Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon

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.’