The Seeds of Fiction

by Bernard Diederich

  SEEDS OF FICTION

  In 1965 Graham Greene made what he described as ‘a trip down the Dominican and Haitian border … in the company of two exiles from Haiti’. Bernard Diederich was one of those two exiles, and Seeds of Fiction includes a first-hand account of that trip, one that inspired one of Greene’s most significant works, The Comedians.

  Diederich, a seasoned correspondent for the British and North American press, had lived in Haiti for many years. In 1963 he had been thrown out by Papa Doc Duvalier, and, in exile in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, soon became a champion of the cause of the Haitian opposition.

  Diederich and Greene had become friends in the mid-1950s when the celebrated author visited Haiti. When Greene met Diederich in Santo Domingo in 1965 he was sixty-one and depressed and plagued by religious doubt. Sensing that the volatile political situation in Haiti was something Greene could write about and so help to expose the Duvalier regime in all its brutality, Diederich suggested they tour the border region between the two countries, and together with an exiled Haitian priest, Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux — whose family had recently been ‘disappeared’ — they set off. Along the way they met a number of characters later fictionalized in Greene’s most politically charged novel, The Comedians, and Seeds of Fiction illuminates in detail this pivotal episode in Greene’s career and provides a fascinating glimpse into the writer’s life from a very personal perspective.

  Diederich arranged for Greene to visit Panama and to meet its leader Omar Torrijos, and a friendship quickly developed between the two men, with Greene making a number of trips to visit Torrijos and to get to know the region. This formed the background to Getting To Know the General, Greene’s seminal work on the situation in Central America at that time. These journeys and Greene’s relationship with Torrijos are also explored in intimate detail in this book — everything from where to get the best rum punches to Greene’s views on US policies in the region.

  With extensive new material and exclusive, never-before-seen photographs of the author on his travels, Seeds of Fiction tells the story of how a series of extraordinary and often hair-raising journeys gave one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century new inspiration in his writing.

  BERNARD DIEDERICH was born in New Zealand and settled in Haiti in 1949. The following year he set up an English-language weekly newspaper, the Haiti Sun, and became the resident correspondent for the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Time-Life News Service and the Daily Telegraph. Exiled from Haiti in 1963 by Papa Doc Duvalier, he settled in the Dominican Republic and concentrated on his career in journalism. Later postings for Time magazine included Mexico City and Miami, and his close encounters with dictators and death provided an abundance of news — covering coups, revolutions, invasions, earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions — as well as a wealth of material for his books about the politics and political leaders of the Caribbean and Central America. Diederich was finally allowed to return to Haiti in 1980 to interview Baby Doc Duvalier and his new wife Michéle, and he was then able to report on the popular uprising that sent them both into exile in 1986. He now splits his time between Miami and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It was in the Haitian capital in 1954 that Diederich first met Graham Greene, and this led to a life-long friendship — much of it based on a shared love of that country — which only ended with Greene’s death in 1991.

  | ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Graham Greene’s niece and last secretary, the late Amanda Dennys Saunders, was the first person to encourage me to write this book. She was an inspiration, and I owe dear Amanda, her husband Ron and daughter Lucy much gratitude. Yvonne Cloetta, Graham’s companion, had cheered me on in spite of being a target of malicious attacks and did not live to read the book.

  There are many who helped me along the road to telling the story of a man who over the years had become a father figure and to whom I turned for advice, which I treasured. I wish to thank Graham Greene’s Estate, and especially Francis, for permitting me to use my correspondence with his father. As a compulsive note-taker — as was Graham — I recorded the dialogue between Graham and myself for stories, some published and others shelved, but to this day I can recall our journeys together.

  There are many I must thank, beginning with our writer son Phillippe, my editor, who deserves credit for making me break with my long-held view that a journalist should not become the story and who weeded out so many distracting details that had overloaded earlier versions of this book. I also thank my son Jean-Bernard, who was privileged to know Graham — and several of the photographs he took during our last visit to Graham appear in this book — and, of course, my wife of fifty years who put up with my bringing dictators into our various homes and courageously faced several of them down.

