The Comedians

by Graham Greene

  ‘This cochon, this salaud,’ Madame Philipot said, still barring the way to the hearse, ‘wants to drive back into the city.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘The militia at the barrier up the road will not let us pass.’

  ‘But why, why?’ Mr Smith repeated with bewilderment and the two men, leaving their taxi in the drive, began to walk down the hill towards the city with an air of purpose. They had put on top-hats.

  ‘They murdered him,’ Madame Philipot said, ‘and now they will not even allow him to be buried in our own plot of ground.’

  ‘There must be some mistake,’ Mr Smith said, ‘surely.’

  ‘I told that salaud to drive on through the barrier. Let them shoot. Let them kill his wife and child.’ She added with illogical contempt, ‘They probably have no bullets in any case for their rifles.’

  ‘Maman, maman,’ the child cried from the taxi.

  ‘Chéri?’

  ‘Tu m’as promis une glace à la vanille.’

  ‘Attends un petit peu, chéri.’

  I said, ‘Then you got through the first road-block without being questioned?’

  ‘Yes, yes. You understand – with a little payment.’

  ‘They wouldn’t accept payment up the road?’

  She said, ‘Oh, he had orders. He was afraid.’

  ‘There must be a mistake,’ I said, repeating Mr Smith, but unlike him I was thinking of the bribe which had been refused.

  ‘You live here. Do you really believe that?’ She turned on the driver and said, ‘Drive on. Up the road. Salaud,’ and the cat, as though it took the insult to itself, leapt at the nearest tree: its claws scrabbled in the bark and held. It spat once more over its shoulder, at all of us, with hungry hatred and dropped into the bougainvillaea.

  The two men in black returned slowly up the hill. They had an intimidated air. I had time to look at the coffin – it was a luxurious one, worthy of the hearse, but it bore only a single wreath of flowers and a single card; the ex-Minister was doomed to have an interment almost as lonely as his death. The two men who had now rejoined us were almost indistinguishable one from the other, except that one was a centimetre or so the taller – or perhaps it was his hat. The taller one explained, ‘We have been to the lower road-block, Madame Philipot. They say we cannot return with the coffin. Not without the authorization of the authorities.’

  ‘What authorities?’ I asked.

  ‘The Secretary for Social Welfare.’

  We all with one accord looked at the handsome coffin with its gleaming brass handles.

  ‘There is the Secretary for Social Welfare,’ I said.

  ‘Not since this morning.’

  ‘Are you Monsieur Hercule Dupont?’

  ‘I am Monsieur Clément Dupont. This is Monsieur Hercule.’ Monsieur Hercule removed his top-hat and bowed from the hips.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Mr Smith asked. I told him.

  ‘But that’s absurd,’ Mrs Smith interrupted me. ‘Does the coffin have to wait here till some fool mistake has been cleared up?’

  ‘I’m beginning to fear it was no mistake.’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘Revenge. They failed to catch him alive.’ I said to Madame Philipot, ‘They will arrive soon. That’s certain. Better go to the hotel with the child.’

  ‘And leave my husband stranded by the road? No.’

  ‘At least tell your child to go and Joseph will give him a vanilla ice.’

  The sun was almost vertically above us now: splinters of light darted here and there from the glass of the hearse and the bright brass-work of the coffin. The driver turned off his engine and we could hear the sudden silence extending a long long way to where a dog whined on the fringes of the capital.

  Madame Philipot opened the taxi door and lifted the little boy out. He was blacker than she was and the whites of his eyes were enormous like eggs. She told him to find Joseph and his ice, but he didn’t want to go. He clung to her dress.

  ‘Mrs Smith,’ I said, ‘take him to the hotel.’

  She hesitated. She said, ‘If there’s going to be trouble, I think I ought to stay here with Madame Phili – Phili – you take him, dear.’

  ‘And leave you, dear?’ Mr Smith said. ‘No.’

  I hadn’t noticed the taxi-drivers where they sat motionless in the shadow of the trees. Now, as though they had been exchanging signals with each other while we talked, they started simultaneously to life. One swung his taxi out of the drive, the other reversed and turned. With a grinding of gears they skidded together like decrepit racing-motorists down the hill towards Port-au-Prince. We heard the taxis halt at the road-block and then start off again and fade into the silence.

