The Seeds of Fiction

by Bernard Diederich

  Later in the afternoon Sergeant José Jesús Martínez, General Torrijos’s aide and our driver that first day, arrived. He insisted we call him Chuchu (the Latin American nickname for Jesus). Chuchu proved himself a formidable conversationalist and a chatterbox. He talked virtually non-stop over lunch in the old hotel’s high-ceilinged dining-room and throughout our fifty-mile drive back to Panama City. Graham and I listened to Chuchu expounding on his Marxist ideology and life as Omar’s aide. That evening over a nightcap, after Martínez had left us, Graham wondered aloud, ‘How sincere a Marxist is Chuchu? He certainly talks well.’

  I had heard that Chuchu, politically, was Omar’s left-hand man, but I had no clue as to how influential he might be. Torrijos had both capitalists and Marxists in his camp and personally embraced neither extreme. In fact he prided himself on being a pragmatist and knowing how to balance both groups. He had the ability to take advice from both sides, reflect on it and then make a final decision. He was the first to admit it was not always the right decision, but his intuition was rather good. He trusted Chuchu. That was apparent. But Graham and I agreed that Chuchu, for a man of so many eclectic interests and loyalties, must find it hard to be a dogmatic Marxist.

  The next day we were invited to a town meeting over which Omar was presiding in a hall across the street from the Comandancia, the National Guard headquarters, in El Chorrillo, a damp, decrepit barrio in downtown Panama City. The sagging wooden tenements always seemed to have drying laundry hanging out their windows: flags of poverty. We stood among the crowd and watched. Omar sat among several of his top Guardia officers. He twisted his unlit cigar, listening to the complaints and suggestions of the poor people of El Chorrillo. Speakers were introduced by a bongo drum-roll.

  Graham was enthralled. He commented how the black Panamanian drummers sounded Haitian. He asked me to identify each member of the high command, who they were and their alliances. He gave Chief of Staff Colonel Flores low marks because he sat chewing gum. Omar later told us Flores was one of his most trustworthy officers. The General didn’t say whom among his military staff he didn’t trust. Later, the television commentator Jorge Carrasco caught up with us, and Graham went back into his shell. He wasn’t happy about the intrusion. He distrusted the newsman-translator.

  Graham played his own game, quietly assessing who were the good guys whom he believed the General could trust and the potential bad guys who could be secret backers of El Hombre, ex-President Arnulfo Arias. After having heard stories of Arias’s early days in Europe and his infatuation with Mussolini and Hitler, Graham had concluded that the former president had an evil streak.

  Later he asked me to take him to the British Embassy. I was at a loss. In all my travels I had never bothered to check in with the British or US embassy to sign their respective visitors’ books. However, if he wasn’t staying at the British Embassy in whatever foreign land he was visiting Graham was a stickler for registering with the Embassy to make his presence known. When we got to Her Majesty’s Embassy in Panama City it was closed. We later returned when it was open, and he duly signed their book. ‘Let’s see if the old fart [the British ambassador] invites us to tea,’ Graham chuckled.

  No invitation came.

  The next evening we listened to the other side of the Canal issue. Virtually across the fence from El Chorrillo, the baseball diamond in the Canal Zone was lit up as if for a night game, but instead it was for a Zonian rally. Politically at bat was the policeman Drummond himself. He addressed the crowd of barely a hundred American Zonians about the legal actions he had taken to block the Canal Treaty. Graham thought it was interesting how the Americans called Secretary of State Kissinger and President Ford by their first names and accused ‘Henry’ and ‘Gerry’ of being ‘traitors’. We both felt a little sorry for the Zonians; they were bound to lose the game. They believed in American hegemony over the Canal and honestly felt they were the only ones who could run it properly. Graham recorded in his book Getting to Know the General, ‘The protesters looked lost and lonely in the vast stadium and the hot and humid night, and one felt a little sorry for them. God and Country would almost certainly let them down just as surely as Gerry and Henry had done.’

