The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth (34 page)

YETTE

Let me go, sir.

DESSALINES

Rub your arm on these muscles. Feel.

You feel how smooth and black they are, mulatresse?

Do you like an emperor made of pure ebony?

This is your own flesh, your grandfather’s flesh.

And look into my eyes now and find your pride.

Like the skin of a trotting panther, yes, black

Like the galloping panther that carries

Two yellow candles in his eyes, whose pads

Are quiet as ashes, whose teeth are fine bone,

Who has the night for his cave, whose skin

Smells of the jungle, and whose eyes are stars

Searching the heaven for a face like yours.

I’m like a black candle melting when you touch me.

YETTE

S’ous plait.

DESSALINES

                    Do not beg me.

I cannot stand people to beg me.

(
Pause.
)

Look, that is not your husband in the grass there?

Sitting out in the dew. Crying into the dew,

A big man like that? You married a child!

YETTE

No. He is a man. As much as you.

DESSALINES

I thought I tell him to go somewhere else.

He disobey his Emperor. Well, maybe

He does not want his room.

You have heard what I do men who disobey me?

YETTE

Yes. Don’t hurt him.

DESSALINES

Hurt him? Me?

Listen, you will not believe it,

But you will boast when you are an old woman

How, in that same room, you fucked a king.

(
He waves to
POMPEY
,
makes a sign on his lips of silence, and moves from the balcony with
YETTE
.)

Scene 14

Interior. Dark. The bedroom. Dawn.
DESSALINES, YETTE
in bed. Half-dark.
DESSALINES
on
YETTE
.

DESSALINES

… dit … Jacques …
Call me Jack.

YETTE
(
Softly
)

… Your Majesty … Your Majesty.

DESSALINES

… Jacques … dit Jean Jacques …

YETTE
(
Her eyes open, dry.
)

… Your … Majesty … Majesty …

DESSALINES
(
Slapping her.
)

… Jacques … salope! Jacques!

YETTE
(
Wincing; tears begin.
)

… Majesty … Majesty …

DESSALINES
(
Slapping her.
)

… Say it … Yellow bitch … you sweet

Yellow bitch …

(
He slaps her.
)

… say Jacques! Jacques! Jacques!

YETTE
(
Quietly
)

… Nègre … nègre … cochon!

(
DESSALINES
slaps her frenziedly to a climax.
)

DESSALINES

That’s better. Better. Yes …
Nègre
 …

(
He rolls off. Watching the ceiling.
)

Yes …
c’est ça moi y est …

(
Pause.
)

Un nègre …

(
He turns to her.
)

Merci.
I thank you.

(
He removes a ring.
)

Here. Take it. For your wedding.

(
Fade-out.
)

Scene 15

Dawn. The same, but the yard.
DESSALINES
enters the yard and shouts towards the arches of the Great House.

DESSALINES

It’s sunrise. Wake up. Where is my Minister

Of Agriculture? Christophe! Minister Christophe.

(
He crows like a cock.
)

The cock is trumpeting, Minister of Agriculture.

And the golden cock, your Emperor, is calling you.

(
CHRISTOPHE
,
partially dressed, comes out onto the balcony, then descends.
DESSALINES
is in a corner of the yard, peeing.
)

Peace. I hate peace. I piss on peace.

(
CHRISTOPHE
joins
DESSALINES
.)

Pee with me, Minister. That is a command.

CHRISTOPHE

You should get some sleep, Jean Jacques.

DESSALINES

Pétion and his mulatto army are over there

Behind those blue hills. He will not fight me.

He hides in the south. Look at these hills,

This earth, how dry it is. I sprinkled it.

I sprinkled it with an emperor’s golden dew.

Kings will grow out of this soil; my seed

Will grow more emperors.

CHRISTOPHE

                                                   Kings. Yes.

And the peasants cut them down.

DESSALINES

I must lend you my crown sometime, Henri.

CHRISTOPHE

Make it a crown of olive, Your Majesty.

DESSALINES

Olive? What is it?

CHRISTOPHE

                                A tree. The crown of peace.

DESSALINES

Ah yes. Peace. You know when peace will be?

When every yellow skin in Haiti goes dry as corn.

When we bury all the treacherous mulattos.

We had dusty times in those hills, though, General.

Boukmann. I kissed his head. Remember that?

Now it is time for me to administer justice.

These people will not plant.

They must go back to planting.

You hear me, Minister of Agriculture?

Now bring in the one who refused to work.

CHRISTOPHE

No more whipping. They have been beaten enough.

I have to protect them, to encourage them.

You need sleep.

DESSALINES

                             Bring him in front me.

The one who wouldn’t plant.

CHRISTOPHE

                                                  No more whipping.

DESSALINES

No more whipping? Don’t we whip mules, horses?

When they don’t move? What’s wrong?

What are you staring at, Minister of Agriculture?

CHRISTOPHE

An animal.

DESSALINES
(
Turning.
)

                      What animal? Where?

CHRISTOPHE

You can’t see him.

DESSALINES

                                 Why? A ghost?

CHRISTOPHE

You would have to be where I am to see him.

DESSALINES

M’as comprends.
Stand where you are to see an animal?

I am standing next to you and I cannot see him.

CHRISTOPHE

I can smell him.

DESSALINES

                               Yes? What smell? Close?

