Read Online The Comedians by Graham Greene - Free Book Online Page A

hubbub of lunch on the verandah, and at night the drummer and the dancers, with Baron Samedi, a grotesque figure in a ballet, stepping it delicately in his top-hat under the lighted palms. I had known for a short time all of this.
    We drew up in the darkness, and I kissed Martha again: it was still an interrogation. I could not believe in a fidelity that lasted for three months of solitude. Perhaps – it was a less disagreeable speculation than another – she had turned to her husband again. I held her against me and said, ‘How is Luis?’
    â€˜The same,’ she said, ‘always the same.’ And yet I thought she must have loved him once. This is one of the pains of illicit love: even your mistress’s most extreme embrace is a proof the more that love doesn’t last. I had met Luis for the second time when I was among the thirty guests at an embassy cocktail party. It seemed to me impossible that the ambassador – that stout man in the late forties whose hair gleamed like a polished shoe – did not remark how often our eyes met across the crowded room, the surreptitious touch she gave me with her hand as we passed. But Luis kept his appearance of established superiority: this was his embassy, this was his wife, these were his guests. The books of matches were stamped with his initials, even the bands round his cigars. I remember him raising a cocktail glass to the light and showing me the delicate engraving of a bull’s mask. He said, ‘I had them specially designed for me in Paris.’ He had a great sense of possession, but perhaps he didn’t mind lending what he possessed.
    â€˜Has Luis comforted you while I was away?’
    â€˜No,’ she said, and I cursed myself for my cowardice in so phrasing the question that her answer remained ambiguous. She added, ‘No one has comforted me,’ and at once I began to think of all the meanings of comfort from which she might choose one to satisfy her sense of truth. For she had a sense of truth.
    â€˜You’ve got a different scent.’
    â€˜Luis gave me this for my birthday. I’d finished yours.’
    â€˜Your birthday. I forgot . . .’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter.’
    â€˜Joseph is a long time,’ I said. ‘He must have heard the car.’
    She said, ‘Luis is kind to me. You are the only one who kicks me around. Like the Tontons Macoute with Joseph.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    Everything was just as before. After ten minutes we had made love, and after half an hour we had begun to quarrel. I left the car and walked up the steps in the dark. At the top I nearly stumbled on my suitcases which the driver must have deposited there, and I called, ‘Joseph, Joseph’ and no one replied. The verandah stretched on either side of me, but no table was laid for dinner. Through the open door of the hotel I could see the bar by the light of a tiny oil-lamp, like the ones you place beside a child’s bed or the bed of someone sick. This was my luxury hotel – a circle of light which barely touched a half-empty bottle of rum, two stools, a syphon of soda crouched in the shadow like a bird with a long beak. I called again, ‘Joseph, Joseph,’ and again nobody answered. I went back down the steps to the car and said to Martha, ‘Stay a moment.’
    â€˜Is something wrong?’
    â€˜I can’t find Joseph.’
    â€˜I ought to be getting back.’
    â€˜You can’t go alone. Don’t be in such a hurry. Luis can wait a moment.’
    I mounted the steps again to the Hotel Trianon. ‘A centre of Haitian intellectual life. A luxury-hotel which caters equally for the connoisseur of good food and the lover of local customs. Try the special drinks made from the finest Haitian rum, bathe in the luxurious swimming-pool, listen to the music of the Haitian drum and watch the Haitian dancers. Mingle with the élite of Haitian