  Monsieur Hercule Dupont cleared his throat. He said, ‘You are quite right. I and Monsieur Clément will take the child . . .’ Each seized a hand, but the little boy dragged to get away.

  ‘Go chéri,’ his mother said, ‘and find a vanilla ice.’

  ‘Avec de la crème au chocolat?’

  ‘Oui, oui, bien sûr, avec de la crème au chocolat.’

  They made an odd procession, the three of them going up the drive under the palms, between the bougainvillaeas, two top-hatted middle-aged twins with the child between. The Hotel Trianon was not an embassy, but I suppose that the brothers Dupont considered it was perhaps the next best thing – a foreigner’s property. The driver of the hearse too – we had forgotten him – abruptly climbed down and ran to catch them up. Madame Philipot, the Smiths and I were alone with the hearse and the coffin, and we listened in silence to the other silence on the road.

  ‘What happens next?’ Mr Smith asked after a while.

  ‘It’s not in our hands. We wait. That’s all.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For them.’

  Our situation reminded me of that nightmare of childhood when something in a cupboard prepares to come out. None of us was anxious to look at another and see his private nightmare reflected, so we looked instead through the glass wall of the hearse at the new shining coffin with the brass handles which was the cause of all the trouble. Far away, in the land where the barking dog belonged, a car was taking the first gradients of the long hill. ‘They’re coming,’ I said. Madame Philipot leant her forehead against the glass of the hearse, and the car climbed slowly up towards us.

  ‘I wish you’d go in,’ I said to her. ‘It would be better for all of us if we all went in.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Mr Smith said. He put out his hand and gripped his wife’s wrist.

  The car had halted at the barrier down the road – we could hear the engine running; then it came slowly on in bottom gear, and now it was in view, a big Cadillac dating from the days of American aid for the poor of Haiti. It drew alongside us and four men got out. They wore soft hats and very dark sun-glasses; they carried guns on their hips, but only one of them bothered to draw, and he didn’t draw his gun against us. He went to the side of the hearse and began to smash the glass with it, methodically. Madame Philipot didn’t move or speak, and there was nothing I could do. One cannot argue with four guns. We were witnesses, but there was no court which would ever hear our testimony. The glass side of the hearse was smashed now, but the leader continued to chip the jagged edges with his gun. There was no hurry and he didn’t want any one to scratch his hands.

  Mrs Smith suddenly darted forward and seized the Tonton Macoute’s shoulder. He turned his head and I recognized him. It was the man whom Mr Smith had out-stared in the police station. He shook himself free from her grip and putting his gloved hand firmly and deliberately against her face he sent her reeling back into the bushes of bougainvillaea. I had to put my arms round Mr Smith and hold him.

  ‘They can’t do that to my wife,’ he shouted over my shoulder.

  ‘Oh yes, they can.’

  ‘Let me go,’ he shouted, struggling to be free. I’ve never seen a man so suddenly transformed. ‘Swine,’ he yelled. It was the worst expression he c
ould find, but the Tonton Macoute spoke no English. Mr Smith twisted and nearly got free from me. He was a strong old man.

  ‘It won’t do any good to anyone if you get shot,’ I said. Mrs Smith sat among the bushes; for once in her life she looked bewildered.

  They lifted the coffin out of the hearse and carried it to the car. They wedged it into the boot, but it stuck several feet out, so they tied it securely with a piece of rope, taking their time. There was no need to hurry; they were secure; they were the law. Madame Philipot with a humility which shamed us – but there was no choice between humility and violence and only Mrs Smith had essayed violence – went over to the Cadillac and pleaded with them to take her too. Her gestures told me that; her voice was too low for me to hear what she said. Perhaps she was offering them money for her dead: in a dictatorship one owns nothing, not even a dead husband. They slammed the door in her face and drove up the road, the coffin poking out of the boot, like a box of fruit on the way to market. Then they found a place to turn and came back. Mrs Smith was on her feet now; we stood in a little group and we looked guilty. An innocent victim nearly always looks guilty, like the scapegoat in the desert. They stopped the car and the officer – I assumed he was an officer, for the black glasses and the soft hats and the revolvers were all the uniform they wore – swung the car door open and beckoned to me. I am no hero. I obeyed and crossed the road to him.

