The Seeds of Fiction

by Bernard Diederich

  Much later in the book, as Greene recounts his efforts back at home in France to begin the subsequently aborted novel, On the Way Back, the scene is transformed. The fictional protagonist, a journalist named Marie-Claire, arrives at the same suburban house to interview the as yet unknown General. ‘She found herself surrounded in the small courtyard of a white suburban villa with half-Indian faces. The men all carried revolvers on their belts and one had a walkie-talkie which he kept pressed closely to his ear as though he were waiting with the intensity of a priest for one of his Indian gods to proclaim something. The men are as strange to me, she thought, as the Indians must have seemed to Columbus five centuries ago. The camouflage of their uniforms was like painted designs on naked skin.’

  DeYoung’s fellow foreign correspondent Alan Riding concluded his review in the 4 November 1984 New York Times:

  On Greene’s last trip to Panama, in 1983, some of Torrijos’s followers were eager to use him as a symbol that the general’s political ideas were still alive. Greene didn’t mind. ‘I have never hesitated to be “used” in a cause I believe in,’ he noted. And he headed off in a Panamanian Government plane, first to Nicaragua, where he met top Sandinista leaders, and then to Cuba for the same reason, where he greeted Fidel Castro with the words, ‘I am not a messenger. I am the message.’

  Greene omits the detailed analysis required to support his case, but it remains valid — the death of Torrijos removed a vital force for moderation from the Central American scene. At his death, he was somewhat disillusioned with both the Sandinistas and Fidel Castro, but he kept his lines open to the left, just as he did to the United States. And his death, Greene concludes, ‘was not only the end of his dream of moderate socialism but perhaps the end of any hope of a reasonable peace in Central America.’ Coming out shortly after Graham Greene’s 80th birthday, Getting to Know the General reassures us that the writer’s dreams and hopes have not died. From a literary point of view, this book is perhaps not among his most memorable — he has conceded he found it difficult to write. But from a human point of view, it is compellingly compassionate.

  ‘I am glad you found something you liked in The General, Graham wrote to me on 2 January 1984. He was responding to my favourable comment.

  I was disappointed in the book myself. It seemed to fall between too many stools, but it was the best I could do. Of course I haven’t seen much of the American press, but I was surprised by the number of good reviews that I did see — including the New York Times, Time itself, and Newsweek, and there were others … I do hope we meet again in not so long a time in Central America or elsewhere.

  Graham ended a long letter with ‘Forgive a hasty line, but this bloody 80th birthday is filling all my time and my post box.’

  For all his eight decades of life, Graham’s correspondence — and mind — seemed as sharp as ever. He wrote on 29 September 1984:

  I am sorry you are out of Central America for the moment, but I suspect after the election you will be well in again. I don’t see any chance of joining you in the Caribbean for our war [a reference to Yvonne’s domestic tribulations] is still continuing and I don’t feel able to get away for any length of time. I have been invited to Bulgaria and to Russia — Bulgaria in October and Russia in the spring — but I am very doubtful of getting to either of them … I went back to Spain for a little more than a week in August but I plan no real travels … Let me know if you come to Paris.

  Back in New Zealand my eldest sister, a Catholic nun and a great admirer of Graham Greene, had been diagnosed with cancer and had been given only a few weeks to live. I had made an urgent journey to visit her. On my return to Miami I received a letter from Graham, dated 27 June 1985, saying he was sorry to hear the news.

  As one grows older there seem to be many more deaths than births to record. I don’t know exactly what I shall be doing this summer except I hope that I escape from the Côte a bit. The affair [Yvonne’s problems] is still a bit of a bother but not so much as it used to be. Chuchu rings up from time to time and it’s just possible that I might go to Panama and Nicaragua in late July, but I find it difficult to make up my mind. I shall certainly let you know if I do go. Reagan is a real nightmare. Russia and the USA seem to be the same face looking at each other in the same glass and there are times when I certainly prefer the Russian face to the American face similar though they both are. I miss Omar more and more and I haven’t the same confidence in Noriega … Anyway let’s keep in touch.