  Professor Richard Greene (no relation) wrote the book Graham Greene: A Life in Letters that is among the best editing of Graham’s correspondence. The late Peter Glenville, although retired, was forthcoming in his interview with me. Haiti’s Foreign Minister, François Benoît, allowed me to photocopy the Ministry’s only remaining copy of Graham Greene Démasqué — a 92-page Haiti Foreign Ministry bulletin that turned to dust in the January 2010 earthquake. Tel Scott of the Havana Post had kept me informed of Graham’s 1954 antics in Havana. Reverend Jim McSwigan, in charge of the Redemptorist Mission Home at Las Matas de Farfán, saved us from dying of thirst on our border trip in January 1965. I would also like to thank the lawyer Sauveur Vaisse for being generous with his time in a Paris interview in 1986.

  In Haiti there are so many to whom I am indebted — peasant neighbours, fellow journalists, Haitians of all ranks of society and our extended family. As a journalist I needed to break the heavy hand of Papa Doc’s censors to send my stories out to the world. Among those who took great risks were RCA Cable employees, especially Josseline Bazelais Edline at West Indies Cable, the only international telephone company. My friend the late Albert Silvera, the owner of El Rancho Hotel, kept me informed of Graham movements during his 1954 and 1956 visits. The late Aubelin Jolicoeur was a great asset to my newspaper, the Haiti Sun; he liked to embroider his stories about Graham during his three visits to Haiti but was nevertheless a good witness. My friend Dick Eder of the New York Times was a superb journalist whose story on Graham in Haiti in 1963 was loved by all. Manny Freedman, Foreign Editor of the New York Times, wanted to know whether I had become a guerrilla when I was among the Kamoken denounced to the United Nations Security Council by Papa Doc but accepted my reasoning that a journalist must go to extremes sometimes to get the story. Mambo Lolotte was understanding and showed great kindness in arranging a red cushion and miniature rocking-chair for Graham’s bottle of vodka.

  I am indebted to my employers at Time-Life News Service (TLNS), who understood the importance of my close ties to General Omar Torrijos, not only because Panama was a major story but also because of Torrijos’s knowledge of the crisis in Central America. They also knew that my time with Graham Greene produced stories. Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan, whose visit with other Time notables to Panama I had to arrange, produced an excellent editorial on South America that is quoted here. John Dinges’s excellent book The Underside of the Torrijos Legacy is recommended for anyone interested in that period. My colleagues who covered the same beat, such as Karen de Young of the Washington Post and Alan Riding of the New York Times, shared the safe house in Managua during the war and were tireless reporters, and their reviews of Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement gave a different perspective of General Omar Torrijos. I would also like to thank my late friend and colleague Gloria Emerson.

  Gabriel (Gabo) García Márquez, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature who belie
ved Graham Greene should also have won the prize, quietly played an important humanitarian role in Central America, unknown to the general public.

  Thanks to my London publisher Peter Owen and especially to Simon Smith who welcomed me to their prestigious house.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  List of Illustrations

  Foreword by Pico Iyer: ‘Greene in the World’

  Introduction by Richard Greene

  Map of Hispaniola

  PART I

  Graham Greene in Haiti

  Seeds of Fiction

  A Quixotic Insurgency

  Loving Haiti

  A River of Blood

  The Poetry of Faith

  A Matter of Policy

  Blood in the Streets

  The Comedians

  Papa Doc Reacts to The Comedians

  After Papa Doc

  PART II

  On the Way Back:

  Graham Greene in Central America

  A Dictator with a Difference

  The Years Pass

  Rendezvous on a Pearl Island

  Getting to Know Chuchu

  Greene Goes to Washington

  Fair Wind for the Isthmus

  Operation Sir Francis Drake

  Waiting for the Guerrilla

  Our Man in Panama

  Managua Nights

  The General Is Dead!

