Читать книгу Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon - Анри Шарьер, Henri Charriere - Страница 7

‘GOOD luck, Frenchman! From this moment, you’re free. Adios!’

The officer of the El Dorado penal settlement waved and turned his back.

And it was no harder than that to get rid of the chains I had been dragging behind me these thirteen years. I held Picolino by the arm and we took a few steps up the steep path from the river-bank, where the officer had left us, to the village of El Dorado. And now, sitting here in my old Spanish house on the night of 18th August 1971, to be exact, I can see myself with unbelievable clarity on that pebbly track; and not only does the officer’s voice ring in my ears in just the same way, deep and clear, but I make the same movement that I made twenty-seven years ago – I turn my head.

It is midnight: outsidé, the night is dark. And yet it’s not. For me, for me alone, the sun is shining: it’s ten o’clock in the morning and I stare at the loveliest shoulders, the loveliest back I have ever seen in my life – my gaoler’s back moving farther and farther away, symbolizing the end of the watching, the spying, the surveillance that had gone on every day, night, minute and second, never stopping for thirteen years.

A last look at the river, a last look beyond the warder at the island in the middle with the Venezuelan penal settlement on it, a last look at a hideous past that lasted thirteen years and in which I was trampled upon, degraded and ground down.

All at once pictures seemed to be forming against the mists raised from the water by the blazing tropical sun, to show me the road I had travelled these thirteen years, as though it were on a screen. I refused to watch the film; I caught Picolino by the arm, turned my back on the weird picture and led him quickly up the path, first giving myself a shake to get rid of the filth of the past for good and all.

Freedom? Yes, but where? At the far end of the world, way back in the plateaux of Venezuelan Guiana, in a little village deep in the most luxuriant virgin forest you can imagine. This was the south-east tip of Venezuela, close to the Brazilian frontier: an enormous sea of green broken only here and there by the waterfalls of the rivers and streams that ran through it – a green ocean with widely-scattered little communities with ways and customs worthy of biblical times, gathered round a chapel, where no priest even had to talk about love for all men and simplicity because that was the way they lived naturally, all the year round. Often these pueblitos are only linked to others, as remote as themselves, by a truck or two: and looking at the trucks, you wondered how they ever got so far. And in their way of life these simple, poetic people live just as people did hundreds and hundreds of years ago, free from all the taints of civilization.

When we had climbed up to the edge of the plateau where the village of El Dorado begins, we almost stopped; and then slowly, very slowly, we went on. I heard Picolino draw his breath, and like him I breathed in very deeply, drawing the air right down into the bottom of my lungs and letting it out gently, as though I were afraid of living these wonderful minutes too fast – these first minutes of freedom.

The broad plateau opened in front of us: to the right and the left, little houses, all bright and clean and surrounded by flowers. Some children had caught sight of us: they knew where we came from. They came up to us, not unfriendly at all; no, they were kind, and they walked beside us without a word. They seemed to understand how grave this moment was, and they respected it.

There was a little wooden table in front of the first house with a fat black woman selling coffee and arepas, maize cakes.

‘Good morning, lady.’

‘Buenos dias, hombres.'

‘Two coffees, please.’

‘St, señores.’ And the good fat creature poured us out two cups of delicious coffee: we drank them standing, there being no chairs.

‘What do I owe you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How come?’

‘It’s a pleasure for me to give you the first coffee of your freedom.’

‘Thank you. When’s there a bus?’

‘Today’s a holiday, so there’s no bus; but there’s a truck at eleven.’

‘Is that right? Thanks.’

A black-eyed, light-skinned girl came out of a house. ‘Come in and sit down,’ she said with a lovely smile.

We walked in and sat down with a dozen people who were drinking rum.

‘Why does your friend loll out his tongue?’

‘He’s sick.’

‘Can we do anything for him?’

‘No, nothing: he’s paralysed. He’s got to go to hospital.’

‘Who’s going to feed him?’

‘Me.’

‘Is he your brother?’

‘No; my friend.’

‘You got money, Frenchman?’

‘Very little. How did you know I was French?’

‘Everything gets known here in no time. We knew you were going to be let out yesterday: and that you escaped from Devil’s Island and that the French police are trying to catch you to put you back there again. But they won’t come and look for you here: they don’t give orders in this country. We are the ones who are going to look after you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Here, drink a shot of rum and give one to your friend.’

