The Seeds of Fiction

by Bernard Diederich

  ‘Redemptorists,’ I said.

  ‘Redemptorists!’ His tone changed as he repeated the name and explained that the order had been established in Italy in 1732 and was known for its strict theological principle that the beginning of wisdom was fear.

  Father Bajeux, who had been quiet through our entire trip, became animated. He was impressed with Graham’s knowledge of the Church and agreed with him.

  Graham looked at me. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t introduce me.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘You see, I don’t believe in Hell,’ he said. ‘I really don’t wish to be drawn into a discussion on my beliefs.’

  Bajeux and I were stunned.

  ‘If there is one congregation that is big on Hell it is these people,’ Graham said, sounding apprehensive about meeting the priests.

  ‘I understand,’ I said. As far as I knew, all Catholics had to believe in Hell. I was brought up as an Irish Catholic, in a tradition that threatens one, at a very early age, with burning in eternal fires in the hereafter for even questioning one’s faith. I was shocked by Graham’s pronouncement. Nevertheless I had reached what I felt was a truce with my celestial judge and believed that the day of payment for sins took place on earth. There was a tradition of blind faith in my family with which I found it difficult to identify. Still, I felt, a convert like Graham was often a better Catholic than Father Bajeux and I, who had been born into the Church and basically accepted its teaching as part of our spiritual inheritance. Graham the convert, we were learning, was continually questioning his adopted faith, a theme in many of his books.

  Graham must have known what Father Bajeux and I were thinking. ‘I do believe in Purgatory, though. It makes more sense than Hell.’

  I waited for him to express his opinions on Heaven, but he said no more. But I learned something about Graham that day. In most cases he preferred to remain anonymous, and in future travels I seldom introduced him by name. Besides, it was customary for leftist and guerrilla groups in the Caribbean and Central America not to introduce people by their real or full names. To ask names could be considered impolite or could raise suspicions.

  Explaining that we would probably have to introduce Graham because these alert American missionaries would expect us to, Bajeux and I decided that he should be addressed as Mr White, the title Haitians applied to all foreigners, blan.

  ‘But am I Monsieur Blanc or Mr White?’ Graham asked, noting that he had spent much of his professional life selecting names for his characters, and it had often been a tricky business. After a brief discussion, we agreed that Mr White was a common enough name and would do the job.

  We put the issue of our souls and Heaven and Hell aside, and focused on a more earthly issue. Clearing our throats of dust was the highest priority. We didn’t have any water, and had spent most of the day in the hot car as we drove the dusty roads. In the back seat Father Bajeux had made a strange rasping sound, clearing his dust-coated throat, possibly to ask Graham a question about his Catholic belief, but he had evidently thought better of it and remained silent.

  I had felt Graham might welcome the company of the young, activist Haitian cleric — which the famed Catholic author indeed did. Father Bajeux would, among other things, be able to answer any ecclesiastical questions that Graham might have concerning Papa Doc’s success in controlling Haiti’s once-powerful Roman Catholic Church. Enlisting Father Bajeux for the trip had not been difficult. It was an escape from his latest exile in a small parish in a Dominican sugar town where he was suffering deep depression. Tall, with the gaunt, malnourished look of most Haitian exiles, our pastor-companion was a Greene literary fan well acquainted with the author’s whisky priest in The Power and the Glory, and he knew all about Graham’s conversion to Catholicism. Bajeux was no whisky priest but an intellectual, a writer and somewhat of an existentialist, a perfect Greene character, although I knew it was impossible to predetermine such things.

  Bajeux believed that the Church had a responsibility not only to alleviate the economic conditions of the poor but also to play a part in liberating them from political and social oppression as well. As a young man he had gone to France, where he studied theology and philosophy for nine years and was ordained to the priesthood. His Holy Ghost Order first sent him to Africa for five years to teach. In the Cameroons he edited the Church-sponsored newspaper LEffort Camerounais, dedicated to the Cameroons’ drive for independence. He also collaborated on several books dealing with the national clergies in the Third World that were published by the Church. Still later Bajeux was involved in the exciting activities that accompanied preparations for Vatican Council II. He had met Pope John XXIII in Rome while assisting in the consecration of the young Archbishop of Yaounde, Jean Zoa. After returning with Zoa to the Cameroons as his secretary, Bajeux accompanied the Archbishop on some of his official trips.

