In the end I found a man in the village who really did know the country and who agreed to guide me. Four or five days later I reached El Callao. Exhausted, worn out, thin as a lath, I knocked on Maria’s door at nightfall.
“He’s here! He’s here!” shrieked Esmeraida at the top of her voice.
“Who?” asked Maria from another room. “And why do you shout so?”
All stirred up by finding this sweetness again after the weeks I had just been through, I caught hold of Esmeraida and put my hand over her mouth to keep her from answering.
“Why all this noise about a visitor?” asked Maria, coming in. Then with a cry of joy, of love, of hope fulfilled, she threw herself into my arms.
When I had embraced Picolino and kissed Maria’s other sister--José was away--I lay there a long, long while beside Maria. She kept asking me the same questions; she couldn’t believe I had come straight to her house without stopping at Big Charlot’s or at any of the village cafés.
“You’re going to stay a little while in El Callao, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’ll fix things so I stay for some time.”
“You must take care of yourself and put on weight; I’ll cook such dishes for you, sweetheart. When you go, even if it wounds my heart forever--not that I blame you in any way, since you warned me--when you go, I want you to be strong, so that you can avoid the snares of Caracas as well as you can.”
El Callao, Uasipata, Upata, Tumeremo: little villages with names strange for a European, tiny points on the map of a country three times the size of France, lost at the back of beyond, where the word progress has no meaning and where men and women, young and old, live as people lived in Europe at the beginning of the century, overflowing with genuine passions, generosity, joy in life and kindness. Almost all the men who were more than forty had had to bear the most terrible of all dictatorships, the rule of Gomez. They were hunted down and beaten to death for nothing: any man in authority could flog them with a bull’s pizzle. When they were between fifteen and twenty in the years 1925 to 1935, all of them had been hunted like animals by the army’s recruiting agents and dragged off to the barracks. Those were the days when a pretty girl might be picked out and kidnapped by an important official and thrown into the street when he was tired of her; and if her family raised a finger to help her they were wiped out.
Now and then, to be sure, there were uprisings, suicidal revolts by men who were determined to have their revenge even if they died for it. But the army was always there at once, and those who escaped with their lives were so tortured they were crippled for the rest of their days.
And yet in spite of all that, the almost illiterate people of these little backward villages still retained their love for other men and their trust in them. For me it was a continual lesson, and one that touched me to the bottom of my heart.
I thought of all this as I lay beside Maria. I had suffered, that was true; I had been condemned unjustly, that was true again; the French wardens had been as savage as the tyrant’s police and soldiers, and maybe even more devilish; but here I was, all in one piece, having just gone through a terrific adventure--a dangerous adventure, certainly, but how utterly fascinating! I’d walked, paddled my canoe, ridden through the bush; but as I lived it each day was a year, so full it was; that life of a man with no laws, free from all restraints, from all moral limits, all obedience to orders from outside.
So I wondered whether I was doing the right thing, going to Caracas and leaving this corner of paradise behind me. Again and again I asked myself that question.
The next day, bad news. The correspondent of the Lebanese, a little jeweler who specialized in gold orchids with Margarita pearls and in all kinds of other truly original ornaments, told me he couldn’t pay anything on my notes of credit because the Lebanese owed him a huge sum of money. Okay, so I’d go and get my money at the other address in Ciudad Bolivar.
“Do you know this man?” I asked.
“Only too well. He’s a crook. He’s run off, taking everything, even some choice pieces I’d left with him on trust.”
If what this goddamn fool said was true, then I was even more broke than before I went off with Jojo. Fine, fine! Fate--what a mysterious business. These things only happened to me. And done by a Lebanese, into the bargain!
Bowed down and dragging my feet, I came back to the house. To win those wretched ten thousand dollars I’d risked my life ten and twenty times over; and now not the smell of a cent was left to me. Well, well; that Lebanese did not have to load the dice to win at craps. Better still, he did not even bother to move--he sat there at home, waiting for the cash to be brought to him.
