The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth

by Derek Walcott

  (During this speech, three black figures creep near ANTON.)

  VOICES (Softly, like the wind)

  Anton Calixte! Anton Calixte! Anton Calixte!

  ANTON (Alert)

  Who was that?

  Yes, yes, I am Anton Calixte, what do you want?

  VOICE

  You are the son of Monsieur Calixte?

  ANTON

  I am his nephew. His nephew! I know these voices!

  I am one of you, believe me. My mother was black, my mother was black.

  Gaspar, Félicien?…

  VOICES (Like wind as they circle him.)

  You have the blood of your father, for that you will die.

  When the moon hides in a cloud, for that you will die.

  ANTON (Urgent)

  Let me see who you are. I have done nothing to you.

  Oh God! I have your blood in me.

  (The moon hides in a cloud. They murder him. A SLAVE screams in triumph. The drums of revolution begin.)

  Scene 11

  The Bois Cayman. Drums. Enter SLAVES running with flambeaux towards the body. Silence. Enter BOUKMANN.

  BOUKMANN

  Jour sang rivé!

  SLAVES

  Hallelujah!

  BOUKMANN

  Jour nègre rivé!

  SLAVES

  Hallelujah!

  BOUKMANN

  C’est moi Boukmann qui dit ça!

  Dire Hosannah!

  SLAVES

  Hosannah!

  BOUKMANN (Holding up cross.)

  Ça c’est croix n’hommes blancs, pas croix Damballa!

  SLAVES

  Hallelujah!

  C’est pas croix Damballa!

  BOUKMANN

  Crasez croix Dieu blanc.

  (He breaks the cross.)

  You wishes to know why Boukmann break the cross?

  This is the white God cross, not the god of this colour.

  Alors, crasez croix Dieu blanc

  Hosez serpent Damballa.

  (Drums. A serpent is brought in.)

  SLAVES

  Damballa, Damballa!

  (A white rooster is brought in by a FEMALE SLAVE.)

  BOUKMANN (Holding the rooster.)

  Red blood will flow from the white throat, I say.

  Burn the canes, kill the enemies,

  Kill everything white in Haiti today!

  (A ritual dance begins, with flambeaux.)

  We forget our gods when we leave Africa.

  We make Shango vex, we forget Damballa!

  Brûlez, brûlez, brûlez!

  (All exit, led by BOUKMANN, with torches. Drumming. The dead body is left abandoned. TOUSSAINT, as a coachman, enters, finds ANTON dead.)

  TOUSSAINT

  Monsieur Anton! Anton, Monsieur Anton?

  (Over the body)

  Monsieur Anton! Drunk again. Come on, levez.

  (He touches blood.)

  Oh God. My other life is finished. Love is dead.

  (He takes up the body.)

  This poor boy hated nothing, nothing.

  (A SLAVE WOMAN enters, passes TOUSSAINT.)

  SLAVE WOMAN

  That’s a heavy burden you’re carrying, black man.

  (Fade-out.)

  Scene 12

  It is the late autumn of the first year of the nineteenth century. Rebel Haitian armies under Toussaint sack the city of Les Cayes. Bands of marauders. Torrential rain fights with the fire of the city. DESSALINES, soaked, watches the scene with some OFFICERS. A shed. A SOLDIER passes.

  DESSALINES

  You there, soldat!

  SOLDIER

  Yes, my general.

  DESSALINES

  Under what army are you, me, Christophe, which, hein?

  SOLDIER

  With General Toussaint, General Dessalines.

  DESSALINES

  In your cloak there, rum, non? Bring it here, nègre, and give your general a drink. Look at it burn, look. Remember this, this is the turning of a century, nègre. Oh, it pleases me. I could wash my face, Sergeant, in the handful of its ashes. Tell me, I love to hear it, what city is that? (He drinks.)

  SOLDIER

  That is Les Cayes, mon général, and we have scattered the forces of the mulatto Rigaud. The worst enemy of our new black republic.

  DESSALINES

  There must be one hundred thousand slaughtered there.

  Burn, burn, city of contagions, consume it all.

  Though God poured out the whole basin of this sky

  He could not drench that fire. Go, leave the bottle.

  You, there, you soldiers. In what quarter of the town

  Is General Christophe?

  SOLDIER

  Here he comes now, my general.

  (Enter CHRISTOPHE muddy, tired.)

  DESSALINES

  Put up the general’s tent to break this rain.

  (An awning is added to the balcony.)

  Look at it, General. It is art, is it not?

  CHRISTOPHE (Collapses on a stool.)

  Poor country. This is not a war.

  DESSALINES

  No, it is not war. But it will do for now. Here, drink!

  I understand you had a difficult assault?

  CHRISTOPHE

  You said assault?

  This butchering of mulattos you call assault?

  You’ll catch a chill there, sitting in the rain.

  Lend me a cloth, my own is soaked with blood.

  DESSALINES

  Here, have this shirt, I sent for dry boots and linen.

  Well, where is our excellent commander L’Ouverture?

  CHRISTOPHE

  I thought that he was working close to you.

  DESSALINES

  No, I had an easy quarter.

