I didn’t have to wait long. Once we had been around a number of wretched little drinking joints, to “make contact,” as Jojo put it, everyone knew that there would be a game of craps in our place at eight that evening. The last joint we went to was a shed with a couple of tables outside, four benches and a carbide lamp hanging from a covering of branches. The boss, a huge, ageless redhead, served the punch without a word. As we were leaving he came over to me and, speaking French, he said, “I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know. But I’ll just give you this tip. The day you feel like sleeping here, come along. I’ll look after you.”
He spoke an odd sort of French, but from his accent I realized he was a Corsican. “You a Corsican?”
“Yes. And you know a Corsican never betrays. Not like some guys from the north,” he added, with a knowing smile.
“Thanks. It’s good to know.”
Toward seven o’clock, Jojo lit the carbide lamp. The two blankets were laid out on the ground. No chairs. The gamblers would either stand or squat. We decided I shouldn’t play that night. Just watch, that’s all.
They started to arrive. Extraordinary mugs. There were few short men: most were huge, bearded, moustachio’d types. Their hands and faces were clean, and they didn’t smell, but their clothes were all stained and very nearly worn out. Every single one of the shirts, though, was spotlessly clean.
In the middle of the cloth, eight pairs of dice were neatly arranged, each in a little box. Jojo asked me to give each player a paper cup. There were about twenty of them. I poured out the rum. Not a single guy there jerked up the neck of the bottle to say enough. After just one round, three bottles vanished.
Each man deliberately took a sip, then put his cup down in front of him and laid an aspirin tube beside it. I knew there were diamonds in those tubes. A shaky old Chinese set up a little jeweler’s scales in front of him. Nobody said much. These men were exhausted: they’d been laboring under the blazing sun, some of them standing in water up to their middies from six in the morning till the sun went down.
Ha, things were beginning to move! First one, then two, then three players took up a pair of dice and examined them carefully, pressing them tight together and passing them on to their neighbor. Everything must have seemed in order, because the dice were tossed back onto the blanket without anything said. Each time, Jojo picked up the pair and put them hack in their box, all except for the last, which stayed there on the blanket.
Some men who had taken off their shirts complained of the mosquitoes. Jojo asked me to burn a few handfuls of damp grass, so the smoke would help to drive them out.
“Who kicks off?” asked a huge copper-colored guy with a thick black curly beard and a lopsided flower tattooed on his right arm.
“You, if you like,” Jojo said.
Out of his silver-mounted belt, the gorilla--for he looked very like a gorilla--brought an enormous wad of boilvar notes held in a rubber band.
“What are you kicking off with, Chino?” asked another man.
“Five hundred bolos.” Bolos is short for “bolivars.”
“Okay for five hundred.”
And the craps rolled. The eight came up. Jojo tried to shoot the eight.
“A thousand bolos you don’t shoot the eight with double fours,” said another player.
“I take that,” Jojo said.
Chino managed to roll the eight, by five and three. Jojo had lost. For five hours on end the game continued without an exclamation, without the least dispute. These men were uncommon gamblers. That night Jojo lost seven thousand bolos and a guy with a game leg more than ten thousand.
It had been decided to stop the game at midnight, but everyone agreed to carry on for another hour. At one o’clock Jojo said this was the last crack.
“It was me that kicked off,” said Chino, taking the dice. “I’ll close it. I lay all my winnings, nine thousand boilvars.”
He had a mass of notes and diamonds in front of him. He covered a whole lot of other stakes and rolled the seven first go.
At this terrific stroke of luck, a murmur went around for the first time. The men stood up. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“Well, you saw that, man?” Jojo said when we were alone.
“Yes, and what I noticed most were those tough mugs. They all carry a gun and a knife. There were even some who sat on their machetes, so sharp they could take your head off in one swipe.”
“That’s a fact, but you’ve seen others like them.”
“Still and all... I ran the table on the islands, but I tell you I never had such a feeling of danger as tonight.”