Now it was a woman of about thirty who took over. She was almost black. She asked me whether I was married. Yes, in France. If my parents were still alive. Only my father.

‘He’ll be glad to hear you are in Venezuela.’

‘That’s right.’

A tall dried-up white man then spoke – he had big, staring eyes, but they were kind – ’My relation didn’t know how to tell you why we are going to look after you. Well, I’ll tell you. Because unless he’s mad – and in that case there’s nothing to be done about it – a man can be sorry for what he’s done and he can turn into a good man if he’s helped. That’s why you’ll be looked after in Venezuela. Because we love other men, and with God’s help, we believe in them.’

‘What do you think I was a prisoner on Devil’s Island for?’

‘Something very serious, for sure. Maybe for having killed someone, or for a really big theft. What did you get?’

‘Penal servitude for life.’

‘The top sentence here is thirty years. How many did you do?’

‘Thirteen. But now I am free.’

‘Forget all that, hombre. As quick as you can forget everything you suffered in the French prisons and here in El Dorado. Forget it, because if you think about it too much you’ll be forced to feel ill-will towards other men and maybe even hate them. Only forgetting will let you love them again and live among them. Marry as soon as ever you can. The women in this country are hot-blooded, and the love of the woman you choose will give you happiness and children, and help you forget whatever you have suffered in the past.’

The truck arrived. I thanked these kind, good people and went out, holding Picolino by the arm. There were about ten passengers sitting on benches in the back of the truck. In their kindness these humble people left us the best seats, next to the driver.

As we lurched wildly along the bumpy, pot-holed track, I thought about this strange Venezuelan nation. Neither the fishermen of the Gulf of Paria, nor the ordinary soldiers of El Dorado, nor the humble working-man who talked to me in that thatched mud hut had had any education. They could hardly read and write. So how did they come to have that sense of Christian charity and nobility of heart that forgives men who have done wrong? How did they manage to find just the right encouraging words, helping the ex-convict with their advice and what little they possessed? How did it come about that the heads of the penal settlement of El Dorado, both the officers and the governor – educated men, those – had the same ideas as the simple people, the idea of giving the man who is down his chance, whoever he is and however bad the thing he’s done? Those were not qualities that could ever come from Europeans: so the Venezuelans must have got them from the Indians.

Here we are in El Callao. A big square: music. Of course: it is 5th July, the national holiday. People dressed in their best clothes, the motley crowd of tropical countries where all sorts of colours are mixed – black, yellow, white, and the copper of the Indians, whose race always comes out in the slightly slanting eyes and the lighter skin. Picolino and I got out, as well as some passengers from the back of the truck. One of them, a girl, came up to me and said, ‘Don’t pay: that has been looked after.’ The driver wished us good luck and the truck set off again. With my little bundle in one hand and Picolino holding the other with the three fingers he had left, I stood there wondering what to do. I had some English pounds from the West Indies and a few hundred bolivars (one bolivar is worth about ten new pence) given me by my mathematical pupils at the penal settlement. And a few raw diamonds found among the tomatoes in the kitchen-garden I had made.

The girl who had told us not to pay asked me where we were going and I told her my idea was to find a little boarding-house.

‘Come to my place first: then you can look around.’

We crossed the square with her and in a couple of hundred yards we reached an unpaved street lined with low houses; they were all made of baked clay, and their roofs were thatch or corrugated iron. At one of them we stopped.

‘Walk in. This house is yours,’ said the girl. She must have been about eighteen.

She made us go in first. A clean room with a floor of pounded earth; a round table; a few chairs; a man of about forty, medium height, smooth black hair, the same colour as his daughter’s; Indian eyes. And three girls of about fourteen, fifteen and sixteen.

‘My father and my sisters,’ she said, ‘here are some strangers I have brought home. They’ve come from the El Dorado prison and they don’t know where to go. I ask you to take them in.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said the father. And he repeated the ritual words, ‘This house is yours. Sit down here, round the table. Are you hungry? Would you like coffee or rum?’

I didn’t want to offend him by refusing so I said I’d like some coffee. The house was clean, but I could see from the simple furniture that they were poor.

‘My daughter Maria, who brought you here, is the eldest. She takes the place of her mother, who left us five years ago with a gold-prospector. I’d sooner tell you that myself, before you hear it from someone else.’

