Jojo stopped. There was nothing he had forgotten: now I knew the whole story. I thought quickly and then said, “You go off alone, Jojo. I can’t see myself working like a Trojan. You’d have to be possessed--you’d have to believe in your bomb like you believe in God Almighty to stand it in that kind of a hell. Yes, you go off by yourself. I’ll look for my bomb in Caracas.”
Once again his hard eyes pierced me through and through. “I get it; you haven’t changed. Do you want to know what I really think?”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re quitting El Callao because it makes you sick, knowing there’s an unprotected heap of gold at La Mocupia. Right or wrong?”
“Right.”
“You’re leaving it alone because you don’t want to muck things up for the ex-cons who are living here in retirement. Right or wrong?”
“Right.”
“And you think that when it comes to finding the bomb there where I said, it’s a matter of many are called and few are chosen? Right or wrong?”
“Right.”
“And you’d rather find the bomb in Caracas, wrapped up and prepared, the diamonds already cut--find it in a jeweler’s shop or a gem wholesaler’s?”
“Maybe: but that’s not certain. Remains to be seen.”
“I swear, you’re a true adventurer; nothing will cure you.”
“That’s as it may be. But don’t you forget this thing that keeps eating me all the time--this revenge. For that I really think I’d do anything at all.”
“Adventure or revenge, you still need dough. So come along into the bush with me. It’s terrific, you’ll see.”
“With a pickax and a shovel? Not for me.”
“You got a fever, Papillon? Or has it turned you into a lemon, knowing that you can go where you like since yesterday?”
“I don’t feel that way.”
“You’ve forgotten the main thing--my name. Jojo La Passe: Jojo the Craps.”
“Okay, so you’re a professional gambler; I don’t see what that’s got to do with this notion of laboring away like brutes.”
“Nor do I,” he said, doubling up with laughter.
“How come? We aren’t going to the mines to dig up diamonds? Where do we get them from, then?”
“Out of the miners’ pockets.”
“How?”
“By shooting craps every night, and by sometimes losing.”
“I get it, mac. When do we leave?”
“Wait a minute.” He was very pleased with the effect of his words. Slowly he stood up, pulled a table into the middle of the room, spread a blanket over it and brought out six pairs of dice. “Have a good look.” Very carefully I examined them. They were not loaded.
“No one could say those dice were loaded, could they?”
“Nobody.”
He took a gauge out of a felt case, gave it to me and said, “Measure.” One of the sides had been carefully filed and polished, reducing it less than a tenth of a millimeter. All you could see was shine. “Try and throw seven or eleven.” I rolled the dice. Neither seven nor eleven. “My turn now.” Jojo deliberately made a little wrinkle in the blanket. He held the dice with the tips of his fingers. “That’s the trick,” he observed. “Here we go! And there’s seven! And there’s eleven! And eleven! And seven! You want six? Boom, there’s six! Six with four and two or five and one? There you are. Is the gentleman satisfied?”
I was fascinated, utterly fascinated. I’d never seen such a thing: it was extraordinary. You couldn’t make out the slightest false move.
“Listen, mac. I’ve been shooting craps forever. I started on the Butte when I was eight. I’ve risked shooting them with dice like that, and you know where? On the crap table at the Gare de l’Est, in the days of Roger Sole and Company.”
“I remember. There were some very tough customers there.”
“You don’t have to tell me. And among the regulars, as well as the tough guys and the pimps and the burglars, there were cops as famous as Jojo-le-Beau, the pimp cop from La Madeleine, and specialists from the gambling squad. And I took them as well as the rest. So you see there’s no way to lose if you shoot these craps in a miners’ camp.”
“True enough.”
“But get this: the one place is as dangerous as the other. At the Gare de l’Est the crooks were as quick on the draw as the miners. Just one difference: in Paris you shoot and you light out as quick as you can. At the mine, you shoot and stay put. There are no pigs; the miners make their own laws.” He paused, slowly emptied his glass and went on, “Well now, Papillon, are you coming with me?”
