“Welcome to this house,” the black girl said. “Don’t you worry, Charlot, your friends will be properly looked after. I’ll go and see to their room.”
Charlot told me about his break--an easy one. When he first got to the penal colony he was kept at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and after six months he escaped from there with another Corsican called Simon and a detainee. “We were lucky enough to reach Venezuela a few months after the dictator Gomez died. These open-handed people helped us make a new life for ourselves. I had two years of compulsory residence at El Callao, and I stayed on. Little by little, I took to liking this simple life, you know? I lost one wife when she was having a baby, and the daughter, too. Then this black girl you’ve just seen, Conchita, she managed to comfort me with her real love and understanding, and she’s made me happy. But what about you, Papi? You must have had a cruelly hard time of it; fourteen years is a hell of a stretch. Tell me about it.”
I talked to this old friend for more than two hours, spilling out everything these last years had left rankling in me. It was wonderful for us both to be able to talk about our memories. But, oddly, there was not a single word about Montmartre, not a word about the underworld, no reminders of jobs that were pulled off or misfired, nothing about crooks still at large. It was as though for us life had begun when we stepped aboard La Martinière, me in 1933, Charlot in 1935.
Good Chianti, excellent salad, a grilled chicken, goat cheese and a delicious mango, all put on the table by the cheerful Conchita, meant that Charlot could welcome me properly in his house, and that pleased him. He suggested going down to the village for a drink. I said it was so pleasant where we were I didn’t want to go out.
“Thanks, my friend,” my Corsican said--he often put on a Paris accent. “You’re dead right: we are comfortable here. Conchita, you’ll have to find a girl friend for Enrique.”
“All right: Enrique, I’ll introduce you to friends prettier than me.”
“You’re the prettiest of them all,” CharIot said.
“Yes, but I’m black.”
“That’s the very reason why you’re so pretty, poppet. Because you’re a thoroughbred.”
Conchita’s big eyes sparkled with love and pleasure; it was easy to see she worshipped Charlot.
Lying quietly in a fine big bed I listened to the BBC news from London on Charlot’s radio: but being plunged back into the life of the outside world worried me a little--I was not used to it anymore. I turned the knob. Now it was Caribbean music that came through: Caracas in song. I didn’t want to hear the great cities urging me to live their life. Not this evening, anyway. I switched off quickly and began to think over the last few hours.
Had we purposely avoided talking about the years when we both lived in Paris? No. Had we purposely not mentioned the men of our world who had been lucky enough not to be picked up? No again. So did what had happened before the trial no longer matter?
I tossed and turned in the big bed. It was hot; I couldn’t bear the heat anymore and walked out into the garden. I sat down on a big stone, from where I could look Out over the valley and the gold mine. Everything was lit up down there. I could see trucks, empty or loaded, coming and going.
Gold: the gold that came out of the depths of that mine. A lot of it, either in bars or turned into bills, would give you anything on earth. This prime mover of the world, which cost so little to mine, since the workers had such miserable wages, was the one thing you had to have to live well. Charlot had lost his freedom because he had wanted a lot of it, yet today he hadn’t even mentioned the stuff. He hadn’t told me whether the mine had much gold in it or not. These days his happiness was his black girl, his house, his animals and his garden. He had never even referred to money. He had become a philosopher. I was puzzled.
They caught Charlot because a guy by the name of Little Louis tipped off the police; and during our short meetings in the Sante Charlot never stopped swearing he would get Louis the first chance he had. Yet this evening he had not so much as breathed Louis’s name. And as for me--Christ!--I had not said a word about my cops, or Goldstein, or the prosecuting counsel, either. I should have talked about them! I hadn’t escaped just to end up a cross between a gardener and a day laborer.
I had promised to go straight in this country, and I’d keep my word. But that didn’t mean I had given up my plans for revenge. You mustn’t forget, Papi, that the reason you’re here today is that the idea of revenge kept you going for fourteen years.
