The Seeds of Fiction (18 page)

I had hardly proffered my warning to my editors when Ginette called me from Santo Domingo to advise me to hurry home. The coup was about to happen. The food shops were swamped by customers fighting to stock up on provisions. Events exploded while I was on my way back. I reached San Juan, Puerto Rico, just as the coup unfolded. Commercial air traffic to and from the Dominican Republic was suspended. I interviewed ex-President Bosch, who was in exile in Puerto Rico, and filed as best I could on the situation in
the Dominican Republic, with my wife now playing the role of reporter, monitoring the radio and passing along vital information by telephone. But with Ginette and our two infant sons caught in the turmoil in the capital, I became desperate. I managed to hitch a ride on a US Marine landing ship, the USS
Wood County,
a modern LST (landing ship tank) heading to the Dominican Republic to evacuate American citizens. It was the night of 28 April 1965, exactly two years to the day since I had been booted out of Haiti.

Other newsmen and I joined the US Marines enjoying the evening movie aboard ship. Just as the actor William Holden disappeared from the screen for the love scene, the ship's public address system boomed, ‘Now hear this, now hear this. Darken ship.'

The Marines on board buckled up for war. They began breaking out live ammunition. I couldn't believe what was happening. This was 1965, not the early part of the twentieth century when the US, exercising its doctrine of ‘manifest destiny', sent Marines ashore in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

‘It can't be!' I exclaimed to the ship's captain. ‘It's not that serious.'

‘Tell that to President Johnson.' He laughed.

Maybe matters were worse than my wife's reports. Once again I became deeply concerned about their safety.

There was little sleep aboard ship that night as the Marines prepared to land, but we newsmen couldn't file our stories about the imminent invasion because the ship's commander told us he could not authorize the use of the ship's communications facilities.

It was a clear and beautiful Caribbean night as we sailed, blacked out, listening to President Johnson over the Voice of America explaining in his Texas drawl that he had ordered Marines ashore in the Dominican Republic to ‘protect American lives'. Johnson's doctrine of ‘no more Cubas' was being put into practice. More than twenty-seven thousand US servicemen would be involved and would remain until the crisis was over in September 1966.

The day after we landed Dick Duncan of
Time,
Louis Uchitelle of the Associated Press and I ventured into the rebel-held ‘Constitutionalist zone' in downtown Santo Domingo, just off Plaza de la Independencia, and came upon an old bakery, busy and alive with the sound of Haitian Creole. The Kamoken were working away, not baking bread but repairing an ancient machine-gun. With their knowledge of firearms, the Haitians had been quickly integrated into the Dominican Republic's new Constitutionalist army, now at war with both the Dominican status quo forces and the American troops. At the outbreak of hostilities, Fred Baptiste, his brother Renel and most of the other Kamoken fled the lunatic asylum at Nigua and joined the Dominican Constitutionalist side. It was the first time in anyone's memory
that Haitians and Dominicans had joined to fight a common enemy on Dominican soil. On entering the bakery we found the Haitians in high spirits. They announced that their side was winning the battle and that the landing of the US troops had been a terrible mistake. As soon as the war was won, they added, they could resume their war against Papa Doc; meanwhile they were perfecting their urban-guerrilla tactics.

A few days later I was in the Constitutionalist sector at the cable office when the gunfire had died down, sending a story. Suddenly I heard a commotion in the street and ran to the door. Fred Baptiste, a bazooka over his shoulder, was moving his troops down Calle el Conde on his way to blow the door off the historic Forteleza (Fortress) Ozama. The US-trained Cascos Blancos (White Helmets), Santo Domingo's tough, loyalist riot police, were still holding out there. It was Fred's and his men's finest hour. The fortress capitulated. Fred was getting a reputation as a tough disciplinarian — far too tough for Colonel Francisco Caamano Deno, who had been made leader of the Constitutionalist forces. One day Caamano told me he had received reports that the Haitians were executing some of their own men for unknown reasons. He was angry and concerned, declaring that all he needed was for word to leak out that people were being executed in his zone.

I confronted Fred about this, but he denied that anyone had been executed. ‘Let me tell you what happened,' he said. ‘Puma [Jean-Claude Romain] died playing Russian roulette.'