  In his postscript he reported, ‘I was invited to the 6th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution on I think July 19 but it’s a date very difficult for me and I was glad to have an excuse to refuse. If I go to Nicaragua I would much rather go on my own and not with a bunch to make propaganda.’

  25 | WE’LL MEET AGAIN

  One day in September 1985 I watched as Graham walked swiftly across the little Antibes railway station to greet me. I had finally found time to take up his invitation and visit him. Apprehensive, in his heavily accented French, Graham questioned the female receptionist at the old Hotel Terminus et Suisse across from the station: ‘You have held your good corner room? I specifically asked for it weeks ago, chamber 12,’ he insisted.

  She nodded. ‘Oui, monsieur.’

  Merci, mademoiselle,

  Graham personally made reservations for his visitors weeks in advance and troubled about their comfort. But he was always relieved when they left and the reunion was over. He never made any secret of how much he treasured his privacy or his aversion to any form of domesticity. ‘One needs to be free of all the taxing chores of domestic life, family feuds and that sort of thing,’ he said, adding that that didn’t mean he didn’t love his family. In fact, he emphasized, he loved his family very much and tried to help and provide for them as much as possible.

  We went to his small apartment overlooking Antibes and the French Riviera and sipped a noontime vodka (not really a martini) which he had poured himself. He had managed to simplify his lifestyle, he said, with few commitments, and Yvonne was most understanding, She arrived on the scene most days at noon after he had completed his day’s work.

  Graham had just emerged from his war with the Mafia. Much of the publicity that had accompanied it, he confessed, was his doing. In addition, all the fuss over his eightieth birthday had robbed him of much of the privacy he held so dear. He had allowed himself to be interviewed and decorated. He had received the Companion of Literature award from the Royal Society of Literature in England and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. During the outset of his war he was so disgusted with the French judicial system that he had returned his Légion d’honneur to Paris, but the government had returned it saying that it remained his until ‘death or dishonour’.

  He sat in his rattan armchair, mocking himself as a fool for having succumbed to the publicity. He wondered out loud whether it wasn’t all part of the rites of becoming an octogenarian. The fall-out from all the publicity was almost a daily routine, and he had to be on his guard. Relishing his vodka, he pondered whether it had not cast too much illumination on his private life. For decades he had preferred to live quietly and unseen; now he complained he was being badgered by perfect strangers. ‘When I returned from Capri there were over sixty letters. I couldn’t possibly reply to them. I’d be writing all day,’ he said.

  At the little tabac across from Chez Félix au Port they had finally learned the identity of the tall Englishman who for years had purchased English and French newspapers and magazines there. In 1984 those newspapers carried big photographs and stories on him to mark his eightieth birthday. He now dreaded his front-door buzzer and intercom.

  Graham’s living-room was his workroom. The bright Mediterranean sun slanted through the glass doors on to the wooden dining table that doubled as his writing desk. He rose, went over and sat down behind the table, his back to the wall, and explained how he worked. He lifted his right hand, his long slender finger bent from rheumatism. The disease was Dupuytren’s co
ntracture. ‘My ideas flow from the right side of my head down to this hand,’ he explained, demonstrating the right hand with which he composed in longhand, using a fountain pen, not a pencil. In the morning, he said, his favourite working time, he was now lucky to produce two hundred words. When the first draft of a manuscript was complete, he added, he would read it page by page into a Dictaphone and then send the tapes to England where his sister, Elisabeth, would do the typing. When the typescript came back he would do his own trimming and other editing.

  Work came first, and he built his life around it; like a turtle, he joked, he had his shell. He did his writing in the morning. By noon he was ready to relax. Yvonne joined him for lunch. He now believed in an afternoon siesta. The evenings were free, although, he said, ‘Yvonne and I drive [she did the driving] into the hills sometimes to a restaurant for an early dinner.’ (Often when he telephoned for a reservation Graham found his name written as Gram Grim.)

  He devoted a great deal of time to reading, and often reread books that he particularly liked. He talked enthusiastically about R.K. Narayan, the Indian writer, whom Graham had helped find a publisher earlier in life and with whom he continued to correspond.