  I regretted having to leave Graham in Panama, but before departing I mentioned to Rory Gonzales that Graham needed a better driver, that he couldn’t communicate with the first one assigned to him. Rory reported to the General and the General assigned his aide to be both driver and guide to Graham. As we parted, Graham said he wasn’t sure he would remain for the entire planned three weeks. ‘Must get back to Yvonne,’ he said. It was obvious that Yvonne was very special to him. Indeed, upon his arrival I had attributed his new tropical wardrobe to her. He was wearing slightly more stylish tropical clothes and shoes than in his earlier days. Time had noted in a 1951 cover story on Graham that ‘he dresses like a careless Oxford undergraduate’. Yvonne told me years later that when she met Graham in the early 1960s he owned just three suits, each of them grey pinstriped. Clearly he was not fashion-conscious. I left Panama to cover general elections in Jamaica and then join my family on a prearranged holiday.

  *It was after attending Graham’s memorial service at Westminster Cathedral on 6 June 1991 that I understood what he had meant in cautioning me about his ‘personal life’ on that train in Panama. The Sunday Times published a photograph of the ‘Catherine’ who had accompanied Graham on their visit to Haiti in 1956, identifying her as Catherine Walston. ‘At precisely the same hour as the Westminster memorial service, Lord Walston, a socialist millionaire whose life had been closely bound up with Greene’s, was being buried. Only with his death has the long-kept secret emerged of Greene’s love for Catherine Walston (Lord Walston’s beautiful American wife),’ stated the report by Geordie Greig. ‘Even though Lady Walston died in 1978, aged 62, Greene always insisted that matters of the heart should remain private.’ It was said that their affair, begun in 1949, had ended in 1960. Yet it was hardly the secret the Sunday Times suggested. The literary world knew about it, and Evelyn Waugh’s letters mention Catherine. Waugh appeared to have approved of the liaison and wrote admiringly of both Catherine and Graham.

  14 | GETTING TO KNOW CHUCHU

  PR man Fabian Velarde had sought to market Graham in the usual press agent’s fashion. I did my best to explain that Graham was not in Panama as a publicity stunt to publicize Panama or Omar or to fight for the Canal Treaty. ‘Graham,’ I said, ‘is a writer who decides what he writes when he likes.’

  When Velarde said he wanted a professional American photographer to follow Graham around and take pictures of him, I spoke up indignantly. ‘On no condition,’ I declared.

  ‘But the General likes this photographer,’ Velarde said.

  ‘Graham doesn’t,’ I replied. He hated having his picture taken.

  When I told Graham about the exchange he said, ‘Quite right. I don’t want to end up in Playboymagazine between some big tits without my knowledge.’

  And when Torrijos heard of the episode he said, ‘Leave Graham alone.’

  The order was that Sergeant ‘Chuchu’ Martínez would take charge of Graham after my departure. Omar assigned Chuchu as Graham’s driver, guide, translator and professor of local lore and history. Appointing Chuchu to this task was a sign that the General had accepted Graham into his close circle of friends. Few generals share their aides, and Chuchu had at times made himself indispensable to Torrijos. While Chuchu often romanticized his version of things, the origin of his relationship with Torrijos was indeed intriguing. Omar explained to us that Chuchu had joined the National Guard to fight him but instead had become a loyal aide. He said he had met Chuchu at the Guardia boot camp at Río Hato. The officer at the camp in charge of basic training for an anti-guerrilla force told Torrijos, ‘General, we have a professor of mathematics here who wants to become a soldier.’ Torrijos was understandably baffled by such an anomaly.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ the General asked Chuchu, who had b
een a faculty member at the University of Panama.

  ‘General, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t beat you on the outside, so I’ve decided to try from the inside,’ Chuchu said.

  ‘The son-of-a-bitch was only half joking,’ Torrijos said. When the laughter died down Omar’s instructions to the officer were: ‘OK, let’s see if the old bastard [Chuchu was forty-five] can survive the training.’