The other Kamoken backed up Fred's story. With a revolver loaded with a single bullet, they said, Puma shot himself in the head and died instantly. I thought of Graham's stories about how he had played Russian roulette as a bored youth.

The American forces laid siege to the Constitutionalist-occupied area of Santo Domingo, while junta forces continued their fight against rebels in the northern part of the city. There were fierce firefights. My little Volkswagen with ‘Prensa' (Press) taped on its windows became a familiar sight throughout the city. Reporting the war meant covering all three sides: the daily US Army briefings in the Embassy Room of the Hotel El Embajador; the Constitutionalists at the Copello Building on Calle el Conde (after passing through US Marine and Army checkpoints and driving rapidly across streets receiving fire from the Palace, where loyalist troops were holed up); then on to the fairgrounds, where the new right-wing Government of National Reconstruction had its headquarters. There was a good deal of dangerous travel every day, but my hardy Beetle sustained only minor war damage. In fact, I credited my manoeuvrable and speedy little ‘Bug' with getting me out of the line of fire a number of times. My colleague Al Burt of the
Miami Herald
was not so fortunate. While travelling in a taxi with a photographer he became a target for skittish US
Marines at a roadblock. The Marines believed they had received incoming fire and opened a withering barrage on the taxi. Both newsmen and the taxi driver were badly wounded.

The US intervention finally ended, and President Johnson gave his approval for the seasoned conservative Dominican politician, Joaquín Balaguer, to take power. The Dominican Republic would no longer compete for headlines with Vietnam.

Graham had certainly been right — grim things had happened in the wake of his departure.

In a letter dated 20 December 1965 Graham finally broke the news. He preceded it by alluding to the Dominican upheaval. ‘I was afraid that something might have happened to one of you during the revolution — a revolution which alas I could not attend!' Then, sounding slightly sheepish, at the end of the letter he announced, ‘I've got a novel about Haiti coming out at the end of January, of which I am sending you a copy in the hope that it may arrive. I'm sure you will find a great many errors there, but perhaps you will be amused by the last chapter, which reflects our visit to the bauxite works. Forgive the errors for the sake of the intention.'

In the midst of the Dominican civil war, in spite of the erratic postal service,
The Comedians
arrived at our home. It was a thrilling moment, mixed with apprehension. This book, I hoped, would affect Haiti's future or at least Papa Doc's tyranny. The pen could indeed be mightier than the sword. I felt that much depended on the little parcel I held in my hand that afternoon. I examined its careful wrapping and waited a moment before tearing open the package and showing it to my wife. The book's cover was several shades of green. The brief blurb on the inside jacket flap said it was Greene's first novel in five years and noted that ‘Like one of its predecessors,
The Quiet American,
it is a story about the committed and uncommitted.' Graham opened the book in the form of a letter, both as a salute to his old publisher, A.S. Frere, and as a way of establishing its geographical location. ‘Poor Haiti itself and the character of Doctor Duvalier's rule are not invented,' he wrote, ‘the latter not even blackened for dramatic effect. Impossible to deepen that night.' The UK edition had been published by the Bodley Head of London. In his tiny script Graham had written: ‘For Bernard — hoping you will not find this too much of a travesty — with love, from Graham. Christmas 1965.'

Unconsciously I lifted the book to feel its weight, as if it were a precious metal. Then I sat down, forgot about deadlines and news reports and devoured
The Comedians.
I didn't sleep that night. Graham had given us a novel in which fiction was reality. There had been no need to worry. He had protected everyone concerned. There was not one breach of confidence. I was reassured he was honourable and compassionate. He had given the poor people of Haiti something Papa Doc had deprived them of: a voice. The horrors of the Papa
Doc dictatorship and its gratuitous brutality were there. Graham had managed to capture, in this imaginary love story, the 1963—4 climate of Duvalier's terror and its surrealism. Only those who had lived through that terror could appreciate the accuracy with which he painted it. The dark comedy left me depressed, and for several nights after rereading the book I suffered painful flashbacks of my last years in Haiti.

The comedians of the book's title are not the Haitians but the
blans
(whites), a term synonymous in Haiti with foreigners — whom Graham introduces sailing to Haiti aboard the
Medea,
a Dutch ship named after the jealous sorceress of legend. Their names are as vacuous as their moral philosophies — Brown, Jones and Smith. However, Jesuit-educated Brown is well read, citing Wordsworth and Baudelaire, and he reads Henry James's ‘The Great Good Place' at the Trianon — Port-au-Prince's gingerbread landmark, clearly patterned after the venerable Grand Hotel Oloffson — during a long Sunday afternoon.

