The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth (4 page)

Well, I will not listen.

White men are here; for every scar

(
He bares his tunic.
)

Raw on my unforgiving stomach, I’ll murder children,

I’ll riot. I have not grown lunatic, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.

You think I am not aware of your intrigues,

Mulattos and whites, Brelle and Pétion;

I am a king: Argue with history.

Ask history and the white cruelties

Who broke Boukmann, Ogé, Chavannes; ask Rochambeau.

If you will not comply, I’ll go.

(
He exits.
)

CHRISTOPHE

That is the crazy graph of power,

The zenith of his climb; he thinks himself colossus, but size

Spells ruin, the earth is cracking now under his girth.

We must look after us, or he will …

A lunatic king.

SYLLA

If I could only warn, a grey-haired harbinger,

Helpless as time to warn her pupils;

There is nothing more to life, gentlemen,

Than to find a positive function for the money in the blood

To culture peace.

The meeting is over,

Nothing gained again. Good night. Brelle

Will be amused and terrified.

(
Exit all but
CHRISTOPHE
and
PÉTION.
)

CHRISTOPHE

Sylla hangs to the archbishop

Like an innocent child; with wagging tongue

Around a father’s knee, preparing for death

By logic and loves.

PÉTION

What is it you want, Henri?

(
CHRISTOPHE
closes the door.
)

CHRISTOPHE

Sit down.

PÉTION

Yes?

CHRISTOPHE

I think it is boredom that has put him so;

Blood grows into a habit with a born butcher;

He has grown into something monstrous

From thirteen years of war …

PÉTION

I am not as gentle as he thinks;

War has begun to crease my face with savagery;

It is worn like an old cavalry boot;

But if he thinks a king’s authority

Beggars morality, he had better reject priests.

CHRISTOPHE

However, he has never sought to harm the clergy;

Although he does not find much favour with the archbishop,

He has never killed a priest.

PÉTION

To think that for two days now he has been

Martyring children with a tired sword! He is a model

Of horror. Dessalines is only a beast;

He goes to blood with the joy that I go to a feast.

There must be some revision

Of his absurd and useless decision.

CHRISTOPHE
(
Slyly
)

You are thinking of treason and anarchy.

Has he not good reason to adopt a monarchy?

PÉTION

Because he fought to protect his country

Does he think he has bought its soul and its duty?

For my part I do not care who rules,

As long as he loves his country and rules

Well. But he commands a tyranny of fools,

Who spell wounds, not words, their sabres their schools;

I will not be one and stain

The memory of Toussaint’s intention;

I will resist tyranny on pain of expulsion.

CHRISTOPHE

His last deeds fill me to the brim with revulsion.

He is not fit to rule, but on revision,

I find that our patriotism leaps the boundary

Of duty, and this is our quandary:

Whether our duty is to country or King;

This is the problem, between the spirit

Of love and the material duty: that is the thing.

PÉTION

His death is for his country’s merit.

CHRISTOPHE

And when he is dead, who shall inherit?

You of course are more fit.

PÉTION

That is a matter solved after the riddle;

You want to begin somewhere in the middle.

As for myself, I halt at assuming

A blood-whispering cloak, gripping the sceptre he gripped,

Squatting on the throne from which he slipped.

Besides, you are better equipped.

I am a mulatto, the Negroes are in the majority,

Present rule is only your authority.

Or, after he is dead, with a twin constituency

We could contest rule.

CHRISTOPHE

You mean one of us King?

PÉTION

I was thinking

Rather in terms of a presidency.

CHRISTOPHE

You would have the public vote.

PÉTION

I’m sure I would not.

Mon Dieu,
look how time has made us politicians

Rather than soldiers!

CHRISTOPHE

So I must kill my friend. How will we do it?

On a matter of a massacre, I’m one of the expert technicians.

But to kill a friend …

PÉTION

That is only the only means to an end.

CHRISTOPHE

It is true that the country is ruined.

And the French may return. It will have to be done

Secretly, not in an open rebellion.

One of my soldiers … Pétion, you must go south

To avoid suspicion; please do not mistake my purpose.

Besides, he swears that he will deal with the mulattos

After he slaughters the whites;

Wait at Les Cayes, or stay near Port-au-Prince;

I will arm your forces to seize the sceptre from him.

Meanwhile, I will remain here and hide the snake

In my pawn’s fawning; he still considers me.

Mass power in the South; I will weaken

Him by duplicity. I think the time is ripe:

The fruit is going to be wrenched from the stalk.

PÉTION

And the other generals, Sylla, Paul Prompt, Blondin—can

They be trusted to a man?

CHRISTOPHE

Each of them thinks nightly of being a king.

It is a peasant’s vanities.

We will tell them nothing.

PÉTION

And if they know …

CHRISTOPHE

To know is nothing; to hinder is execution.

PÉTION

You are firm in your dreams as in your solution.

CHRISTOPHE

What do you know of my dreams?

PÉTION

Nothing except that by hiding them you admit

Their existence. Excuse me. I must go south.

God help us in our purposes as in our ambitions.

CHRISTOPHE

God help our ambitions to the gates of our purposes.

(
PÉTION
shakes his hand and leaves.
)

I must do it.

(
A knock.
)

Who is it?

Come in.

(
A
MESSENGER
enters.
)

Speak, soldier, why are you so dirty?