  In 1960, as Bajeux was preparing to accompany Archbishop Zoa to the Vatican Council — where Zoa would distinguish himself as secretary-general of the African Episcopate — fate intervened. Bajeux was packing his bag when he was directed to return to his native Haiti by his superior in the Holy Ghost Order. Back in Haiti, Bajeux became Professor of Philosophy at the Holy Ghost Order’s St Martial College, one of the two major high schools in Port-au-Prince and a hotbed of anti-Duvalierism.

  In the Haiti of the early 1960s Bajeux found a country virtually paralysed and in the vice of dictatorship. With other young Haitian priests he embarged on the important work of creating a Creole liturgy. He edited the Catholic cultural magazine Rond-Point and directed Port-au-Prince’s Catholic youth centre, Bibliotheque des Jeunes. He also helped launch another religious magazine entitled Church on the March.

  It was a dangerous and difficult time. Young Haitian priests and their students had become the core of anti-Duvalier resistance. In many ways Papa Doc had helped them by decapitating the old conservative hierarchy of the Haitian Church. No more dour-looking Frenchmen from Brittany would be added to the photo gallery of former archbishops, dating from 1860, covering the walls of the waiting-room of the Port-au-Prince archbishopric. However, Duvalier became even more disturbed by the threat from the young Haitian priests and would eventually send them into exile.

  During the crisis of the summer of 1963 Bajeux had spent twenty-one days under house arrest after he tried to establish a residence for the chaplains of the Catholic Youth Movement in a large house in the capital. He was finally expelled from Haiti in February 1964, going first to New York. The following April he decided that a priest was needed in the Dominican Republic to administer to Haitians who were crossing the border in greater numbers, fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship. In Santo Domingo, with a group of prominent Dominicans, he established a ‘Friendship of Peoples Foundation’, whose announced mission was to give what spiritual and material aid was possible to Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. In a white flowing soutane, Bajeux was a familiar figure swishing into Dominican police or army headquarters to get a Haitian released from detention or celebrating Mass for poor civilian exiles or guerrillas. He was a one-man human rights mission who wrote reports, complaints and protests and dispatched them to the Dominican authorities.

  Unfortunately, Bajeux had not been as communicative a passenger as I had hoped, but he would provide us with a perfect alibi for travelling along the border. Our cover was that we were checking Dominican border jails for missing Haitians. But Bajeux, I felt, was searching spiritually for his own family. Papa Doc had ‘disappeared’ them only three months earlier. In October 1964 I had had the unfortunate task of informing Father Bajeux that his family had been seized at their home in Port-au-Prince by Duvalier’s police. Bajeux was truly alone, struggling with his God. Sometimes, while speeding through the Dominican countryside, I thought I could hear his prayers, begging God to protect his family. It was the worst Duvalier could inflict on an exiled opponent — reprisals against the exile’s helpless relatives. An opponent could suffer
deprivations and estrangement in a foreign land and still bear up, but to be made responsible for the ‘disappearance’ of one’s family was the cruellest punishment of all. It was Duvalier’s ultimate retribution: kill the families of exiles — men, women and babies. Papa Doc believed this horrifying strategy would make his exiled enemies weigh the high cost of their actions against him.

  The anguished priest, then aged thirty-three, was to live for years with this personal Calvary — not knowing whether his loved ones were dead or alive, visualizing the horrors they might be suffering because he was an activist priest. During our border trip he could only guess what had happened, but years later he finally pieced together the sickening story.

