The Comedians

I smiled. 'We have never been demonstrative. What's wrong, doctor?'

'She has had a second crise cardiaque. I am surprised that she is alive. She is a very remarkable woman.'

'Oughtn't we to call in … perhapsT

'You need not be afraid, Mr Brown. The heart is my speciality. You will not find anyone more competent than I am nearer than New York. I doubt whether you will find one there.' He was not boasting; he was just explaining, for he was used to being doubted by white people. 'I was trained,'

he said, 'under Chardin in Paris.'

'No

hope?'

'She can hardly survive another attack. Good-night, Mr Brown. Don't stay with her too long. I am glad you were able to come. I was afraid she might have no one to send for.'

'She didn't exactly send for me.'

'Perhaps one night you and I might have dinner together. I have known your mother many years. I have a great respect …' He gave me the kind of bow with which a Roman emperor might have brought an audience to an end. He was in no way condescending. He knew his exact value. 'Goodnight, Marcel.' To Marcel he gave no bow at all. I noticed that even Petit Pierre let him go by without greeting or question. I was ashamed at the thought that I had suggested to a man of his quality a second opinion. Marcel said,'Will you come upstairs, Mr Brown?'

I followed him. The walls were hung with pictures by Haitian artists: forms caught in wooden gestures among bright and heavy colours - a cockfight, a Voodoo ceremony, black clouds over Kenscoff, banana-trees of stormy green, the blue spears of the sugar-cane, golden maize. Marcel opened the door and I went in to the shock of my mother's hair spread over the pillow, a Haitian red which had never existed in nature. It flowed abundantly on either side of her across the great double bed.

'My dear,' she said, as though I had come to see her from the other side of town, 'how nice of you to look in.' I kissed her wide brow like a whitewashed wall and a little of the white came off on my lips. I was aware of Marcel watching. 'And how is England?' she asked as though she were inquiring after a distant daughter-in-law, for whom she did not greatly care.

'It was raining when I left.'

'Your father could never stand his own climate,' she remarked. She might have passed anywhere for a woman in her late forties, and I could see nothing of an invalid about her except a tension of the skin around her mouth which I noticed years later in the case of the pharmaceutical traveller.

'Marcel, a chair for my son.' He reluctantly drew one from the wall, but, when I sat in it, I was as far from her as ever because of the width of the bed. It was a shameless bed built for one purpose only, with a gilt curlicued footboard more suitable to a courtesan in a historical romance than to an old woman dying.

I asked her, 'And is there really a count, mother?'

She gave me a knowing smile. 'He belongs to a distant past,' she said, and I could not be certain whether she intended the phrase to be his epitaph or not. 'Marcel,' she added, 'silly boy, you can safely leave us alone. I told you. He is my son.' When the door closed, she said with complacency, 'He is absurdly jealous.'

'Who is he?'

'He helps me to manage the hotel.'

'He isn't the count by any chance?'

'Mйchant,' she replied mechanically. She had really caught from the bed - or was it from the count? - an easy enlightened eighteenth-century air.

'Why should he be jealous then?'

'Perhaps he thinks you're not really my son.'

'You mean he is your lover?' I wondered what my unknown father, whose name - or so I understood - was Brown, would have thought of his negro successor.

'Why are you smiling, my dear?'

'You are a wonderful woman, mother.'

'A little luck has come my way at the end.'

'You

mean

Marcel?'

'Oh, no. He's a good boy - that's all. I meant the hotel. It is the first real property I have ever possessed. I own it completely. There is no mortgage. Even the furniture is paid for.'

'And the pictures?'

'They are for sale, of course. I take a commission.'

'Was it alimony from the count which allowed you … ?'

'Oh, no, nothing like that. I gained nothing from the count except his title, and I have never checked in the 'Almanac de Gotha to see whether it exists. No, this was a little piece of pure good fortune. A certain Monsieur Dechaux who lived in Port-au-Prince was anxious about his taxes, and as I was working for him at the time in a secretarial capacity I allowed him to put this hotel under my name. Of course I left him the place in my will and as I was over sixty and he was thirty-five the arrangement seemed to him quite a secure one.'

'He trusted you?'

'He was quite right to trust me, my dear. But he was wrong in trying to drive a Mercedes sports car on the roads that we have here. It was a lucky chance he killed only himself.'

'And so you took over?'

'He would have been very happy to know of it. My dear, you can't imagine how much he detested his wife. A big fat negress without education. She could never have run the place properly. Of course after his death I had to alter my will - your father, if he is still alive, might have been next of kin. By the way, I have left the fathers of the Visitation my rosary and my missal. I was never quite happy about the manner in which I treated them, but I was very pressed for money at the time. Your father was a bit of a swine, God rest his soul.'

'Then

he

is dead?'

'I have every reason to believe it, but no proof. People live so long nowadays. Poor man.'

'I've been talking to your doctor.'

'Doctor Magiot? I wish I had met him when he was younger. He's quite a man, isn't he?'

'He says if you keep quiet …'

'Here I am lying flat in bed,' she exclaimed with a knowing and pleading smile. 'I can do no more to please him, can I? Do you know the dear man asked me if I would like to see a priest? I said to him, 'But surely, doctor, a long confession would be a little too exciting for me now - with such memories to recall?' Would you mind going to the door, dear, and opening it a little way?'

I obeyed her. The passage was empty. From below came a chink of cutlery and a voice saying, 'Oh, Chick, do you really think I could?'

'Thank you, dear. I just wanted to be quite certain … While you are up, would you give me my brush? Thank you again. So much. How nice it is for an old woman to have a son around …' She paused. I think she expected me courteously, like a gigolo, to contradict the fact of her age. 'I wanted to speak to you about my will,' she went on in a tone of slight disappointment, as she brushed and brushed her improbable and abundant hair.

'Oughtn't you to rest now? The doctor told me not to stay long.'

'They have given you a nice room, I hope? Some of the rooms remain a little bare. For want of ready cash.'

'I left my bags at El Rancho.'

'Oh, but you must stay here, my dear. El Rancho - it wouldn't do - to advertise that joint,' she used the American expression. 'After all - it was what I had to tell you - this hotel will be yours one day. Only I wanted to explain - the law is so complicated, one must take precautions - that it's in the form of shares, and I have left to Marcel a third interest. He will be very useful if you treat him right, and I had to do something for the boy, hadn't I?

He has been rather more than a mere manager. You understand? You are my son, so of course you understand.'

'I

understand.'

'I'm so glad you are here. I didn't want any little slip … Never underestimate a Haitian lawyer, when it comes to a testament … I'll tell Marcel that you'll take over the actual direction immediately. Only be tactful, that's a good boy. Marcel is very sensitive.'

'And you, mother, rest quiet. If you can, don't think any more about business. Try to sleep.'

'They say that to be dead is about as quiet as you can get. I don't see any point in my anticipating death. It lasts a long time.'