Travels with Graham Greene 145 Travels with Graham Greene
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Diederich: Travels with Graham Greene 145 Travels with Graham Greene which would have amused him. Some of the Travels with allegations are outrageous and unfounded. If Graham could stand up in his grave he Graham Greene might shout a word he learned in his travels in Spanish America: “basta!”—enough!” Bernard Diederich When I first met him, I realized that he was really a shy man. But over the years I Graham Greene had a divine habit of turn- also learned just how committed he was ing up when a place was about to break into in his incessant quest. Greene was proud the news. He really did not need my help. of an ancestral connection to the beauti- He knew how to sniff the air and while not ful islands of the Caribbean. In fact, I often endowed with language skills except English, wondered whether his ancestors had not in which he became a master, he had a sixth communicated their love for the islands sense and extraordinary clairvoyance about and adventure to him. people and places. I had the pleasure of In 1963 when dictator Francois (“Papa accompanying him on some of his forays in Doc”) Duvalier was at the height of his the Caribbean and Central America and can terror in Haiti, Graham went back to Haiti be accused of placing him at the center of to test that terror. At the beginning when controversy in the 1970s and 1980s by open- I first met him, in Haiti in 1954, he was to ing his passage to Panama and introducing me just a famous writer on vacation, very him to the country’s strongman, Brig. Gen. English and very quiet. Much later I saw Omar Torrijos Herrera. him as a literary sword (he preferred a long Even in Graham’s later years, during bow and a full quiver of arrows) striking at the last of his trips to Central America, he Papa Doc, whom we both equated with fas- was able to march through the area’s polit- cism of the Hitlerian strain. Graham needed ical quicksand sorting out its labyrinth of no prodding. In targeting Papa Doc in the intrigue. Undaunted, the author of The Quiet novel The Comedians and later the movie American looked for some familiar faces version of the book, Graham gave poor from Indochina days as the Contras’ not- Haitians a voice when they had no voice. so-secret “secret war” with its CIA handlers And this voice was heard around the world. heated up. On his last trip to the region in For his effort he came close to becoming December 1985, he went to Nicaragua and, another of Papa Doc’s victims. with U.S. President Reagan’s words ringing Greene’s elimination, which was seri- in his ears—that the anti-Sandinista Contras ously considered by Duvalier and his “are our brothers and these freedom fight- aides, attested to the effectiveness of The ers we owe them our help . they are the Comedians. It was only after he died, and equivalent to the founding Fathers and while researching my book in Haiti, that I the brave men and women of the French learned how infuriated Papa Doc was, not Resistance . .”—Graham received a decora- so much by the book but by the movie ver- tion from the Sandinistas, who were grateful sion of it, which was the last script Greene to have a friend in the famous British author. wrote. Duvalier was prepared to take Since his death, Greene and his writings extreme action against the writer. Graham have been the object of concentrated analysis, suspected, but never knew, the true danger Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2017 1 Graham Greene Studies, Vol. 1 [2017], Art. 20 Graham Greene Studies Volume 1 146 he had faced. Ultimately, Papa Doc decided He died. on an alternative plan to strike at Graham, In the early years of our friendship in the spending thousands upon thousands of dol- mid-1950s, I helped introduce Greene to lars from the Haitian state treasury to have what was then the pleasantries of Haitian the film banned in France. life. Later, in the early 1960s, I helped nav- Panama and Central America were to be igate him through the Byzantine labyrinths his last hurrah, and what a pleasure it was of the Duvalier dictatorship of the early ‘60s. accompanying him. It helped him produce During these latter years, I took him to meet two more books—Getting to Know the a band of Haitian guerrillas hibernating General and The Captain and the Enemy. in an old insane asylum in the Dominican The “Viejo Ingles,” the “Old Englishman,” Republic. The group had failed to overthrow as he was known affectionately in Spanish- Papa Doc and had been forced into exile. America did not win the Nobel Prize but Greene, in fact was to have more impact on he was