I reflected for a moment; but not for long. The adventure tempted me. It was risky, without doubt; those miners would not be choirboys--far from it; but there might be big money to be picked up. Come on, Papillon, banco on Jojol And again I asked, “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, if you like: at five, after the heat of the day. That’ll give us time to get things together. We’ll travel by night at first. You got a gun?”
“No.”
“A good knife?”
“No knife.”
“Never mind. I’ll look after that. Ciao.”
I went back to the house, thinking about Maria. She’d certainly rather I went into the bush than to Caracas. I’d leave Picolino with her. And then tomorrow, on my way for the diamonds! And seven! And eleven! Once, siete! Et sept, et onze! I was there already; all I had to do was learn the numbers in Spanish, English, Brazilian and Italian.
I found José at home. I told him I’d changed my mind. Caracas would be for another time; at present I was going off with an old white-haired Frenchman called Jojo to the diamond mines.
“What are you going with him as?”
“As his partner, of course.”
“He always gives his partners half his winnings.”
“That’s the rule. Do you know men who’ve worked with him?”
“Three.”
“Did they make plenty of money?”
“I don’t know. I dare say they did. Each one of them made three or four trips.”
“And what about after those three or four trips?”
“After? They never came back.”
“Why not? Did they settle down there at the mines?”
“No. They were dead.”
“Is that right? Fever?”
“No. Killed by the miners.”
“Oh. Jojo must be a lucky guy, if he always got out of it.”
“Yes. But Jojo, he’s very clever. He never wins much himself: he works it so that his partner wins.”
“I see. So it’s the other man who’s in danger; not him. It’s good to know. Thanks, José.”
“You’re not going, now that I’ve told you that?”
“One last question, and give me the straight answer: Is there a chance of coming back with a lot of dough after two or three trips?”
“Sure.”
“So Jojo is rich. Why does he go back there, then? I saw him loading the mules.”
“To begin with Jojo doesn’t risk anything, as I said. Secondly, he was certainly not going off. Those mules belong to his fatherin-law. He made up his mind to go because he met you.”
“But what about the stuff he was loading, or getting ready to load?”
“How do you know it was for him?”
“Oh-ho. What other advice have you got?”
“Don’t go.”
“Not that. I’ve made up my mind to go. What else?”
José bent his head as if to think. A long pause. When he looked up again his face was bright. His eyes shone with intelligence, and slowly, drawing out his words, he said, “Listen to the advice of a man who knows that world through and through. Every time there’s a big game, a real big game--when there’s a heap of diamonds in front of you and everything is at the boiling point, get up unexpectedly and don’t sit there with your winnings. Say you’ve got a bellyache and go straight to the john. You don’t come back, of course; and tha
t night you sleep somewhere else, not in your own place.”
“Pretty good, José. And what else?”
“Although the buyers at the mine pay a good deal less than the ones in El Cailao or Ciudad Boilvar, you want to sell them all the diamonds you win--sell them every day. And don’t ever take the cash. Make them give you receipts in your name so as to cash them at El Callao or Ciudad Boilvar. Do the same with foreign banknotes. You say you’re afraid of losing everything you’ve won in a single day and so you avoid the risk by never having much on you. And you tell everybody just what you’re doing, so it becomes well known.”
“So that way I’ll have a chance of coming back?”
“Yes. You’ll have a chance of coming back alive, if God wills.”
“Thanks, José. Buenos noches.”
Lying in Maria’s arms, exhausted with love, my head in the hollow of her shoulders, I felt her breath on my cheek. In the darkness, before I closed my eyes, I saw a heap of diamonds in front of me. Gently I picked them up, as though I was playing with them, and put them into the little canvas bag that all miners carry; then I got up right away and having looked round I said to Jojo, “Keep my place. I’m going to the john. I’ll be back in a minute.” And as I dropped off, there were José’s knowing eyes, shining full of light--only people who live very close to nature have eyes like that.
