The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth (35 page)

YETTE
places a crucifix next to the doll king. She dips the pin in the paste. She heats and turns the long, sharp pin slowly in the flame. She rests the doll at an angle. She plucks a hair from her head sharply and lights a dressing-table candle. She burns the hair and draws it across the face of the black doll king. Fade-out.

Scene 17

CHRISTOPHE
’s palace. Night. Dressed exactly like the doll but without a crown,
CHRISTOPHE
limps across the floor, past the high arches to his throne, and sits there, squirming in agony at the stabbing pain in his legs. Fade-out.

Scene 18

Belle Maison. For every stab of the heated pin into the doll’s leg,
CHRISTOPHE
wrenches and twists in agony.
YETTE
keeps stabbing.

YETTE

No more kings. No more kings. No more kings.

(
A
MAN
climbs over a rail, peeps at
YETTE
through the window. She feels him watching her and turns. He scurries away.
)

CHRISTOPHE

My crown! Bring me my crown! My crown!

(
Fade-out.
)

Scene 19

Interior. The palace. Morning.
CHRISTOPHE
in his red coat with its star, his leg propped on a stool. Behind him
SOLDIERS
.
On the floor is a huge scale model of the citadel at Sans Souci.
POMPEY
and
YETTE
enter.

CHRISTOPHE

From the Hotel Couronne to this. I was a waiter.

A waiter. And this was a good leg.

Tell them again what she did to this waiter.

Say it, man.

SOLDIER

She prayed for victory for General Rigaud,

The enemy of our Emperor Henri Christophe.

CHRISTOPHE

Didn’t you remember I was your King?

Perhaps you cannot believe in a black king!

You prayed for this mulatto. But of course.

You and he are the same people.

Did you see victory for Pétion? Eh?

For you and all the mulattos, eh? Mulatresse?

POMPEY

I will speak for her, with your permission.

CHRISTOPHE

She has a tongue. I know she has a tongue.

I knew her when she was the army’s yellow whore.

(
Pause.
)

They say, these people,

You made
chienbois
against me. Is that true?

They say you prayed against me. Is that true?

(
YETTE
nods.
)

Maybe she just like playing with dolls. Like children.

You all have children?

POMPEY

                                        No.

CHRISTOPHE

                                               Is she barren?

In Le Cap, in the big fire, I lost a child.

The soil can be dry. In your part of the country.

But never barren. You had a good crop this year?

(
POMPEY
shrugs.
)

Do you see that thing there in front of you?

It is not the castle of a doll, men like you

Are building it now, on the ridge of Cap Haitien.

An army can march on the walls. If I tell that army

To march straight off into the precipice, they would

Obey me, to prove their obedience, as General Moise

Obeyed his uncle. It will be, after I choose to die,

One of the wonders of the world. When men like you

Are tired, they will look up into the clouds

And see it, and take strength; the clouds themselves

Will have to look up to see it. Does she think

Little pins in my legs will stop it?

Ask her. Why is she silent? Make her speak.

POMPEY

She is silent as the earth self silent, sir. Pardon me, yes, Your Majesty. But I have seen so many kings, me and my woman here, that we have to be afraid. One King say to us he is the sun, and we niggers answer yes, and we was his shadows, and the sun set, the King dead, and it was night again until the next King come, and we again was shadows. It wasn’t for a king all this begin? I mean to say the King they kill in France? Was not for that King, the sixteenth sun that rise and the last King to set in France, that we came free? It had no talk of king, then, Your Majesty. It was only poor people, it was slaves, and those who work and die as if they was white niggers under the sixteen kings of France, every one a sunrise, every one a sunset, that Haiti live so long in a long night. It had one talk then, I remember, under the old coachman, and that talk was not who was king but who would make each man a man, each man a king himself; but all that change. We see them turn and climb and burn and fall down like stars that tired, and cut my hand, my head, my tongue out if you want, Your Majesty, but my life is one long night. My country and your kingdom, Majesty. One long, long night. Is kings who do us that.

