Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon

‘Maybe. But you aren’t here twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four.’

‘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.’

‘Oh yes, I know him. Well, be seeing you, Simon. Say hello to your family for me.’

‘You’ll come and see 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 one-time 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 with Chariot’s château on it. J dawdled; the eight-hour day had been tough. In the second gallery down there was 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 away. It was half past eight now and I had gone down the mine at noon. I’d earned eighteen bolivars. If I had had a working-man’s mind, that wouldn’t have been so bad. Meat was 2-50 bolivars the kilo; sugar 0-70; coffee 2. Vegetables were not 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 that kind of life?

In spite of myself, as I climbed up 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, there wouldn’t be any difficulty in jumping on Simon and chloroforming 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 of the store so he could take shelter if it rained. Criminal irresponsibility! All that would be left 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 packets of a hundred kilos each. If it was a truck, then once it was unloaded I’d have to carry right 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 between eight and six in the morning 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, in my mind I had already brought it off, and was slipping into the sheets of Big Chariot’s bed.

‘Buenos noches, Francès,’ 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: we’d like you to.’

It would have been rude to refuse so I accepted. And here I was sitting among these good souls, most of them miners. They 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 towards the château. 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 – when I left for work so he came back. Conchita was full of fun and kindness: she gave me a pair of slippers to rest my feet after the heavy boots.

‘Your friend’s asleep. He ate well and I have sent off a letter asking for him to be taken 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,’ said Conchita. ‘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 blonde hair. Graciela had black Andalusian eyes with a touch of tropical fire; Mercedes’ were green and all at once I remembered Lali, the Goajira Indian. Lali…Lali and her sister Zoraïma: what had become of them? Might I not try to find them again, now I was back in Venezuela? It was 1945 now, and twelve years had gone by. That was a long, long time, 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 a man of their own race. No, honestly I had no right to disturb their new existence.

‘Your friends are terrific, Conchita! 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 leant 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 here the girls of the ordinary people loved just to be loved. They gave themselves to the man they liked spontaneously, wholly, without asking anything in exchange apart from the thrill.

‘I understand you, poppet. I’m as willing as the next man to make love for love’s sake. Only you tell your friends that an affair with me doesn’t bind me in any way at all. Once warned, it’s another matter.’

Dear Lord above! It wasn’t going to be easy to get away from an atmosphere like this. Chariot, Simon, Alexandre and no doubt a good many others had been positively bewitched. I saw why they were so thoroughly happy among these cheerful people, so different from ours. I went to bed.

‘Get up, Papi! It’s ten o’clock. And there’s someone to see you.’

‘Good morning, Monsieur.’ A greying man of about fifty; no hat; candid eyes; bushy eyebrows. He held out his hand. ‘I’m Dr Bougrat.

(#litres_trial_promo) I came because they told me one of you is sick. I’ve had a look at your friend. Nothing to be done unless he goes into hospital at Caracas. And it’ll be a tough job to cure him.’

‘You’ll take pot-luck with us, Doctor?’ said Chariot.

‘I’d like to. Thanks.’

Pastis was poured out, and as he drank Bougrat said to me, ‘Well, Papillon, and how are you getting along?’

‘Why, Doctor, I’m taking my first steps in life. I feel as if I’d just been born. Or rather as if I’d lost my way like a boy. I can’t make out the road I ought to follow.’

‘The road’s clear enough. Look around and you’ll see. Apart from one or two exceptions all our old companions have gone straight. I’ve been in Venezuela since 1928. Not one of the convicts I’ve known has committed a crime since being in this country. They are almost all married, with children, and they live honestly, accepted by the community. They’ve forgotten the past so completely that some of them couldn’t tell you the details of the job that sent them down. It’s all very vague, far away, buried in a misty past that doesn’t matter.’

‘Maybe it’s different for me, Doctor. I have a pretty long bill to present to the people who sent me down against all justice – thirteen years of struggle and suffering. To see the bill is paid, I have to go back to France; and for that I need a lot of money. It’s not by working as a labourer that I’m going to save up enough for the voyage out and back – if there is any return – quite apart from what my plan will cost. And then the thought of ending my days in one of these God-forsaken holes…I like the idea of Caracas.’

‘And do you think you’re the only one of us with an account to settle? Just you listen to the story of a boy I know. Georges Dubois is his name. A kid from the slums of La Villette – alcoholic father, often inside with delirium tremens, the mother with six children: she was so poor she went around the North African bars looking for customers. Jojo, they called him; and he’d been going from one reformatory to the next since he was eight. He started with the crime of knocking off fruit outside shops – did it several times. First a few terms in the Abbé Rollet’s homes, then, when he was twelve, a tough stretch in a really hard reformatory. I don’t have to tell you that the fourteen-year-old Jojo, surrounded by young fellows of eighteen, had to look out for his arse. He was a weakly kid, so there was only one way of defending himself – a knife. One of these perverted little thugs got a stab in the belly, and the authorities sent Jojo to Esse – the toughest reformatory of the lot, the one for hopeless cases – until the age of twenty-one. Then they gave him his marching orders for the African disciplinary battalions, because with a past like his, he was not allowed into the ordinary army. They handed him the few francs he had earned and farewell, adieu! The trouble was that this boy had a heart. Maybe it hardened, but it still had some sensitive corners. At the station he saw a train destined for Paris. It was as if a spring had been triggered off inside him. He jumped in double quick, and there he was in Paris. It was raining when he walked out of the station. He stood under a shelter, working out how he would get to La Villette. Under this same shelter there was a girl; she too was keeping out of the rain. She gave him a pleasant sort of a look. All he knew about women was the chief warder’s fat wife at Esse and what the bigger boys at the reformatory had told him – more or less true. No one had ever looked at him like this girl: they began to talk.

‘“Where do you come from?”'

‘“The country.”'

‘“I like you, boy. Why don’t we go to a hotel? I’ll be nice to you and we’ll be in the warm.”'

‘Jojo was all stirred up. To him this chick seemed something wonderful – and what’s more her gentle hand touched his. Discovering love was a fantastic, shattering experience for him. The girl was young and very amorous. When they had made love until they could no more, they sat on the bed to smoke, and the chick said to him, “Is this the first time you’ve been to bed with a girl?”

‘“Yes,” he confessed.

‘“Why did you wait so long?”

‘“I was in a reformatory.”

‘“A long time?”

‘“Very long.”

‘“I was in one too. I escaped.”

‘“How old are you?” asked Jojo.