But my zest for life was so strong that I bawled myself out. You’re free, man, and here you are whining about fate! You can’t be serious. So maybe you did lose your banco; what a marvelous caper it was! Lay your bets!
I was in control again now, and I could see the position clearly enough. I’d have to hurry back to the mine, before the Lebanese sneaked off. And since time is money, don’t let’s lose any. I’d go and find a mule, some stores and be on my way! I still had my gun and my knife. The only question was, would I find the way? I hired a horse--Maria thought it far better than a mule. The only thing that worried me was the idea of taking the wrong pique, because there were places where others came in from all directions.
“I know the paths: would you like me to go with you?” Maria asked. “Oh how I should love that! I’d only go as far as the posada, where you leave the horses before taking to the canoe.”
“It’s too dangerous for you, Maria. Above all, too dangerous coming back alone.”
“I’ll wait for somebody who’s returning to El Callao. That way I’ll be safe. Please say yes, mi amor!”
I talked it over with José, and he agreed she should go. “I’ll lend her my revolver. Maria knows how to use it,” he said.
And that’s how we came to be sitting there alone on the edge of the pique, Maria and I, after a five hours’ ride--I had hired another horse for her. She was wearing breeches, a present from a friend, a llanera. The Venezuelan llana is a huge plain, and the women who live there are brave and untamable; they fire a rifle or a revolver like a man, wield the machete like a fencer and ride like an Amazon--yet in spite of that they are capable of dying for love.
Maria was exactly the opposite. She was gentle and sensual and so close to nature you felt she was part of it. Not that that prevented her from knowing how to look after herself, with a weapon or without: she was courageous.
Never, never shall I forget those days of traveling before we reached the posada. Unforgettable days and nights when it was our hearts that sang after we were too tired to speak our happiness.
I’ll never be able to describe the delight of those dreamlike halts when we played in the coolness of the crystal-clear water and then, still wet and mother-naked, made love on the grassy bank with butterflies and hummingbirds and dragonflies all around us.
We would go on, tottering with love and sometimes so filled with ecstasy that I felt myself to make sure I was still all in one piece.
The nearer we came to the posada the more closely I listened to Maria’s pure natural voice singing love songs. And the more the distance shortened, the more often I pulled in my horse and found excuses for another rest.
“Maria, I think we ought to let the horse cool a while.”
“At this pace, he’s not going to be the one who’s tired when we get there, Papi; we’re the ones who’ll be worn out,” she said, breaking into a laugh that showed her pearly teeth.
We managed to spend six days on the road before we came in sight of the posada. The instant I saw it, I was overcome with a longing to spend the night there and then go back to El Callao. The idea of having the purity of those six days of passion all over again suddenly seemed to me a thousand times more important than my ten thousand dollars. The desire was so strong it made me tremble. But even stronger, there was a voice that said, “Don’t
be a fool, Papi. Ten thousand dollars is a fortune, the first big chunk of the amount you need to carry out your plan. You must not give it up.”
“There’s the posada,” said Maria.
And against myself, against everything I thought and felt, I said the opposite of what I wanted to say. “Yes, there’s the posada. Our journey’s over; tomorrow I leave you.”
Four good men at the paddles, and in spite of the current the canoe raced over the water. Every stroke took me farther from Maria, and standing on the bank she watched me disappear.
Where was peace, where was love, where perhaps was the woman with whom I was fated to build a home and a family? I forced myself not to look back, for fear I should call out to the paddlers, “Let’s turn around!” I had to go on to the mine and get my money and then head for other adventures as soon as possible, to make enough for the great journey to Paris and back. If there was to be any return.
Only one promise: I’d not hurt the Lebanese, I’d just take what belonged to me, neither more nor less. He’d never know he owed this forgiveness to my six days of traveling through paradise with the most wonderful girl in the world, Maria, the nymph of El Callao.