CHRISTOPHE

You work in dreams. Listen, last night, alone,

I had a terror of a dream. I saw the coachman

Drawing his country behind him like a black hearse

On a long, long road where stars were placed like candles,

And in the forest, on both sides, were little people

Born with their feet reversed, those mouse-eared elves

The boloms, and the black coach went on,

On the road to Guinea, it went along the road

On the sea, and the sea was silver, when it reached

The other side, they were all standing there,

Boukmann, and Biassou, and Moise, who shot himself

For discipline and example, and then the coachman

Came down and stroked the horses, then the coach,

And all the transparent shadows turned hard

Or changed into a forest, then the old coachman

Stood there between me, and something white was falling,

First I thought it was feathers, then it was snow.

If you have powers to see, tell ’em what it mean.

(
YETTE
silent.
)

The woman must be punished. Executed. Hang her.

The man is free.

POMPEY

                              Free? When I was ever free?

Under you all?

CHRISTOPHE

You want to die with her?

(
He turns away.
)

POMPEY

For me not to die with her, Christophe,

Is the worse punishment that you could give me.

(
YETTE
coughs.
)

YETTE

I have one thing to say. That will be all.

I never know I would ever find something stronger

Than you,
Ti-moune.
Stronger even than us.

Stronger and older than the love you teach me.

To love the earth. This. Here. The Haitian earth.

(
She stamps her foot.
)

I am ready when you ready.
Au voir, Ti-moune.

CHRISTOPHE

Come on, one of you. Help me into bed.

(
He exits.
)

YETTE
(
To the
SOLDIER
)

Espérez.
He love his country more than all of you!

He is the sweat and salt of the earth, this man.

And I prouder of him than if he was a king.

(
She shouts.
)

Chantez chanson nous, Ti-moune, chantez,

Et prends courage. Chantez-lui fort, Pompey.

Don’t beg them, Pompey. Don’t beg, you not a slave!

(
The
CHORUS
enters, as before.
YETTE
sings.
)

Haiti, Haiti, I shall love you.

I shall join the Haitian earth.

Suns shall set and rise above you,

Sunset death and sunrise birth.

(
She climbs out of sight.
)

POMPEY, CHORUS, PEASANTS

They cannot take our faith from us,

We, who suffered many things,

All the soldiers, guns, and drummers,

All the emperors and kings.

(
A single drumbeat.
POMPEY
reenters, carrying
YETTE
’s body wrapped in a shroud. He shows her face.
)

POMPEY

I have folded you up, the banner of my life.

Ah, Yette,
chérie,
I took your body down

To give enterrement in the Haitian earth.

You will turn into grass in a high wind,

You will have no regiments but the waving canes,

You will be a country woman with a basket

Walking down a red road in the high mountains.

(
He begins to dig the grave with a pitchfork, digging harder and harder. Fade-out.
)

ALSO BY DEREK WALCOTT

POEMS

Selected Poems

The Gulf

Another Life

Sea Grapes

The Star-Apple Kingdom

The Fortunate Traveller

Midsummer

Collected Poems: 1948–1984

The Arkansas Testament

Omeros

The Bounty

Tiepolo’s Hound

PLAYS

Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays

The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!

Remembrance and Pantomime

Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken;

A Branch of the Blue Nile

The Odyssey

ESSAYS

What the Twilight Says

DEREK WALCOTT

THE HAITIAN TRILOGY

Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia in 1930. His
Collected Poems: 1948–1984
was published in 1986; his subsequent works include the book-length poem
Omeros
(1990),
The Bounty
(1997), and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings,
Tiepolo’s Hound
(2000), all published by FSG. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

19 Union Square West, New York 10003

Copyright © 2002 by Derek Walcott

All rights reserved

First edition, 2002

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

www.fsgbooks.com

CAUTION
:
Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that the plays by Derek Walcott in this book are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, the British Empire including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and are subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid on the question of readings, permission for which must be obtained in writing from the author’s agent. All inquiries should be addressed to the author’s representative, Howard Rosenstone, Rosenstone/Wender, 38 East 29th Street, New York, New York 10016.

eISBN 9781466880368

First eBook edition: July 2014