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policy of ‘prudence’. A young black architect agreed with me about the stupidity of high-rise apartments in the poor quarter of El Chorillo – even the slum houses of Hollywood were to be preferred, he said. I was confused by his reference to Hollywood which I associated with film stars rather than with slums. ‘The people in Hollywood are attached to their houses,’ he told me. ‘The conditions are terrible, but all the same they are homes.’ I realized tardily that Hollywood must be the name given to a very poor part of the city.
    Chuchu nudged me. ‘There’s Koster.’
    The novelist – or CIA agent – was circulating assiduously, drawing ever nearer, except when he made a sideways dash to refill his glass. The National Guard had done us well and I was feeling a little tipsy myself by this time. Koster reached me and held out his hand.
    ‘Koster,’ he said.
    ‘The old goat,’ I introduced myself.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Chuchu told me that you wanted to know what the old goat was doing here.’
    ‘I never said such a thing.’
    He moved quickly away to hide himself among the other guests and according to Chuchu he spread a rather strange story that I was a well-known homosexual. Are goats homosexual?
    Ten o’clock was long past: the drinks were inexhaustible: and at midnight guests were still arriving. Feeling a discourteous host, I slunk away with Chuchu and his companion, the somewhat haggard woman whom Chuchu fancied, the refugee from Argentina and the dictatorship of Videla. There were many such refugees in Panama City and there was a special flat for their use, known locally as the Pigeon House, for when they had found work or entry into another country they flew away. Chuchu supported them out of the General’s private account.
    Chuchu had confided to me over the drinks that the only wife he had ever really loved (she was a legal wife, too) was arriving next day from the States where she lived with her new husband, a professor, to see her mother and she was bringing with her Chuchu’s two children whom he had not seen for seven years. Her husband was following her in a few days, but I could tell that Chuchu all the same had hopes, and it was obvious that the Argentinian woman was of little importance to him for the time being.
    The day after the party one of my ambitions was fulfilled. Chuchu took me to Portobelo. It wasn’t Nombre de Dios, which I was not to see for another two years, but it was in Portobelo Bay that Drake’s body was buried. An American officer was aiding the Panamanians in what proved an unsuccessful search there for his coffin.
    Portobelo is fantastically beautiful. Little seems altered since Drake’s day when the town stood at the end of the gold route from Panama City. Here is still the treasure house where the gold awaited shipment to Spain, the three forts guarding the town, the ramparts which are lined now with vultures: vultures too were sitting on and around the cross of the cathedral. From the door of the cathedral one could see nothing of the village, only the jungle descending like a curtain, dark and impenetrable, to within fifty yards of the door. There seemed little room among the stone ruins even for the small population of two thousand. The statue of a black Christ presided over the altar. It had been shipwrecked on the way to the Viceroy of Peru and salvaged by the Indians.
    Back in Panama City I lay down for a siesta, but it was not to be. Chuchu woke me to say that the General wanted us to come over to Rory González’s house – Mr Bunker and the Americans had left after only a few days on Contadora island and the General was celebrating.
    It was the first time that we had a real drinking party together. At lunch he would drink water, and only when he had realized my European desire for a real drink did he concede me a glass of rum. This evening Black Label was already flowing when I arrived with Chuchu at five and it continued to flow till ten when