Our Man in Havana (Graham Greene, 1958)

Our Man in Havana (Graham Greene, 1958)

My friends Logan and Amanda just got back from Cuba. Along with a care-package of 50 Cohiba and Monte Cristo cigars they also brought vivid pictures and memories of their brief but fascinating exploration of the Cuban capital.

Logan described Old Havana in sharp detail, painting a mental image of ornate architecture experiencing the slow but steady decay that sea salt combined with a lack of upkeep, causes. He said it looked like it had been under water for 50 years and resembled his idea of the mystical sunken city of Atlantis.

Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” paints a similar picture. In fact, the image Logan conjured up while we sat in Jet Fuel in Cabbagetown last week was a perfect match for Greene’s description of Havana in the 1950s, so I guess not much has changed.

I love the premise of this book. James Wormold, the middle-aged ‘hero’ of the story, is a soft-spoken, mediocre Englishman who has lived in pre-Castro Havana for 20 years running his small, struggling vacuum cleaner shop. He has one friend with whom he spends about six minutes each day, is still in love with the wife who left him a decade earlier, and the possessions he cares about would fit in a single crate.

That sounds like an incredibly boring start, but Wormold has a pretty, spunky 17-year-old daughter named Millie who keeps things interesting right from the beginning. Most of his energy is spent worrying about her and trying to protect her – though she seems capable of handling herself just fine.

When the opportunity to join the British MI6 spy agency comes literally walking though the door of his shop, he decides he needs the money – and probably the distraction --badly enough to join up.

One of his key responsibilities is to recruit Cuban agents to supply intelligence, but rather than doing so Wormold sets about inventing fictional characters to fill the roles, picking names randomly from a list of country club members. The problem is, he does too good a job and his colourful cast of non-existent spies begin bringing in information that makes his superiors in London sit up and take notice.

In response to his good work London decides to boost his bureau staff, and sends Beatrice, a female agent, to work as his secretary along with Rudy, a radio operator disguised as his bookkeeper.

This is where things begin to become complicated for Wormold. His until now seemingly harmless charade suddenly becomes serious, as he needs to strengthen the web he has created around his fake agents in order to make them stand up under scrutiny.

This, he also does well – so well that Beatrice begins to fall in love with Raul, the alcoholic Cuban airline pilot Wormold has ‘recruited’ to fly surveillance missions and collect images of the massive, non-existent military constructions his spies have reported on. One of Wormold’s more colourful character studies, Raul has lost his wife in a massacre during the Spanish civil war and has become disillusioned with both sides, especially the communists, making him an ideal recruit – and an sparking intrigue in Beatrice.

This is a problem for Wormold, who has fallen in love with her and becomes irrationally jealous over the fictional character he invented as a reflection of some of the romantic aspects of his own personality.

Sometimes Wormold felt a twinge of jealousy towards Raul and he tried to blacken the picture.

“He gets through a bottle of whisky a day,” he said.

“It’s his escape from loneliness and memory,” Beatrice said. “Don’t you ever want to escape?”

“I suppose we all do sometimes.”

“I know what that kind of loneliness is like,” she said with sympathy. “Does he drink all day?”

“No, the worst hour is two in the morning, When he wakes then, he can’t sleep for thinking, so he drinks instead.” It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of his consciousness – he had only to turn a light on and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action.”

But soon, Beatrice’s fascination with Raul becomes the least of his problems, as Captain Segura, a feared member of the Havana police, becomes suspicious of Wormold, and as some of his star spies begin to meet with fatal coincidences, eventually leading to the complete collapse of Wormold’s carefully constructed world and a hasty departure.

Entertaining and clever, OMIH is partly a satirical mockery of the British secret service, and partly a criticism of Cuban corruption in the 50s.

Greene was well positioned to provide first-hand descriptions and criticisms of both. He actually served as an MI6 intelligence agent during the Second World War, attempting to send spies into global hotspots and later working in counter-espionage in Portugal, according to an Amazon review. He also had first hand experience in Cuba and actually met Fidel Castro, whom he supported. All that lends a sophisticated, genuine quality to a comedy of errors story that also works as a political commentary.