  As a professor of philosophy (his initial discipline) at the university Chuchu had joined the protests, often violent, against the 1968 military coup that ousted Populist President Arnulfo Arias. Chuchu’s involvement cost him his university job. Eventually he obtained a two-year scholarship to study mathematics at the Sorbonne in Paris. Afterwards he was permitted to return to the University of Panama to teach mathematics but spent much of his spare time with an experimental cinema group. He then joined Torrijos’s Guardia Nacional. Chuchu’s campus student friends ribbed him about changing his profession from academic to militar, and anti-Torrijos students believed he had sold out to the enemy. Later, Chuchu accepted the General’s offer to join his security detail after they had lunch together. Torrijos had won over the enemy, and Chuchu had switched sides.

  Chuchu became more than a security aide; he also became Omar’s staff intellectual, interpreter and troubleshooter. He was promoted to sergeant -he said he didn’t want an officer’s rank. One of his many troubleshooting tasks, assigned to him personally by Torrijos, was that of assisting Latin American leftists on the run from Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Omar, who didn’t own a chequebook or even know how to write a cheque - his wife ran their family finances — gave Chuchu a figurative blank cheque to aid the refugees. From all indications Chuchu was scrupulously honest in dealing with the funds. He himself lived modestly and appeared to have no particular interest in money. His underground railroad moved rebels escaping from Argentina’s military and Chile’s General Pinochet in and out of Panama. By the time Graham arrived, Chuchu’s ‘Pigeon House’, the name he gave his combination rebel guest quarters and safe house, was the nesting place mostly of Sandinistas fighting President Anastasio (nicknamed Tacho II) Somoza of Nicaragua.

  Chuchu admitted that he did not always see eye to eye politically with Torrijos and that he did his best to influence the General. However, he would not allow his ideology to encroach on his loyalty to the General. It was not long before Chuchu was extending his loyalty to Graham. They discovered that they were fellow playwrights. Chuchu told us he had published two plays the year before, one entitled El Caso Dios (The God Case) and the other, which won the Ricardo Miró prize of 1975, entitled La Guerra del Banano (The Banana Wars). In 1952 he had won the National Theatre prize in Madrid for his play, La Perrera. Chuchu explained that his Banana Wars play was about United Brands, known as the Chiriqui Land company in Panama. The villains were the big banana producers who had exerted such a powerful influence in Central America’s ‘banana republics’. The heroes were leftist workers.

  One day Chuchu proudly showed us around Panama University and introduced us to its Experimental Cinema group. The students excitedly asked Graham whether they could interview him on camera, for television. Knowing his aversion to being interviewed on television I was surprised to hear him say, All right.’ (As far as I know, the only other time he went on television was much later, in 1983, on a regional French station when he appeared to attack a story on Nicaragua that he found offensive in Time. He told me where to obtain a video of the show if I wanted it.)

  Graham and Chuchu were soon a couple of fellow conspirators. It was a merry ideological mix. Omar’s other aides, to whom Graham had taken a dislike, were soon pushed into the background as far he was concerned. Meanwhile the eclectic multilingual Chuchu was perfecting his Italian as he was courting a young Italian woman who resided in Panama and whom he was soon to marry.

  Graham was smitten by Panama. On his return to France on 30 December 1976 he wrote to me:

  I am writing after my return from one of the most charming countries I have visited! I was very grateful for your support those first days and as you can imagine we had a running struggle with Mr Velarde. He told Chuchu to report at every Guardia Nacional on the routes we took so that he could know where I was, but Chuchu completely disobeyed instructions. In any case the General on, I think, our second meeting had told us to do the opposite of anything Mr Velarde required. The downfall of Mr Velarde occurred just before I left when the General was having one of his Saturday binges, which began at 5 o’clock and ended at 10.00 and Mr Velarde may have begun earlier. Anyway, Velarde was quite incapable and when he left me at my hotel he just managed to get out that he hoped that I would have a cup of tea with him and the General next day, which seemed something of an improbability. Chuchu was a tower of strength though, unlike what you thought, he always carried a revolver in his pocket! In fact his car had been blown up by a bomb a little before my arrival and so we travelled always in one of the General’s cars. I saw a great deal of the General and liked him more all the time. He soon came to realize that I was not an intellectual!