Maria poured coffee for us. Now I could look at her more closely, seeing she had come to sit down next to her father, right opposite me. The three sisters stood behind her. They looked closely at me, too. Maria was a girl of the tropics, with big black almond-shaped eyes. Her jet-black curling hair, parted in the middle, came down to her shoulders. She had fine features, and although you could make out the drop of Indian blood from the colour of her skin, there was nothing Mongolian about her face. She had a sensuous mouth: splendid teeth. Every now and then she showed the tip of a very pink tongue. She was wearing a white, flowered, wide-open blouse that showed her shoulders and the beginning of her breasts, hidden by a brassière that could be seen under the blouse. This blouse, a little black skirt and flat-heeled shoes were what she had put on for the holiday – her best. Her lips were bright red, and two pencilled lines at the corners of her huge eyes made them seem even larger.

‘This is Esmeralda [Emerald],’ she said, introducing her youngest sister. ‘We call her that because of her green eyes. This is Conchita; and the other is Rosita, because she looks like a rose. She is much lighter coloured than the rest of us and she blushes at the least thing. Now you know the whole family. My father’s name is José. The five of us are the same as one, because our hearts beat all together. And what’s your name?’

‘Enrique.’ [Henri: in Spanish they say Enrique.]

‘Were you in prison long?’

‘Thirteen years.’

‘Poor thing. How you must have suffered.’

‘Yes: a great deal.’

‘Papa, what do you think Enrique can do here?’

‘I don’t know. Do you have a trade?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, go to the gold-mine. They’ll give you a job.’

‘And what about you, José? What do you do?’

‘Me? Nothing. I don’t work – they pay you very little.’

Well, well, well. They were poor, sure enough; yet they were quite well dressed. Still, I couldn’t very well ask him what he used for money – whether he stole instead of working. Wait and see, I said to myself.

‘Enrique, you’ll sleep here tonight.’ said Maria. ‘There’s a room where my father’s brother used to sleep. He’s gone, so you can have his place. We’ll look after the sick man while you go to work. Don’t thank us; we’re giving you nothing – the room’s empty in any case.’

I didn’t know what to say. I let them take my little bundle. Maria got up and the other girls followed her. She had been lying: the room was in use, because they brought out women’s things and put them somewhere else. I pretended not to notice anything. No bed, but something better, something you see most of the time in the tropics – two fine wool hammocks. A big window with just shutters – no glass – opening on to a garden full of banana palms.

As I swung there in the hammock I could hardly believe what had happened to me. How easy this first day of freedom had been! Too easy. I had a free room and four sweet girls to look after Picolino. Why was I letting myself be led by the hand like a child? I was at the world’s end, to be sure; but I think the real reason why I let myself be managed was because I had been a prisoner so long that obeying was the only thing I understood. Yet now I was free and I ought to make my own decisions; but still I was letting myself be led. Just like a bird when you open the door of its cage and it doesn’t know how to fly any more. It has to learn all over again.

I went to sleep without thinking about the past, exactly as the humble man of El Dorado had advised me. Just one thought before I dropped off: these people’s hospitality was something staggering and wonderful.

I had just breakfasted off two fried eggs, two fried bananas covered with margarine and black bread. Maria was in the bedroom, washing Picolino. A man appeared in the doorway: a machête in his belt.

‘Gentes de paz,’ said he. Men of peace, which is their way of saying I’m a friend.

‘What do you want?’ asked José, who had had breakfast with me.

‘The chief of police wants to see the men from Cayenne.’

‘You don’t want to call them that. Call them by their names.’

‘OK, José. What are their names?’

‘Enrique and Picolino.’

‘Señor Enrique, come with me. I am a policeman, sent by the chief.’

‘What do they want with him?’ asked Maria, coming out of the bedroom. ‘I’ll come too. Wait while I dress.’

In a few minutes she was ready. As soon as we were in the street she took my arm. I looked at her, surprised, and she smiled at me. We soon reached the little administrative building. More police, all in plain clothes apart from two in uniform with machêtes hanging from their belts. In a room full of rifles, a black man with a gold-braided cap. He said to me, ‘You’re the Frenchman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s the other?’

‘He’s sick,’ said Maria.

‘I command the police. I’m here to be useful and to help you if you need it. My name’s Alfonso.’ And he held out his hand.

‘Thanks. Mine’s Enrique.’

