But at that particular moment, not only had I lost the plane, and not only had my job with the Hungarian woman been taken by someone else, but I also had to avoid the central parts of Caracas, because Coriat’s shop was there and I had no wish to bump into him. So once more the position was far from brilliant. But I didn’t care: those few weeks with Carotte had been too marvelous for me to regret anything at all.
Carotte and I often saw one another after that; we used to meet in a quiet little joint run by an old Frenchman who had retired from the Compagnie Transatlantique. One night when we were playing dominoes in a corner with a Spanish republican and an ex-con who now made a peaceful living by selling perfume on credit, two men wearing sunglasses came in--we didn’t know them--and asked if it was true that a Frenchman often came here, a pilot.
Carotte stood up and said, “That’s me.”
I examined these strangers from head to foot and right away, in spite of his dark glasses, I recognized one of them. I felt a sudden wave of emotion. I went up to him. Before I could speak he knew me. “Papi!”
It was Big Leon, one of my best friends in the penal colony. A tall guy with a thin face; a real man, openhearted. This was not the moment to seem too friendly and he just introduced me to his sidekick Pedro the Chilean and said no more. We had a drink in a corner, and Leon said he was looking for a light plane with a pilot, and he had been told about this Frenchman.
“The pilot’s here,” said Carotte, “and I’m him. But the plane is not. It belongs to other people now.”
“That’s sad,” Leon said laconically.
Carotte returned to his game of dominoes; someone else took my place. Pedro the Chilean went and stood at the bar, so we could talk quietly.
“Well, Papi?”
“Well, Leon?”
“The last time we met was more than ten years ago.”
“Yes. You were coming out of solitary just as I was going in. How are you doing, Leon?”
“Not bad, not bad at all. And you, Papi?”
Since it was Leon, I felt I could talk. “I’ll tell you plain, Leon: I’m a little pissed off. It’s not so easy to climb up the hill. It’s all very well coming out of stir filled with the best intentions: life’s so tough when you have no trade that all you think of is hustling again. Leon, you’re older than me and you aren’t the ordinary bum. I can tell you what’s on my mind. Speaking dead serious and dead straight, as far as I’m concerned I owe this country everything. I came back to life here and I’ve promised myself to respect this great community--to do the least possible number of things that could be criticized. It’s not easy, but I’m perfectly certain that even with my love for pulling things off I could set myself up here, starting from nothing and going straight, if only I hadn’t a long bill to present to some people in Paris, and I can’t wait, in case those assholes should die before I get there.
“When I see the young people of this country, utterly carefree and full of the joy of life, then in spite of myself I look back at the best years of my life. And I see the black holes of the Réclusion, and the three years of waiting before the trial and after it, and that stinking clink where I was treated far worse than a mad dog. And then for hours, sometimes for whole days on end, I walk about the streets of Caracas turning it all over in my mind. I feel I’m back in those places where I was buried alive; I keep seeing them, and I go back to my one, two, three, four, five, turn, just as I did when I was buried there and walked to and fro like a bear in a cage. It’s beyond my control; it’s a real obsession. I can’t tolerate the idea that those who unjustly put me through that hell should die in peace, without having paid.
“So when I’m walking along the streets like that, I don’t look around like an ordinary man. Every jeweler’s shop, every place that is sure to hold the money I need--I can’t help casing it and working out just how I could get my hands on everything it contains. It’s not because I don’t feel like it that I haven’t yet pulled anything off; there are jobs here so dead easy they almost cry out to be done.
“Up until now I’ve managed to keep a hold on myself; I’ve done nothing serious against this country that trusts me. That would be vile, as odious as raping the daughters of a house that had taken you in. But I’m afraid one day I may not be able to resist the temptation of pulling off a big job. Because I’ll never, never be able to scrape together the huge sum I need for my revenge, not by working honestly. Between you and me, Leon, I’m at the end of my rope.”
Big Leon listened to me in silence, gazing at me attentively. We had a last drink, hardly exchanging another word. He got up and gave me a time to come and have lunch with him and Pedro the Chilean the next day.
We met in a quiet restaurant with an arbor. The sun was shining.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said to me, Papi. So listen, and I’ll tell you why we’re in Caracas.”
They were only passing through, on their way to another South American country. There they were going to pay serious attention to a pawnshop, where, according to their own inquiries and information supplied by one of the chief employees, there was enough jewelry for each of them to come out with a very elegant fortune, once the jewels were turned into dollars. That was why they were looking for Carotte. They had meant to make him a proposition for his plane and himself; but now there was no point in talking about it.
“You can come in with us, if you like, Papi,” Leon concluded.
“I’ve no passport and nothing much in the way of savings either.”
“We’ll look after the passport. Isn’t that right, Pedro?”
“It’s just as if you had it already,” said Pedro. “In a phony name: that way you’ll officially neither have gone out of Venezuela nor come back.”
“What’ll it cost, roughly?”
“About a thousand dollars. Have you got that much dough?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, considering how you’re placed, you shouldn’t hesitate.”
Two weeks later I was some miles from a South American capital, having hired a car the day after the job, busy burying a cookie tin with my share of the jewels in it.