The morning passed quickly. Everything was settled. Picolino was to stay there; he would be well cared for. I kissed everybody. Maria shone with delight. She knew that if I went to the mines I’d have to come back this way, whereas Caracas never gave back the men who went to live there. She went with me as far as the meeting place. Five o’clock; Jojo was there, and in great form. “Hello there, man! Okay? You’re prompt--fine, fine! The sun will be down in an hour. It’s better that way. No one can follow you at night.”
A dozen kisses for my true love and I climbed into the saddle. Jojo fixed the stirrups for me and just as we were setting off Maria said to me, “And above all, mi amor, don’t forget to go to the lavatory at the right moment.”
I burst out laughing as I dug my heels into the mule. “You were listening behind the door, you Judas!”
“When you love, it’s natural.”
Now we were away, Jojo on a horse and me on a mule. The virgin forest has its roads, called piques. A pique is a passage about two yards wide that has gradually been cut through the trees; and the men who pass along keep it clear with their machetes. On either side, a wall of green: above, a roof of millions of plants, but too high to be reached with a machete even if you stand in your stirrups. This is the selva, the tropical forest. It is made up of an impenetrable tangle of two kinds of vegetation: a layer of creepers, trees, and plants that do not rise much above twenty feet, and over that, mounting to seventy-five or a hundred feet, the splendid great tops of the huge trees that climb higher and higher to reach the sun. Although their tops are in the sunlight, the foliage of their wide, leafy branches makes a thick screen, keeping off all but a dim, filtered day. In a tropical forest you are in a wonderful landscape that bursts into growth all over, so as you ride along a pique you have to hold the reins in one hand and keep slashing at everything that gets in your way. A pique where a certain number of people keep coming and going always looks like a well-kept corridor.
There’s nothing that gives a man such a sense of freedom as being in the bush and well armed. He has the feeling of being as much part of the landscape as the wild animals. He moves cautiously, but with unbounded self-confidence. He seems to be in the most natural of all possible elements, and all his senses are on the alert--hearing, sight and smell. His eyes dart perpetually from point to point, sizing up everything that moves. In the bush there is only one enemy that matters, the beast of beasts, the most intelligent, the cruelest, the wickedest, the greediest, the vilest and also the most wonderful--man.
We traveled all that night, going fairly well. But in the morning, after we had drunk a little coffee from the Thermos flask, my whore of a mule started dragging its feet, dawdling along sometimes as much as a hundred yards behind Jojo. I stabbed its ass with all kinds of thorns, but nothing did any good. And to aggravate matters, Jojo started bawling out, “Why, you know nothing about riding, man. It’s easy enough. Watch me.” And he would just touch his creature with his heel and set off at a gallop. And he’d stand in his stirrups and bellow, “I’m Captain Cook,” or “Hey there, Sancho! Are you coming? Can’t you keep up with your master, Don Quixote?”
This riled me, and I tried everything I could think of to make the mule get along. At last I hit on a terrific idea and right away it broke into a gallop. I’d dropped a lighted cigar-end into its ear. It tore along like a thoroughbred, and I rejoiced, full of glee; I even passed the Captain, waving as I went flashing by. But a mule is such a vicious brute the wild ride lasted only the length of the gallop. The animal rammed me up against a tree, nearly crushing my leg, and there I was on the ground, my ass filled with the prickles of some plant. And there was old Jojo, screeching with laughter like a child.
I won’t tell the whole story of chasing the mule (two hours!), or of its kicking and farting and all the rest. But at last, out of breath, full of thorns, perishing with heat and weariness, I did manage to hoist myself onto the back of that cross-grained, obstinate bastard. This time it could go just as it chose: I was not going to be the one to cross it. The first mile I rode not sitting but lying on its back, with my ass in the air, trying to get the fiery thorns out of it.
The next day we left the pigheaded brute at a posada, an inn. Then two days in a canoe, followed by a long day’s walk with packs on our back, brought us to the diamond mine.
