The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth (22 page)

MANO

Is Yette voice, but don’t trust them soldiers, scatter. Hide the tureen, General.

RAM

Wait, let me get on them trousers. Wait, wait.

(
They scramble into hiding. Enter
YETTE, CALICO, POMPEY
.)

YETTE

Mano! Is Yette, I bring you more recruits. We got a Chinese cook, an East Indian tactician; now we have a preacher and a ruined planter. Attention, recruits. In about five minutes, if the Maroon commander like you, you might promote to the rank of generals, for that’s the way things devise here, equal powers. (
MANO
and the others emerge.
) Your commander, Emmanuel Mano, sometimes known as Cudjoe, sometimes John Orr, sometimes Fédon, and various multicoloured aliases. They call he Calico; all he have left in his name is an antique Spanish coin that ain’t worth much. And you there, put down the breadfruit and salute.

MANO

Your first military action, pardner, is to dedicate this fruit to today’s supplies. Hand it over to General Yu.

YU

Just in time, General, nice fruit just good for pot.

MANO

What’s your Christian name, and what make you fight for the cause of emancipation and constitutional progress?

POMPEY

You never heard of me?

RAM

You is a soldier?

POMPEY

I is a calypsoldier. I bugles, I incites violence, I tread the burning zones of Arabia. I was a meek and mild nigger, a pacific man, but now …

MANO

All right, all right, and you, Mr. Calico, hand over the coin to the auditor, General Ram. Yette, you see anything, gal?

CALICO

General, this is an ancestral heirloom, my great-grandfather found it and died with it as Jeremy Ford when he searched for Guiana with Sir Walter Raleigh.

MANO
(
Shouting impatiently.
)

Well, ain’t it an Indian you giving it to, and ain’t it an Indian them did want it from? Boy, pass the subscription before I chop off your brains.

YU

Food cook will please sit and serve. I will stand watch.

POMPEY

Inform me of my duties and watch me charge the foe.

MANO

You ent too mind if we eat a little food first. Now you, what you want?

(
They sit to eat.
YU
passes plates of food around.
)

CALICO

General, the bottom fell out of the sugar market, but more than that economic fact, I was pursuing your career with interest. I hear how you have developed an army of free men. You could shoot me if you need to, but since the hand of ruin withered my crops, poverty has taught me compassion.

MANO

Friend Calico, nobody hate nobody here. I know what concern you have for the land, and you may have a proprietary right, for all I know, as you was here first …

CALICO

Yes, but I didn’t care sufficient about those who worked it.

MANO

I say it don’t matter, sometimes the times so bad a man don’t have time to think properly. Now, ladle out a soup for yourself.

CALICO

I don’t like Chinese food.

MANO

Well, that’s all we have here, so you best swallow your pride.

YU
(
Rushing at
CALICO
.)

You don’t like Chinese food? A smashed head brings wisdom.

MANO

Don’t attack the man, General Yu, he don’t mean no wrong. Pompey, how about you?

POMPEY
(
Waving his musket.
)

War! To war! They holding us in the chains of bondage, and I doesn’t eat dead flesh with mortal man. Oh God, they beat poor Pompey with the rod of correction, and they cast me and my people in a dungeon with the lizard and the involved serpent.

YETTE

Hear he. Good robber talk, Pomps.

MANO

What’s the news in the country now, girl?

YETTE
(
Eating.
)

They hanged George William Gordon from the yardarm is what I gather, and the riots in Morant Bay bursting out like sandbox pods from the tree of Liberty …

POMPEY

Liberty, that’s a stupid phrase, that’s an abused phrase. I drowned my grandmother in a spoonful of water, I is the tawny lion of Assyria, and the rod of God is the rod of violence. I defies police and parliament, I shoe the foot of the devil so he can tread the burning marl of hell. Oh, God is a white man that crack me crown, destroy the enemy.

(
Rushes at
CALICO. RAM
and
YETTE
hold him back.
)

RAM

Pompey, pal, eat your eat and don’t worry.

POMPEY

Ain’t this is the man who profit from my flesh and get fat on my ignorance, ain’t this is the man who fatten the land and exhaust it? O God in heaven, let me bury my cracked head in the grave, for I can’t stand the din of the history of unrighteousness no more.

CALICO

All I had was a coin and I gave it to Ram.

RAM

Pompey, history not a judge, not a prophet, not a priest, and not a executioner. This man never hurt, and he ain’t no more responsible for the past to his father than for the future to his son. Don’t grudge, don’t remember, eat.

CALICO
(
Aside to
YETTE
)

What is your relationship with this general, if I may ask?

YETTE

I’m a woman friend. I don’t have no prejudice.

POMPEY

Prejudice! The cry of the damned fiend in the whirlwind of reason …

(
Again he charges
CALICO
and is again intercepted.
)

MANO

Oh God, but is hard sometimes to love one another; if he get on like a beast, bind him hand and foot. I can’t have no ruction in this place. He getting on like some mad Haitian rebel. Wait, I hear the bugles of the first battalion.

(
They tie
POMPEY
’s hands and gag him.
)

RAM
(
Searching.
)

The hour of battle is at hand. Where the map? Where the map I draw out with the battle tatix?

YU

Do not touch the calaloo pot.

