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progressive.’
    â€˜In that case she will not mind. These are surely the symbols of progress.’
    â€˜Suffering as we do from acidity, at least we need not pass it on to our children.’
    He giggled and set to work with a coloured crayon on one of his monstrous faces. The texture of the skin whined under his fingers.
    â€˜What time, do you think, we’ll arrive on Wednesday?’
    â€˜The captain expects to tie up by the early evening.’
    â€˜I hope we get in before the lights go out. I suppose they still go out?’
    â€˜Yes. You will find nothing has changed for the better. Only for the worse. It is impossible to leave the city now without a police-permit. There are barricades on every road out of Port-au-Prince. I doubt if you will be able to reach your hotel without being searched. We have warned the crew that they leave the harbour only at their own risk. Of course they will go just the same. Mère Catherine will always stay open.’
    â€˜Any news of the Baron?’ It was the name some gave to the President as an alternative to Papa Doc – we dignified his shambling shabby figure with the title of Baron Samedi, who in the Voodoo mythology haunts the cemeteries in his top-hat and tails, smoking his big cigar.
    â€˜They say he hasn’t been seen for three months. He doesn’t even come to a window of the palace to watch the band. He might be dead for all anyone knows. If he can die without a silver bullet. We’ve had to cancel our call at Cap Haïtien the last two trips. The town is under martial law. It’s too close to the Dominican border, and we aren’t allowed in.’ He drew a deep breath and began to inflate another French letter. The teat stood out like a tumour on the skull, and a hospital smell of rubber filled the cabin. He said, ‘What makes you go back?’
    â€˜One can’t just leave a hotel one owns . . .’
    â€˜But you did leave it.’
    I wasn’t going to confide my reasons to the purser. They were too private and too serious, if one can describe as serious the confused comedy of our lives. He blew up another capote anglaise , and I thought: Surely there must be a power which always arranges things to happen in the most humiliating circumstances. When I was a boy I had faith in the Christian God. Life under his shadow was a very serious affair; I saw Him incarnated in every tragedy. He belonged to the lacrimae rerum like a gigantic figure looming through a Scottish mist. Now that I approached the end of life it was only my sense of humour that enabled me sometimes to believe in Him. Life was a comedy, not the tragedy for which I had been prepared, and it seemed to me that we were all, on this boat with a Greek name (why should a Dutch line name its boats in Greek?), driven by an authoritative practical joker towards the extreme point of comedy. How often, in the crowd on Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway, after the theatres closed, have I heard the phrase – ‘I laughed till the tears came.’
    â€˜What do you think of Mr Jones?’ the purser asked.
    â€˜Major Jones? I leave such questions to you and the captain.’ It was obvious that he had been consulted as well as I. Perhaps the fact that my name was Brown made me more sensitive to the comedy of Jones.
    I picked up one of the great sausages of fish-skin and said, ‘Do you ever put one of these to a proper use?’
    The purser sighed. ‘Alas, no. I have reached an age . . . Inevitably I get a crise de foie . Whenever my emotions are upset.’
    The purser had admitted me to an intimacy and now he required an intimacy in return, or perhaps the captain had demanded information on me too and the purser saw an opportunity of providing it. He asked me, ‘How did a man like you ever come to settle in Port-au-Prince? How did you ever become an hôtelier . You don’t look like an hôtelier . You look like –