Читать книгу Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon - Анри Шарьер, Henri Charriere - Страница 9

JESUS, the song was in French! And it was the little old prospector singing. I listened.

The old sharks are there already

They’ve smelt the body of a man.

One of them chews an arm like an apple

Another eats his trunk and tra-la-la

The quickest gets it, the rest have none

Convict farewell; long live the law!

I was thunderstruck. He sang it slowly, like a requiem. The ‘tra-la-la’ had an ironic merriment, and the ‘long live the law’ was full of the mockery of the Paris underworld: it sounded like an unanswerable truth. But to feel the full irony of it you had to have been there.

I looked closely at the man. The size of three apples one on top of the other: just five foot one, I learnt afterwards. One of the most picturesque ex-convicts I had ever come across. Snowy white hair with long, grey side-whiskers cut on the slant. Blue jeans; a big, broad leather belt; on the right, a long sheath with a curved handle coming out of it at the height of his groin. I walked over to him. He had no hat on – it was lying on the ground – so I could see his broad forehead, speckled with a red even darker than his old sun-baked pirate’s tan. His eyebrows were so long and thick he surely had to comb them. Beneath them, steely grey-green eyes, gimlets that bored through me. I hadn’t taken four steps before he said to me, ‘You come from penal, as sure as my name’s La Passe.’

‘Right. My name’s Papillon.’

‘I’m Jojo La Passe.’ He held out his hand and took mine frankly, just as it should be between men, not so hard it crushes your fingers the way the show-offs do, nor too flabby, like hypocrites and fairies. I said, ‘Let’s go to the bar and have a drink. It’s on me.’

“No. Come to my place over the way, the white house. It’s called Belleville, after where I lived when I was a kid. We can talk there in peace.’

Indoors it was swept and clean – his wife’s field of action. She was young, very young; perhaps twenty-five. He – God knows: sixty at least. She was called Lola, a dusky Venezuelan.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said to me, with a pleasant smile.

‘Thanks.’

‘Two pastis,’ said Jojo. ‘A Corsican brought me two hundred bottles from France. You’ll see whether it’s good or not.’

Lola poured it out and Jojo tossed back three-quarters of his glass in one gulp. ‘Well?’ said he, fixing me with his eye.

‘Well what? You don’t think I’m going to tell you the story of my life, do you?’

‘OK, mate. But Jojo La Passe, doesn’t that ring any bells?’

‘No.’

‘How quickly they forget you! Yet I was a big shot in penal. There was no one that came within miles of me for throwing the seven and eleven with dice just touched with a file – not loaded, of course. That wasn’t yesterday, to be sure; but after all, men like us, we leave traces – we leave legends. And now according to what you tell me, in a few years it’s all forgotten. Did not one single bastard ever tell you about me?’ He seemed deeply outraged.

‘Frankly, no.’

Once again the gimlets bored right into my guts. ‘You stayed no great time in penal: you’ve scarcely got the face at all.’

‘Thirteen years altogether, counting El Dorado. You think that’s nothing?’

‘It’s not possible. You’re scarcely marked, and only another con could tell that’s where you come from. And even then, a con who was not a diabolically clever face-reader might get it wrong. You had it easy in penal, right?’

‘It wasn’t as easy as all that: the islands; solitary.’

‘Balls, man, balls! The islands – they’re a holiday camp! All they lack is a casino. For you, penal meant the sea-breeze, crayfish, no mosquitoes, fishing, and now and then a real treat – the pussy or the arse of some screw’s wife kept too short of it by her bastard of a husband.’

