Getting to Know the General [N.F. - Memoirs] by Greene Graham

Author:Greene, Graham [Greene, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Memoir, Modern Classics, Nonfiction
Publisher: Random House / Vintage Classics
Published: 1984-01-04T02:00:00+00:00

PART III

1978

1

I was far away in Antibes, reading only in newspapers of the civil war in Nicaragua. Hardly a day passed without a paragraph which reminded me of my Sandinista friends in Panama. Then suddenly one day Panama and Nicaragua came unexpectedly to Antibes in the person of the young mathematician Rogelio. He was ringing from the station at Nice and he was on his way to Italy. Apparently he needed a visa for Italy and he had none, but this didn’t worry him unduly. After all, he had an Italian wife. One could always arrange things like visas, he said over the telephone, but he would like to break his journey and have a talk with me.

I found him a room for the night and we dined together. I felt hungry for news. He told me that Camilo had at last seen action with a group of Sandinistas who had crossed the Costa Rican frontier. It had not been a successful foray, for they had been attacked from the air and they had no anti-aircraft guns. Now Rogelio was on a mission to raise money for arms. He gave me the name and number of an account in Panama City in case I knew of any rich sympathizers. There was no problem, he said, about small arms. They could capture enough of these from Somoza’s National Guard. It was anti-aircraft guns which were needed. Alas! I was of little use to him. I could only send off a small cheque of my own to Panama in the hope that it would buy a few bullets, one of which might put paid to Somoza.

2

A few more weeks passed and another familiar voice was speaking over the telephone late one evening in July.

‘Where are you, Chuchu?’

‘In Panama, of course. Where do you expect me to be? When are you arriving? The General wants to know. KLM have your ticket.’

I was very much surprised by the invitation, and I calculated with haste. ‘9.30 in the morning on 19 August. Will that do?’

But I very nearly missed the plane.

It was early morning on the eighteenth, and I was staying at the Ritz in London en route to Amsterdam – the hotel where in those days something always went wrong, which was one of the reasons why I liked it. Writing is for most of the time a lonely and unsatisfying occupation. One is tied to a table, a chair, a stack of paper. Only a strict discipline enabled me to carry on, so that I welcomed the unexpected which the Ritz seemed always ready to supply – smoked salmon, perhaps, served instead of eggs for breakfast, a bird flapping all day in the chimney, a window which could not be opened or else could not be closed, an Egyptian waiter, who was studying to play the drums and who tried to kiss the girl next door when he brought her breakfast. So it was in the good old days before Trafalgar House bought the hotel and hung hideous pictures in the corridors and made the service dully reliable.

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