  A cowardly segment of Rigaud’s mulatto army. Oh, look!

  There must be one hundred thousand dead out there.

  Listen to the cries.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Yes, they smell wonderful, don’t they?

  Burnt flesh and trampled muck and sweating rain.

  It is only two o’clock, and dark as an eclipse.

  DESSALINES

  The pot is overturned, up in the north; the news is this,

  That bloody, murderous slaughterer Sonthonax,

  Boukmann, the Jamaican, and other rebellious regiments

  Have burned the plains into a smoking shambles.

  CHRISTOPHE

  They burn the crops, but when peace has returned …

  And which of them has yet conquered Leclerc?

  DESSALINES

  Up in the north two thousand whites are slaughtered.

  The flame is catching in the unharvested canes,

  Not only in this island, but through the Antilles.

  We have sent agents to stir up this violence. Drink, drink.

  Here, two hundred estates destroyed. The black wolves

  Of our marauding soldiers, swollen by famine,

  Have sacked the indigo and coffee fields. It will spread

  Even in the British territories. In Martinique, Guadeloupe.

  CHRISTOPHE

  I only wish I had your sense of theatre. And Leclerc,

  What has he offered us for the capture of Toussaint?

  DESSALINES

  The yellow fever has wrecked the French battalions.

  The time has come, with Leclerc’s forces weakened,

  For us to strike some temporary pact. As you remember,

  He offered to withdraw his forces of occupation

  If we hand over Toussaint to Napoleon. Oh, this Napoleon,

  He is such an egotist. He thinks that Toussaint’s capture

  Would weaken us. Oh, mon Dieu, mi blague, I could laugh, laugh.

  CHRISTOPHE

  There is no one the Corsican hates more than this ape,

  This—what does he call him?—“this gilded African.” We sell him?

  DESSALINES

  One thing perturbs me. Pa
ss me the bottle, friend.

  One thing perturbs poor Dessalines: we are four armies,

  And all assembled under distinctive generals, you, me,

  Toussaint, Maurepas. But of all of us, Toussaint

  Has grown most power drunk. He has monarchic aims, I know.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Let us not lie to ourselves. We are betraying him.

  A transaction of exchange, let us not excuse it, hein?

  You think he’ll set himself up as Emperor?

  How do you know?

  DESSALINES (Laughs.)

  I have a parrot that speaks to me in my dreams. Look!

  Napoleon thinks of the whole world as his empire, yet

  This ape has beaten him, outwitted his best generals.

  And since Napoleon thinks in terms of a late Caesar,

  He thinks this ape, encaged, will resolve the war.

  Even Leclerc, who is a cynic and no fool, believes it.

  And as you say, this is not war. Yet how I love it,

  Look at it burn. This is more than war, it is revolt;

  It is a new age, the black man’s turn to kill.

  CHRISTOPHE

  Then we are no better. Revenge

  Is very tiring. Please do not hog the bottle.

  Where does all that leave the mulatto, Dessalines?

  DESSALINES (Pointing.)

  There, out there dead in the stinking rain.

  (A drumbeat. Enter TOUSSAINT.)

  Speak, parrot. Here comes our bill of sale. The meat we dice for.

  TOUSSAINT (To the OFFICERS)

  We have scattered Rigaud, but we still have enemies

  Here on the soil of our beloved Haiti: Leclerc, his armies;

  Yet we have allies also, the fever, and our great zeal

  To make this country greater than it was. Revenge is nothing.

  Peace, the restoration of the burnt estates, the ultimate

  Rebuilding of those towns war has destroyed, peace is harder.

  We strike our march in the next hour. Collect your troops.

  (A bugle is blown. OFFICERS exit.)

  DESSALINES

  Your lungs are iron, to still have breath to speak. Some rum?

  TOUSSAINT

  These clothes are stuck to me with filth and blood, a basin.

  No, I must keep a clear head, though my generals do not.

  DESSALINES

  How many did you butcher of the yellow ones?

  (A SOLDIER brings a basin and a cloth.)

  TOUSSAINT

  I do not have my ledgers with me.

  The cavalry is cutting the last troops on the plain;

  There is nothing between our mercy and their death

  But a vast swamp of stinking mud. It is dark,

  Dark as a portent at this turn of the year, the birth

  Of a new century. What comes at the end of it, my friends?

  CHRISTOPHE

  This is a new age, born like us, in blood …

  TOUSSAINT

  Yes, yes, but I hate excess.

  (He washes his hands.)

  DESSALINES (Roars with laughter.)

  Ho, ha! He kills ten thousand or more defenceless citizens

  Who did him no harm but that their colour was wrong

  And shrugs his shoulders and says he hates excess. Oh, oh

  I love, I kiss this hypocrite!

  TOUSSAINT (Angrily)

  I am not a hypocrite, Jean Jacques,

  I hate this now it is all finished. I remember

  The body of the first mulatto I ever saw. The son

  Of a stupid planter called Calixte. Multiply that.

  I come from an exhausting expedition and I find

  My two best generals getting drunk like sergeants.

  Go, collect your forces, I want to think a little.