‘Still, you know…’

‘Blah-blah-blah: don’t you try to fool me. I know all about it. I wasn’t on the islands, but I’ve been told about them.’ This man, maybe he was picturesque, but things were likely to turn nasty for him: I felt my temper rising fast. He went on, ‘Penal, the real penal, was Kilometre 24. That doesn’t mean anything to you? No, it doesn’t, and that’s for sure. With your mug, you’ve certainly never pissed in those parts. Well, mate, I have. A hundred men, every one of them with diseased guts. Some standing, some lying down, some groaning like dogs. There’s the bush in front of them, like a wall. But it’s not them that are going to cut the bush down: it’s the bush that’s going to do the cutting. It’s not a working camp. As the prison administration puts it, Kilometre 24 is a conveniently hidden little dell in the Guiana forest – you toss men into it and they never bother you again. Come, Papillon; don’t try and stuff me up with your islands and your solitary. It won’t wash with me. You’ve got nothing of the look of a dog with all the spirit beaten out of it, nor the hollow face of a skin-and-bones lag with a life-sentence, nor the dial you see on all those poor buggers who escaped from that hell by some miracle – unfortunate sods who look as if they’d been worked over with a chisel to give them an old man’s face on a young man’s head. There’s nothing like that about you at all. So there’s no possible mistake about my diagnosis: for you, penal meant a holiday in the sun.’

How he did nag on and on, this little old bastard. I wondered how our meeting was going to end.

‘For me, as I’ve been telling you, it meant the hollow nobody ever comes out of alive – amoebic dysentery, a place where you gradually shit your guts out. Poor old Papillon: you didn’t even know what penal was all about.’

I looked closely at this terribly energetic little man, working out just where to plant my fist on his face, and then all at once I shifted into reverse and decided to make friends. No point in getting worked up: I might need him. ‘You’re right, Jojo. My penal didn’t amount to much, since I’m so fit it takes a really knowing type like you to tell where I come from.’

‘OK, we’re in agreement, then. What are you doing now?’

‘I’m working at the Mocupia gold-mine. Eighteen bolivars a day. But I’ve got a permit to go wherever I like; my confinamiento is over.’

‘I bet you want to light off for Caracas and go on the loose again.’

‘You’re right: that’s just what I want to do.’

‘But Caracas, it’s the big city; so trying to pull off anything there means a hell of a risk. You’re scarcely out, and you want to go back inside again?’

‘I’ve got a long bill for the sods who sent me down – the pigs, the witnesses, the prosecutor. A thirteen-year stretch for a crime I never committed: the islands, whatever you may think of them, and solitary at Saint-Joseph, where I went through the most horrible tortures the system could think up. And don’t forget I was only twenty-four when they framed me.’

‘Hell: so they stole the whole of your youth. Innocent, really innocent, cross your heart, or are you still pleading in the dock?’

‘Innocent, Jojo. I swear by my dead mother.’

‘Christ. Well, I see that must lay heavy on your chest. But you don’t have to go to Caracas if you want dough to straighten out your accounts – come with me.’

‘What for?’

‘Diamonds, man, diamonds! Here the government is generous: this is the only country in the world where you can burrow wherever you like for gold or diamonds. There’s only one thing: no machinery allowed. All they let you use is shovel, pickaxe and sieve.’

‘And where’s this genuine El Dorado? Not the one I’ve just come out of, I hope?’

‘A good way off. A good way off in the bush. A good many days on a mule and then in a canoe and then on foot, carrying your gear.’

‘It’s not what you’d call in the bag; hardly child’s play.’

“Well, Papillon, it’s the only way of getting hold of a fat sack of dough. You find just one bomb and there you are, a wealthy man – a man who has women that smoke and fart in silk. Or, if you like it that way, a man who can afford to go and present his bill.’

Now he was in full flow; his eyes blazed; he was all worked up and full of fire. A bomb, he told me – and I’d already heard it at the mine – was a little mound no bigger than a peasant’s handkerchief, a mound where by some mystery of nature a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, even a thousand carats of diamonds were clustered together. If a prospector found a bomb in some far-off hole, it didn’t take long – presently men started coming in from north, south, east and west, as if they’d been told by some grapevine. A dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand. They smelt the gold or the diamonds like a starving dog smells a bone or an old bit of meat. They came flooding in from every point of the compass. Rough types with no trade who’d had enough of battering away with a pick at twelve bolivars a day for some employer. They got sick of it, and then they heard the call of the jungle. They didn’t want their family to go on living in a rabbit-hutch, so they went off, knowing very well what they were in for – they were going to work from one sun to the next in a wicked climate and a wicked atmosphere, condemning themselves to several years of hell. But with what they sent home, their wife would have a light, roomy little house; the children would be properly fed and clothed and they’d go to school – even go on with their own schooling, perhaps.