But comedy in
The Comedians
is of the bitter kind, about dark human emotions. There are no belly laughs, just a deep sadness at watching a country sink into a living hell because of the cruel and capricious contempt for human life of its despotic leader and his sadistic Tontons Macoutes. Papa Doc does not make a personal appearance in the book, but his presence permeates the air like some awesome, terrifying vulture. Graham achieves this by portraying Duvalier as the Voodoo god Baron Samedi, guardian of the dead. As such, he casts a demonic shadow that darkens all.

Graham uses a first-person narrative. Brown, the book's anti-hero and main protagonist, was left by his worldly mother to be raised by Jesuits. He even contemplated becoming a priest at one stage but lost his faith and became a cynical, jaded, middle-aged beachcomber-type. He refers to God ‘as an authoritative practical joker'. Determinedly uncommitted, Brown wants to remain uninvolved in any social or political cause (which was so true of many foreigners and effete Haitians living under the dictatorship). But Brown's cynicism does not prevent him from knowing what is going on around him. He returns to Haiti unable to sell his hotel, which his well-travelled mother has ended up with in Port-au-Prince.

Aboard the
Medea
there is also ‘Major' Jones, who is sailing under false pretences. He is a con man in the British genre, at times a charming cad but a pathetic figure none the less. He boasts of having battled the Japanese in Burma during the Second World War when in fact — as he confesses to Brown in a Haitian cemetery towards the end of the book — he was an actor performing far behind the front lines (which reminds me of Noël Coward). In Haiti Jones has high hopes of striking it rich by making a lucrative arms deal with corrupt government bureaucrats. Unfortunately, as the winds blow, so do the officials; Jones's letter of introduction is to an official whose current address is the national prison.

The only committed members of the group of seafarers travelling to Port-au-Prince are Mr and Mrs Smith, a noble-minded but naïve and elderly American couple who have not the slightest idea of what Haiti is like under Papa Doc's dictatorship. As evangelical vegetarians (he was the presidential candidate on the US Vegetarian Party ticket) the Smiths absurdly seek to set up a vegetarian centre in Haiti that they hope will ‘one day remove acidity and passion from the Haitian character'. Still, they are likeable, and Graham shows that there are good Americans as well as quiet ones.

From the moment the
blans
descend the gangplank in Port-au-Prince, they move deep into the terrifying darkness of Papa Doc's regime and his eerie hell on earth. (Graham told me more than once after his 1963 visit that he had never elsewhere confronted the type and extent of evil that pervaded Papa Doc's Haiti. The place, Graham said, reeked of malevolence — a malevolent dictator, a malevolent secret police and a malevolent system.) Upon disembarking Brown is given an effusive greeting by the ubiquitous Petit Pierre, the most recognizable character in the book after the all-pervasive Papa Doc. Because Petit Pierre seems to have escaped being beaten up or worse, he is suspected of having connections with the Tontons Macoutes. But Brown questions whether it is true because ‘there were occasionally passages in his gossip-column that showed an odd satirical courage — perhaps he depended on the police not to read between the lines'. It is also true that in a dictatorship any survivors are suspect. In his portrait of Petit Pierre Graham adds that he was ‘always gay. It was as though he had tossed a coin to decide between the only two possible attitudes in Port-au-Prince, the rational and the irrational, misery or gaiety; Papa Doc's head had fallen earthwards and he had plumped for the gaiety of despair.'

Brown heads off in the country's customary nightly black-out to the eerily majestic Hotel Trianon only to find a corpse in the hotel's pool, which has no water. The body is that of Doctor Philipot, Papa Doc's Secretary of State for Social Welfare, who has chosen suicide at Brown's mother's hotel, slashing both his wrists and his throat, rather than face death at the hands of the regime's terror specialists, the Tontons Macoutes. Although Brown is unmoved by this distasteful discovery, the incident eventually draws him into Haiti's drama and even affects his sex life. While making love to Martha, the wife of a South American ambassador, Brown sees in his mind's eye Doctor Philipot's corpse again and is rendered impotent.