‘Enrique, the chief administrator wants to see you. You can’t go in, Maria,’ he added, seeing she was about to follow me. I went into the next room.

‘Good morning, Frenchman. I am the chief administrator. Sit down. Since you’re in compulsory residence here in El Callao I sent for you so that I could get to know you: because I’m responsible for you.’ He asked me what I was going to do – where I wanted to work. We talked a while and then he said to me, ‘If there’s anything at all, come and see me. I’ll help you work out as good a life as we can manage.’

Thank you very much.’

‘Oh, there’s one thing. I must warn you that you’re living with very good, honest girls; but their father, José – he’s a pirate. Be seeing you.’

Maria was outside, at the station door, settled into that attitude of Indians when they are waiting, neither moving nor talking to anyone at all. She was not an Indian: yet in spite of everything, because of that little drop of Indian blood she had, the race came out. We took another way back to the house and walked through the whole village, her arm in mine.

“What did the chief want with you?’ asked Maria, calling me tu for the first time.

‘Nothing. He told me I could count on him to help me find a job or in case I was in a hole.’

‘Enrique, you don’t need anyone now. Nor does your friend.’

‘Thanks, Maria.’

We passed by a pedlar’s stall, full of women’s trinkets – necklaces, bracelets, earrings, brooches, etc.

‘Hey, look at this.’

‘Oh, how pretty!’

I took her over to the stall and picked out the best necklace together with matching earrings, and three other smaller ones for her sisters. I gave thirty bolivars for these tinselly little things, paying with a hundred note. She put on the necklace and the earrings straight away. Her big black eyes sparkled with joy and she thanked me as though they were really valuable jewels.

We went back to the house, and the three girls shrieked with delight over their presents. I went to my room, leaving them. I had to be alone to think. This family had offered me their hospitality with a splendid generosity; but should I accept it? I had a little Venezuelan money and some English pounds, not to mention the diamonds. Reckoning it all together, I could live four months and more without worrying and I could have Picolino looked after.

All these girls were lovely, and like tropical flowers they were surely all warm, sexy, ready to give themselves only too easily, almost without thinking. I had seen Maria looking at me today almost as if she were in love. Could I resist so much temptation? It would be better for me to leave this too welcoming house, because I did not want my own weakness to bring trouble and suffering. On the other hand, I was thirty-seven and although I looked younger, that did not change my real age. Maria was not quite eighteen and her sisters were younger still. I ought to go, I thought. The best thing would be to leave Picolino in their care: paying for his board, of course.

‘Señor José, I’d like to talk to you alone. Shall we go and have a rum at the café in the square?’

‘All right. But don’t call me señor. You call me Jose and I’ll call you Enrique. Let’s go. Maria, we’re going out to the square for a minute.’

‘Enrique, change your shirt,’ said Maria. ‘The one you’ve got on is dirty.’

I went and changed in the bedroom. Before we left, Maria said to me, ‘Don’t stay long, Enrique; and above all, don’t you drink too much!’ And before I had time to step back she kissed me on the cheek. Her father burst out laughing, and he said, ‘That Maria – she’s in love with you already.’

As we walked towards the bar I began, ‘José, you and your family took me in the first day of my freedom, and I thank you more than I can say. I’m about your age; and I don’t want to make you a bad return for your hospitality. You’re a man, so you will understand that if I lived among your daughters it would be hard for me not to fall in love with one of them. But I’m twice as old as the eldest and I’m legally married in France. So let’s go and have a drink or two together, and then you take me to some cheap little boarding-house. I can pay.’

‘Frenchie, you’re a real man,’ said José, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Let me shake your hand good and hearty, like a brother, for what you’ve just said to a poor guy like me. In this country, do you see, it’s not like it is where you come from, maybe. Here almost nobody’s married legally. You like one another, you make love, and if there’s a child you set up house together. You join up as easily as you leave one another. It’s very hot here, and on account of the heat the women are very full-blooded. They thirst for love and the pleasures of the flesh. They mature early. Maria’s an exception; she’s never had an affair although she’s nearly eighteen. I think your country’s morality is better than ours, because here there are any number of women who have children without a father, and that’s a very serious problem. But what can you do about it? The good Lord says you must love one another and have children. In this country the women don’t calculate when they give themselves to a man – they aren’t after a social position. They want to love and be loved, just like that, quite naturally: nothing more. They are faithful so long as they like you sexually. When that’s over, it’s another story. Yet they are wonderful mothers, willing to make any sacrifice at all for their children, even keeping them when they could work for themselves. So although I quite see you are surrounded by temptation all the time, I ask you again to stay with us. I’m glad to have a man like you in the house.’

