Those characters which I had so mistakenly drawn from life wouldn’t let me rest. I would constantly remember Chuchu’s boast, ‘I’m never going to die’; his complex theology – ‘I believe in the Devil. I don’t believe in God,’ and the way that he would prove the existence of the Devil by pushing at a swing door in the wrong direction. The General and Chuchu went on living, far away in Panama, and they refused to become characters in my novel. And Panama – so much of the little country had still been left unseen and it seemed highly unlikely that I would ever be able to return for a second visit. I hadn’t got as far as Columbus to the undesirable island of Bocas del Toro; Nombre de Dios was a name only in a pageant and a poem; we had failed to penetrate the Haunted House. News came to me, I think from my friend Diederich, that Señor V, poor man, was dead of a heart attack. Had that last Black Label party been too much for him? In the novel, which I began to despair of ever writing, it was essential that he should remain alive, for his role was an important one.
What do You think about Getting To Know The General?
