The Seeds of Fiction by Richard Greene, Bernard Diederich

witnessed the murder, ‘for a considerable period after that day had to live locked in a room in a sanatorium, a raving maniac. She couldn’t understand that her husband was simply acting on orders from
El Generalissimo.’
    Before resuming the journey I cleaned off the mass of splattered insects on the car’s windshield. Then I poured drops of water on the dirt road, on each of the cardinal points of the compass. Graham liked the idea that we had appealed to Papa Legba to ‘open the gate’ for us
— ‘Papa Legba ouvri barye pou nou
— and for a safe trip. Graham saw the invocation as the equivalent of Catholics beginning their prayers with the sign of the cross. Papa Legba is invoked at the beginning of ceremonies when a person wishes to communicate with his gods. This powerful Voodoo
lwa
is keeper of the keys, guardian of the highways, crossroads and man’s destiny. ‘And this,’ Graham asked, pointing to the St Christopher medal attached to the dashboard. ‘Is this Papa Legba’s Catholic equivalent? We are not taking any chances, are we?’
    With the sun directly overhead the car felt like the inside of an oven. ‘I shouldn’t have had that beer,’ I grumbled.
    â€˜But you did.’ Graham disagreed with my view that one should not drink in the Tropics until the sun went down over the yardarm. ‘I think it’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘One should not be limited by any such code. A drink is good any time, and it is especially good for the digestion at noon — in the Tropics or anywhere.’
    The road meandered from the lush green riverside over dry, brown rolling hills where goats nibbled at stubbles of burnt grass. In the distant blue haze appeared the mountains where Maroons, escaped slaves from the large plantations that then occupied Haiti’s bountiful Plaine du Nord, had established their campsites. These Maroons, or Cimarons as the Spanish calledthem, led the early slave revolts against the French colonialists and played an important role in Haiti’s independence war.
    â€˜How good it is you have no radio,’ Graham said. ‘We are quite cut off. Excellent!’ We could, he said, survive at least a couple of days without news or music.
    It worried me, though. There could be a coup d’état or civil war could break out, and we wouldn’t know it.
    Graham was surprisingly at ease as I drove along the rutted narrow dirt track, which required most of my concentration. I tried not to think of what could or might happen. Graham had an insatiable appetite for facts but also liked to hear all the fiction (rumours) from Haiti. We passed through Capotillo, at the small pueblo near which on 16 August 1963 Cantave’s troops had made a swift incursion into Haiti and seized the picturesque little coffee town of Mont-Organisé. That attack had been a special embarrassment to Dominican President Bosch, who had been near by commemorating the Dominican Republic’s independence from Haiti. The exile force quickly retreated to the Dominican side when reinforcements began arriving from Cap Haïtien to retake Mont-Organisé. These attacks were launched without the knowledge of President Bosch.
    Near the Dominican town of Restauración a sawmill that once had belonged to Generalissimo Trujillo was in disrepair and appeared abandoned. The mules used for dragging pine trees to the mill grazed on a neighbouring hill. El Jefe had sold the mill to Antonio de la Maza, who established a coffee plantation near Restauración. His pinewood home here had once been the centre of the area’s social activity. Years later, de la Maza led the team that assassinated Trujillo. He was later shot to death near Santo Domingo’s Independence Square by the SIM (Military Intelligence Service) one night while I was having dinner near by with a group of colleagues.
    As we came into Restauración Graham pointed to a little