  We reminisced about the General. Graham wondered whether many of the crazy things Torrijos had threatened to do had only been clever tactics designed to force Washington’s hand. There was, for instance, the team of Israeli experts Omar said he had brought to Panama to sabotage the Canal by blowing up its locks if the US Senate refused to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty. It was commonly accepted that Omar’s agents had set off the harmless bombs in the Canal Zone on the eve of Graham’s first visit to Panama in 1976.

  Graham wanted to know whether there was any truth to the rumour that Reagan would invade Nicaragua. He believed that the US president might have adopted Omar’s threatening tactics.

  ‘How can Reagan get away with it?’ he asked, referring to Washington’s belligerent policy towards the Sandinistas.

  Many Americans shared Graham’s concern. It was the first time since the Vietnam War that a US President was being accused of waging an undeclared war without the consent of Congress. The Reagan administration had argued that it was in compliance with the law because the purpose was merely to harass the Sandinista government, not to overthrow it.

  Smiling, Graham said, ‘The General would have found that ingenious …’

  Later, Yvonne arrived. She entered with a flurry and a ‘Bonjour, Gram.’

  Speculation over Torrijos’s reaction to Reagan’s policy in Central America ended in mid-sentence. Graham’s mood brightened. He towered over the trim, petite figure as he rose to greet her. After introductions she excused herself and set about straightening up the small kitchen. He had spoken so often about Yvonne in Central America that I felt I already knew her.

  Then the phone rang. ‘Where are my glasses?’ Graham fretted. Yvonne found them and handed them to him.

  After he hung up Yvonne said that Graham and I had a lot to talk about and that she would not join us for lunch.

  It was a straight walk from his apartment building down the hill to Chez Félix au Port, the old Le Men family restaurant at the entrance to the port, now a fashionable marina. Albert Le Men greeted Graham as an old friend. Chagrined, our host realized that someone was seated at Graham’s favourite table. Graham was visibly annoyed. As soon as he set his reading spectacles down on our allocated table he hurried across the street to the small tabac and bought The Times. ‘The Guardian has really become unreadable,’ he said, ‘but the British Tablet is quite good. I read it regularly.’

  He placed the financial section of the newspaper on the windowsill behind him, and Albert retrieved them. Albert was interested in financial matters; Graham was not. We looked out at the old town gateway in the wall that dated from the seventeenth century and led to the marina. During the summer, he said, the little street would be jammed with pedestrians and vehicle traffic. Chez Félix could no longer be his hideaway, nor could his other favourite local restaurant, Auberge Provençale. The newspaper and magazine stories on his eightieth birthday describing his life in Antibes and naming his two favourite restaurants had ruined all that. Albert agreed. He was often pestered by ‘Greeneophiles’ requesting introductions.

  We drank two bottles of wine during lunch and continued our talk about Central America. ‘I was very interested in the World Court case [Nicaragua’s Sandinistas versus the USA over its backing of the Contra rebels],’ Graham said. ‘I was going to write a letter to Reagan in reply to his famous terrorist speech, accusing the US of being the chief terrorist, but next day I read that Fidel had done just that.’

  There was nothing extreme about Graham, except for his political conversation. While he talked about opium, he was not a dope addict, and while he enjoyed his vodka, rum punches, wine, whisky and good British beer, he was not an alcoholic. Torrijos admired Graham’s capacity for liquor and once asked me, ‘Graham is a heavy drinker, yes?’

  I told Graham and he told the General, ‘No, I am not a heavy drinker. I am a steady drinker.’

  There was a lesson in the manner in which he lived. He configured his living arrangements to be as free as possible from stressful domestic distractions. It was as if his books were his family. His surroundings were almost Spartan, not at all bourgeois. He had everything he needed, but there were no frills and few trinkets from his foreign trips, no unnecessary extras, just a tidy one-bedroom apartment with no room for guests. Yet it was a place where even Salvadorean guerrillas could feel at home, although Graham had been a little tart with the Haitian guerrilla Fred Baptiste and his suspicious army friend when they visited him during the filming of sequences of The Comedians, which were being shot in the hills above St Raphael further down the Riviera.

  ‘Fred said that their train left at 9.50 p.m. and when we got to the station we found its departure time was 8.50. He had a long wait for the next train. How can they run a revolution if they can’t get such a simple thing as their train schedule right?’ Graham complained.