‘So that’s what a bomb gives?’

‘Don’t talk balls, Papillon. The guy that finds a bomb never goes back to mining. He’s rich for the rest of his life, unless he goes so crazy with joy that he feeds his mule with hundred-bolivar notes soaked in kummel or anis. No, the man I’m talking about, the ordinary guy, he finds a few little diamonds every day, even though they may be very, very small. But even that means ten or fifteen times what he gets in the town. Then again, he lives as hard as possible, right down to bed-rock; because out there you pay for everything in gold or diamonds. But if he lives hard, he can still keep his family better than before.’

‘What about the others?’

‘They come in every shape and size. Brazilians, types from British Guiana and Trinidad: they all of them escape from exploitation in the factories or cotton-plantations or whatever. And then there are the real adventurers, the ones who can only breathe when they’re not hemmed in by the horizon, the ones who will always stake everything for the jackpot – Italians, Englishmen, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Portuguese – men from all over. Christ, you can’t imagine the types that come rushing into this promised land! The Lord above may have filled it with piranhas and anacondas and mosquitoes and malaria and yellow fever, but He’s also scattered gold, diamonds, topazes and emeralds and such all over its surface. There’s a swarm of adventurers from everywhere in the world, and they stand there in holes up to their bellies in the water, working so hard they never feel the sun nor the mosquitoes nor hunger nor thirst, digging, tossing out the slimy earth and washing it over and over again, straining it through the sieve to find the diamonds. Then again, Venezuela has enormous frontiers and there you won’t meet anyone who asks you for your papers. So there’s not only the charm of the diamonds, but you can be sure of the pigs leaving you in peace. A perfect place to lie up and get your breath if you’re on the run.’

Jojo stopped. There was nothing he had forgotten: I now knew the lot. A quick moment of thought and then I 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 old lags 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 jeweller’s shop or a gem wholesaler’s?’

‘Maybe: but that’s not certain. Remains to be seen.’

‘On my oath, you’re a right 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 pickaxe 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.’

‘OK, so you’re a professional gambler: but I don’t see what that’s got to do with this notion of labouring away like brutes.’

‘Nor do I,’ said he, 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 you, mate. When do we leave?’

‘Wait a minute.’ He was very pleased with the effect of his words: slowly he stood up, pulled a table out 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 cogged, could they?’

‘Nobody.’

He brought 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 millimetre. 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 ruck in the blanket. He held the dice with the tips of his fingers. ‘That’s what we call the nippers,’ 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, mate, I’ve been shooting craps for ever. I started on the Butte when I was eight. I’ve risked shooting them, mate, I’ve risked shooting them with dice like that, and do you know where? On the crap-table at the Gare de l’Est, in the days of Roger Sole and Co.’

‘I remember. There were some very quaint specimens there.’

‘You don’t have to tell me. And among the regulars, as well as the wide boys and the pimps and the odds and sods, there were cops as famous as Jojo-le-Beau, the pimp-cop from La Madeleine, and specialists from the gambling squad. And they were done as brown as the rest. So you see there’s no coming unstuck 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 choir-boys – far from it; but there might be big money to be picked up. Come on, Papillon, banco on Jojo! And again I said to him, ‘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 left to do was to learn all 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 knowing. 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 as well 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 father-in-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 belly-ache and go straight to the john. You don’t come back, of course; and that 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 Callao or Ciudad Bolivar, 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 Bolivar. 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. Buenas noches.’