The carefully programmed operation had been simple. We went in through a tie shop next door to the pawnbroker’s. Leon and Pedro had been there to buy ties several times so as to get a good look at the lock and settle on the exact spot where they would make the hole in the wall. These were no safes, only locked cupboards all around. We went in at ten on Saturday evening, and we came out at eleven on Sunday night.
A smooth, well-run job. So there I was, a dozen miles from the town, burying my tin at the foot of a huge tree. I knew I would find the place again without any difficulty, because even without the mark I’d cut with my knife, the tree was easy to spot: the forest began just after a bridge, and the first tree of this forest, right by the road, was mine. Driving back, I threw the pick away some five miles along the road.
That evening we all met in a classy restaurant. We walked in separately and behaved as if we’d met by chance at the bar and then decided to have dinner together. Each of us had hidden his share, Leon with a friend and Pedro in the forest, like me.
“It’s much better for each to have his own private hole,” Leon said. “That way, no one of us knows what the others have done with theirs. It’s a precaution they often take in South America, because if the pigs pull you in, what they put you through is no fun at all. Then if a poor guy starts to talk, why, he can only rat on himself. So that’s sewn up: tell me, Papi, are you satisfied with the shares?”
“I think our rough estimate of each piece was dead right. Everything’s fine: I don’t have any gripes.”
So all was satisfactory and everyone was pleased.
“Hands up!”
“Why, what the hell?” cried Leon. “Are you crazy?”
No time for further observations: in a flash we were clubbed, handcuffed and wheeled off to the police headquarters. We hadn’t even finished the oysters.
&n
bsp; In that country, the pigs do not coddle you at all; the party went on all night. Eight hours at the very least. First questions: “Do you like ties?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
And so it went. By five in the morning we were nothing but lumps of bruised flesh. The pigs were furious at not having been able to get anything out of us; they frothed with rage. “Okay. Since you’re all in a sweat and your temperature’s too high, we’ll cool you.” We could scarcely stand, but they tossed us into a paddy wagon and a quarter of an hour later we were in front of a huge building. The pigs went in and then we saw workmen coming out; the pigs must have asked them to leave. Then it was our turn to go in, each propped up by two pigs and almost dragged along.
An enormous corridor; steel doors right and left, each with a kind of clock over it: a clock with only one hand. Thermometers. Right away I grasped that we were in the corridor of the deepfreeze of a big slaughterhouse. We stopped at a place where there were several tables standing in the corner. “Well, now,” said the chief pig. “I’ll give you one last chance to think it over. These are meat lockers. You understand what that means? So for the last time, where have you put the jewels and the other things?”
“We know nothing about any jewels or about any ties,” said Leon.
“Okay, lawyer. You can go first.”
The cops unbolted a door and opened it wide. A kind of icy fog came out and wafted down the corridor. Having taken off Leon’s shoes and socks they shoved him in.
“Shut it quick,” said the chief, “or we’ll be frozen, too.”
“Now, Chilean. Are you going to talk, yes or no?”
“I’ve nothing to talk about.”
They opened another door and pushed the Chilean in.
“You’re the youngest, Wop [my passport had an Italian identity]. Take a good look at these thermometers. They show minus forty. That means that if you don’t talk and we stuff you in there in a sweat, after the party you’ve been through, its ten to one you’ll catch pneumonia and die in hospital in less than forty-eight hours. I’m giving you one last chance, you see: did you rob the pawnbroker’s by going through the tie shop, yes or no?”
“I’ve nothing to do with those men. I only knew one of them, long ago, and I just met them by chance in the restaurant. Ask the waiters and barmen. I don’t know whether they had anything to do with this job, but I’m dead certain I didn’t.”
“Well, Macaroni, you can perish, too. I’m sorry to think of you dying at your age; but it’s your own fault. You asked for it.”
The door opened. They shot me into the darkness, and hitting my head on an iron-hard side of beef hanging from a hook, I fell flat on the floor: it was covered with ice and hoarfrost. Immediately I felt the appalling cold seize upon my flesh, pierce right through and reach my bones. With a terrible effort I got to my knees, then, clinging to a side of beef, I stood upright. Every movement hurt, after the beating they had given us, but in spite of that I thumped my arms and rubbed my neck, cheek, nose and eyes. I tried warming my hands under my armpits. All I had on were my pants and a torn shirt. They had taken my shoes and socks, too, and the soles of my feet hurt terribly as they stuck to the ice; I felt my toes beginning to freeze.
I said to myself, “This can’t go on for more than ten minutes-- a quarter of an hour at the most. Otherwise I’ll be like one of these sides of beef: a lump of deep-frozen meat. No, no, it’s not possible. They can’t do that to us! Surely they can’t freeze us alive? Stick it out, Papi. A few minutes more and the door will open. That icy corridor will seem as warm as toast.” My arms were not working anymore; I could no longer close my hands or move my fingers; my feet were sticking to the ice and I no longer had the strength to pull them away. I felt I was going to faint, and in the space of a few seconds I saw my father’s face, then the prosecutor’s floating over it, but that was not so clear, because it merged with the faces of the cops. Three faces in one. “How strange,” I thought. “They are all alike, and they are laughing because they’ve won.” Then I passed out.
