The Comedians Read Free Page A

had thought of something a little quieter,’ Mr Smith said.
    â€˜We are quiet enough now.’
    â€˜It would certainly be pleasant, wouldn’t it, dear, to be with a friend? If you have a room vacant with a bath or a shower.’
    â€˜Every room has a bath. Don’t be afraid of noise. The drummer’s fled to New York, and all the bikini girls stay in Miami now. You’ll probably be the only guests I have.’
    These two clients, it had occurred to me, might be worth a good deal more than the money they paid. A presidential candidate surely had status; he would be under the protection of his embassy or what was left of it. (When I had left Port-au-Prince the embassy staff had already been reduced to a chargé, a secretary, and two Marine guards, who were all that remained of the military mission.) Perhaps the same thought occurred to Jones. ‘I might join you too,’ he said, ‘if no other arrangements have been made for me. It would be a bit like staying on shipboard if we stuck together.’
    â€˜Safety in numbers,’ the purser agreed.
    â€˜With three guests I shall be the most envied hôtelier in Port-au-Prince.’
    â€˜It’s not very safe to be envied,’ the purser said. ‘You would do much better, all three of you, if you continued with us. Myself I don’t care to go fifty yards from the water-front. There is a fine hotel in Santo Domingo. A luxurious hotel. I can show you picture-postcards as good as his.’ He opened the drawer and I caught a brief glimpse of a dozen little square packets – French letters which he would sell at a profit to the crew when they went on shore to Mère Catherine’s or one of the cheaper establishments. (His sales talk, I felt certain, would consist of some grisly statistics.) ‘What have I done with them?’ he demanded uselessly of Mr Fernandez, who smiled and said, ‘Yes,’ and he began to search the desk littered with printed forms and paper-clips and bottles of red, green and blue ink, and some old-fashioned wooden pen-holders and nibs, before he discovered a few limp postcards of a bathing-pool exactly like mine and a Creole bar which was only distinguishable because it had a different drummer.
    â€˜My husband is not on a vacation,’ Mrs Smith said with disdain.
    â€˜I’d like to keep one if you don’t mind,’ Jones said, choosing the bathing-pool and the bikinis, ‘one never knows . . .’ That phrase represented, I think, his deepest research into the meaning of life.
    III
    Next day I sat in a deck-chair on the sheltered starboard side and let myself roll languidly in and out of the sun with the motions of the mauve-green sea. I tried to read a novel, but the heavy foreseeable progress of its characters down the uninteresting corridors of power made me drowsy, and when the book fell upon the deck, I did not bother to retrieve it. My eyes opened only when the traveller in pharmaceutical products passed by; he clung to the rail with two hands and seemed to climb along it as though it were a ladder. He was panting heavily and he had an expression of desperate purpose as though he knew to what the climb led and knew that it was worth his effort, but knew too that he would never have the strength to reach the end. Again I drowsed and found myself alone in a blacked-out room and someone touched me with a cold hand. I woke and it was Mr Fernandez who had, I suppose, been surprised by the steep roll of the boat and had steadied himself against me. I had the impression of a shower of gold dropping from a black sky as his spectacles caught the fitful sun. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes,’ smiling an apology as he lurched upon his way.
    It seemed as though a sudden desire for exercise had struck everyone except myself on the second day out. For next it was Mr Jones – I still couldn’t bring myself to call him Major – who passed steadily up