The Haitian Trilogy: Plays: Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours, and The Haytian Earth (7 page)

We like the King …

VASTEY

Where is the chapel door?

You say the King will not come here?

ATTENDANT

No, sir.

The chapel door is two doors after.

VASTEY

Here are two letters. Can you read?

No? Put these in slyness in the bishop’s vestments

While he is whispering hypocrisies to heaven

With penny candles humble in his eyes,

Turning pages of meditation with dry rustling lips.

He must not know about the letters.

He will take time to pray, more than an hour …

Hide them where you can find them, because you will take

Them back, to show the King.

Lock question on your lips, lackeys do not quarrel;

It will do the priest no harm.

You cannot read?

ATTENDANT

No … no, sir …

VASTEY

Do not be awkward; there are

Several kings who cannot.

When will the King come?

ATTENDANT

I think I hear him …

VASTEY

I know he likes to sprawl, wasting his energy walking in the dark,

Thinking his power far into the dark,

Or is it regret that thrusts him in the dark,

Out of society?

Look, hurry, be quiet, numb to suspicion; and efficient.

I hear a step …

(
Exit
ATTENDANT. VASTEY
lights another candle as
CHRISTOPHE
enters.
)

CHRISTOPHE

That chapelle music—

The architectural arabesque halts, spreads, builds

In vision; when I hear madrigals, requiems,

It is so much like constructing citadels, châteaux,

Or, sometimes, Vastey, in the labyrinth brain,

The theme runs out its threads like—who was it—Theseus,

That book you read me, descending down the spirals of the ear;

Then, listen, a crash, crescendo comes, like urge, like knock of light

Burst from the petal and the bud’s green prison,

Like glare of sun, or like a minotaur;

Then hear it dying, the thread lost, the light broken, the metal leaf

Rusted with time; and who was it—Theseus

Travelling out of light and knowledge like the bone,

Complexions of the skeleton.

My thoughts tease death, Vastey;

I am getting old.

VASTEY

All of us, Henri.

Even Brelle.

CHRISTOPHE

Poor Brelle.

And Sylla—dead, eh?

VASTEY

You ask me often; he was an old man.

CHRISTOPHE

My friend, they say that old men die

Mumbling a syntax of the probable;

Truth breaks, refractory on their days of dark,

Like chips of moon, lavish on their death edge …

VASTEY

He was always talking about the moon, and death,

Also regret …

His own white-haired regret

Was the anatomy that he wore to the grave,

Always regretting what his mad youth did,

A spendthrift general spilling coins of blood

Around the altars of the god of pity.

Surely you are not regretting

Taking Brelle’s advice?

CHRISTOPHE
(
Flaring briefly.
)

No, damn it.

Anyway, he died, broken, grey, and quiet,

White-haired as the moon and stumbling just as lost

Through peace-fleeced colonies of clouds, a foolish, mad old man.

VASTEY

But quiet, safe. Dead.

CHRISTOPHE

Yes, archbishops live.

They whom the gods love die young …

He is at chapel now, isn’t he?

VASTEY

Or perhaps plotting piety with Pétion.

Or receiving letters from the south …

CHRISTOPHE
(
Anger mounting.
)

What insanity are you talking?

You do not like Brelle. Why?

VASTEY

Do you, Your Majesty?

Sixty years of conscience on a mangy martyr

White and superior as his Paris statues?

His obvious love for clear complexions,

His pride in Pétion, his dislike

Of being repeatedly contradicted?

Oh, certainly I like him, equally,

As you or Dessalines.

CHRISTOPHE

Do not mention Dessalines

And I in the same breath.

How do you know?

VASTEY

Search his vestments, he kneels in the chapel,

Break at his pride while he mumbles mercies

To black baboons who wear king’s clothes …

CHRISTOPHE

Whom are you referring to?

VASTEY

That is how

He feels, I have heard him …

CHRISTOPHE

But those letters …

His vestments … It is below me to search …

Pétion?

VASTEY

I have not eaten yet …

CHRISTOPHE

What?

VASTEY

My supper. May I leave?

CHRISTOPHE

Of course, of course … Letters …

As you go, send in a soldier or a servingman.

I will find out …

VASTEY

Yes … You know the postmark of the south,

I need not be here to read it.

(
He exits.
)

CHRISTOPHE

Archbishop, if this is true,

I will kill you with these hands that have known

To forget vocabulary of blood …

Your life, Brelle, is nothing more

Than candle stubs, or incense dying with a sign in censers,

And you already a tired, weak old fool,

Too keen and political

And overfat with conscience …

You will see how I value lives … then talk to angels

When I draw out a dagger;

Then call your God.

We men are helpless, accident our religion,

Birth, death, and life are accident …

After the mathematics of casualty

We are still children guessing after dark,

Waiting for dim collisions of spectrum-splintered stars;

Birth breaks around the lips, children learning language of error.

Your death, Archbishop, would

Be accident.

Ah, Brelle, our God is no more than a guess,

A hoax of heaven, a nun’s nicety;

Time is the god that breaks us on his knees, learning

Our ruin and repeating epitaphs

Like a dull pupil; it is that one that flings

That moon, a wild white spinning coin in grooves of time;

But death returns as the bright thrown dust falls, and walks

Into the memory, the death, the dark.