His little black girl was very pretty, all right; but still I wondered whether Big Charlot wouldn’t be better off in a city than in this hole at the far end of creation. Or maybe I was the square, not seeing that my friend’s life had its charm? That was something to chew over.
Charlot was forty-five, not an old man. Very tail, very strong, built like a Corsican peasant fed on plenty of good, healthy food all his young days. He was deeply burned by the sun of this country, and with his huge straw hat on his head, its brim turned up at the sides, he looked terrific. He was a perfect example of the pioneer in these virgin lands, and he was so much one of the people and the country he did not stand out at all. Far from it: he really belonged.
Seven years he’d been here, this still young Montmartre safecracker! He must certainly have worked more than two years to clear this stretch of plateau and build his house. He had to go out into the bush, choose the trees, cut them down, bring them back, fit them together. Every beam in his house was made of the hardest and heaviest timber in the world, the kind they call ironwood. I was sure all he earned at the mine had gone into it, because he must have had help and must have paid for the labor, the cement (the house was concreted), the well, and the windmill for pumping the water up to the tank.
That well-rounded young Negrita with her big loving eyes: she must be a perfect companion for this old sea dog on shore. I’d seen a sewing machine in the big room. She must make those little dresses that suited her so well.
Maybe the reason Charlot hadn’t gone to the city was that he wasn’t sure of himself, whereas here he enjoyed a life with no problems at all. You’re a great guy, Charlot! You’re the very picture of what a crook can be turned into. I congratulate you. And I also congratulate the people who changed your way of seeing what a life can or ought to be.
But still these Venezuelans are dangerous, with their generous hospitality. Kindness and goodwill turn you into a prisoner if you let yourself be caught. I’m free, and I mean to stay that way forever.
I’d better watch it. Above all, no setting up house with a girl. A man needs love when he’s been cut off from it for a long time, but fortunately I’d had a girl in Georgetown two years before, my Hindu, Indara. So I was not so vulnerable as if I’d come straight from jail, as Charlot had. Indara was lovely and I was happy with her; but it wasn’t for that I had settled in Georgetown, living there in clover. If the quiet life is too quiet, even though it’s happy, it’s not for me: that I know very well.
Adventure! A man needs adventure to feel alive, alive all through! That was why I left Georgetown and why I ended up at El Dorado. And that was why I was where I was today.
Okay. The girls were pretty, full-blooded and charming, and I certainly could not live without love. It was up to me to avoid complications. I must promise myself to stay there a year, since I was forced to do so anyway. The less I owned, the easier I’d be able to leave this country and its enchanting people. I was an adventurer, but an adventurer with a shift of gear--I must get my money honestly, or at least without hurting anyone. Paris, that was my aim: Paris one day, to present my bill to the people who put me through so much suffering.
I was calmer now, and my eyes took in the setting moon as it dipped toward the virgin forest, a sea of black treetops with waves of different heights--but waves that never stirred. I went back to my room and stretched out on the bed.
Paris was still a great way off, but not so far that I wouldn’t be there again one day, walking the asphalt of her streets.
2
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The Mine
A week later, thanks to the letter that Prospéri, the Corsican grocer, wrote for me, I was taken on at the Mocupia mine. There I was, looking after the working of the pumps that sucked up the water from the shafts.
The mine looked like a coal pit, with its underground galleries. There were no veins of gold and very few nuggets. The gold was found in very hard rock; they blasted this rock with dynamite and then broke the oversized lumps with a sledgehammer. The pieces were put into trucks, and the trucks brought to the surface in elevators; then crushers reduced the rock to a powder finer than sand. This was mixed with water, making a liquid mud that was pumped up into tanks as big as the reservoirs in an oil refinery. These tanks had cyanide in them. The gold dissolved into a liquid heavier than the rest and sank to the bottom. Under heat, the cyanide evaporated, carrying off the particles of gold; they solidified and were caught by filters very like combs as they went past. Then the gold was collected, melted into bars, carefully checked for 24-carat purity and put into a strictly guarded store. But who did the guarding? I still can’t get over it. Simon, no less, the crook who had made his break from the penal colony with Big Charlot.