  ‘You own this hotel, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were in the police station yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Next time you see me don’t stare at me. I don’t like to be stared at. Who is the old man?’

  ‘The Presidential Candidate,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean? Presidential candidate for where?’

  ‘For the United States of America.’

  ‘Don’t joke with me.’

  ‘I’m not joking. You can’t have read the papers.’

  ‘Why has he come here?’

  ‘How would I know? He saw the Secretary of State yesterday. Perhaps he told him the reason. He expects to see the President.’

  ‘There’s no election now in the United States. I know that much.’

  ‘They don’t have a President for life like you do here. They have elections every four years.’

  ‘What was he doing with this – box of offal?’

  ‘He was attending the funeral of his friend, Doctor Philipot.’

  ‘I’m acting under orders,’ he said with a hint of weakness. I could understand why it was these men wore dark glasses – they were human, but they mustn’t show fear: it might be the end of terror in others. The Tontons Macoute in the car stared back at me as expressionless as golliwogs.

  I said, ‘In Europe we hanged a lot of men who acted under orders. At Nuremberg.’

  ‘I don’t like the way you speak to me,’ he said. ‘You are not open. You have a mean way of talking. You’ve got a servant called Joseph, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I remember him well. I interviewed him once.’ He let that fact sink in. ‘This is your hotel. You make a living here.’

  ‘No longer.’

  ‘That old man will be leaving soon, but you will stay on.’

  ‘It was a mistake you made to hit his wife,’ I said. ‘It’s the kind of thing he’s likely to remember.’ He slammed the door shut again and they drove the Cadillac back down the hill; we could see the end of the coffin pointing out at us until they turned the corner. Again there was a pause and we heard them at the barrier; then the car put on speed, racing down towards Port-au-Prince. To where in Port-au-Prince? What use to anyone was the body of an ex-Minister? A corpse couldn’t even suffer. But unreason can be more terrifying than reason.

  ‘Outrageous. It’s outrageous,’ Mr Smith said at last. ‘I’ll telephone to the President. I’ll get that man . . .’

  ‘The telephone doesn’t work.’

  ‘He struck my wife.’

  ‘It’s not the first time, dear,’ she said, ‘and he only pushed me. Remember at Nashville. It was worse at Nashville.’

  ‘It was different at Nashville,’ he replied and there were tears in his voice. He had loved people for their colour and he had been betrayed more deeply than are those who hate. He added, ‘I’m sorry, dear, if I used expressions . . .’ He took her arm and Madame Philipot and I followed them up the drive. The Duponts were sitting on the verandah with the little boy, and all three were eating vanilla ices with chocolate sauce. Their top-hats stood beside them like expensive ash-trays.

  I told them, ‘The hearse is safe. They only broke the glass.’

  ‘Vandals,’ Monsieur Hercule said, and Monsieur Clément touched him with a soothing undertaker’s hand. Madame Philipot was quite calm now and without tears. She sat down by her child and aided him with the ice-cream. The past was past, and here beside her was the future. I had the feeling that when the time came, in however many years, he would not be allowed to forget. She spoke only once before she left in the taxi which Joseph fetched for her. ‘One day someone will find a silver bullet.’

  The Duponts, for want of a taxi, left in their own hearse, and I was alone with Joseph. Mr Smith had taken Mrs Smith to the John Barrymore suite to lie down. He fussed over her and she let him have his way. I said to Joseph, ‘What good to them is a dead man in a coffin? Were they afraid that people might have laid flowers on his grave? It seemed unlikely. He wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t all that good either. The water-pumps for the shanty-town were never finished – I suppose some of the money went into his pocket.’

  ‘The people they very frightened,’ Joseph said, ‘when they know. They frightened the President take their bodies too when they die.’