“It’s all a matter of habit, mac. Tomorrow you’ll play and we’ll win; it’s in the bag. As you see it,” he added, “which are the guys to watch closest?”
“The Brazilians.”
“Well done! That’s how you can tell a man--the way he spots the ones who may turn lethal from one second to another.”
When we had locked the door (three huge bolts) we threw ourselves into our hammocks, and I dropped off right away, before Jojo could start his snoring.
The next day, a splendid sun arose fit to roast you--not a cloud or the least hint of a breeze. I wandered about this curious village. Everyone was welcoming. Disturbing faces on the men, sure enough, but they had a way of saying things (in whatever language they spoke) so there was a warm human contact right away. I found the enormous Corsican redhead again. His name was Miguel. He spoke fluent Venezuelan with English or Brazilian words dropping into it every now and then, as if they’d come down by parachute. It was only when he spoke French, which he did with difficulty, that his Corsican accent came out. We drank coffee that a young brown girl had strained through a sock. As we were talking he asked, “Where do you come from, brother?”
“After what you said yesterday, I can’t lie to you. I come from the penal colony.”
“Ah? You escaped? I’m glad you told me.”
“And what about you?”
He drew himself up, six feet and more, and his redhead’s face took on an extremely noble expression. “I escaped, too, but not from Guiana. I left Corsica before they could arrest me. I’m a bandit of honor--an honorable bandit.”
His face, all lit up with the pride of being an honest man, impressed me. He was really magnificent to see, this honorable bandit. He went on, “Corsica is the paradise of the world, the only country where men will give their lives for honor. You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t know whether it’s the only country, but I do believe you’ll find more men who are fugitives on account of their honor than because they’re just plain bandits.”
“I don’t care for town bandits,” he said thoughtfully.
In a couple of words I told him how things were with me; and I said I meant to go back to Paris to present my bill.
“You’re right; but revenge is a dish you want to eat cold. Go about it as carefully as you can; it would be terrible if they picked you up before you had had your satisfaction. You’re with old Jojo?”
“Yes.”
“He’s straight. Some people say he’s too clever with the dice, but I don’t believe he’s a wrong ‘un. You’ve known him long?”
“Not very; but that doesn’t matter.”
“Why, Papi, the more you gamble the more you know about other men--that’s nature; but there’s one thing that worries me for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Two or three times his partner’s been murdered. That’s why I said what I did yesterday evening. Take care, and when you don’t feel safe, you come here. You can trust me.”
“Thanks, Miguel.”
Yes, a curious village all right, a curious mixture of men lost in the bush, living a rough life in the middle of an explosive landscape. Each one had his story. It was wonderful to see them, wonderful to listen to them. Their shacks were sometimes no more than a roof of palm fronds or bits of corrugated iron, and God knows how they got there. The walls were strips o
f cardboard or wood or sometimes even cloth. No beds; only hammocks. They slept, ate, washed and made love almost in the street. And yet nobody would lift a corner of the canvas or peer between the planks to see what was going on inside. Everybody had the utmost respect for others’ privacy. If you wanted to go and see anyone, you never went nearer than a couple of yards before calling out, by way of ringing the bell, “Is anyone home?” If someone was, and he didn’t know you, you said, “Gente de paz,” the same as saying, I’m a friend. Then someone would appear and say politely, “A delante. Esta casa es suya.” Come in; this house is yours.
A table in front of a solid hut made of well-fitting logs. On the table, necklaces of real pearls from Margarita Island, some nuggets of virgin gold, a few watches, leather or expanding metal watch straps, and a good many alarm clocks. Mustafa’s jewelry shop.
Behind the table was an old Arab with a pleasant face. We talked awhile; he was a Moroccan and he’d seen I was French. It was five in the afternoon, and he said to me, “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.”
“Nor have I. I was just going to. If you’d like to share my meal... ?”
“That would be fine.”
Mustafa was a kind, cheerful guy. I spent a very pleasant hour with him. He was not inquisitive, and he didn’t ask me where I came from.