When my work was over, I went to gaze at the sight. I went to the store and stared at the huge pile of gold ingots neatly lined up by Simon, the ex-convict. Not even a strongroom, just a concrete storehouse with walls no thicker than usual, and a wooden door.
“Everything okay, Simon?”
“Okay. And what about you, Papi? Happy at Charlot’s?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“I never knew you were in El Dorado. Otherwise I’d have come to get you Out.”
“That’s a good guy. Are you happy here?”
“Well, you know, I have a house: it’s not as big as Charlot’s, but it’s made of bricks and mortar. I built it myself. And I’ve got a young wife, very sweet. And two little girls. Come and see me whenever you like--my house is yours. Charlot tells me your friend is sick; my wife knows how to give injections, so if you need her don’t hesitate.”
We talked. He, too, was thoroughly happy. He, too, never spoke of France, of Montmartre, though he had lived there. Just like Charlot. The only thing that mattered was the present--wife, children, the house. He told me he earned twenty bolIvars a day. Fortunately their hens gave them eggs for their omelettes, and the chickens were on the house; otherwise they wouldn’t have gone far on twenty bolivars, Simon and his brood.
I gazed at that mass of gold lying there, so carelessly stored behind a wooden door, and the four walls only a foot thick. A door that two heaves on a jimmy would open without a sound. This heap of gold, at three boilvars fifty a gram or thirty-five dollars an ounce, would easily add up to three million five hundred thousand boilvars, or almost a million dollars. And this unbelievable fortune was within hand’s reach! Knocking it off would be almost child’s play.
“Elegant, my neat pile of ingots? Eh, Papillon?”
“It’d be more elegant still well salted away. Christ, what a fortune!”
“Maybe, but it’s not ours. It’s holy, on account of they’ve entrusted it to me.”
“Entrusted it to you, sure; but not to me. You must admit it’s tempting to see something like that just lying about.”
“It’s not just lying about, because I’m looking after it.”
“Maybe. But you aren’t here twenty-four hours a day.”
“No. Only from six at night to six in the morning. But during the day there’s another guard: maybe you know him--Alexandre, of the forged postal orders.”
“Yes, I know him. Well, I’ll see you later, Simon. Say hello to your family for me.”
“You’ll come and visit us?”
“Sure. I’d like to. Ciao.”
I left quickly, as quickly as I could to get away from this scene of temptation. It was unbelievable! Anyone would say they were yearning to be robbed, the guys in charge of this mine. A store that could hardly hold itself upright, and two onetime high-ranking crooks taking care of all that treasure! In all my life on the loose I’d never seen anything like it!
Slowly I walked up the winding path to the village. I had to go right through it to reach the headland where Charlot’s chateau was. I dawdled; the eight-hour day had been tough. In the second gallery there had been precious little air, and even that was hot and wet, in spite of the ventilators. My pumps had stopped sucking three or four times and I had had to set them right again. It was half past eight now, and I had gone down the mine at noon. I’d earned eighteen boilvars. If I had had a workingman’s mind, that wouldn’t have been so bad. Meat was 2.50 bolIvars per kilo; sugar 0.70; coffee 2. Vegetables weren’t dear either: 0.50 for a kilo of rice and the same for dried beans. You could live cheaply, that was true. But did I have the sense to put up with this kind of life?
In spite of myself, as I climbed the stony path, walking easily in the heavy nailed boots they had given me at the mine--in spite of myself, and although I did my best not to think about it, I kept seeing that million dollars in gold bars just calling out for some enterprising hand to grab it. At night, it wouldn’t be hard to jump Simon and chloroform him without being recognized. And then the whole thing was in the bag, because they carried their fecklessness to the point of leaving him the key to the store so he could take shelter if it rained. Criminal irresponsibility! All I’d have to do then was carry the two hundred ingots out of the mine and load them into something--a truck or a cart. I’d have to prepare several caches in the forest, all along the road, to salt the ingots away in little bundles of a hundred kilos each. If it was a truck, then once it was unloaded I’d have to carry on as far as possible, pick the deepest place in the river and toss it in. A cart? There were plenty in the village square. The horse? That would be harder to find, but not impossible. A night of very heavy rain would give me all the time I needed for the job, and it might even let me get back to the house and go to bed meek as a monk.
