table in an ice-cream parlor, writing sappy postcards to his wife and drinking soft, sweet drinks. Hassid sat with him, head in hands, in an ennui that would persist another fortnight, all the way, in fact, to Port-au-Prince. “Got your sea legs yet?” Horace would ask him every little while, and wink at me. I suggested reading as a cure, but the Turk’s sole interests were young girls and commerce. Reading, he said, made him nervous, and as it happened, a dislike of books was the one thing he and Horace would agree upon. Despite their enmity, he had acquired a taste for Horace’s company, having doubtless perceived that his dark dream of undoing this man’s moral superiority was all that stood between him and his monstrous boredom. For his part, the missionary clung to some fond hope of redeeming the sybaritic Turk, whom he preached to nightly.
And so, to amuse myself, I set one upon the other, confident that both secretly enjoyed this. “Their claws,” as someone once remarked of a somewhat more auspicious pair, “were set so deep into each other that if they pulled apart, they would soon bleed to death.”
B OUND FOR H AITI , our freighter trailed smoke south through the horse latitudes, where in other times dead horses were heaved overboard from ships becalmed in theSargasso Sea. Horace, still cheerful to a fault, had held the upper hand on the bounding main of the North Atlantic, but in the pewter calms of the horse latitudes his companion began to stir into dull life, and ashore in Haiti, where seasickness no longer stayed him, Hassid moved very quickly to the fore. Scarcely had his slippered foot touched land—and land, moreover, where his favorite tongue was the official language—when he stood full-blown before us, a true
bon vivant
whose delicate French and urbane manner made him the natural leader of our little party. Who then if not the bold Turk dismissed Port-au-Prince as unworthy of our custom? No, no, quoth he, we would hire a conveyance and escape the sea,
à la campagne, à la montagne
! So enchanted was he by this inland prospect that he waved his arms in fine Gallic abandon, inadvertently inciting to near hysteria the hordes of jobless Haitians who rushed along with us, desperate to attend to every need.
The human din, the forceful smells, the ribald colors of the waterfront juxtaposed with grinding poverty and filth, drove Horace to condemn the Roman Church, which he blamed—with bitter looks at Hassid—for the plight of this beautiful, unhappy country. Politically oblivious, Hassid ignored him, having commenced dealings with a sober-suited native who had persevered so with his winks and hisses as to commend himself at last to the Turk’s attention. Even now our new Haitian acquaintance was revealing the existence of another friend, almost as dear to him as we were, who knew more about Haiti than anyone since Toussaint l’Ouverture. As luck would have it, this same friend was the master of a splendid car designed perfectly for whatever purpose
les gentilshommes
might have in mind. This friend, said he, might be engaged upon short notice,and sure enough, a spavined Ford came forward even as he spoke, honking and backfiring along the curb. Its clairvoyant chauffeur turned out to be none other than Charles (
“Tous mes amis Americains m’appellent Shar-lie”
), the international authority on Haiti, who swore he would place his awesome expertise at our disposal for a
prix d’ami
that was nothing short of laughable. In proof of this he laughed, more or less merrily, hurling his car door wide to show us in.
Gold-toothed and fragrant in a many-colored shirt, Charlie was as festive as Pierre was somber, and his black skin shone in the very places where Pierre’s old hide looked gray and dull. Adjusting his tone from the first instant to the whims of Hassid, he said, Yes! Yes! We would make a
tour de ville
, and afterward
un petit séjour à la campagne, à la montagne
—and afterward? Here
And so, to amuse myself, I set one upon the other, confident that both secretly enjoyed this. “Their claws,” as someone once remarked of a somewhat more auspicious pair, “were set so deep into each other that if they pulled apart, they would soon bleed to death.”
B OUND FOR H AITI , our freighter trailed smoke south through the horse latitudes, where in other times dead horses were heaved overboard from ships becalmed in theSargasso Sea. Horace, still cheerful to a fault, had held the upper hand on the bounding main of the North Atlantic, but in the pewter calms of the horse latitudes his companion began to stir into dull life, and ashore in Haiti, where seasickness no longer stayed him, Hassid moved very quickly to the fore. Scarcely had his slippered foot touched land—and land, moreover, where his favorite tongue was the official language—when he stood full-blown before us, a true
bon vivant
whose delicate French and urbane manner made him the natural leader of our little party. Who then if not the bold Turk dismissed Port-au-Prince as unworthy of our custom? No, no, quoth he, we would hire a conveyance and escape the sea,
à la campagne, à la montagne
! So enchanted was he by this inland prospect that he waved his arms in fine Gallic abandon, inadvertently inciting to near hysteria the hordes of jobless Haitians who rushed along with us, desperate to attend to every need.
The human din, the forceful smells, the ribald colors of the waterfront juxtaposed with grinding poverty and filth, drove Horace to condemn the Roman Church, which he blamed—with bitter looks at Hassid—for the plight of this beautiful, unhappy country. Politically oblivious, Hassid ignored him, having commenced dealings with a sober-suited native who had persevered so with his winks and hisses as to commend himself at last to the Turk’s attention. Even now our new Haitian acquaintance was revealing the existence of another friend, almost as dear to him as we were, who knew more about Haiti than anyone since Toussaint l’Ouverture. As luck would have it, this same friend was the master of a splendid car designed perfectly for whatever purpose
les gentilshommes
might have in mind. This friend, said he, might be engaged upon short notice,and sure enough, a spavined Ford came forward even as he spoke, honking and backfiring along the curb. Its clairvoyant chauffeur turned out to be none other than Charles (
“Tous mes amis Americains m’appellent Shar-lie”
), the international authority on Haiti, who swore he would place his awesome expertise at our disposal for a
prix d’ami
that was nothing short of laughable. In proof of this he laughed, more or less merrily, hurling his car door wide to show us in.
Gold-toothed and fragrant in a many-colored shirt, Charlie was as festive as Pierre was somber, and his black skin shone in the very places where Pierre’s old hide looked gray and dull. Adjusting his tone from the first instant to the whims of Hassid, he said, Yes! Yes! We would make a
tour de ville
, and afterward
un petit séjour à la campagne, à la montagne
—and afterward? Here
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