The Seeds of Fiction (5 page)

Santo Domingo is fifty minutes from Port-au-Prince by air, but the distance separating the two places must be judged not in miles but in centuries … neither business nor politics has any relevance in Haiti. Haiti produces painters, poets, heroes — and in that spiritual region it is natural to find a devil too.

He ended his article: ‘The electric sign which winks out every night across the public garden has a certain truth.
Je suis le drapeau Haitien, un et indivisible.
(I am the Haitian flag, one and indivisible.) François Duvalier.'

One of the foreign newsmen staying at the Sans Souci Hotel was Richard Eder of the
New York Times,
who wrote an article about Graham. The piece was published on 18 August with the headline ‘Graham Greene, in Haiti, talks of Double Trouble'. Although the article focused mostly on a gun-runner and thief who had been posing as Graham Greene, it also mentioned that Graham was in Haiti and thinking of writing an entertainment (the name Graham gave to his less serious fiction). Eder wrote, ‘If the entertainment is written, it will begin with a hotel proprietor returning from abroad and finding his hotel has only two guests. Mr Greene is staying at the Hotel Oloffson, which has only three guests.'

I had kept a copy of the article and handed it to Graham. He looked it over and smiled. ‘Yes, he is a decent fellow,' Graham said about Eder. ‘I had him over at the Oloffson for drinks one night. I didn't know he was going to write this. I must say, he did a remarkable job.'

It was the only time I had seen him pleased with reporting on himself. But what excited me about the article was the possibility that he might write a novel set in Haiti. I knew enough not to intrude. I was in awe of Graham and wanted to help him as well as I could and certainly learn from him. He offered no further comment on the matter, and I didn't ask. Still, he did not deny what Eder had written in the article. It gave me hope that he might write about Haiti.

After dinner we sat on the patio. It was a hot, humid night with no breeze. Slowly the conversation began to shift back and forth from Haiti to Indochina. He and Max Clos began discussing their time covering the French war in Indochina. Talk turned to
The Quiet American,
and Graham confessed he had modelled the American newsman Granger on Larry Allen of the Associated Press. Graham and Max began telling Larry Allen stories, about how he had covered the war and even been decorated by the French. The stories were not complimentary. Graham confessed that the press conference portrayed in
The Quiet American
— in which Granger bullies the briefing officers into revealing French casualties, only to ‘stare around with oafish triumph' at his colleagues — actually happened.

While the book's narrator is Fowler, a cynical old-time English political reporter who wants to remain above the fray and uninvolved, the quiet American Pyle is his opposite — youthful, naïve and out to save Vietnam from Communism. Graham said that, unlike the recognizable Granger, there was no Pyle. The best he could do, he said, was to create a composite of various Americans he had met in Saigon.

In describing his craftsmanship, Graham said he usually transposed real-life individuals into fictional characters. Sometimes he took bits and pieces of different real-life characters and moulded them into the people he needed to play the various roles he had set out for them or they for him.

I walked into the kitchen to fetch more rum and found Ginette busy preparing dessert. She was ecstatic. ‘Did you hear? He never invented a character. Maybe he's searching for characters for the book on Haiti.'

‘It's possible,' I said and pulled out a bottle of Barbancourt. ‘You think he might write a serious book?'

‘Why not?' Ginette took out an ice tray from the freezer and broke ice cubes into a small bucket. ‘If he has enough characters, maybe he'll write a book about Papa Doc.'

It seemed like a real possibility. When we went back to the patio, Ginette and I began to talk of some of the people we knew in Haiti and on the Dominican border, characters we thought would entice Graham into writing a powerful novel, something that could be used as a weapon against the dictatorship. Words alone might not bring down Papa Doc, but they could bring world attention to the calamity that had befallen Haiti.

‘There are scores of exiles gathering along the border,' I said. ‘They're ill-prepared, but they're determined.'

‘It's a real tragedy,' Graham said quietly.

‘It certainly is,' I said. ‘I know the guerrillas. We have been doing what we can to help them. Mainly, I have had to transport charity food to keep them from starving.'