honored by men in those countries the Duvalier regime than the guerrillas and whose causes he supported. His cause was all the many attempts to dislodge the Haitian not always Washington’s cause, but then in tyrant. But our relationship was not one of the ‘80s there were many Americans who reporter and invariant subject. did not agree with Washington fanning the As noted, the Graham Greene I knew did fires of the Cold War in Central America. indeed enjoy living on the “dangerous edge Some of the anecdotes he told me along of things,” as he put it, and the closer to the the trail still enliven my memory. He was edge the better. No one could have loved a great raconteur. The Graham Greene I more than he the thrill of a Volkswagen came to know often reminded me of my own “bug” skirting the edges of a sheer precipice father who had a similar sense of humor, along the Dominican-Haitian frontier, or love of pranks, and enjoyment of applying a flying in an old Cessna with a seemingly mad little shock treatment during a dull moment. Panamanian poet. Greene scorned mov- Who was Graham Greene? Like all com- ie-formula heroes and villains. He detested plex human beings, and perhaps all of us, mediocrity. Nor did he actively seek public he was not one person, but many. Greene acclaim. He didn’t consider himself a news himself once told a newsman in Haiti that story when he occasionally “escaped” from he was pursued by an adventurous, rather England, and later from Antibes during indiscreet man by the name of Graham the crowded tourist season on the French Greene. I knew him best as an inexhaustible Riviera, but instead preferred a low profile, voyager who detested boredom. From time avoiding public attention and interviews. to time I reported on his travels in snippets From his perspective, the Americas offered for Time magazine’s “People” section. him one of the last frontiers to live and One of the most fascinating stories of that explore as he chose. At times, he spurned his time never made it to print: The Forgotten friends’ advice and appeared to be swimming Hostage. Greene’s efforts to save a kidnap against the tide. He was a man who, when all victim in El Salvador were complicated and was said and done, relied on his own instinct. required massive amounts of time. I had My book, Seeds of Fiction, is about Graham agreed to Graham’s request to embargo the Greene and how he drew inspiration to write story until the kidnapped victim went free. seven of his books. Greene’s first important https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/ggs/vol1/iss1/20 2 Diederich: Travels with Graham Greene 147 Travels with Graham Greene book, The Power and the Glory, was the result his 1938 trip here, but smartly uniformed of his first trip to Mexico in spring of 1938, elite paratroopers from Mexico City. What and his last, The Captain and the Enemy, had not changed were the black vultures that published in 1988, ended a few hundred miles Greene so hated. Gliding above, their ugly to the south in Nicaragua. Though Graham little heads peered down on us, sensing that Greene is associated with Indochina, (The there would be “carrion” that day. From the Quiet American) and the Cold War intrigues time, three decades ago, when Greene had of Europe (The Third Man) and Africa, the stood in the same old city main Plaza de fact is that seven of his books (conspicuously Armas, and written “If I had moved a camera also including The Comedians, Our Man In all round the edge of the little plaza in a pan- Havana, The Honorary Consul, The Lawless ning shot it would have recorded all the life Roads, Travels with My Aunt, Getting to there was in the capital city.” The Templo de Know the General and The Captain and la Concepcion, partially destroyed in 1925 the Enemy) were drawn from his odysseys during the religious persecution period, had through the Americas encompassing—in been rebuilt with a new imposing façade, addition to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central seven years after Greene’s visit. This had been America and South America. the fief of governor-dictator, Jefe Máximo, The “Viejo Ingles” will be sorely missed Tomás Garrido Canabal (1920-35) the vicious by those who loved and respected him. To anti-clerical leader in Mexico who created salute his memory, and to imbue his his- the Red Shirts, a fascist paramilitary group torical persona with accuracy it deserves, I to hunt down Catholic priests and shout at rummaged through my old notebooks and Garrido’s command, “God does not exist, unearthed some 130 odd letters I received nor ever has existed!” He was finally booted from Greene over years of our friendship.