What was happening? Where was I? As I opened my eyes there was a man’s face leaning over me, a handsome face. I could not speak, because my mouth was still frozen stiff with cold, but inside my head I asked myself what I was doing here, stretched out on a table.
Big, powerful, efficient hands rubbed me all over with warm grease, and gradually I felt heat and suppleness coming back. The chief cop was watching, two or three yards away. He looked hot and bothered. Several times they opened my mouth to pour a drop of spirits into it. Once they poured too much; I choked and shot it out.
“There we are,” said the masseur. “He’s saved.”
They went on rubbing me for at least half an hour. I felt that I could talk if I wanted to, but I preferred keeping my mouth shut. I realized that over there on the right there was another body lying on a table the same height as mine. He was naked, too, and they were rubbing and massaging him. Who was it? Leon or the Chilean? There had been three of us: but with me on this table and the guy on the other, that only made two. Where was the third? The other tables were empty.
Helped by the masseur I managed to sit up, and I saw who the other one was. Pedro the Chilean. They dressed us and put us into those padded overalls specially made for men who work inside deepfreezes.
The chief pig returned to the attack. “Can you speak, Chilean?”
“Yes.”
“Where are the jewels?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“And what about you, Spaghetti?”
“I wasn’t with those men.”
“Okay.”
I slipped off the table. I could barely stand, but once I was up I felt a healthy burning on the soles of my feet. That pleased me although it hurt, and I felt the blood flowing inside me, racing round my whole body with such strength that it thumped in the farthest veins and arteries.
I thought that for one day I had gone as far in horror as possible, but I had got it wrong, quite wrong.
They put Pedro and me side by side, and the chief, who had now recovered his self-assurance, called out, “Take off their overalls.”
They took them off, and there I was, naked to the waist: straight away I started shivering with cold again.
“And now take a good look at this, hombres.”
From under a table they dragged a kind of rigid parcel and stood it up on end in front of us. It was a frozen corpse, as stiff as a board. Its eyes were wide open and fixed, like two marbles: it was hideous to see, terrifying. Big Leon! They had frozen him alive!
“Take a good look, horn bres,” said the chief again. “Your accomplice wouldn’t talk; so all right, we went all the way with him. Now it’s your turn, if you’re as stubborn as he was. I’ve been given orders to be merciless, because this job of yours is much too serious. The pawnshop is run by the state, and there’s an ugly rumor in the town--people think it’s a racket worked by some of the officials. So either you talk, or in half an hour you’ll be like your friend here.”
My wits had not yet come back, and the sight so churned me up that for three long seconds I felt like talking. The only thing that prevented me was that I didn’t know where the other hiding places were. They’d never believe me and I’d be in worse danger than ever.
To my utter amazement I heard a very collected voice, Pedro’s voice, say, “Come on now; you can’t frighten us with that stuff. Why, of course it was an accident--you never meant to freeze him; it was an error of judgment, that’s all; but you don’t want another error with us. One you can get away with; but three, three foreigners turned into blocks of ice, that mounts up. And I can’t see you giving airtight explanations to two different embassies. One, okay. Three, it’s too much.”
I could not help admiring Pedro’s steely nerve. Very calmly the pig looked at the Chilean, not speaking. Then, after a little pause, “You’re a crook, and that’s for sure; but I have to admit that you’ve also got guts.” Turning to the others he said, “Fi
nd them each a shirt and take them back to the prison: the judge will look after them. With brutes like this there’s no point in going on with the party--it’s a waste of time.” He turned his back and walked off.
A month later they let me out. The tie merchant admitted I had never been to his shop, which was true: the barmen stated that I had had two whiskies by myself, that I had already booked a table for one before the other two appeared, and that we had seemed very surprised to meet one another in this town. Still, they ordered me to leave the country in five days, because they were afraid that as Leon’s so-called countryman (Leon also had an Italian passport) I would go and tell the consulate what had happened.
During the inquiries, we had been brought face to face with a guy I did not know but Pedro did--the pawnshop employee who had put him on to the job. The very evening we divided up the take, this silly cunt presented a girl from an all-night bar with a splendid antique ring. The pigs were tipped off, and they had no difficulty in making him talk: that was why Big Leon and Pedro were identified so quickly. Pedro the Chilean stayed there, hooked on this business.
I took the plane with five hundred dollars in my pocket. I never went near my hiding place; it was too risky. I took stock, to see how things stood after the hideous nightmare I had just been through; the papers reckoned the pawnshop job at two hundred thousand dollars; even if they had exaggerated and doubled it, that still left a hundred thousand; so in my hole I had about thirty thousand. Since the value had been reckoned according to the amount lent on the jewels, that is to say half their real value, and if I sold them without going through a fence, then by my calculations I should be the owner of more than sixty thousand dollars! So I had what I needed for my revenge, as long as I did not break into it for living. This money was sacred; it was for a sacred purpose, and I must never use it for anything else upon any pretext whatsoever.