Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon. Henri Charriere

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      ‘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.’

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