  I got involved even in his private life as well as Chuchu’s, although it was a complete holiday and, apart from Mr Velarde and that fat translator, I liked everybody. My only dislikes seemed to have been shared with the General. I even got an idea for a novel when I was in the country with Chuchu and, if it does seem to take root, I shall go back to Panama in July.

  I was very touched by the little note [you] left under my door and I was sorry to be out when you telephoned. With the help of Chuchu I tried to telephone [you in] Mexico several times but without success. I do hope you have had a nice holiday with your family in New Zealand, and perhaps we can meet again next summer. Everybody appreciated your piece in Time magazine, which occurred at psychologically the right moment, because of Mr [Ellsworth] Bunker’s arrival with the negotiators.

  The article was one of many I reported from Panama on the potentially explosive issue of conceding sovereignty over the Canal to Panama.

  Graham and I corresponded a great deal during 1977. He had asked me to keep him abreast of developments in Panama as he was writing an article about Panama. The General and Chuchu were of no help since they were not letter-writers. Although covering the Canal Treaty negotiations was taking up much of my time — I was virtually commuting back and forth between my bureau base in Mexico City and Panama — I kept Graham as informed as possible.

  Graham was a fast worker. On 18 January 1977 he announced in another missive:

  I have done a rather lengthy 4,000-word article on Panama and Playboy is showing interest in America as well as the New York Review of Books. Playboy of course would probably need illustrations. My camera shutter went wrong just before leaving with Chuchu for the country so I had to depend on him for photographs. Unfortunately the two he took of me and the General at the General’s house in the country are very dark and I am not sure that they are useable. Could I have permission to show anyone who publishes the article that very good photograph which you didn’t use in Time? Naturally, of course, a fee would have to be negotiated and credit given you, but is this impossible because of your connection with Time? I really believe a novel is emerging into my subconscious as the result of Panama with Chuchu as the main character.

  On 5 February I received a handwritten letter in Graham’s tiny script which I had great difficulty in reading. Omar’s press agent Fabian Velarde had by now suffered a heart attack and died, and I had facetiously reassured Graham that it had had nothing to do with him. ‘You have relieved my guilt about Velarde,’ he wrote back. ‘I told the General I called him fishface and he became a standing joke between us.’ Graham announced that the New York Review of Books had published his article on Panama and that the Sunday Telegraph magazine in London would ‘follow suit in early March … I chose one of the two photos you gave me. I hope you’ll find the article reasonably truthful and I’d be glad to hear what the General’s reaction has been.’ He end
ed with ‘I envy your going back to Panama. I feel quite homesick for the place.’ A week later in another letter he wrote:

  I do hope by this time you have seen my story — I asked a copy to be sent to you. I think the New York Review is a good place for it to appear and better, except financially, than Playboy. I hear from John Ansty of the Sunday Telegraph magazine that Playboy might be interested in the article for its Spanish edition. He has the syndication rights apart from the United States and France. Tell Chuchu I have just had his letter and a copy of his play — an excellent little one-act play, by the way. I hope he will have received the New York Review by this time.

  The anxiety that Graham displayed in his letters, one seeming to follow the other, over how his Panama article would be seen by the General and Chuchu was striking. It was as if Graham were a cub reporter waiting for a response to his first story:

  I feel a little nervous in case the General feels that I was a bit too personal. I did leave out a very interesting story of his wife and his father-in-law and Dian [sic] which Chuchu can tell you. I was very touched by the fact that the General confided it to me. The telephone directory [which I had sent him] is a fascinating bedside book for me and the plans [maps] of Panama City and the Zone are invaluable. I am doing my best to finish off the novel which was begun eight years ago [The Human Factor] and in which I have no confidence, but am determined to get to the end of it if only in order to try this Spring to begin the Panama novel. One of the things which fascinated me about Panama was the communications. The General obviously can’t rely on telephone or codes and therefore, like in the 18th century, he uses couriers. Chuchu is sometimes used as a courier. Once when he was spending the day at the General’s house in the country a letter arrived from Venezuela by jet plane at his little airport there. I am always delighted when the 20th century goes back through the multiplication of technology to the 17th or 18th century.