  Greene’s Other War

  A Night in Havana

  Master of Contradiction

  We’ll Meet Again

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Index

  | ILLUSTRATIONS

  The Haiti Sun reports Graham Greene’s second visit to Haiti in 1956

  Graham and Catherine Walston with artists at La Galerie Brochette, Haiti, 1956

  Larry Allen of the Associated Press, the model for Granger in The Quiet American

  Roger Coster of the Grand Hotel Oloffson, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

  François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier on the day he was inaugurated as president in 1957

  Graham talking to journalist Max Clou in the Dominican Republic, 1963

  Anti-Duvalier rebels training in the Dominican Republic, 1963

  A public execution of two members of the Jeune Haiti resistance movement, 1964

  Bernard Diederich, 1965, during the civil war in the Dominican Republic

  Members of the Kamoken, the Haitian Revolutionary Armed Forces

  Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux saying Mass to Haitian exiles in the Dominican countryside

  Kamoken leader Fred Baptiste with other Kamoken in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

  Fred Baptiste at the Kamoken base at Nigua, Dominican Republic, 1965

  Graham walks into Haiti, 1965 Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux at the Haitian border, 1965

  Graham and Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux with Dominican soldiers at the Massacre River, 1965

  The Hotel Brisas Massacre de Mariav de Rodriguez in the town of Restauración, Dominican Republic

  Graham and Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux on the Bridge at Dajabón over the Massacre River, 1965

  Graham photographs Haiti from no man’s land, 1965

  Bernard Diederich changes a tyre on his Volkswagen, 1965

  The cover of Graham Greene Démasqué, Papa Doc’s case against Graham following publication of The Comedians

  Poster for the 1967 film adaptation of The Comedians

  The film of The Comedians is finally shown in Haiti in 1986

  General Omar Torrijos, the Panamanian leader, in the countryside with his people

  Torrijos in Panama City

  Graham and Torrijos getting to know one another on Contadora Island, Panama, in 1976

  Graham and Bernard Diederich with rum punches on Contadora Island, 1976

  Graham on the Panama Canal train, 1976

  Graham at Cristóbal railway station, Panama, 1976

  Graham fumbles with his camera, Cristóbal railway station, 1976

  Graham and Bernard Diederich in the grounds of the Hotel George Wasington, Colon, Panama, 1976

  Graham at the Panama Canal with Chuchu, 1978

  Graham at Torrijos’s house at Farallon, Panama, 1978

  Graham and Chuchu searching for evidence of Sir Francis Drake at Portobelo, Panama, 1978

  Graham resting in an Indian village, Panama, 1978

  Graham and Chuchu flying to Torrijos’s house at Farallon, 1978

  Graham and Chuchu in a market in Panama City, 1980, waiting to meet Salvadoran guerrilla Salvador Cayetano Carpio to help arrange the release of the kidnapped South African ambassador Archibald Gardner Dunn

  Graham is honoured by the Panamanian President Ricardo de la Espriella, 1983

  Graham recieves the Order of Rubén Darío in Nicaragua, 1987

  Bernard Diederich with Aubelin Jolicoeur, the model for the character of Petit Pierre in The Comedians, Port-au-Prince, 1986

  A painting of Baby Doc in the toilet at Graham’s Antibes apartment

  Graham with his pen and midday martini, Antibes, 1989

  Graham with Bernard Diederich the last time they met, 1989

  Graham and Yvonne Cloetta in Antibes

  Bernard Diederich, Yvonne Cloetta and Max Reinhardt at Graham’s memorial service, Westminster Abbey, London, 1991

  Yvonne Cloetta at Graham’s grave, Vevey, Switzerland

  Jean-Claude Bajeux lecturing on Graham’s work, Port-au-Prince, 1995

  Bernard Diederich giving a presentation during the Graham Greene International Festival, Berkhamsted School, UK, 2001

  | FOREWORD BY PICO IYER

  Greene in the World

  Bernard Diederich was already a legend when I joined the staff of Time magazine in 1982. In those days, some writers — those seasoned, fearless foreign correspondents such as Bernie — actually travelled the globe covering the news, while the rest of us (bookish neophytes like myself) sat in little offices in Mid-town Manhattan and drew on our expert colleagues’ reports to produce the compressed pieces that appeared in the magazine. Time’s roving band of reporters were themselves the stuff of many a wild rumour, some of them former spies, others the lovers of princesses and all of them responsible for traversing the world at a time when the magazine was more or less the globe’s deining news source.