RAM

You damn stupid Chinaman, look how you tear up me map. What you know about war?

YU

Is better always to make soup than war.

RAM

This the map I spent all last night designing.

YU

Short of paper. Map was entirely without tactical value. Hence used to start fire.

MANO

Yette, bring the military list. Loose Pompey, and make him stop whining there as a mongrel dog. Boy, whether you like it or not, we uniting against this oncoming British platoon. Take away the tureen, General Yu.

YETTE

General Yu, where the military list? It was in your coat there last night.

MANO

Oh God, when West Indians going learn discipline, much less the art of war?

POMPEY
(
Singing.
)

The drums and colours come, and the canes marching to war.

YETTE

Here the list, General Mano.

MANO

Ram, run up to the rock and signal for me.

RAM

Right.

(
He runs off.
)

POMPEY
(
Singing.
)

The drums and colours come to defeat us as before …

MANO

All right, we going into council. General Yu, you keep watch ahead;

Ram signal the rebels across the ravine that we ready.

(
Reads.
)

One pair washikongs, two pairs shirts, one underwear, two parts scallion, one part fried rice … Give me patience; Christ, this is the laundry list …

POMPEY
(
Singing and marching.
)

The conqueror that leads us into war,

Oh, the conqueror that leads us into war.

MANO

It have the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and the Black Watch … Hey, Ram, what is this Black Watch, coloured boys?

CALICO

It’s a regimental description …

MANO

Now General Yu report! Hurry up, hurry up! Don’t bother bow.

YU
(
Bowing profusely.
)

As special cook for British regiments from Newcastle to the northern plain, have fixed company meals thus. Placing many haphazard ingredients into Chinese special Friday-night menu, into vast cauldron of polluted soup, last night whole company complain of interior disorder, but during supper several green British soldiers demand more, kicking this person in the shin …

POMPEY

Oh God, they coming for Pompey, hide me, hide me …

YETTE

Take it easy, boy!

RAM
(
From above.
)

I can see the sunlight winking on their muskets and the sergeant have a broad and blond mustache …

POMPEY

Oh God, the sergeant, the sergeant.

YU

This same platoon should be considerably weakened by dysentery, yet compelled to march. I remember the advice of General Ram, that an army travel on its stomach.

MANO

Yette, you going be in the vanguard and conduct this interesting flank movement. When the regiment passing between this gully of the dried riverbed, sick and helpless and ready to die … then you suddenly appearing like a mirage of woman and water onto the parched plain, without musket, singing a local song, and then display a vulnerable flank. Show me the artillery.

YETTE
(
Showing a leg.
)

So?

YU

Naturally, men sick and tired will stop and whistle. Sex being a great republic …

YETTE

Mano is British not French soldiers, you think they going look?

Them fellers well trained in discipline.

MANO

They bound to look.

YU

We lashing into them.

MANO

Then Ram, at some point, you getting up slowly and making off-break remarks about the regimental British cricket team, then I giving the other band a signal, and we lashing into them with stone, ladle, iron. This one musket I giving to Pompey so he can shoot the sergeant.

POMPEY
(
Grabbing a musket.
)

The sergeant, the sergeant!

RAM
(
Waving frantically above.
)

Boys, boys, clear the road, clear the road, they coming…!

POMPEY

Oh God, revengement is mine. Come, Brother Calico!

(
POMPEY
and
CALICO
exit.
)

MANO
(
To
YETTE
)

But let me tell you, woman. You best not act this part too good or is blows in your skin, and your regimental colours going be black and blue …

YETTE

Don’t mind that, scatter, scatter!

(
She sits singing as the regiment comes on.
)

Fan me, soldier man, fan me.

Fan me, soldier man, fan me.

Fan me, soldier man, fan me, oh

Gal, your character gone.

SOLDIER
(
Shouts.
)

I’ll see you later, sausage!

(
The
CAPTAIN
blows a whistle; all halt.
)

CAPTAIN

Halt! stop that drumming.

Sergeant, find out who shouted to that woman,

I’m sick of this indiscipline.

SERGEANT
(
Moving among
SOLDIERS
.)

The young captain is very thirsty, mates, and he would like me to know which of you poor suffering buggers, sweating on the march all day and fighting in a rebellion which you really have no faith in, cried out, I’ll see you later, sausage, or various innocent words to that effect, thereby slandering this lady’s physique. Purdy? Williams? Fairweather? Matheison? No answer, Captain, they never even seen her before.

CAPTAIN

You there! strumpet! Ease there on your muskets.

YETTE

Is it me, my blue-eyed captain?

CAPTAIN

Is there a river near here?

YETTE
(
Singing.
)

Oh, down by the river, he gave me his word,

I’ll be back tomorrow is all I heard.

Oh, now he’s gone, and he rots in the sun …

There’s river through the canes to your right, Captain Blue-eyes.

POMPEY

You see how she flirting? (
He rises.
) Surrender in the name of General Mano, defender of freedom, or is stones in your skin.

CAPTAIN

Shoot that fellow, Sergeant, he’s a runaway slave.

POMPEY

You can’t shoot me.

CAPTAIN

                                   Present your musket.

POMPEY

I ain’t have no damn rifle.

CAPTAIN

                                                Prime locks.

POMPEY

All you best surrender.

CAPTAIN