  Duvalierists had heard Father Bajeux’s name cited on a newscast on 10 July 1964 on the Santo Domingo radio monitored in Haiti. The newscast reported that the exiled priest had opened an office to help poor Haitians in the Dominican Republic, especially those toiling as cane-cutters. The Papal Nuncio accredited to the Dominican government had attended the opening ceremony, as had the Archbishop of Santo Domingo. Eleven days preceding the broadcast, on 29 June, Fred Baptiste’s guerrillas had staged a landing on the west coast of Haiti, coming from the Dominican Republic. There was at least one Duvalier spy in the Baptiste camp in Santo Domingo. Papa Doc had the names of all those involved with the guerrillas, according to evidence he was able to present to the Organization of American States and the UN Security Council. Bajeux had been a chaplain to the guerrillas and said Mass at their initial training camp near Villa Mella. I also had been listed and accused of issuing identification cards to the Kamoken. In fact I was interested in knowing each and every exile, where they came from and as much of their lives as possible for an eventual news feature. I had photographed each of the Kamoken and prepared a card with their background — in fact I was trying to weed out Papa Doc spies. I failed.

  On the night of 11 July the Bajeux family was preparing for bed. The mother was nervous, with a premonition of trouble even though she had been reassured by the French Ambassador and the Papal Nuncio that she had nothing to fear. Albert, her eldest son, was comforting her, as was Maxim, her youngest daughter. Another daughter, Anne-Marie, a pretty woman who was engaged to be married, had come to spend the night with her mother and comfort her and a third daughter, Micheline. The three sisters were all in their nightdresses getting ready for bed. Suddenly it happened. The quiet Bois Verna Street filled with cars loaded with big-name Tontons Macoutes and police officers. Neighbours watched terror-stricken from behind shutters. The Macoutes and police burst into the Bajeux house. Neighbours saw the family being dragged in their night clothes into vehicles and driven away. No one bothered to switch off the lights. The front door of the house remained open. The neighbours dared not enter the house to close the door and turn the lights off. It remained a strangely silent illuminated house for days, a reminder of Duvalierist terror. The Bajeux family’s yard boy, who was also seized but later temporarily released, told neighbours that everyone had been beaten at the police headquarters before the family were disappeared. The yard boy was later seized again and also disappeared. All were later reported executed at Fort Dimanche.

  Bajeux had asked me not to tell Graham about what had happened to his family. I agreed that we didn’t want to become the story and divert Graham from concentrating on Papa Doc.

  The American Mission House at Las Matas de Farfan came into view, and we all sighed deeply in anticipation of something cold and fresh to drink. As we walked up to the building the door swung wide open. Reverend Jim McSwigan, a tall Irishman from Pittsburgh with a shock of blond hair, stood there with a wide smile on his face. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said, thrusting out his hand, as if he’d been waiting all day for our arrival.

  We shook hands, and he said it was good to see me again on the border. Then he reached past me and took Graham’s hand and pumped it excitedly. ‘Graham! What a pleasure this is. Come in. Please come in.’

  We were stunned. None of us dared look at each other. As Father McSwigan escorted us upstairs to the mission’s common room I asked him, ‘Do you have any whisky?’

  ‘No. With the taxes and all, it is far too expensive now. But I can make a good rum Manhattan!’

  And so he did, quickly mixing a batch and handing one to each of us. When Father McSwigan went out to order our dinner — the priests had just finished their evening meal when we arrived — Graham, Father Bajeux and I burst into laughter.

  ‘It is their intelligence service,’ Graham said when he regained his composure, his eyes filled with tears of laughter. ‘They have people everywhere. They knew we were coming. Missionaries are well informed. They have their network.’

  Father Bajeux walked over to examine the mission’s well-stocked common-room library. He found a copy of Graham’s most recent work, A Burnt-Out Case, a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection published by Viking in 1961. ‘Mr Greene, you gave yourself away,’ Bajeux said and waved a copy of a book featuring Graham’s photograph on the back flap. The image was a relatively recent likeness, and Graham had not changed much. ‘You allowed them to publish your picture in one of your books. They know you well in this house.’

  It was the first time I had seen Bajeux smile in three months. The library also contained copies of two other Graham Greene tomes, The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory. Graham confessed that until lately he had not permitted his picture to appear on the jacket of his books, in order not to be recognized.

  Bajeux picked up a copy of The Power and the Glory. ‘It is my favourite,’ he said.

  When Father McSwigan returned to announce that the cook had agreed to prepare us a spaghetti dinner we regained our decorum and took our seats like innocent schoolboys. Graham drained his second drink and complimented the Father on his rum Manhattans.