CHRISTOPHE

Very close. He is here, a spine-backed boar,

Rooting through the earth, grunting, furrowing

And foraging with his black snout, head down,

And a tail like a question, he crowned himself

The monarch of swinedom.
Le roi cochon.

DESSALINES
(
Stepping back.
)

                                                                         Waiter …

CHRISTOPHE

Yes.

DESSALINES

Remember when I met you at L’Auberge de la Couronne?

CHRISTOPHE

Yes.

DESSALINES

        When I had chains around my foot? Look there.

You can still see it. You remember all that?

Good. Then remember who you are talking to.

(
CHRISTOPHE
picks up
DESSALINES
’s coat.
)

CHRISTOPHE

I know the work you were doing in there, and why

You have your coat flung down in the dirt. Here,

Wear it. You’re supposed to be my Emperor, even

At six in the morning. This medal here, Toussaint

Gave you at D’Ennery. I stopped fighting to watch you,

Crouched at a gallop, your course fixed like a panther,

A black scream for your banner, you were then

The sword and reason of the war, left and right

You cutlassed legions of dragoons like sugar,

And wheeled round again like a tiger spinning

On its heel, till all the lances of the French legions

Were piled level as canes and there was nothing standing

Between your fury and the setting sun’s.

And so it went, from Cap to Artibonite,

Across the ridges, the soldiers saw your body

Half-welded to its horse, like a black centaur,

And whispered, “This is an African, magical, singing

Sabres whistle through him and he joins his halves.

He slaps off bullets like mosquitoes, what

Chembois,
what amulets preserve him?”

And I wondered myself, I lost myself

In utter and unutterable admiration

Like a man wandering through a forest

Whose compass is the moon, and when the moon went,

I took even a deeper pride in blackness,

In the night’s skin; for us, you were the night,

The constellations were your medals,

The clouds, your plumes, you were a forest

Where our ancestral spirits lived, you were,

Jean Jacques. Then, you had majesty.

When you had nothing on your back

Which was already velvet, like a panther’s,

Then you had grace, but what you are today

Turns the same eyes that watered with admiration

Away from you, makes us move from your shadow

As if it were a curse; you betray yourself,

One action noble, then the next one common,

One moment this, then the next moment that.

If you find peace has less purpose than war,

Then make a war inside you, fight with yourself,

And then I’d crown you myself, but all your actions

Endanger the republic, or what was once

A republic, before you made yourself a king.

Jean Jacques, the greatest king, the absolute monarch,

Is the man who knows his work has earned a crown

But who refuses it, or crowns the one who offers

It instead. You should give back the crown

To the republic, dissolve the monarchy,

Dissolve yourself, and then you’ll know yourself.

And I’m saying what everyone around you feels

But is too scared to tell you.

(
DESSALINES
weeps.
)

Tears may be good for us. When a king cries,

There’s hope. That means he’s still human.

DESSALINES

I think you said enough, yes.

CHRISTOPHE

                                                   I said enough. Yes.

But I haven’t written enough. Watch what I write.

(
He finds a stick.
)

DESSALINES

You know damn well I can’t read. What is that?

(
CHRISTOPHE
writes in the dirt with the stick.
)

CHRISTOPHE

Toussaint L’Ouverture. Jean Jacques Dessalines.

This one there is your name. No, this one here.

It is written in the Haitian earth forever.

Even if I scrape it out with my foot, like this.

(
He rubs out the names with his boot.
)

DESSALINES

Where’s your name? Why you don’t put it there?

So, you can write now. Me, I just use my stamp.

I am not a stick. I don’t break. Where’s the man

Who refused to work? Bring him here in front me

And you’ll see who break. They have to plant,

They have to grow, they have to obey.

To make example, give him fifty lashes,

And since he won’t listen, cut off his ear.

CHRISTOPHE

Not me. Not me again.

DESSALINES

                                         Not you?

CHRISTOPHE

Not me, Jacko.

(
Silence.
)

DESSALINES

All right. Then me. Is I who do everything anyway.

I who begin, and I who end. You come in, you join

When everything was going good. I am the beginning,

And I am the end. Haiti is me.
Ous tendre?
This!

(
He stamps his foot.
)

Is. Me. I will send you his two ears.

(
He exits.
)

CHRISTOPHE

Jacques!

(
Two
LABOURERS
,
barefooted, in dirty clothes, enter, then wait.
)

FIRST LABOURER

Monsieur Le Ministre, ’ous tais v’iler voir nous. Ous dit nous espérer.

CHRISTOPHE

’Jourd’hui.

(
FIRST LABOURER
puts on a boar’s head.
)

SECOND LABOURER

Eh bien, ’jourd’hui.
If today is the day, today is the day.

CHRISTOPHE

The boar will find him, as he found the boar.

On the same beach. Do what you have to do.

(
Fade-out.
)

Scene 16

Belle Maison. 1820. A room.
YETTE
rises out of bed and goes to a chest of drawers, one of which she pulls out carefully, so as not to wake
POMPEY
.
She eases the drawer out, without looking down, watching her face in the dressing-table mirror steadily. Her hair is greying. She brings up an object from the bottom of the drawer. It is an effigy of
CHRISTOPHE
,
doll-size, in coronation robes and with a little crown. The doll wears a crown, a figured golden robe, red coat, the Star of David on its tiny breast, its right cloth hand gripping a straw sceptre, its fat cloth legs splayed apart.