  Panama’s Chuchu had been somewhat taken aback by Graham’s simple lifestyle on the French Riviera. It was in stark contrast to the way other rich and famous people lived in big villas on Cap Antibes, hidden behind high walls and scraggly Mediterranean pines or further along the coast in such sprawling white villas as that of the late author Somerset Maugham, visible in the distance on Cap Ferrat. Graham’s apartment, on the other hand — apart from his library containing two thousand-odd well-worn books, many of which he often reread, and some of which were stacked under a wooden liquor cabinet which also served as a bar — was a very ordinary middle-class bachelor pad.

  Publishers and authors, Graham explained, sent him a great number of unsolicited books. ‘I have no room for them. Some I read, some I don’t, and the man who collects those I cast off is very lucky — he gets a lot of books,’ he said; he avoided calling the collector the dustman.

  He did complain that his flat was no longer as comfortable as it had once been because of the noise. ‘Confounded cars and motorbikes, changing gears and roaring up the street,’ he said, and he slid open the glass doors and stood on the balcony enveloped in the deafening roar of traffic. Graham said he had once poured a pot of water on one particularly noisy motorcyclist who had spent a long time revving his motor below. The water, Graham added, was dissipated into drops by the time it hit the cyclist. ‘I do believe he thought I had peed on him. He was quite angry.’

  Yvonne remained at her home in Juan-les-Pins that evening. Wheeling out a small black-and-white television set Graham said, ‘Let’s hear the evening news.’ He never liked television the way he loved the cinema, he explained, but the evening news had a rather nice anchor lady. The news was tragic. There were pictures of Mexico City, my former Time base, devastated by an earthquake. Firefighters and rescue teams from nearby Marseilles, the woman anchor reported, were leaving to help in the faraway rescue work. Graham and I looked at each other in shock. There was n
othing we could do. I worried about friends in Mexico City and later that evening called home for news of them, but there was none.

  The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was also in the news. Graham bet me that the head of the French Secret Service (General Directorate of External Security, DGSE), Admiral Pierre Lacoste, would roll because of the scandal involving the environmentalist vessel. ‘He will either quit or be fired,’ Graham predicted. The Rainbow Warrior, berthed in Auckland, New Zealand, had been sunk on 10 July by two mines attached to its hull, and a photographer aboard had been killed. The ship had been due to sail on a protest voyage against French nuclear testing on the Mururoa atoll in Polynesia, and the DGSE agents responsible for sabotaging the Rainbow Warrior had been caught by the New Zealand police. Graham ridiculed the French Secret Service as ‘terribly stupid, and one must agree they are a beastly lot of amateurs’. He won his bet. Admiral Lacoste later quit.

  The uproar over the French Secret Service blunder in New Zealand brought him back to the old subject of Kim Philby. Graham said he drew great pleasure from their correspondence as a game between two old friends. It took them back to the days when they lunched together in London. He did say, however, that Philby’s views (contained in his letters) on Soviet trouble spots such as their war in Afghanistan were quite ‘doveish’.

  After dinner we strolled around town, and Graham told me in two words how he had been drawn to Antibes: ‘Love, Yvonne.’ It was as if the darkened street were his confessional, and, like the confessor to the priest, only his profile was visible in the night. ‘I settled here to be near her,’ he said. ‘She lives next door in Juan-les-Pins. We met in Africa, in Douala in the Cameroons in March 1959.’ He had just spent six weeks at a leprosarium in the Belgian Congo and Yvonne called him as burnt out as his character Querry in A Burnt-Out Case. That same year Yvonne moved back from Africa to her home in Juan-les-Pins with her two children. (Martine was eight and Brigitte was nearly five.) Her husband Jacques, a Swiss working for the UAC, the Anglo-Dutch United African Company, whom she had met in Dakar and married in 1948, remained most of the year in Africa. Yvonne told me later that by 1959 she and Jacques were no longer a couple but that they had decided to stay together because of the children. She had gone to Africa with her mother at the end of the Second World War to join her father, who had made a career in Africa building the Benin-to-Niger railway.