  ‘Call me Gredo,’ he said. ‘That’s how I’m known around here, Padre Geraldo.’ We never learned if it had been the photograph on the flap of A Burnt-Out Case that had given Graham’s identity away. Nor did we ask, because it didn’t really matter. Graham was treated like a visiting bishop. He was quickly made to feel a member of the mission family. ‘I’ll admit,’ Padre Gredo said. ‘We make Graham required reading in the seminar.’ He was a good and generous host — especially with his rum — and he didn’t spoil the visit with talk of Hell or redemption.

  Father Bajeux explained that we were on the border looking for missing Haitians and wanted to know whether there was any news locally of Haiti or border crossings.

  Padre Gredo said he’d heard the horror stories from Haiti but that this sector of the border had been relatively quiet during the past several weeks.

  ‘How is the road along the border to Jimam’?’ I asked.

  ‘What road?’ Padre Gredo shook his head. ‘Is there a road?’ I supposed the Redemptionist was not trying to be funny. ‘It is more like a track than a road. My guess is it’s hardly ever in use. When there is trouble with Duvalier the army might make a trip, or timber thieves may move out some wood, but hardly anyone goes from here to Jiman’ along the border. It is much easier to go inland and cut across on a good road.’

  There was no room for the three of us at the mission house, and Padre Gredo suggested we drive the short distance inland to San Juan de la Maguana, the country’s fourth-largest town, assuring us that the hotel had plenty of space. We thanked him and his fellow priests for their hospitality and promised to return for early-morning Mass and breakfast.

  The relaxing visit to the mission house, the rum Manhattans and the generous helpings of spaghetti allowed the subject of religion again to arise, as we sped the twenty miles into the Dominican interior in search of an inn. Graham had thoroughly enjoyed the Irish-American missionary priest.

  ‘So what was your religion before you converted to Catholicism?’ I asked.

  ‘None,’ Graham said, adding that his family had been Anglican but that he had been an atheist before being baptized a Catholic. After his conversion, he sa
id, ‘I took as my patron saint St Thomas Didymus, the doubter.’

  I said something about how in Haiti Catholicism and Voodoo have become intertwined.

  ‘They are not so entirely different,’ Graham said. ‘They both accept the existence of God.’

  A lot of old Breton priests who had served in Haiti would have been shocked at that. While Judaeo-Christianity is distinguished by its concept of a single deity and a plethora of saints and guardian angels, Voodoo-worshippers must keep their peace with a plethora of Iwas.

  We entered the Hotel Maguana, which had been built by El Benefactor, Generalissimo Trujillo, father of tourism and virtually everything else. We were told that Trujillo had had a reserved suite here, as in most of the Dominican Republic’s hotels. A large black Dominican man was registering as we were handed our registration cards.

  ‘What is this?’ Graham asked the desk clerk, pointing to a line that demanded to know the guest’s colour. Trujillo was sensitive to race and colour and had decreed his country officially ‘white’. To help confirm this, hotel guests were required to list the colour of their skin in addition to their nationality. The registration cards with the requisite line for this data were still in use nearly four years after the dictator’s demise. The black Dominican registering before us had put down his colour as ‘‘ indio oscuro’, meaning a dark-hued Indian. It was difficult even then for a black Dominican to admit to being black. The Dominicans were proving Trujillo right. There were no blacks in the Dominican Republic. The hotel industry could confirm that, because no blacks ever registered.

  Graham was indignant. The registration card requirement was blatantly racist. He complained to the desk clerk and, fuelled with Padre Gredo’s Manhattans, he decided to provide a literal description of his colour and wrote ‘Pink’ on his registration card. He showed Bajeux and me his card with a touch of triumph. ‘That settles that. I am pink.’

  The desk clerk, himself a swarthy ‘Indian hue’, looked slightly confused. If someone had made such an impertinent statement prior to Trujillo’s assassination he or she would in all probability have been overheard by an informer, and the police would have joined us in the lobby for a quick arrest. Even then, being politically ‘pink’ or ‘red’ was still extremely dangerous in the Dominican Republic. After all, President Juan Bosch had been overthrown only two years earlier by the military who accused him of having been soft on communists.