  (Exit CHRISTOPHE, DESSALINES.)

  Oh God, that I should find the centre of this whirlwind,

  Those leaves of yellow bodies whirled in wind.

  (Enter TWO SOLDIERS, CALIXTE-BREDA in rags between them.)

  SOLDIER

  We found this one hiding in the ruins, General.

  What shall we do with him?

  TOUSSAINT

  I do not know the man … who …

  Calixte? Is it Monsieur Calixte?

  CALIXTE-BREDA (Shaking free from the SOLDIERS.)

  And it is General Toussaint, is it not?

  The conqueror of Haiti … I want to talk with you,

  Unless the general must go back to his butchering.

  TOUSSAINT

  You soldiers, stand in easy distance from this tent.

  What are you doing in Les Cayes? You live in the north?

  (The SOLDIERS withdraw.)

  CALIXTE-BREDA

  There is no north. They have burnt the good land.

  You should know that, it is you who guide this war.

  TOUSSAINT (Holding out the bottle.)

  Here, have a drink of rum. I do not know what savour,

  You may remember how one improved its vintage

  With an occasional slave tossed in the vats?

  CALIXTE-BREDA (Hanging his head.)

  I was never cruel. It was the times, the thought.

  TOUSSAINT

  I am not cruel either. It is also in my case the times,

  The compulsion of opinion. I did not begin it.

  CALIXTE-BREDA (Angrily)

  You call this compulsion, this slaughtering of children,

  This dedicated erasure of any complexion?

  I have walked through the smoking fields, through the burnt land

  That we all loved, destroyed, that was once green,

  Racked by a rabble, turned savage as wild pigs.

  TOUSSAINT (Shouting.)

  They are my soldiers, not pigs, not animals.

  CALIXTE-BREDA

  I stepped across hacked citizens in these streets,

  Blind in a stream of tears, I moved through fire,

  Oh God in heaven, Toussaint, hell is not worse.

  TOUSSAINT

  War is not a drawing-room minuet.

  CALIXTE-BREDA

  Do not call this war, you hypocritical liar!

  Since the day Anton died, and you abandoned him

  On the white columned steps of Mal Maison,

  I have pursued your great career with diligence.

  I heard of how you joined the marauding armies,

  Who burnt our lands and shambled the green north;

  Your rise in the field of battle; how you wrecked Maitland

  And drove the English down to the sea. Until today,

  You are blood drunk, since that first boy you murdered.

  TOUSSAINT

  Murdered? Boy?

  CALIXTE-BREDA

  My son, my son Anton, that was so far

  You have forgotten it. You have seen so many dead,

  Now that war makes your butchery legitimate.

  (He draws his pistol.)

  TOUSSAINT

  Put down the pistol, Monsieur Calixte. Your son? What son?

  He was your nephew then. Look, man, have you forgotten,

  Is it because you’re ruined you have turned pious?

  CALIXTE-BREDA

  O God, give me the strength to shoot this monster.

  TOUSSAINT

  And do not speak to me of God, monsieur; right now

  I cannot think of God. Where was God in those years

  When we were whipped and forced to eat our excrement,

  Were peeled alive, pestered with carnivorous ants.

  Where was God? All of a sudden from your nephew’s body

  You have grown a delicate orchid called a conscience.

  And blame the times. I have learnt to pick up a child

  Limp on my sword’s edge as you would lift an insect;

  I have to learn this. I love this land as well as you,

  But when we tried this, when we tried to love you,


  Where, O chaos, where was your heart?

  CALIXTE-BREDA (Weeping.)

  Toussaint, what, what is all this?

  What is happening to the world, to Haiti?

  (A bugle sounds in the distance.)

  TOUSSAINT

  Oh God, I do not know, Monsieur Calixte. I do not know.

  I am pushed forward, lifted on the crest of the wave,

  Then I am abandoned among the wreckage, while

  The mass of guilty men say, Oh, Toussaint, he is gentle, good.

  Leave him to clean it. Listen, the bugle blows the march.

  We are striking out …

  (Enter DESSALINES, CHRISTOPHE.)

  DESSALINES

  Who is this filthy white? A spy?

  (He seizes his pistol.)

  TOUSSAINT

  I was his coachman once. Give me the pistol, General Dessalines.

  CHRISTOPHE

  His coachman? Is he offering your old employment back?

  I will search him for letters. Jacques, keep the pistol.

  TOUSSAINT

  You see how my generals trust me, monsieur.

  (The bugle again.)

  DESSALINES

  There are no gentlemen in Haiti now.

  CHRISTOPHE

  He has no letters. Come, it is time to march.

  CALIXTE-BREDA

  You have become three mad dogs all of you.

  So these are the great generals. Is this Dessalines?

  DESSALINES (Gripping CALIXTE-BREDA.)

  Yes, white man, this is Dessalines, the general

  Who ripped the white heart from the flag of France.

  Tell them you saw him when you get down to hell.

  Come, General, we are giving this one too much privilege.

  TOUSSAINT

  I still command here, Dessalines. Release him!

  SERGEANT (Enters.)