“It’s odd,” he said, “in my own country I hated the French, and here I like them. Have you known any Arabs?”
“Plenty. Some were very good and others were very bad.”
“It’s the same with all nations. I class myself among the good ones. I’m sixty, and I might be your father. I had a son of thirty who was killed two years ago--shot. He was good-looking; he was kind.” His eyes brimmed with tears.
I put my hand on his shoulder; this unhappy father so moved by the memory of his son reminded me of my own--he, too, retired in his little house in the Ardèche, must have his eyes fill with tears when he thought of me. Poor old Dad. Who could tell where he was, or what he was doing? I was sure he was still alive--I could feel it. Let’s hope the war had not knocked him about too much.
Mustafa told me to come to his place whenever I felt like it-- for a meal or if I ever needed anything: I’d be doing a kindness if I asked him a favor.
Evening was coming on: I said thank you for everything and set off for our shack. The game would be beginning soon.
I was not at all on edge about my first game. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Jojo had said, and he was quite right. If I wanted to deliver my trunk filled with dynamite at 36, quai des Orfèvres and to deal with the others, I needed dough, plenty of dough. I’d be getting my hands on it precious soon; that was a certainty.
As it was a Saturday, and as the miners religiously took their Sundays off, the game was not to begin before nine, because it would last until sunrise. The men came crowding to the shack, too many of them to get inside. It was impossible to find room for them all, so Jojo sorted out the ones who could play high. There were twenty-four of them: the rest would play outside. I went to Mustafa’s, and he very kindly lent me a big carpet and a carbide lamp. As the big-time gamblers dropped out, they could be replaced from outside.
Banco, and banco again! On and on: every time Jojo rolled the dice, so I kept covering the stakes. “Two to one he won’t shoot six with double threes . - . ten with double fives...” The men’s eyes were ablaze. Every time one of them lifted his cup an eleven-year-old boy filled it with rum. I’d asked Jojo to let Miguel supply the rum and the cigars.
Very soon the game heated up to boiling point. Without asking his permission, I changed Jojo’s tactics. I laid odds not only on him but also on the others, and that made him look sour. Lighting a cigar, he muttered angrily, “Quit it, man. Don’t squander the jack.” By about four in the morning I had a pile of bolivars, cruzeiros, American and West Indian dollars, diamonds and even some little gold nuggets in front of me.
Jojo took the dice. He staked five hundred boll vars. I went in with a thousand.
And he threw the seven!
I left the lot, making two thousand bolIvars. Jojo took out the five he had won. And threw the seven again! Once more he pulled out his stake. And seven again!
“What are you going to do, Enrique?” Chino asked.
“I leave the four thousand.”
“Banco alone!” I looked at the guy who had just spoken. A little thickset man, as black as boot polish, his eyes bloodshot with drink. A Brazilian for sure.
“Put down your four thousand bolos.”
“This stone’s worth more.” And he dropped a diamond on the blanket, just in front of him. He squatted there in his pink shorts, bare to the waist. The Chinese picked up the diamond, put it on his scales and said, “It’s only worth three and a half.”
“Okay for three and a half,” said the Brazilian.
“Shoot, Jojo.”
Jojo shot the dice, but the Brazilian grabbed them as they roiled. I wondered what was going to happen; he scarcely looked at the dice but spat on them and tossed them back to Jojo. “Shoot them like that, all wet,” he said.
“Okay, Enrique?” asked Jojo, looking at me.
“If that’s the way you want it, hombre.”
Jojo hitched the fold in the blanket deeper with his left hand, and without wiping the dice he shot them--a long, long roll. And up came the seven again.
As if he was jerked by a spring, the Brazilian leapt to his feet, his hand on his gun. Then quietly he said, “It’s not my night yet.” And he went out.
The moment he shot up like a jack-in-the-box my hand darted to my gun--it had a round in the breech. Jojo never stirred or made a move to defend himself. And yet it was him the black man was aiming at. I saw I still had a lot to learn before I knew exactly when to draw and fire.