We were in the bar before I answered. It was a bar and at the same time a grocer’s shop. A dozen men were sitting about. We drank a few Cuba Libres, a mixture of rum and Coca-Cola. Several people came up to shake my hand and bid me welcome to their village. Each time José introduced me as a friend who was living at his house. We had a good many drinks. When I asked what they came to, José became almost annoyed. He wanted to pay for everything. Still, I did manage to persuade the barman to refuse his money and take mine.

Someone touched me on the shoulder: it was Maria. ‘Come home. It’s lunch-time. Don’t drink any more: you promised me not to drink too much.’ She was saying ‘thee’ to me now.

José was arguing with another man; she said nothing to him but took me by the arm and led me out.

‘What about your father?’

‘Let him be. I can never say anything to him when he’s drinking and I never come to fetch him from the café. He wouldn’t have it, anyway.’

‘Why did you come and fetch me, then?’

‘You’re different. Be good, Enrique, and come along.’ Her eyes were so brilliant and she said it so simply that I went back to the house with her.

‘You deserve a kiss,’ she said when we got there. And she put her lips to my cheek, too near my mouth.

José came back after we had had lunch together at the round table. The youngest sister helped Picolino eat, giving him his food little by little.

José sat down by himself. He was tolerably high, so he spoke without thinking. ‘Enrique is frightened of you, my girls,’ he said. ‘So frightened he wants to go away. I told him that in my opinion he could stay, and that my girls were old enough to know what they were doing.’

Maria gazed at me. She looked astonished, perhaps disappointed. ‘If he wants to go, Papa, let him. But I don’t think he’d be better off anywhere else than he is here, where everyone likes him.’ And turning to me she added, ‘Enrique, don’t be a coward. If you like one of us and she likes you, why should you run away?’

‘On account of he’s married in France,’ said her father.

‘How long since you saw your wife?’

‘Thirteen years.’

‘The way we see it, if you love a man you don’t necessarily marry him. If you give yourself to a man, it’s to love him, nothing more. But it was quite right of you to tell our father you were married, because like that you can’t promise any of us anything at all, apart from love.’ And she asked me to stay with them without committing myself. They would look after Picolino and I would be free to work. She even said I could pay a little, as if I were a lodger, to make me feel easier in my mind. Did I agree?

I had no time to think properly. It was all so new and so quick after thirteen years of life as a convict. I said, ‘OK, Maria. That’s fine.’

‘Would you like me to go with you to the gold-mine this afternoon to ask for a job? We could go at five, when the sun is lower. It’s a mile and a half from the village.’

‘Fine.’

Picolino’s movements and his expression showed how pleased he was that we were going to stay. The girls’ kindness and their care had won his heart. My staying was chiefly on account of him. Because here I was pretty sure of having an affair before long: and maybe it would not suit me.

With all that had been going on inside my head these last thirteen years, with all that had stopped me sleeping these thirteen years on end, I was not going to come to a halt as quickly as all this and settle down in a village at the far end of the world just because of a girl’s pretty face. I had a long road in front of me, and my stops must be short. Just long enough to get my wind and then full speed ahead. Because there was a reason why I had been fighting for my liberty these thirteen years and there was a reason why I had won the fight: and that reason was revenge. The prosecuting counsel, the false witness, the cop: I had a score to settle with them. And that was something I was never to forget. Never.

I wandered out to the village square. I noticed a shop with the name Prospéri over it. He must be a Corsican or an Italian, and indeed the little shop did belong to the descendant of a Corsican. Monsieur Prospéri spoke very good French. He kindly suggested writing a letter for me to the manager of La Mocupia, the French company that worked the Caratal gold-mine. This splendid man even offered to help me with money. I thanked him for everything and went out.

‘What are you doing here, Papillon? Where the hell have you come from, man? From the moon? Dropped by parachute? Come and let me kiss you!’ A big guy, deeply sunburnt, with a huge straw hat on his head, jumped to his feet. ‘You don’t recognize me?’ And he took off his hat.

