The Seeds of Fiction (32 page)

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
Playboy
magazine 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 been 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 ended 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.

If this arrives before you go to Panama do tell Chuchu that the Swedish paper
Aftonbladet
are publishing the article in their magazine as soon as it has appeared in England. Chuchu was rather against me writing an article because he felt it would damage a possible novel. I can quite see his point of view and it is a very sensitive one, but I felt I had to get a little bit down on paper first. I wonder anxiously how
you will take my article. P.S. I am sending a few of your photos to
Aftonbladet
assuming that your permission extends that far. Of course I have told them to credit you.

P.P.S. A brief examination of the [Zonian] telephone book makes me curious. Why are the only Diplomatic and Consular representatives those of Denmark, Finland (strangely), Norway and Sweden? I am fascinated under Churches to find a Baha'i faith. Presumably they have got a branch in the Zone as well as the extraordinary building they have in the Republic. Have you ever visited that? It too seemed to be run by Americans. I must say I like a telephone book which includes instructions for ‘attack without warning'. ‘Your first warning of an attack might be the flash of a nuclear explosion.' One is advised to get quickly underneath a motor car! Surely the advice before the last war for ordinary bombs was less innocent than that.

Elisabeth Dennys, Graham's sister, who took care of his correspondence, included a letter of her own in the envelope. ‘Graham dictated this letter over the Dictaphone,' she wrote, ‘and I am not very happy that I have got the word in line 12 correctly. It sounded like “Dian” but I may not have spelt it right! I did not want to hold up the letter until I could ask him, knowing that you may be off to Panama quite soon.' The name was actually that of Moshe Dayan, former Israeli defence minister and hero of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Graham later revealed to me that the ‘interesting story' was that Dayan had helped to bring Torrijos's wife and her estranged Jewish father, then living in New York, together after twenty-five years.