Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon. Henri Charriere

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

       2: The Mine

      A WEEK later, thanks to the letter that Prospéri, the Corsican grocer, wrote for me, I was taken on at the Mocupia mine. Here I was, looking after the working of the pumps that sucked up the water from the shafts.

      The mine looked like a coal-pit: the same underground galleries. There were no veins of gold and very few nuggets. The gold was found in very hard rock: they blasted this rock with dynamite and then broke the oversized lumps with a sledge-hammer. The pieces were put into trucks, and the trucks came to the surface in lifts; then crushers reduced the rock to a powder finer than sand. This was mixed with water, making a liquid mud that was pumped up into huge tanks as big as the reservoirs in an oil-refinery: these tanks had cyanide in them. The gold СКАЧАТЬ