  ‘Why care? There’s nothing left as it is but skin and bone, and why would the President need dead bodies anyway?’

  ‘The people very ignorant,’ Joseph said. ‘They think the President keep Doctor Philipot in the cellar in the palace and make him work all night. The President is big Voodoo man.’

  ‘Baron Samedi?’

  ‘Ignorant people say yes.’

  ‘So nobody will attack him at night with all the zombies there to protect him? They are better than guards, better than the Tontons Macoute.’

  ‘Tontons Macoute zombies too. So ignorant people say.’

  ‘But what do you believe, Joseph?’

  ‘I be ignorant man, sir,’ Joseph said.

  I went upstairs to the John Barrymore suite, and I wondered while I climbed where they would dump the body – there were plenty of unfinished diggings and no one would notice one smell the more in Port-au-Prince. I knocked on the door, and Mrs Smith said, ‘Come in.’

  Mr Smith had lit a small portable paraffin-stove on the chest-of-drawers and was boiling some water. Beside it was a cup and saucer and a cardboard carton marked Yeastrel. He said, ‘I have persuaded Mrs Smith for once not to take her Barmene. Yeastrel is more soothing.’ There was a large photograph of John Barrymore on the wall looking down his nose with more than his usual phoney aristocratic disdain. Mrs Smith lay on the bed.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Smith?’

  ‘Perfectly all right,’ she said with decision.

  ‘Her face is quite unmarked,’ Mr Smith told me with relief.

  ‘I keep on telling you he only pushed me.’

  ‘One doesn’t push a woman.’

  ‘I don’t think he even realized I was a woman. I was, well – sort of assaulting him, I must admit.’

  ‘You are a brave woman, Mrs Smith,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense. I can see through a pair of cheap sun-glasses.’

  ‘She has the heart of a tigress when roused,’ Mr Smith said, stirring the Yeastrel.

  ‘How are you going to deal with the incident in your article?’ I asked him.

  ‘I have been considering very carefully,’ Mr Smith said. He took a spoonful of Yeastrel to see whether it was the right temperature. ‘I think one more minute, dear. I
t’s a little too hot still. Oh yes, the article. It would be dishonest, I think, to omit the incident altogether, and yet we can hardly expect readers to see the affair in proper perspective. Mrs Smith is much loved and respected in Wisconsin, but even there you will find people who are prepared to use a story like this to inflame passions over the colour question.’

  ‘They would never mention the white police officer in Nashville,’ Mrs Smith said. ‘He gave me a black eye.’

  ‘So taking all things into consideration,’ Mr Smith said, ‘I decided to tear the article up. People at home will just have to wait for news of us – that’s all. Perhaps later, in a lecture, I might mention the incident when Mrs Smith is safely by my side to prove that it wasn’t very serious.’ He took another spoonful of Yeastrel. ‘It’s cool enough now, dear, I think.’

  II

  I went reluctantly to the embassy that evening. I would have much preferred to know nothing of Martha’s normal surroundings. Then, when she was not with me, she would have disappeared into a void where I could forget her. Now I knew exactly where she went when her car left the Columbus statue. I knew the hall which she passed through with the chained book where visitors wrote their names, the drawing-room that she entered next with the deep chairs and sofas and the glitter of chandeliers and the big photograph of General so-and-so, their relatively benevolent president, who seemed to make every caller an official caller, even myself. I was glad at least that I had not seen her bedroom.

  When I arrived at half past nine the ambassador was alone – I had never seen him alone before: he seemed a different man. He sat on the sofa and thumbed through Paris-Match like a man in a dentist’s waiting-room. I thought of sitting down silently myself and taking Jours de France, but he anticipated me with his greeting. He pressed me at once to take a drink, a cigar . . . Perhaps he was a lonely man. What did he do when there was no official party and his wife was out meeting me? Martha had said that he liked me – the idea helped me to see him as a human being. He seemed tired and out of spirits. He carried his weight of flesh slowly, like a heavy load, between the drink-table and the sofa. He said, ‘My wife’s upstairs reading to my boy. She’ll be down presently. She told me you might call.’