  Even by Time standards, though, Bernie stood out. He looked like Hemingway, I was told, and knew more about Haiti than any foreigner alive. He had some of Hemingway’s glamour in his life, too, having run away from home to join a four-master in his teens and then started a newspaper in Haiti, before being sent to prison by ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier. In my early years at the magazine Bernie was constantly sending dispatches from Nicaragua and El Salvador, both in the middle of bitter civil wars then; when Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983 Bernie, already in his fifties, was the one correspondent who somehow commandeered a boat to take him to the island where the action was taking place. I was deputed to condense and rewrite his vivid eyewitness account, as was the unbudging custom then, until our top editor saw Bernie’s version and said, ‘Run every word just the way he had it!’

  Apart from all this, Bernie was celebrated as the trusted friend of Graham Greene, a man not known for his love of Time magazine (he included mischievous digs in at least three of his major novels) and a writer clearly suspicious of journalists, whose errors he loved to enumerate. Anyone reading The Quiet American or many other of Greene’s works will note that the only characters who are always treated unsympathetically in them are journalists — a reflection, perhaps, of the fact that Greene was a rigorous and precise observer himself and, having witnessed the news everywhere from Cuba to Vietnam, had little patience for those correspondents too lazy or ill-informed to do justice to it.

  In spite of all that, however, there was Bernie, invoked with warmth and respect in Greene’s book on Panama. Greene often referred to him as his source and guide through the thickets of Central America and Haiti. They’d met thirty years before, I gathered, and after that Be
rnie had earned his way into that select, very small band of Greene companions that all the rest of us dreamed of and envied. For the many who regarded Greene as perhaps the shrewdest and most soulful chronicler of the world’s conflicts in the years between 1950 and 1980, the man who was Greene’s guide had something of the air of a writer’s John the Baptist.

  I never met Greene, though, like anyone who travels, I felt he caught the sensation of being a foreigner alone, in a treacherous turmoil, as he caught the particulars of Port-au-Prince, Hanoi, Asunción and Havana, as well as anyone I’d read. Again and again, setting foot in the Hotel Oloffson or walking through Saigon’s streets after midnight, I felt Greene shadowing me almost as if I were his creation; and again and again, I read books by Paul Theroux and John Banville, by Gloria Emerson and Alan Judd, that were so haunted by Greene that I could well understand why Time, in its obituary of him in 1991, had written, ‘No serious writer of the century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination.’

  When I began to write about Greene, I turned to only two people at first: his niece Louise Dennys and his famous travelling companion (much lauded by Louise) Bernie Diederich. One stormy night in 1995, just before the events described at the end of this book, I met Bernie near his home in Coral Gables, and he gave me a perfect illustration of why Greene had found him perfect company: he was friendly, relaxed, full of professional details and enormous fun, as he shared his adventures, with or without Greene, over many decades. Later, when I wrote a whole book about Greene, the only three writers I consulted were Paul Theroux and Michael Mewshaw, both of whom had been taken up by Greene as young protégés of a kind, and Bernie. As he described to me Greene’s ‘long stride’, the evenings they’d spent in Panama and Antibes, how loyal and kind a friend Greene had been, I could see how the loyalty and kindness ran in both directions. Greene did not open himself up to many — and he liked to keep his own counsel, I suspect — but in Bernie he found someone whose courage he could look up to and whose practical on-the-ground, unideological wisdom he could trust.