That was all I saw of a revolution which caused no blood to flow at all; and when we woke up next day, there was the membership of the military junta in the papers: three colonels--Delgado Chalbaud as president, Perez Jiménez and Llovera Páez.
At first, we were afraid this new régime would mean the suppression of the rights given by the former one. But nothing of the kind. Life went on just the same, and we scarcely noticed the change of government, except that the key posts were taken over by soldiers.
Then two years later came the assassination of Delgado Chalbaud. A very ugly business with two conflicting explanations. First theory: they meant to murder all three and he was just the first to be killed. Second theory: one or both of the other colonels had had him put out of the way. The truth was never known. The murderer was arrested, and he was shot and killed while he was being transferred to prison--a lucky shot that prevented any embarrassing statement. From that day on Perez Jiménez was the strong man of the régime, and he officially became dictator in 1952.
So our life went on, and although we never went out for any fun or entertainment or even a drive, this life and our eagerness to work filled us with a wonderful joy. For what we were building up by our labors was our home-to-be, the home where we would live happily, having earned it ourselves, united as two people can be only when they love one another as we did.
And into this home would come Clotilde, Rita’s daughter, who would be mine, and my father, who would be theirs. And to this house my friends would come, to catch their breath awhile when they were in need. And in this home filled with happiness we would be so thoroughly contented that never again should I think of taking my revenge upon those who had caused so much suffering to me and my people.
At last the day came--we had won. In December, 1950, a beautiful document was drawn up at the lawyer’s, and we became the owners of the hotel for good and all.
11
My Father
Soon thereafter Rita set off on her journey, her heart filled with hope. She was going to find out where my father had hidden himself.
“Rely on me, Henri. I’ll bring you back your father.”
I was alone in the running of the hotel. I gave up selling my trousers and shirts, although I could make quite a bundle that way in a few hours. Rita had gone to look for my father, so I was going to look after everything not only as well as if she were there, but even better, twice as well.
To look for my father: my father, the schoolmaster of a village in the Ardèche, who twenty years before had been unable to embrace his own son, because of the bars in the visiting room. My father, to whom Rita would be able to say, “I’ve come as your daughter to tell you that by his own efforts your son has regained his freedom, that he has made himself a life as a good and honest man, and that he and I have built up a home that is waiting for you.”
I got up at five o’clock and went shopping with Minou and a twelve-year-old boy called Carlitos, whom I had taken in when he came out of prison. He carried the baskets. In an hour and a half I’d done the buying for the whole day--meat, fish and vegetables. We both came back loaded like mules. There were two women in the kitchen, one twenty-four, the other eighteen. I dumped everything we had brought on the table and they sorted it out.
For me, the best moment in this simple life was at half past six in the morning, when I ate my breakfast in the dining room with the cook’s daughter on my knee. She was four; she was coal-black, and she would not eat unless she had her breakfast with me. All these things--her little naked body, still cool from the shower her mother gave her when she got up, her little girl’s piping voice, her lovely shining eyes that looked at me so trustingly, the jealous barking of my dogs, cross at being neglected, Rita’s parrot pecking at its bread and milk by my coffee cup--yes, all this really made breakfast the top moment of my day.
Rita? No letter. Why? It was more than a month now that she’d been gone. The voyage took sixteen days, true enough; but after all she’d been in France for two weeks now--had she still found nothing, or did she not want to tell me? All I asked for was a cable, a very short cable just to say “Your father is well and he loves you still.”
I watched for the postman. I never left the hotel unless I had to in order to keep it running smoothly, and I hurried over the shopping and the other business so I could be on the spot all the time. In Venezuela the people who bring telegrams have no uniform, but they are all young; so the moment any boy walked into the patio I hurried toward him, my eyes fixed on his hands to see if he was carrying a green paper. Not a thing. Most of the time they weren’t even telegraph boys, except on two or three occasions when some young fellow did appear with a green slip in his hand: I’d rush out, snatch the telegram and then see with a sinking heart that it was addressed to someone staying at the hotel.
The waiting and lack of news put me on edge. I worked till I dropped; to keep busy, I helped in the kitchen, I worked out extraordinary menus, I checked the rooms twice a day, I talked to the guests about no matter what and listened to whatever they had to say. The only thing that mattered was filling up these hours and days of waiting. There was only one thing I couldn’t do--take a hand in the poker game that started up about two o’clock every night.
There was only one really serious hitch. Carlitos got things wrong. Instead of buying paraffin for cleaning the kitchen, he bought gasoline. The cooks swilled the concrete floor with a good deal of it and then, never suspecting a thing, they lit the stove. The whole kitchen blazed up vividly and the two sisters were burned from foot to belly. I barely had time to wrap a tablecloth round Rosa’s little black girl and save her--not a second to spare. She was almost unhurt, but the other two were badly burned. I had them looked after in their room in the hotel and engaged a Panamanian cook.
Life in the hotel carried on as usual, but I began to be seriously worried about Rita’s silence and her not being there.