Graham looked at me and said nothing.

I took another drink of rum.

‘Do they have any guns?' he asked.

‘No. They train with broomsticks and old World War I Enfield rifles. They have no logistical support.'

‘At least Fidel had good logistic support effort.'

‘All they have at this point is determination,' I said.

‘If I came back, could you show me the border?' he asked.

‘Certainly.'

I poured more rum. I could see he was turning over ideas in his head. Still, I could tell from his questions on Haiti that he was frustrated. Papa Doc's government had prevented him from travelling to the north where there had been a series of cross-border attacks by General Cantave. He had been stalled. He knew he had only scratched the surface. He needed more, but what he needed he could not get in Haiti.

The day before starting our trip to the border I picked Graham up at the British Ambassador's residence and announced my plan.

‘We're going to an insane asylum.'

‘Not Haiti, I hope,' Graham said.

‘No. No such luck. It's where the rebels are. We're going to meet the rebels, the Kamoken.'

‘At an asylum? Are you serious?'

He squeezed his tall frame into the seat of my Volkswagen, and we were off without further questions about my own sanity. As we headed west out of Santo Domingo he rolled the word ‘Kamoken' over and over as a scrabble player might to try and identify it, until he finally asked me about the name.

‘It's the name of an anti-malaria pill, Camoquin, they sell in Haiti.'

‘Really?' Graham laughed.

‘The pill gives people a yellow complexion. The first anti-Duvalier invaders were mulattos and whites,' I explained. ‘Was this recent?'

‘No. July '58.'

‘You were still in Haiti then and covered it.'

I nodded. ‘I was the only foreign reporter on the scene. Unfortunately the insurgency against Duvalier is full of fantastic plots and even more fantastic failures.'

As we drove out to Nigua I explained to Graham how in the early summer of 1958 rumours of an invasion by an exile force were circulating all over Haiti. Duvalier had been in office for only ten months and there had already been a number of bomb plots against him. Many Haitian military officers such as army captain Alix Pasquet had escaped into exile. The National Pententary prison was full of suspected anti-government agents. (Later Papa Doc made Fort Dimanche his major prison and killing field.)

Pasquet and exiled lieutenants Philippe Dominique and Henri Perpignan, who were living in exile in Miami, recruited Dade County Deputy Sheriff Dany Jones, retired Dade County Deputy Sheriff Arthur Payne and two adventurers Robert Hickey and Levant Kersten to help fight their insurgency. The Haitians agreed to pay the men $2,000 each. The eighth
man in the force was Joseph D.J. Walker, captain of the 55-foot launch the
Mollie C.

Pasquet was motivated not only by his hatred of Papa Doc but by his own ego and the delusion that he might become ruler of Haiti. He kept in touch with many of his friends and fellow officers, lining them up to support his attack on the Palace. He even sent his wristwatch to a friend to get it fixed at a repair shop in Port-au-Prince, saying he would pick it up in a couple of weeks.

Dominique had been the commander of the military riding school. He had the reputation of a playboy, romancing the younger women at the school, despite being married with children. Perpignan had spent most of his military career behind a desk and had little experience in action. He had been a member of former Haitian President Paul Magloire's ‘kitchen cabinet' of unofficial confidants and managed the payroll of government spies to the tune of $12,000 a month.

The group boarded the
Mollie C
and left Key West on what they said was a lobster expedition. The cabin was crammed with arms and ammunition, and the deck was loaded with drums of fuel. They stopped in Nassau, Bahamas, where they were wined and dined by Clément Benoít, Duvalier's new Consul. Then, under a full moon, they began the 600-mile journey from the Bahamas. On the afternoon of 28 June the
Mollie C
entered La Gonave Bay and anchored in a small cove at Deluge, some forty miles north of Port-au-Prince.

The three Haitians stayed inside the boat while Jones and Payne went ashore in the dingy. They posed as typical tourists, wearing only their bathing suits and purchasing several woven straw hats. Payne used sign language to communicate with a group of local peasants, telling them they needed transport to the capital because their boat had broken down. The peasants promised to return with help, but a rural policeman was alerted to the presence of the
blans
(foreigners) and notified the nearby army post at St Marc.

