Doctor Magiot gave me dinner that night at his own home, and in addition he gave me a great deal of good advice which I was unwise enough to discount because I thought he might perhaps have an idea of obtaining the hotel for another client. It was the one share he possessed in my mother's company which made me suspicious even though I held the signed transfer. He lived on the lower slopes of Pйtionville in a house of three storeys like a miniature version of my own hotel with its tower and its lace-work balconies. In the garden grew a dry spiky Norfolk pine, like an illustration in a Victorian novel, and the only modern object in the room, where we sat after dinner, was the telephone. It was like an oversight in a museum arrangement. The heavy drape of the scarlet curtains, the woollen cloths on the occasional tables with bobbles at each corner, the china objects on the chimney-piece that included two dogs with the same gentle gaze as Doctor Magiot's, the portraits of the doctor's parents (coloured photographs mounted on mauve silk in oval frames), the pleated screen in the unnecessary fireplace, spoke of another age; the literary works in a glass-fronted bookcase (Doctor Magiot kept his professional works in his consultingroom) were bound in old-fashioned calf. I examined them while he was out
'washing his hands', as he put it in polite English. There were Les Misйrables in three volumes, Les Mystиres de Paris with the last volume missing, several of Gaboriau's romans policiers, Renan's Vie de Jйsus, and rather surprisingly among its companions Marx's Das Kapital rebound in exactly the same calf so that it was indistinguishable at a distance from Les Misйrables. The lamp at Doctor Magiot's elbow had a pink glass shade, and quite wisely, for even in those days the electric current was erratic, it was oil-burning.
'You really intend,' Doctor Magiot asked me, 'to take over the hotel?'
'Why not? I have a little experience of restaurant work. I can see great possibilities of improvement. My mother was not catering for the luxury trade.'
'The luxury trade?' Doctor Magiot repeated. 'I think you can hardly depend on that here.'
'Some hotels do.'
'The good years will not always continue. Not very long now and there will be the elections …'
'It doesn't make much difference, does it, who wins?'
'Not to the poor. But to the tourist perhaps.' He put a flowered saucer upon the table beside me - an ash-tray would have been out of period in this room where no one had ever smoked in the old days. He handled the saucer carefully, as though it were of precious porcelain. He was very big and very black, but he possessed great gentleness - he would never ill-treat, I felt sure, even an inanimate object, such as a recalcitrant chair. Nothing can be more inconsiderate to a man ot Doctor Magiot's profession than a telephone. But when it rang once during our conversation he lifted the receiver as gently as he would have raised a patient's wrist.
'You have heard,' Doctor Magiot said, 'of the Emperor Christophe?'
'Of
course.'
'Those days could return very easily. More cruelly perhaps and certainly more ignobly. God save us from a little Christophe.'
'Nobody could afford to frighten away the American tourists. You need the dollars.'
'When you know us better, you will realize that we don't live on money here, we live on debts. You can always afford to kill a creditor, but no one ever kills a debtor.'
'Whom do you fear?'
'I fear a small country doctor. His name would mean nothing to you now. I only hope you don't see it one day stuck up in electric lights over the city. If that day comes I promise you I shall run to cover.' It was Doctor Magiot's first mistake prophecy. He underrated his own stubbornness or his own courage. Otherwise I would not have been waiting for him later beside the dry swimming-pool where the ex-Minister lay still as a hunk of beef in a butcher's shop.
'And Marcel?' he asked me. 'What do you propose to do with Marcel?
'I haven't decided. Tomorrow I must have a word with him. You know he owns a third of the hotel?'
'You forget - I witnessed the will.'
'It occurred to me that he might be ready to sell his shares. I have no cash, but I could probably borrow from the bank.'
Doctor Magiot put his great pink palms on the knees of his black formal suit and leant towards me as though he had a secret to convey. He said, 'I would advise you to do the opposite. Let him buy your shares. Make it easy for him and let him buy them cheap. He is a Haitian. He can live on very little. He can survive.' But there again Doctor Magiot proved to be a false prophet. He saw the future of his country clearer than the fate of the individuals who composed it.
I said with a smi1e, 'Oh no, I've taken a fancy to the Trianon. You'll see - I shall stay and I shall survive.'
I waited two days more before I spoke to Marcel, but in the interval I had a word with the bank manager. The last two seasons in Port-au-Prince had been good ones. I outlined my plans for the hotel, and the manager, who was a European, made no difficulty in advancing me the money I needed. The only point on which he proved difficult was the rate of repayment. 'You are virtually asking me to repay in three years?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Well, you see, before that there are the elections.'
I had hardly seen Marcel since the funeral. Joseph, the barman, came to me for orders, the cook and the gardener came to me, Marcel had abdicated without a fight, but I noticed when I passed him on the stairs that he smelt strongly of rum, so I had a glass of it ready for him when we came together at last to talk. He listened without a word and he accepted what I had to say without dispute. What I offered him was a lot of money in Haitian terms, and I offered it in dollars and not gourdes, even though it represented half the nominal value of his shares. For psychological effect I had the money on me in hundred-dollar bills. 'You had better count them,' I told him, but he put the money in his pocket without checking it. 'And now,' I said, 'if you will sign here,' and he signed without reading what he signed. It was as easy as that. No scene at all.