Fifty-seven days she had been gone by the time I found myself waiting for her at the airport. Why just that simple telegram-- “ARRIVE TUESDAY 15.30 FLIGHT 705. LOVE RITA”? Why nothing more? Had she not found anyone? I couldn’t tell what to think anymore, and I didn’t want to make any more guesses.
Then there she was, my Rita. She was the fifth coming down the gangway. She saw me right away and we both waved at the same moment. She came toward me, just as usual. From forty yards I searched her face: she was not laughing, just smiling; no, she hadn’t waved as a sign of joy and victory but just naturally, to show she’d seen me. At ten yards I saw she’d come back beaten.
“Did you find my father?”
The question hit her point-blank, after no more than a kiss, a single kiss after two months of separation. I couldn’t wait any longer.
Yes, she had found him. He was lying in the graveyard of a little village in the Ardèche.
She showed me a photograph. A well-made cement tomb with “J. Charrière” on it. He had died four months before she got there. And all Rita brought me back was this picture of his grave.
My heart, which had seen Rita go off so full of hope, almost stopped at this appalling news. I felt the collapse of all those illusions I had had as a man who still sees himself as a little boy for his father. God, not only have You struck the whole of my youth but You have also refused to let me embrace my father and to hear his voice, which would have said, I am certain of it, “Come to my arms, my little Riri. Fate has been unmerciful to you but I love you still; I am proud that you have had the strength to become what you are.” Over and over again Rita told me the little she had been able to find out about my father’s life after I was sentenced. I said nothing; something inside me was tied into a furious knot. And then all at once, as though a sluice had burst open, the idea of revenge came over me again. “Pigs, I’ll set off that trunk of dynamite at thirty-six, quai des Orfèvres, not just to kill a few but to get as many as possible--a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, a thousand! And you, Goldstein, you perjurer, believe me, you’ll get wha
t’s coming to you, every last bit of it. As for you, prosecuting counsel, so eager to put me away, it won’t take me long to find a way of getting hold of your tongue and tearing it out, to cause as much agony as you can suffer!
“Rita, we must part. Try to understand: they prevented me from embracing my father and having his forgiveness. I must have my revenge; they can’t get away with this. I know where to find the money for the journey and to carry out my plan. All I ask is that you let me take five thousand bolIvars out of our saving for my first expenses.”
An interminable silence settled; I no longer saw Rita; her face disappeared behind the unfolding vision of the plan I had worked out so often.
What did I need to put it into action? Less than two hundred thousand bolivars, in fact. I’d asked too much before. I’d have plenty to spare with these sixty thousand dollars. There were two jobs I’d left alone out of respect for this country. First, El Callao with its heap of gold guarded by ex-cons. Then right in the middle of Caracas, the cashier of a big firm. He was a pushover: he carried large sums of money without an escort. The entrance to the building was perfect; so was the fourth-floor corridor: both were badly lit. I could work alone, unarmed, with chloroform.
As for the getaway, that would have to be through British Guiana. I’d get to Georgetown with just a little gold melted down into nuggets--easy enough with a blowtorch. I’d be certain of finding a buyer for the lot. The fence and I would carry out the deal on the basis of notes cut in two; he’d keep one half and only give it to me when I delivered the goods on the British side of the Caroni, where I would have the stuff hidden. That way, there would be confidence all round.
Transfer the dough to Buenos Aires through a bank; carry a certain amount in notes; take a plane from Trinidad to Rio de Janeiro. At Rio, change passports and get into Argentina.
No problem there. I had friends in Rio, ex-cons; and it must be easy to find former Nazis with their trunks full of papers. Leave for Portugal from Buenos Aires with four sets of passports and identity papers--different nationalities but all in the same name to avoid confusion.
From Lisbon, take the road into Spain and reach Barcelona; still traveling by road, into France on a Paraguayan passport. I spoke Spanish well enough by now for an inquisitive French gendarme to take me for a South American.
In Paris I’d stay at the Georges V. Never go out at night: have dinner at the hotel and send for tea in my suite at ten. The same thing every day of the week. That’s the hallmark of a serious man who leads an exactly regulated life. In a hotel such things get noticed right away.
I’d have a moustache, of course, and hair cut en brosse, like an officer. Only say what was strictly necessary and use a Spanish sort of French to say it. Have Spanish newspapers put in my pigeonhole at the reception desk every day.
Thousands and thousands of times I’d considered which man or men to begin with, so that the three jobs would never be connected with Papillon.
The first to get their deserts would be the pigs, with the trunk stuffed with explosives at 36, quai des Orfèvres. There would be no reason to think of me if I did it cleverly. To begin with I’d have a look at the premises and check the exact time it took to go up the stairs to the report room and then get back to the entrance. I didn’t need anyone to work out the fuse for the detonator; I’d make all the necessary experiments at the FrancoVenezuelan garage.
I’d turn up in a van with MAISON SO-AND-SO: OFFICE EQUIPMENT painted on it. Dressed as a delivery man, with my little crate on my shoulder, I should get away with it easily. But when I first went over the place I’d have to find some inspector’s card on a door or else manage to get hold of the name of an important character with his office on that floor. Then I could say the name to the pigs on duty at the door; or indeed I could show them the invoice, as if I didn’t remember who the trunk was for. And then all aboard for the fireworks. It would take diabolical bad luck for anyone to connect the explosion--a sort of anarchist’s job, after all--with Papillon.