“The Lebanese? But I’m pretty sure he’s gone,” said Miguel, having crushed me in his embrace.
I had found the shack closed, true enough, but the wonderful sign was still there: “Honesty is my greatest treasure.”
“You think he’s gone? Oh, the worthless shit!”
“Calm down, Papi. We’ll soon find out.”
My doubt did not last long, nor my hope; Mustafa confirmed that the Lebanese had gone. But where had he gone? It was only after two days of inquiry that a miner told me he had lit out for Brazil with three bodyguards. “All the miners say he’s an honest man for sure.” Then I told the story of El CalIao and all I’d learned about the disappearing Lebanese in Ciudad Boilvar. Four or five guys, including an Italian, said that if I was right, they were broke. There was only one old character from Guiana who would not see it our way. According to him, the real thief was the Ciudad Bolivar Greek. We looked the situation over from every angle for quite a while, but in my heart of hearts I felt I’d lost the whole works for good and all. What was I going to do?
Go to see Alexandre Guigue at Boa Vista? It was a long way off, Brazil. You had to reckon about three hundred miles through the bush to reach Boa Vista. My last experience had been too risky--just a little farther, and it would have been my last journey. No, I’d fix things so I was in contact with the mine, and as soon as I heard the Lebanese had surfaced again I’d pay him a visit. Once that was settled, I’d be on my way for Caracas, picking up Picolino as I went by. That was the most sensible answer. The next day I’d set off for El Callao.
A week later I was back with José and Maria. I told them everything. Gently, kindly, Maria found the right words to restore my spirits. Her father urged me to stay with them. “We’ll raid the Caratal mine, if you like.” I smiled, and patted him on the shoulder.
No, really that did not appeal to me; I mustn’t stay there. It was only my love for Maria and hers for me that could keep me in El Callao. I was more hooked than I had believed and more than I wanted. It was a strong, genuine love; but still it wasn’t powerful enough to overcome my desire for revenge.
Everything was settled: I had made arrangements with a truck driver and we were to leave at five the next morning.
While I was shaving, Maria slipped out and hid in her sisters’ room. That mysterious sense women possess had told her that this was the real parting. Picolino was sitting at the table in the big room, washed and tidy, with Esmeralda standing next to him, her hand on his shoulder. I took a step toward the room where Maria was. Esmeralda stopped me. “No, Enrique.” Then she too darted to the door and disappeared.
José went with us as far as the truck. We did not say a word.
5
Caracas
It was a tough journey, particularly for Picolino. Six hundred miles and more; twenty hours of driving, not counting the stops. We spent a few hours in Ciudad Boll var, and then having crossed the splendid Orinoco on a ferry, we tore along, the truck racing like crazy, driven by a man with nerves of steel; which was just as well.
The next afternoon at four o’clock we reached Caracas. And there I was in the big city. The movement, the crowds, the coming and going of thousands and thousands of people, sucked me right in.
1931, Paris. 1946, Caracas. Fifteen years had passed since I had seen a genuine big city. A lovely city, Caracas, beautiful with its one-story colonial houses; and it stretched right down the valley with the Avila mountains rising all round it. A city three thousand feet up, with an everlasting spring, neither too hot nor too cold.
“I trust you, Papillon,” said Dr. Bougrat’s voice in my ear, just as if he were there, watching us drive into this huge, swarming city.
Crowds of people everywhere, of all colors from the darkest to the lightest, without any complexes about race. All these people, black, brick-red or purest white, were alive with a happiness that went to my head in the first moments.
With Picolino leaning on my arm, I walked toward the middle of the city. Big Chariot had given me the address of an ex-con who kept a boardinghouse, the Pension Maracaibo.
Yes, fifteen years had gone by and a war had shattered the lives of hundreds of thousands of men of my age in a great many lands, including my own country, France. Between 1939 and 1945 they, too, had been prisoners, or had been killed or maimed. But I was thirty-nine. I was young and strong.
