the certain shape of the world.

PACO
(
Kneeling.
)

Tell of the voyage, the monsters, and the lands.

COLUMBUS

And this spoon is Columbus beating on the gates

Of the great princes of the world. A coin,

A coin. I need a coin.

PACO

                                      Here is one, Excellency.

COLUMBUS
(
Holds coin.
)

Place this gold here, a circle, like the sun

That daily in its course turns round this iron

And casts its shadow on one side, the night.

The city I was born in, superb Genoa,

Stares with her white breast southward to the sea,

Into the sun, that at its summer solstice

Sets like a burning carrack, fierce with fire,

Behind the pinnacle of Mount Beguia.

Turn up the lantern, and I’ll tell thee more.

(
PACO
takes down the lantern.
)

I was a weaver’s son, strange how we start.

While I worked patiently at my father’s shuttle,

I could not guess the web of destinations

That I would weave within the minds of men.

QUADRADO
(
Returns.
)

So now he has an Indian for his friend; the boy is safe.

(
Exits.
GARCÍA
creeps up steps.
)

PACO

Señor, now may I have the coin?

COLUMBUS

Thou art shrewd. Thou shouldst go the distance.

GARCÍA
(
Below.
)

And the distance being from his purse to my pocket.

PACO

Sit down, señor; sit down, you are not well.

COLUMBUS

A little after sunset, one of my sailors

Noticed the phosphorescence of the sea,

And fishing in the glittering waters found

A twig that had a bunch of withered berries on it.

And there were other signs. The third day passed

And so the dark descended on the sea.

Sometimes it seemed we caught the scent of land.

We waited, quiet, there was silence like this,

There where the shadow of the steady helmsman

Tosses upon the huge screen of the sail.

Merely to breathe seemed an offence to faith.

An hour before the lantern of the moon

Climbed to the stair of heaven where no cloud

Can mantle it, I thought I saw what one might call a light.

I called to my helmsman, Pedro Gutiérrez,

Whose eyes were best in the deceiving darkness.

PACO

What was the light, señor? Were you afraid?

COLUMBUS
(
Rises, distracted.
)

Oh, all the cruel patience of the long years,

The fawning humiliation before great princes,

The fears and terrors of the whale-threshed seas

Broke through my cloud now, with his cry of light!

PACO

My admiral, my admiral, sit down, sit down.

COLUMBUS

Honours now hollow are heaped on my crest,

Admiral of ocean, and a tamer of tides,

What will they make of this world is my wonder?

Hypocrites and malefactors have wrecked my work.

PACO

                                                 … Excellency …

COLUMBUS
(
Sits.
)

I had hoped to open the green page of this sea

To be a book cartographers could read.

Let me be buried in the backwash of oblivion,

My bones unmarked, my grave a mystery,

And some unlettered sea stone be my tomb.

Yet I held a cross before me, O my Christ,

I did all for God and the lion of Castile,

I did all for God …

(
He weeps.
)

QUADRADO

I shall get help, my admiral …