At ten o'clock that night Walker brought the
Mollie C
within wading distance of the beach. As the men unloaded their weapons a three-man army patrol drove up to see what they were up to. A firefight ensued. Payne was wounded in the thigh, but the insurgents killed the three soldiers. The eight men climbed into the jeep and sped off into the night, passing through Montrouis and the army post there without being detected.

When they reached the crossroads leading to the town of Arcahaie, not far from another army post, the jeep broke down. Pasquet managed to hire a
taptap
(jitney bus). Inscribed on its front was the warning
Malgre tout Dieu seul maître
(In spite of all, God is the only master).

Dominique took the wheel. Pasquet sat next to him in the front while the others sat in the back on the jitney's two passenger benches. They bound Payne's
leg in a tourniquet and sped off towards the capital, passing two more army posts without incident. They raced through the pre-dawn darkness of the capital and headed straight for the main entrance of the Casernes Dessalines (army barracks), behind the National Palace.

Pasquet barked an order to the sentry announcing they were bringing in prisoners and drew a confused salute as they sped through the gate. Dominique swung the
taptap
in a sharp U-turn and stopped in front of the administrative offices. They hopped out of the jitney and ran up the steps with Payne following behind.

They surprised the duty officer and shot him dead before he could reach for his gun. Within minutes Pasquet and his men had managed to overcome the sleeping soldiers and secure the barracks. The troops were locked inside the garrison and forced to sit in their underwear with their hands on their heads. Pasquet worked the phones, trying to recruit his friends in the military. Unfortunately none were willing to take a chance. One of his calls was to the Palace, where Papa Doc answered the phone and the two men had a quick and peculiar exchange of words, with Duvalier telling Pasquet to be a man and face him at the gate of the barracks.

Outside the Casernes Dessalines Haiti had once again woken to the sound of gunfire. The rumours circulated that a rebel force of two hundred had seized the barracks. The entire army and police apparatus appeared paralysed. Many of the army officers were literally sitting on their hands waiting to see how the scales tilted.

The early daylight hours gave some of the Duvalierists more courage. The plea came over the radio. ‘Aid your president,' the announcer shouted. ‘Hated Magloirists have seized the Casernes Dessalines and they have brought foreigners with them, Dominicans!'

However, few appeared to heed the call. In the downtown area a stream of tradesmen, market women and store employees went about their daily chores, setting up for the day's business, pretending to ignore the obvious. Market women with baskets loaded with vegetables on their heads walked casually past the National Palace without so much as glancing at the soldiers lying on the ground with rifles at the ready.

Duvalier himself, dressed in a soldier's khaki uniform, a combat steel helmet and two pistols at his hips, moved about the place giving orders.

Pasquet and his men held the barracks and waited for reinforcements to arrive. But Perpignan, a heavy smoker, could not control his craving. He sent out one of the prisoners, who also happened to be Mrs Duvalier's driver, to fetch a pack of Haitian-made Splendids from a street vendor. A group of Duvalierists seized and interrogated him, learning the truth: there were only eight invaders.

From there, things got progressively worse for the rebels. The reinforcements
Pasquet expected never arrived. Captain Daniel Beauvoir, a friend whom Pasquet believed would side with him and fight Duvalier, arrived with troops from Pétionville and took up firing positions in the military hospital across the streets from the barracks. The four hundred yards separating the Palace and the Casernes Dessalines turned into a free-fire zone. There was a general distribution of pistols to volunteers at the Palace side gate.

The final assault on the rebels came when the Palace guards opened up on the barracks with a .50-calibre machine-gun, making a terrible din. The rebels returned fire with a .30-calibre. Grenades exploded, and there was a loud cheer as fifty soldiers escaped from the barracks, signalling that it was all over for the invaders. The shooting stopped. The eerie silence that followed was broken when a man ran out of the barracks with a bloody cloth in his hands, yelling frantically that he had the brains of Alix Pasquet.