How beautiful it is, a great city! And it was only four o’clock now. What must it be like at night, with its millions of electric stars? Yet we were still only in a working-class district, and a pretty tough one, at that. I’d spend a little money for once. “Hey there, taxi!”
Sitting beside me, Picolino laughed and dribbled like a kid. I wiped his poor mouth; he thanked me with shining eyes, trembling, he was so moved. For him, being in a town, a great capital like Caracas, meant above all the hope of finding hospitals and doctors who could turn the wreck he had become into a normal man once more. The miracle of hope. He held my hand, while outside the streets went by and then still more streets with people and still more people, so many of them they entirely hid the pavement. And the cars, and the horns, and the siren of an ambulance, the clang of a fire engine, the bawling of the hawkers and the newsboys selling the evening papers, the shriek of a truck’s brakes, the ting-a-ling of the trolleys, the bicycle bells-- all these shouts and the deafening noise around made us feel almost drunk. The din destroys some people’s nerves, but it had the opposite effect on us; it woke us up and made us thoroughly understand that we were right back in the crazy rhythm of modern mechanical life--and instead of being tensed up we felt wonderfully happy.
It wasn’t surprising that the noise struck us most. For I’d known silence for fifteen years, the silence of the prisons, the silence of the penal settlement, the more than silence of solitary confinement, the silence of the bush and of the sea, the silence of the little remote villages where happy people live.
I said to Picolino, “We are coming into a foretaste of Paris-- Caracas, a real city. Here they’ll make you well, and as for me, I’ll find my right path and work out my fate; you can be sure of that.”
His hand squeezed mine; a tear ran from his eye. His hand was so brotherly and affectionate that I held on to it so as not to lose that marvelous contact; and since his other arm was dead, it was I that wiped away my friend’s tear.
At last we reached the place run by Emile S., the ex-con, and settled in. He wasn’t there, but as soon as his wife, a Venezuelan, heard we were from El Callao, she grasped what we were and gave us a room with two beds right away, and some coffee.
Having helped Picolino take a shower, I put him to bed. He was tired and overexcited. When I left he made violent signs; and I knew he meant to say, “You’ll come back, won’t you? You won’t leave me in the lurch, all by myself?”
&n
bsp; “No, Pico! I’ll just spend a few hours in the town: I’ll be back soon.”
And here I was in Caracas. It was seven o’clock when I walked down the street toward the Plaza Simon Bolivar, the biggest in the city. An explosion of light everywhere, a magnificent pouring out of electricity, neon signs of every color. What enchanted me most were the advertisements in colored lights, flaming dragons that came and went like will-o’-the-wisps, flashing on and off like a ballet run by a magician.
It was a splendid square, with a huge bronze statue of Simon Bolivar on an enormous horse in the middle of it. He looked terrific, and the statue showed how noble he must have been. I walked right around him, the man who set Latin America free, and I could not help greeting him in my bad Spanish, speaking low so no one would hear, “Hombre! What a miracle it is for me to be here at your feet--at the feet of the Man of Freedom. A poor bastard like me, who has been fighting all the time for that freedom you personify.”
The pension was a quarter of a mile from the square, and I went back twice before I found Emile S. He said Chariot had written to tell him we were coming; we went out to have a drink so we could talk quietly.
“It’s ten years now I’ve been here,” Emile said. “I’m married, with a daughter, and my wife owns the pension. That’s why I can’t put you up for nothing; but you’ll only pay half price.” The wonderful solidarity of ex-cons when one of them is in a jam! He went on, “Is he an old friend, that poor guy with you?”
“You’ve seen him?”
“No, but my wife’s been telling me about him. She says he’s an absolute wreck. Is he senile?”
“Far from it, and that’s what’s so terrible. His mind is as clear as a bell, but his tongue and his mouth and his right side down to the waist are paralyzed. That’s the way he was when I first knew him in El Dorado. Nobody knows who he is or whether he’s a con or a detainee.”