I dumped my load on the log table of an open-air eating house. I was at the end of my rope, and I could have strangled old Jojo--he stood there with no more than a few drops of sweat on his forehead, looking at me with a knowing grin. “Well, pal, and how are you feeling? Okay?”
“Fine, fine! Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be feeling fine? But just you tell me this: why have you made me carry a shovel, a pickax and a sieve all day long when we aren’t going to do any digging at all?”
J ojo put on a sorrowful air. “Papillon, you disappoint me. Use your noggin. If a guy turned up here, not carrying these tools, what would he have come for? That’s the question everybody would ask--all these eyes that watched you coming into the village through the holes in the wails and the tin roofs. With you loaded as you were, no questions. Do you get it?”
“I get it, man.”
“It’s the same for me, since I’m carrying nothing. Suppose I turn up with my hands in my pockets and I set up my table without doing anything else: what are the miners and their girls going to say, eh, Papi? This old French type is a professional gambler, that’s what they’re going to say. Well now, you’ll see what I’m going to do. If I can, I’ll try and find a secondhand motor pump here in the village; otherwise I’ll send for one. And twenty yards of big piping and two or three sluices. A sluice is a long wooden box with divisions, and these divisions have holes in them. You pump the mud into it, and a team of seven men can wash fifty times more earth than a dozen working the old-fashioned way. And it’s still not looked upon as machinery. Then as the owner of the pump I get twenty-five percent of the diamonds; and what’s more, I have a reason for being here. No one can say I live off gambling, because I live off my pump. But since I’m a gambler as well, I don’t stop gambling at night. That’s natural, because I don’t take part in the actual work. You get it?”
“It’s as clear as gin.”
“There’s a bright boy. Two frescos, Señora.”
A fat, friendly old light-skinned woman brought us glasses full of chocolate-colored liquid with an ice cube and a bit of lemon swimming in it.
“That’ll be eight bolivars, hombres.”
“More than two dollars! Hell, life is not cheap here.”
Jojo paid. “How are things going?” he asked.
“So-so
.”
“Is there any loot or not?”
“Men in plenty. But very, very few diamonds. They found this place three months ago, and since then four thousand men have come rushing in. Too may men for so few diamonds. And what about him?” she said, jerking her chin toward me. “German or French?”
“French. He’s with me.”
“Poor soul.”
“How come, poor soul?” I asked.
“Because you’re too young and too good-looking to die. The men who come with Jojo never have any luck.”
“You shut your trap, you old fool. Come on, Papi, let’s go.”
As we stood up, the fat woman said to me by way of good-bye, “Look out for yourself.”
Of course, I’d said nothing about what José had told me, and Jojo was amazed that I did not try to find out what there was behind her words. I could feel him waiting for the questions that didn’t come. He seemed upset and he kept glancing at me sideways.
Pretty soon, after he had talked to various people, Jojo found a shack. Three small rooms; rings to hang our hammocks; and some cartons. On one of them, empty beer and rum bottles; on another, a battered enamel bowl and a full watering can. Strings stretched across to hang up our clothes. The floor was pounded earth, very clean. The walls of this hutch were made of planks from packing cases--you could still read Savon Camay, Aceite Branca, Nestlé’s Milk. Each room was about ten feet by ten. No windows. I felt stifled and took off my shirt.
Jojo turned, deeply shocked. “Are you crazy? Suppose somebody came in? You’ve got a wicked face already, and now if you go and show your tattooed hide, man, it’s as if you were advertising the fact that you’re a crook. Behave yourself.”
“But I’m stifling, Jojo.”
“You’ll get used to it--it’s all a matter of habit. But behave yourself, almighty God: above all, behave yourself.”
I managed to keep myself from laughing: he was a priceless old fart, that Jojo.
We knocked two rooms into one. “This will be the casino,” said Jojo, with a grin. It made a room twenty feet by ten. We swept the floor, went Out to buy three big wooden crates, some rum and paper cups to drink out of. I was eager to see what the game would be like.
Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon Page 6