Getting to Know the General by Graham Greene

Author:Graham Greene [Greene, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

8

It was certainly a Great Spectacular, the signing of the Canal Treaty. We sat in blocks of countries and Panama adjoined the Senatorial block of the United States, with Venezuela on our other flank. We, the Panamanians, were a mixed bag, including not only myself and García Márquez, but more suitably the mother of a student killed by the Marines in the great riot of ’64.

I had seen nothing like it as a star vehicle since Round the World in Eighty Days. All the familiar actors from how many television screens and newspaper photographs seemed to be there – all except Elizabeth Taylor. Kissinger, before the delegation had settled into their seats, could be seen buttonholing his way around the hall of the Organization of American States with his world-wide grin; five rows in front of me I could see Nelson Rockefeller being strenuously amiable to Ladybird, as though the two of them were sitting out a dance together, and ex-President Ford was in the same row, more blond than I had imagined him from the screen – or had he been to the barber? There too were Mr and Mrs Mondale, Mrs Carter . . . Two rows in front of me sat Andy Young, bright and boyish. All of them were looking consciously unimportant like the stars in Round the World, who had accepted minor parts for the joke of it all. They were not there really to act, only to be noticed, like partygoers having a night out together, pleased to feel at home with friendly faces – ‘What, you here?’

The important character actors were up on the platform – an unpleasant sight but more impressive than the stars below: General Stroessner of Paraguay, General Videla of Argentina with a face squashed into such a narrow space that there was hardly room for his two foxy eyes, General Banzer of Bolivia, a little frightened man with an agitated moustache – he had been miscast and misdressed.

There too was the greatest character actor of them all – General Pinochet himself – the man you love to hate. Like Boris Karloff, he really had attained the status of instant recognition; he was the one who could look down with amused contempt at the highly paid frivolous Hollywood types below him. His chin was so deeply sunk in his collar that he seemed to have no neck at all; he had clever, humorous, falsely good-fellow eyes which seemed to be telling us not to take too seriously all those stories of murder and torture emanating from South America. I could hardly believe that only a week had passed since I listened in Panama to the refugee who broke down when she described how a bayonet had been thrust into her vagina. Hovering behind the dictators was old Bunker, the Refrigerator, keeping an anxious eye on his Treaty, sucking dry lips. He looked like an old, old stork who had been given human features in a children’s book – his head stuck out a long way in advance of his body.

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