At sunrise we stopped. What with the smoke of the damp grass and the cigars and cigarettes, my eyes stung so much they ran. My legs were completely numb from having squatted like a tailor more than nine hours on end. But there was one thing that pleased me: I hadn’t had to get up and piss, not once, and that meant I was entirely in control of my nerves and of my life.
We slept until two in the afternoon. When I woke up, Jojo wasn’t there. I put on my trousers--nothing in the pockets! Shit! J ojo must have swiped the lot. But we hadn’t settled our accounts yet: he shouldn’t have done that. He was taking too much upon himself--assuming that as the boss he was beyond all question. I wasn’t, and never had been, a boss; but I couldn’t bear people who thought themselves superior--who thought they could get away with anything. I went out and found Jojo at Miguel’s, eating a dish of macaroni. “Okay, buddy?” he said to me.
“Yes and no.”
“How come, no?”
“Because you never ought to have emptied my pockets when I wasn’t there.”
“Don’t talk bulishit, boy. I know how to behave and the reason why I did that is on account of everything depends on mutual trust. Don’t you see, during a game you might very well stuff the diamonds or the liquid someplace else besides your pockets, for example? Then again, you don’t know what I won either. So whether we empty our pockets together or not, it’s all one. A matter of confidence.”
He was right; let’s say no more. Jojo had paid Miguel for the rum and the tobacco of the night before. I asked whether the guys wouldn’t think it odd that he paid for them to drink and smoke.
“But I’m not the one who pays! Each man who wins a bundle leaves something on the table. Everyone knows that.”
And night after night this life went on. We’d been here two weeks, two weeks in which every night we played high and wild, gambling with the dice and gambling with our lives too.
One night an appalling rain came hurtling down. Black as ink. A gambler got up after winning a fair pile. He went out at the same time as a huge guy who’d been just sitting there for some time, not playing anymore for want of the wherewithal. Twenty minutes later the big guy who had been so unlucky came back and started
gambling like crazy. I thought the winner must have lent him the dough, but still it seemed queer he should have lent him so much. When daylight came they found the winner dead, stabbed less than fifty yards from our place. I talked to Jojo about it, telling him what I thought.
“It’s nothing to do with us,” he said. “Next time, he’ll watch out.”
“You’re crazy, Jojo. There’ll be no next time for him, on account of he’s dead.”
“True enough: but what can we do about it?”
I was following José’s advice, of course. Every day I sold my foreign notes, the diamonds and the gold to a Lebanese buyer, the owner of a jeweler’s shop in Ciudad Bolivar. Over the front of his hut there was a notice, “Gold and diamonds bought here: highest prices given.” And underneath it, “Honesty is my greatest treasure.”
Carefully I packed the credit notes payable on sight to my order in a balataed envelope--an envelope dipped in raw latex. They couldn’t be cashed by anyone else or endorsed in any other name. Every jailbird in the village knew what I was doing, and if any buster made me feel too uneasy or didn’t speak French or Spanish, I showed him. So the only time I was in danger was during the game or when it ended. Sometimes that good guy Miguel came and fetched me when we stopped for the night.
For two days I’d had the feeling the atmosphere was getting tenser, more mistrustful. I’d learned the smell in the clink: when trouble was brewing in our barrack on the islands, you realized it without being able to tell how. When you’re always on the alert, do you pick up vibes from the guys getting ready for the rough stuff? I don’t know. But I’ve never been wrong about things like that.
For example, one time four Brazilians spent the whole night propped up in the corners of the room, in the darkness. Very occasionally one of them would come out of the shadows into the hard light that shone on the blanket and lay a few ridiculous little bets. They never took the dice or asked for them. Something else: not one of them had a weapon that could be seen. No machete, no knife, no gun. And that just didn’t go with their killers’ faces. It was on purpose, no doubt of it.
Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon Page 7