‘Big Chariot! Stone the crows!’ Big Chariot, the man who knocked off the safe at the Place Clichy Gaumont in Paris, and the one in the Batignolles station! We embraced like two brothers. Tears came into our eyes, we were so moved. We gazed at one another.

‘A far cry from the Place Blanche and the penal, mate, eh? But where the hell have you come from? You’re dressed like an English lord: and you’ve aged much less than me.’

‘I’m just out of El Dorado.’

‘How long were you there?’

‘A year and more.’

‘Why didn’t you let me know? I’d have got you out straight away, signed a paper saying I was responsible for you. Christ above! I knew there were some hard cases in El Dorado, but I never for a moment imagined you were there, you, a buddy!’

‘It’s a bloody miracle we should have met.’

‘Don’t you believe it, Papi. The whole of Venezuelan Guiana from Ciudad Bolivar to El Callao is stuffed with right hard guys or detainees making a break. And as this is the first bit of Venezuelan territory you come across when you escape, there’s no miracle in meeting anyone at all between the Gulf of Paria and here – every last son of a bitch comes this way. All those who don’t come apart on the road, I mean. Where are you staying?’

With a decent type called José. He has four daughters.’

‘Yes, I know him. He’s a good chap, a pirate. Let’s go and get your things: you’re staying with me, of course.’

‘I’m not alone. I’ve got a paralysed friend and I have to look after him.’

‘That doesn’t matter. I’ll fetch an ass for him. It’s a big house and there’s a negrita [a black girl], who’ll look after him like a mother.’

When we had found the second donkey we went to the girls’ house. Leaving these kind people was very painful. It was only when we promised we should come and see them and said they could come and see us at Caratal that they calmed down a little. I can never say too often how extraordinary it is, the Venezuelan Guianans’ hospitality. I was almost ashamed of myself when I left them.

Two hours later we were at Chariot’s ‘château’, as he called it. A big, light, roomy house on a headland looking out over the whole of the valley running down from the hamlet of Caratal almost to El Callao. On the right of this terrific virgin forest landscape was the Mocupia gold-mine. Chariot’s house was entirely built of hardwood logs from the bush: three bedrooms, a fine dining-room and a kitchen; two showers inside and one outside, in a perfectly kept kitchen-garden. All the vegetables we had at home were growing there, and growing well. A chicken-run with more than five hundred hens; rabbits, guinea-pigs, two goats and a pig. All this was the fortune and the present happiness of Chariot, the former hard guy and specialist in safes and very delicate operations worked out to the second.

‘Well, Papi, how do you like my shack? I’ve been here seven years. As I was saying in El Callao, it’s a far cry from Montmartre and penal! Who’d ever have believed that one day I’d be happy with such a quiet, peaceful life? What do you say, buddy?’

‘I don’t know, Chariot. I’m too lately out of stir to have a clear idea. For there’s no doubt about it, we’ve always been on the loose and our young days were uncommonly active! And then…it sets me back a little, seeing you quiet and happy here at the back of beyond. Yet you’ve certainly done it all yourself and I can see it must have meant a solid dose of hard labour, sacrifices of every kind. And as far as I am concerned, you see, I don’t feel myself up to it yet.’

When we were sitting round the table in the dining-room and drinking Martinique punch, Big Chariot went on, ‘Yes, Papillon, I can see you’re amazed. You caught on right away that I live by my own work. Eighteen bolivars a day means a small-time life, but it’s not without its pleasures. A hen that hatches me a good brood of chicks, a rabbit that brings off a big litter, a kid being born, tomatoes doing well…All these little things we despised for so long add up to something that gives me a lot. Hey, here’s my black girl. Conchita! Here are some friends of mine. He’s sick; you’ll have to look after him. This one’s called Enrique, or Papillon. He’s a friend from France, an old-time friend.’

‘Welcome to this house,’ said the black girl. ‘Don’t you worry, Chariot, your friends will be properly looked after. I’ll go and see to their room.’

Chariot told me about his break – an easy one. When he reached penal in the first place 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 get it? 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: thirteen 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 a wonderful evening – wonderful for us both to be able to talk about our memories. It was odd, but there was not a single word about Montmartre, not a word about the underworld, no reminders of jobs that were pulled off or that 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, Chariot in 1935.

Excellent salad, a grilled chicken, goat cheese and a delicious mango, washed down with good Chianti and all put on the table by the cheerful Conchita, meant that Chariot 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 here I didn’t want to go out.