Lying in Maria’s arms, exhausted with love, my head in the hollow of her shoulder, 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 were 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 should 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, mate! OK? You’re prompt – fine, fine! The sun will be down in an hour. It’s better that way. There’s no one who 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, and they are called piques. A pique is a passage about two yards wide that has gradually been cut out through the trees; and the men who pass along keep it clear with their machêtes. On either side, a wall of green: above, a roof of millions of plants, but too high to be reached with a machête 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: first comes a mixture of creepers, trees and plants that does not rise much above twenty feet, then over that, mounting to seventy-five or a hundred feet, there are the splendid great tops of the huge trees that climb higher and higher to reach the sun. But 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 cruellest, the wickedest, the greediest, the vilest and also the most wonderful – man.

We travelled 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 arse 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 straight away it broke into a gallop. I dropped a lighted cigar-end into its ear. It tore along like a thoroughbred; I rejoiced, full of glee; I even passed the Captain, waving as I went flashing by. But a mule being a vicious brute this only lasted the length of the gallop. It rammed me up against a tree, nearly crushing my leg, and there I was on the ground, my arse 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!) nor 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 on to 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 arse in the air, trying to get the fiery thorns out of it.

The next day we left the pig-headed brute at a posada, an inn: then two days in a canoe, and then 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 tether, 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, mate, and how are you feeling? OK?’

‘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 pickaxe and a sieve all day long when we aren’t going to do any digging at all?’

Jojo put on a sorrowful air. ‘Papillon, you disappoint me. Think a little: use your loaf. 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 walls and the tin roofs. With you loaded as you were, no questions. 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 are 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 that means 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 per cent 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 a chocolate-coloured 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.’

‘Are there any or are there 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 many men for so few diamonds. And what about him?’ she said, jerking her chin towards 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 foot 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 mug 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 party, that Jojo.

We knocked two rooms into one. ‘This will be the casino,’ said Jojo, with a grin. It made a room twenty foot 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.

I didn’t have to wait long. Once we had been round 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.’

Towards 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. Few short men: most were huge, bearded, moustachio’d types. Hands and faces were clean; they didn’t smell; yet their clothes were all stained and very nearly worn out. But every single one of the shirts – mostly short-sleeved – 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 that there were diamonds in those tubes. A shaky old Chinese set up a little jeweller’s scales in front of him. Nobody said much. These men were shagged out: they’d been labouring under the blazing sun, some of them standing in water up to their middles 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 neighbour. Everything must have seemed to be in order, because the dice were tossed back on to the blanket without anything being said. Each time, Jojo picked up the pair and put them back 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 that the smoke would help to drive them out.

‘Who kicks off?’ asked a huge copper-coloured guy with a thick black curly beard and a lopsided flower tattooed on his right arm.

‘You, if you like,’ said Jojo.

Out of his silver-mounted belt, the gorilla – for he looked very like a gorilla – brought an enormous wad of bolivar-notes held in an elastic band.

‘What are you kicking off with, Chino?’ asked another man.

‘Five hundred bolos.’ Bolos is short for bolivars.

‘OK 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,’ said Jojo.

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 bolivars.’

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, for the first time a murmur went round. The men stood up. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’

‘Well, you saw that, mate?’ said Jojo when we were alone.

‘Yes: and what I noticed most were those right hard mugs. They all carry a gun and a knife. There were even some who sat on their machêtes, so sharp they could take your head off in one swipe.’

‘That’s a fact: but you’ve seen others like them.’

‘Even so…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, mate. 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 nor 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 said to me, ‘Where do you come from, brother?’

‘After what you said yesterday, I can’t lie to you. I come from penal.’

‘Ah? You escaped? I’m glad you told me.’

‘And what about you?’

He drew himself up, six foot 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 honour – an honourable bandit.’

His face, all lit up with the pride of being an honest man, impressed me. He was really magnificent to see, this honourable bandit. He went on, ‘Corsica is the paradise of the world, the only country where men will give their lives for honour. You don’t believe it?’

‘I don’t know whether it’s the only country, but I do believe you’ll find more men in the maquis who are there on account of their honour than 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 ever 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 of 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 there anyone at home?’ If there was and he didn’t know you, you said, ‘Gentes de paz,’ the same as saying I’m a friend. Then someone would appear and say politely, ‘Adelante. 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 jewellery shop.