By the time I reached the lights of the village square, I had already brought the heist off in my mind, and was slipping into the sheets of Big Charlot’s bed.
“Buenos noches,” called a group of men sitting at the village bar.
“Hello there, one and all. Good night, hombres.”
“Come and join us for a while. Have an iced beer.”
It would have been rude to refuse, so there I was sitting among those good souls, most of them miners, who wanted to know whether I was all right, whether I’d found a woman, whether Conchita was looking after Picolino properly, and whether I needed money for medicine or anything else. These generous, spontaneous offers brought me back to earth. A gold prospector said that if I didn’t care for the mine and if I only wanted to work when I felt like it I could go off with him. “It’s tough going, but you make more. And then there’s always the possibility you’ll be rich in a single day.” I thanked them all and offered to stand a round.
“No, Frenchman, you’re our guest. Another time, when you’re rich. God be with you.”
I went on toward the chateau. Yes, it would be easy enough to turn into a humble, honest man among all these people who lived on so little, who were happy with almost nothing, and who adopted a man without worrying where he came from or what he had been.
Conchita welcomed me back. She was alone. CharIot was at the mine--so when I left for work he’d be coming back. Conchita was full of fun and kindness; she gave me a pair of slippers so I could rest my feet after the heavy boots.
“Your friend’s asleep. He ate well and I’ve sent off a letter asking them to take him into the hospital at Tumereno, a little town not far off, bigger than this.”
I thanked her and ate the hot meal that was waiting for me. This welcome, so homely, simple and happy, made me relax; it gave me the peace of mind I needed after the temptation of that ton of gold. The door opened.
“Good evening, everybody.” Two girls came into the room, just as if they were at home.
“Good evening,” Conc
hita said. “Here are two friends of mine, Papillon.”
One was dark, tall and slim; she was called Graciela and was very much the gypsy type, her father being a Spaniard. The other girl’s name was Mercedes. Her grandfather was a German, which explained her fair skin and very fine blond hair. Graciela had black Andalusian eyes with a touch of tropical fire; Mercedes’ were green and suddenly reminded me of Lali, the Goajira Indian. Lali... Lali and her sister Zoralma: what had become of them? It was 1946 now, and twelve years had gone by, but in spite of all those years I felt a pain in my heart when I remembered those two lovely creatures. Since those days they must have made themselves a fresh life with men of their own race, and honestly I had no right to disturb their new existence.
“Your friends are terrific, Conchità! Thank you very much for introducing me to them.”
I gathered they were both free and neither had a fiancé. In such good company the evening went by in a flash. Conchita and I walked them back to the edge of the village, and it seemed to me they leaned very heavily on my arms. On the way back Conchita told me both the girls liked me, the one as much as the other, “Which do you like best?” she asked.
“They are both charming, Conchita; but I don’t want any complications.”
“You call making love complications? Love, it’s the same as eating and drinking. You think you can live without eating and drinking? When I don’t make love I feel really ill, although I’m already twenty-two. They are only sixteen and seventeen, so just think what it must be for them. If they don’t take pleasure in their bodies, they’ll die.”
“And what about their parents?”
She told me, just as José had done, that the daughters of the ordinary people loved just to be loved. They gave themselves to the man they liked spontaneously, wholly, without asking anything in exchange except the thrill.
“I understand you, poppet. I’m willing as the next man to make love for love’s sake. Only you tell your friends that an affair doesn’t bind me in any way at all. Once they’re warned, it’s another matter.”
Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon Page 3