Thus the prosecutor Pradel would remain unsuspecting. To cope with him, and to prepare the trunk, the fuse, the explosives and the bits of old iron, I’d take a villa, using my Paraguayan passport if I hadn’t managed to get hold of a French identity card. I was afraid it might be too dangerous to get into contact with the underworld again. Better not risk it: I’d make out with the passport.
The villa would be near Paris, somewhere along the Seine, because I’d have to be able to get there by water and by road. I’d buy a light, fast little boat with a cabin, and it would have moorings right by the villa and on the banks of the Seine in the middle of Paris, too. For the road, I’d have a small, high-powered car. It was only when I got there, when I knew where Pradel lived and worked and where he spent his weekends and whether he took the Metro, the bus, a taxi or his own car, that I’d take the necessary steps to kidnap him and shut him up in the villa.
The main thing was to make dead sure of the times and the places he was alone. Once he was in my cellar, I had him on toast. This prosecutor who, way back in 1931, at the trial, had seemed to say to me, with his vulture look, “You won’t escape from me, young cock; I’m going to make use of everything that can look bad for you, all this ugly muck in your file, so the jury will turn you out of society for good and all”--this prosecutor, who had used all his abilities and all his education to paint the vilest and most hopeless picture of a boy of twenty-four, and with such success that the twelve incompetent bastard jurymen sent me to hard labor for life--this prosecutor I’d have to torture for at least a week before he died. And at that he wouldn’t have paid too dear.
The last to pay the bill would be Goldstein, the perjurer. I’d take him last, since he Was the most dangerous for me. Because once I’d killed him, they’d look back over his life, and the pigs were not always half-wits--they’d soon see the part he had played in my trial. And as they’d know right away that I was on the run, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out there might be a Papillon fluttering about in the Paris air. At that point everything--hotels, streets, stations, ports and airfields--would become extremely dangerous for me. I’d have to make my getaway quickly.
It would be easy enough to pinpoint and follow him, because of his father’s fur shop. There were several ways of killing him, but whichever way I chose, I wanted him to recognize me before he died. If possible, I’d do what I had so often dreamed of doing--strangle him slowly with my bare hands, saying, “Sometimes the dead come to life again. You didn’t expect that, brother? You didn’t expect my hands to kill you? Still, you win, because you’re going to die in a few minutes, whereas you sent me down to rot slowly all my life until I died of it.”
I couldn’t tell whether I’d manage to get out of France, because once Goldstein was dead things would be very dangerous. It was almost certain they would identify me, but I didn’t give a damn. Even if I had to die for it, they must pay for my father’s death. I’d have forgiven them for my suffering. But the fact that my father should have died without my being able to tell him his boy was alive and had gone straight; the fact that maybe he had died of shame, hiding from all his old friends, and that he should have lain in his grave without knowing what I was now--that, no, no, no! That I could never forgive!
During the very long silence while I went through every step of the action again to see there was no hitch anywhere, Rita had been sitting at my feet, with her head leaning against my knee. Not a word, not a sound; she almost seemed to be holding her breath.
“Rita, sweetheart, I leave tomorrow.”
“You can’t go.” She stood up, put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. She went on, “You must not go: you can’t go. There’s something new for me, too. I took advantage of my journey to send for my daughter. She’ll be here in a few days. You know perfectly well the reason I didn’t have her with me was that I needed a settled place for her. Now I’ve got one, and she’ll have a father, too--you. Are you going to spoil everything w
e’ve built up with the love and trust between us? Do you think killing the men who were responsible for your sufferings and perhaps for your father’s death is really the only thing to do when you compare it with what we have?
“Henri, for my sake and for the sake of this girl who is coming to you, and who I am sure will love you, I ask you to give up your idea of revenge forever. If your father could speak, do you think he would approve of your idea of revenge? No. He’d tell you that neither the cops nor the false witness nor the prosecutor nor what you call the jurymen nor the wardens were worth your sacrificing a wife who loves you and whom you love, and my daughter who hopes to find a father in you, and your good, comfortable home, and your honest life.
“I’ll tell you how I see your revenge: it’s this--that our family should be a symbol of happiness for everybody; that with your intelligence and my help, we should succeed in life by honest means; and that when the people of this country talk about you not one would say anything but this--the Frenchman is straight and honest, a good man whose word is his bond. That’s what your revenge ought to be; the revenge of proving to them all that they were terribly mistaken about you; of proving that you managed to come through the horrors of prison unspoiled and to become a fine character. That is the only revenge worthy of the love and the trust I have placed in you.”
She had won. All night we talked, and I learned to drain the cup to the dregs. But I could not resist the temptation of knowing every last detail of Rita’s journey. She lay on a big sofa, exhausted by the failure of this long voyage and by her struggle with me. Sitting there on the edge of it, I leaned over her, questioning her again and again and again, and little by little I dragged out everything she had meant to hide.
Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon Page 20