‘Thanks, my friend,’ said my Corsican – 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,’ said Chariot.

‘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 Chariot.

Lying quiedy in a fine big bed I listened to the BBC news from London on Chariot’s radio: but being plunged back into the life of the outside world worried me a little – I was not used to it any more. I turned the knob. Now it was Caribbean music that came through: Caracas in song. I did not 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.

Was it on purpose we had not talked about the years when we both lived in Paris? No. Was it on purpose we had not mentioned the men of our world who had been lucky enough not to be picked up? No again. So did it mean that for tough guys like us what had happened before the trial no longer mattered?

I tossed and turned in the big bed. It was hot: I couldn’t bear it any more and I walked out into the garden. I sat down on a big stone, from where I was I looked 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. If you had a lot of it, in bars or turned into notes, it would give you anything on earth. This prime mover of the world, that cost so little to mine, since the workers had such miserable wages, was the one thing you had to have to live well. And there was Chariot who had lost his freedom because he had wanted a lot of it: yet now he hadn’t even mentioned the stuff. He never told me whether the mine had plenty of gold in it or not. These days his happiness was his black girl, his house, his animals and his kitchen-garden. He had never even referred to money. He had become a philosopher. I was puzzled.

I remembered how they caught him – a guy by the name of Little Louis had tipped off the police; and during our short meetings in the Santé he never stopped swearing he would get him the first chance he had. Yet this evening he had not so much as breathed his name. And as for me – Christ, how strange! – I had not said a word about my cops, nor Goldstein, nor the prosecuting counsel, either. I ought to have talked about them! I hadn’t escaped just to end up as a cross between a gardener and a working-man.

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. Because you mustn’t forget, Papi, that the reason why you’re here today is not only that the idea of revenge kept you going for thirteen years in the cells but because it was your one religion too; and that religion is something you must never give up.

His little black girl was very pretty, all right; but still I wondered whether Big Chariot wouldn’t be better off in a city than in this hole at the far end of creation. Or maybe it was me who was the square, not seeing that my friend’s life had its charm. Or then again was it Chariot who was afraid of the responsibilities that modern big-town life would put upon him? That was something to chew over and reflect upon.

Chariot was forty-five, not an old man. Very tall, very strong, built like a Corsican peasant fed on plenty of good healthy food all his young days. He was deeply burnt by the sun of this country, and with his huge straw hat on his head, its brim turned up at the sides, he really 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 safe-breaker! 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 have paid for the labour, 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. Not many dressmaker’s bills for Chariot, no sir.

Maybe the reason why he hadn’t gone to the city was that he was not sure of himself, whereas here he enjoyed a life with no problems at all. You’re a great guy, Chariot! You’re the very picture of what a crook can be turned into. I congratulate you. But I also congratulate the people who helped you to change not only your life but even your way of seeing what a life can be or ought to be.

But still these Venezuelans are dangerous, with their generous hospitality. Being surrounded with human kindness and good will all the time soon turns you into a prisoner if you let yourself be caught. I’m free, free, free, and I mean to stay that way for ever.

Watch it, Papi! Above all, no setting up house with a girl. You need love when you’ve been cut off from it for so long. But fortunately I’d already had a girl in Georgetown two years ago, my Hindu, Indara. So from that point of view I was not so vulnerable as if I’d come straight from penal, which was the case with Chariot. Yet Indara was lovely and I was happy; but it wasn’t for that I had settled in Georgetown, living there in clover. Then again if the quiet life is too quiet, even though it’s happy, it’s not for me: that I know very well.

Adventure! Adventure so you feel alive, alive all through! Besides, that was why I left Georgetown and why I landed up at El Dorado. But that’s the reason too why I’m here today, in this very spot.

OK. Here the girls are pretty, full-blooded and charming and I certainly cannot live without love. It’s up to me to avoid complications. I must promise myself to stay here a year, since I’m forced to do so anyway. The less I own, the easier I’ll be able to leave this country and its enchanting people. I’m an adventurer, but an adventurer with a shift of gear – I must get my money honestly, or at least without hurting anyone. Paris, that is 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 towards the virgin forest, a sea of black tree-tops with waves of different heights – but waves that never stirred. I went back to my room and stretched out on the bed.

Paris, Paris, you’re still a great way off yet; but not so far that I shan’t be there again one day, walking the asphalt of your streets.