MESSENGER

I am all out of breath, General.

CHRISTOPHE

Not general, commissioner. Next time gather,

Please, your breath in the yard, rather

Than enter scared to death.

MESSENGER

The King sent me in anger.

He says that now there is no more danger.

CHRISTOPHE

Give me the message in the rough.

MESSENGER

                                                              Well, sir,

The soldiers, idle in their narrow barracks,

Tired already of thirteen years of war,

Had planned a liberation from their captains.

Next day the Emperor came riding through the ranks,

Waving a sword that sparkled in the sun,

Commanding all his blacks to slaughter whites.

And there were some of us who, tasting blood,

Hearing this trumpet summon like a wound,

Felt the old call: we leapt into his arms,

And held our smoking rifles by the paws;

He held us burning through the sleeping streets,

Meeting a herd of idlers, who raggedly conjured

A vomit from the horn of plenty.

Two hours we raged the city, raping, rioting,

Turning with slaughter the chapels into brothels.

I skewered a white martyr under an altar,

We flung one girl in an uncertain arc

Into the bloody bosom of the pier, and over us

This King rode, looking as though he chewed his corpses,

His eyes all arson. And now that massacre

Tires him, he comes home to his bed,

To tell the generals that Haiti,

Thank him, is safe,

From prejudice, from pain.

CHRISTOPHE

You have done your duty, I must do mine.

(
The
MESSENGER
exits.
)

I cannot kill my friend.

But this King is not my friend; our ambitions rub,

They want to sit on an only throne.

(
Enter
DESSALINES
,
dishevelled, sword in his hand.
)

DESSALINES

Henri, my friend, you look ill.

CHRISTOPHE

I am not as ruddy as you.

DESSALINES

You mock my colour.

You cannot think a black king real.

CHRISTOPHE

I am black, too, but today I am ashamed.

You have red work on your hands.

DESSALINES

It was a necessary horror,

A crop of murders, necessary

Like death. I know it will not let me sleep from now.

CHRISTOPHE

You have no soul, no thought

Of paying afterwards?

DESSALINES

No, Henri, this is politics.

I cannot wear, Christ-like, an albatross

Around my neck; the wounds in my sides

Were dug by innocent white hands; a king

Makes them pay for it.

CHRISTOPHE

No twinge of soul?

DESSALINES

I act like a king; a king is whole;

A king’s wrongs are a king’s privileges.

CHRISTOPHE

You wound and use authority for bandages.

You are sick, a peevish king with terrible whims.

Sit down, you are tired.

Scarcely an hour ago, it seems,

I was plotting with Pétion to assassinate you,

But I know now I cannot hate you.

I will admit our treason,

But it is past now, and your condition is the reason:

You are sick. We planned Pétion’s going south,

Rebellion against you with me in the north,

But no more. What is it, Jacques?…

DESSALINES

I carved a passage, rigorous as a dolphin

Through the red fun. Oh, three wars cannot size

Yesterday’s horror.

And yet I had no purpose for this fighting.

Have I gone mad, after long war?

Does murder grow like habit in the hand, infection

In the fingers and the skull?

Henri, I am mad …

CHRISTOPHE

Something will be done.

DESSALINES

Yes …

CHRISTOPHE

            For your own good.

But we must watch Pétion. Tomorrow you ride south

To stall the insurrection.

Tonight I will see the light in your

Room is put out.

DESSALINES

You are my friend, you understand

What I need most.

CHRISTOPHE
(
Dimly
)

Yes. Yes. Yes.

(
Slow fade-out.
)

Scene 4

A wood at twilight, outside the city. Two
MURDERERS
onstage, arguing.

FIRST MURDERER

What you want to think about it for? Hold the knife so. Then get somewhere soft and mortal, put the blade in, and think you cutting meat, and don’t bother your head about religion. What wrong in that?…

SECOND MURDERER

It’s only I am not ’custom …

FIRST MURDERER

You don’t want to become a professional?

SECOND MURDERER

Yes, sir … but …

FIRST MURDERER

Well, you shaming your father. I remember how he was always saying you would make such a good apprentice. What is the matter, you are scared of a little blood? You never kill a crab, or a chicken, or an old woman? You all are funny, yes! You kill a man who was an evil king, marry him to the tall dust he grew from; you kill him intelligently, cleanly, no disfiguration; you give him time to pray, and if he does not want, you can say it for him after, just a few
Ave Marias,
and the act of contrition, and then you know you can leave that grey King slain under the red trees and know you do a good job. You don’t even have to worry ’bout the grass growing out of his sockets, the dead leaves rusting for days over his quiet lips, and the tall grass lecturing in whispers about what good all this thing is for … But then you think that after you kill him everything done? You think people glad for it? Listen …

(
He goes into an elaborate pantomime.
)

Finish? No, it isn’t. “Soldiers, ladies and gentlemen! A murder has been done, murder, ladies, murder, gentlemen, against the law of gods. Murder? We must—quiet, ladies, quiet, gentlemen—we must apprehend the killer. Apprehend him.” And then you run, your mouth open, your eyes streaming, with hounds and humans in an inhuman comedy chasing you to sanctuary … Sanctuary? What, in an abbey where they eat chicken, in a stable where they shoot horses, in gaol where they break your neck?

(
He grows quiet, impressing the young man.
)