Getting to Know the General by Graham Greene

Somoza’s men. In the dream his brother had disapproved of what Camilo was doing now. I suppose he too was suffering from a sense of guilt no more rational than mine, because he was in safety while the civil war was being savagely fought in Nicaragua, but he was working under orders for his cause.
    He told me a little about his brother, who had been younger than himself. His brother had been training as an engineer with Siemens in Managua, and when he was seventeen he went off on a scholarship flight to Germany. His parents never saw him again until years later the Nicaraguan police brought them from their home to identify the dead body of Commandant Cero. They had no idea that their son was the famous Cero who had struck the first serious blow against Somoza’s tyranny by kidnapping in one coup a number of ambassadors and government ministers as they left a party and thus obtained the release of fourteen political prisoners who were all flown safely to Cuba.
    My new friend Camilo knew nothing for years of what was happening to his brother after he had seen him leave for Germany as a boy. Then quite accidentally he encountered him in Mexico City and his brother had recruited him into the propaganda side of the Sandinista movement. He heard of his death on the radio in Panama.
    I was glad to find when we returned to the city that Chuchu was safely back, though from where I never learnt. ‘The trouble about Chuchu,’ Camilo said to me, ‘is that he mixes up politics with sex.’ True or not, he now seemed to have a new girl friend, the wife of a gangster who was lying in hospital after a shooting affray, a rather dangerous relationship one would have thought, and in a confusing party with our Sandinista friends a pregnant girl – was it Chuchu’s girl? – made her appearance, but she didn’t seem to be connected with anyone there. Jokes were made about who was the father of the child.
    He was killed in Vietnam, she said.
    ‘Then you’ve been two years pregnant.’
    ‘I meant in Korea.’
    ‘That’s even longer.’
    She pointed at the young mathematician Rogelio.
    ‘Well,’ he said, laughing, ‘who knows? It might be.’
    I urged Chuchu that evening to stay sober. ‘Of course I’ll be sober,’ he said, and he added, ‘I never mix up politics with alcohol or sex.’
    4
    The San Bias Islands – three hundred and sixty-five of them – lie in the Atlantic off the Darién coast. The only inhabitants are Cuna Indians who live a virtually independent life. They pay no taxes. They send representatives to the National Assembly and have even negotiated their own trade treaty with Colombia. Tourists are allowed to spend a night on two of the islands. On the other three hundred and sixty-three strangers can only pass the hours of day. The San Bias lobsters are regarded very highly in Panama, yet, fresh as it was from the sea, I found mine tough and tasteless.
    Far more interesting than the lobsters were the women. What interest and greed they would have aroused in the conquistadores, for in every nose and ear hung a gold ring. No one could tell me from whence the gold had come, for there are no gold mines in Panama. Even in the Spanish days, when the gold caravans took the trail from Panama City to Portobelo, the gold had first to be brought down the Pacific coast from Peru.
    The women, quite apart from the wealth of their rings and their fashion of dressing in a rather similar style to Ancient Egyptians, were interesting to watch. The long-haired girls were unmarried: those with hair cut short were married. A distinction was made between them, even in the use of musical instruments. When they danced for us, at a fixed and very moderate fee, the unmarried rattled gourds and the married played on little bundles of pipes. They contribute to the Cuna economy by embroidering squares of material called molas for use as blouse fronts. That day I was with Camilo and Lidia, the wife of Rogelio. It was her birthday and she