(
Enter the
ATTENDANT
.)

Good, you are here.

Do you know the chapel?

Good. Search the archbishop’s clothes, then bring

Me letters, paper. Look well,

And bring it quietly; keep

This business dark.

(
The
ATTENDANT
exits.
)

The time is full of poison—

Cunning in the cup and lies in the linen;

So this is kingship, vermin among the vows,

Traitors in surplices and swords in tongues …

This rule is only to the violent man.

(
Re-enter
ATTENDANT
with the letters.
)

Ah.

They want to plot against my monarch’s love.

Can you read?

ATTENDANT

No, Your Majesty.

CHRISTOPHE

This letter is from the south, isn’t it?

ATTENDANT

The stamp looks so; it has the seal.

CHRISTOPHE
(
Angrily
)

I cannot read it. But what if it is

A trick of Vastey’s?

The archbishop treacherous! Who would believe it?

Send him to me, I’ll find out.

(
As the
ATTENDANT
goes,
BRELLE
enters.
)

Welcome, Your Grace.

I wanted to see you.

BRELLE

You mock the Church that warmed your head with oil.

Your attendant preceded my own intentions;

I wanted to talk with you.

Henri, you must stop these insolences to decency,

Frame a just constitution or face calamity.

Pétion is massing his military in the south,

And generals desert you slyly every dusk;

The peasants have made small active agitations

Which by sheer brutality your forces split,

But you have scattered sparks from the hard anvil,

And the country waits to pull down

Narrow castles, citadels, and make a passage of war.

You drive the peasants without mercy. Do you consider mercy?

Have you no bitter memory to depose

Your cruelty from its holiday at the blood’s bright money?

And now you force your poison to my clergy,

Corrupting with gold, corroding with silver.

God, what a waste of blood, these cathedrals, castles, built;

Bones in the masonry, skulls in the architrave,

Tired masons falling from the chilly turrets.

Henri, you must stop.

I prayed for you,

Only a humble old man.

CHRISTOPHE

Is this what you

Have come here to threaten?

BRELLE

The King’s law is the Church’s care;

And as long as you rule badly

The Church must war against this evil; sadly

I, who am your enemy, am your friend;

You oppose my flock and rape my pastorate

To glut your lusts: I cannot stand for this …

CHRISTOPHE
(
With mounting anger
)

                                                                            Stand?

You cannot stand for this? You speak to the one who is here

To stand for this black country; it is not yours to stand

Or understand. I am the King, I am the state,

I shall work for the state as I am King

Against what any archbishop will stand for.

BRELLE

Then there will always be strife

Between us; there will always be the knife

Dividing the spiritual from the temporal,

Dividing even to the point of blood …

CHRISTOPHE

Look here, white man, do you threaten me?

BRELLE

Or perhaps my blood, as you killed Dessalines.

CHRISTOPHE

I killed Dessalines and you smiled.

BRELLE
(
Softly
)

I have not been a good priest.

But I was not archbishop then, and only blood

Could buy this comfort, and your graph to authority.

I was a poor priest,

But then I wanted too much; that is why

To stop is better, Henri, than to waste. No one will pity.

I am old, and act

In this arena of sanity; my purposes are broad and open

As the blue air. This is the ambition

That drives me to the ground with hard grey hairs;

I toyed and threatened God, demanding more than a simple death and life.

You think me hypocrite; I wanted honour, comfort

Beyond this muttering in the dark; that was the hope

I had before time put on wrinkles, and now I wear

The stubborn motley of a peevish priest.

Henri, we are fools.

CHRISTOPHE

What about these letters?

What about Pétion?

BRELLE

I hear many rumours.

CHRISTOPHE

I can kill rumours easily;

You only have to throw a threat in their direction

And tongues and fears fly up like a throw of birds;

Suspicions and plots are easily brought to light:

Truth crouches in the dark.

The letters …

BRELLE
(
Cautiously
)

What have they to do with me?

CHRISTOPHE

Who said anything?

BRELLE

Come, come, Henri, what new plot is this?

CHRISTOPHE

But I refuse to be caught by you into accusing.

My accusation would mean only your refusing,

Then what?

(
He gestures in mock helplessness.
)

BRELLE

What am I supposed to have done?

Write these letters?

Whose idea, Vastey’s?

CHRISTOPHE
(
Bewildered
)

Ah …

BRELLE

What am I guilty of?

CHRISTOPHE

Choose any treason.

BRELLE

I have one chronic treason

Which no death can eat, and that is love.

CHRISTOPHE

I am not a civilised man, Father;

I am at heart very primitive; there is that urge—

A beast in the jungle among primitive angers

Clawing down opposition; what is the expression—

The instinct?

BRELLE

I do not know.

I know only this love

I have for peace, religion, and the suffering people.

CHRISTOPHE
(
Tearing the letters, screaming.
)

Oh, shut that hypocrite heart,

Gabbling of love while you mock our complexions,

Inviting death to grow taller after dying;

You wrote those letters, are guilty of treason.

Old man, you have arrived at the end of a season;

I rule now. Take your hoax,

Your statues, and your warnings, and blessing saints

Out of my house, and Haiti.

BRELLE

This is the curse of the nation,