Behind the table, there was an old Arab with a pleasant face. We talked a while: 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: he 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 filled with tears when he thought of me. Poor old Papa. 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 ever I needed anything: I’d be doing a kindness if I asked him a favour.

Evening was coming on: I said thank you for everything and set off for our shack. The game would soon be beginning.

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: and 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, so 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 not only on him but also on the others, and that made him look sour. Lighting a cigar, he muttered angrily, ‘Stuff it, man. Don’t scatter the gumbo.’ 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 bolivars. I went in with a thousand.

And he threw the seven!

I left the lot, making two thousand bolivars. Jojo took out the five hundred 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?’ asked Chino.

‘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.’

‘OK for three and a half,’ said the Brazilian.

‘Shoot, Jojo.’

Jojo shot the dice, but the Brazilian grabbed them as they rolled. 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.

‘OK, 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 nor 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 the exact moment 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! Jojo 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 – coming it the boss, and coming it a trifle high. 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 I found Jojo at Miguel’s, eating a dish of macaroni and mince. ‘OK, 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 balls, 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 some place 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 paid Miguel for the rum and the tobacco of last night. 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 packet 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.

Last 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 any more 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 gaga, 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 jeweller’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 balata’d envelope – an envelope dipped in raw latex. They could not be cashed by anyone else nor endorsed in any other name. Every gallowsbird in the village knew what I was doing, and if there was any type who made me feel too uneasy or who 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 the last two days I’d had the feeling the atmosphere was getting tenser, more mistrustful. I’d learnt the smell in penal: 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 waves put out by the guys getting ready for the rough stuff? I don’t know. But I’ve never been wrong about things like that.

For example, yesterday 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 nor asked for them. Something else: not one of them had a weapon that could be seen. No machête, no knife, no gun. And that just didn’t go with their killers’ faces. It was on purpose, no doubt of it.

They came back this evening. They wore their shirts outside their pants, so they must have their guns up against their bellies. They settled into the shadows, of course, but still I could make them out. Their eyes never left the players’ movements. I had to watch them without their noticing it; and that meant I must not stare straight at them. I managed by coughing and leaning back, covering my mouth with my hand. Unfortunately there were only two in front of me. The others were behind, and I could only get quick glances of them by turning round to blow my nose.

Jojo’s coolness was something extraordinary. He remained perfectly unmoved. Still, from time to time he did bet on other men’s throws, which meant the risk of winning or losing by mere unaided chance. I knew that this kind of gambling set him on edge, because it forced him to win the same money two or three times before keeping it for good. The disadvantage was when the game grew red-hot he became too eager to win and passed me over great wads of dough too fast.

As I knew these guys were watching me, I left my pile there in front of me for everyone to see. I didn’t want to behave like a living safe-deposit today.

Two or three times I told Jojo, in quick crook’s slang, that he was making me win too often. He looked as if he didn’t understand. I had worked the lavatory trick on them yesterday and I had not come back; so it was no good doing it now – if these four types meant to move in tonight, they were not going to wait for me to return: they’d get me between the shack and the shit-house.

I felt the tension mount: the four images in each corner were more on edge than ever. Particularly one who kept smoking cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from the butt of the other.

So now I started making bancos right and left, in spite of Jojo’s ugly looks. To crown it all I won instead of losing and, far from shrinking, my pile kept on piling up. It was all there in front of me, mostly in five-hundred-bolivar notes. I was so keyed up that as I took the dice I put my cigarette down on them and it burnt two holes in a folded five hundred. I played and lost this note together with three others in a two-thousand-bolo banco. The winner got up, said, ‘See you tomorrow,’ and went out.

In the heat of the game I took no notice of how the time passed, and then all at once to my amazement I saw the note there on the blanket again. I knew perfectly well who’d won it, a very thin bearded white man of about forty with a pale mark on the lobe of his left ear, standing out against the sunburn. But he was not here any more. In a couple of seconds I had put the scene together again: he’d gone out alone, I was certain of that. Yet not one of those four types had stirred. So that meant they had one or two accomplices outside. They must have a system of signalling from where they were that a guy was coming out loaded with cash and diamonds.