Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon (23 page)

It was not so foolish, what this guy said. I was interested. “What’ll you drink? It’s on me.”

“A double rum, Frenchman. Thanks.” And he went on, “It’s because of this that the Motilón Indians shoot arrows at you. They say that because of you it’s going to be hard for them to eat.”

“So we are robbing their larder?”

“You’re dead right, Frenchman. Then again, when you go up a stream, have you ever noticed that, where it’s narrow or where there’s so little water you have to get out of the canoe and shove, you destroy a kind of dam made of branches and bamboos?”

“Yes, I have. Often.”

“Well, the things you destroy like that, never thinking twice, are fish traps built by the Motilón Indians; so there again you do them harm. Because there’s a great deal of work in these traps. They are a kind of maze, and the fish that are running up the stream pass through zigzag afterzigzag until they reach a big trap at the end, and then they can’t escape. There’s a wall of bamboos in front, and they can’t find the entrance again, because it’s made of little creepers that the fish pushed aside to get in. The current pushes them back against the gate once the fish has passed. I’ve seen traps more than fifty yards long from one end to the other, Beautiful work.”

“You’re right, absolutely right. You have to be vandals like us to smash work of that kind.”

As we traveled back, I thought about what the rum-soaked halfbreed had told me, and I made up my mind to try something. As soon as we reached Maracaibo, even before I went home for my week’s leave, I left a letter for Monsieur Blanchet, the personnel manager, asking him to see me next day.

He called me in, and there with him I saw the top geologist. I told them there would be no more killed or wounded in the expeditions if they would leave the management to me. Crichet would still be the official boss, of course, but I would be the one who saw to the discipline. They decided to have a try; Crichet had put in a report saying that if they could get higher up than the last expedition, that is to say into an even more dangerous region, they would find a real treasure-house of information. As to the pay for my new job, which would be in addition to being cook (I was still to be the geologists’ chef), that would be settled when I came back. Of course I said nothing about the reasons that I could guarantee the expedition’s safety, and since the Yankees are practical people, they asked me no questions either-- it was the result that mattered.

Crichet was the only one who knew about the arrangement. It suited him, so he fell in with the scheme and relied on me. He was sure I had found some certain way of avoiding trouble; and the fact that I had been one of the three who stayed when all the others left had made a good impression.

I went to see the governor of the province and explained my business. He was friendly and understanding, and thanks to his letter of recommendation, I got the National Guard to give orders that the last post before Motilón territory should take all the weapons carried by the men on my list before letting the expedition through. They would think up some likely, comforting excuse. Because if the men knew back in Maracaibo that they were going into Motilón country unarmed, they wouldn’t even start. I’d have to catch them short and con them on the spot.

It all passed off perfectly. At Burra, the last post, their weapons were taken away from all the men except two, and I told those two never to fire except in immediate danger--never for hunting or for fun. I had a revolver, and that was all.

From that day on, there was no trouble whatsoever in any of our expeditions. The Americans got the message, and being for efficiency above all, they never asked me the reason.

I got along with the men, and they obeyed me. My job fascinated me. Now, instead of smashing the fish traps with our canoes, we worked around them, destroying nothing. Another thing: since I knew the Motilón Indians’ chief problem was hunger, I left old cans filled with salt or sugar every time we struck camp; and according to what we could spare, we’d also leave a machete or a knife or a little ax. When we came back through these camping places we never found a thing. Everything had vanished, even the old cans themselves. So my tactics worked, and since nobody in Maracaibo knew what it was all about, there was a rumor that I was a brujo, a wizard, or that I had a secret understanding with the Motilón Indians.

It was during one of these expeditions that I had an extraordinary lesson in how to fish--in how to catch a fish without bait, hook or line, just quietly picking it up on the surface. My teacher was a
danta
, a tapir, an animal bigger than a large pig, sometimes more than six feet long. One afternoon, when I was near the stream, I saw a
danta
for the first time. It came out of the water, and I watched, keeping perfectly still so as not to frighten it. Its skin was rather like that of a rhinoceros; its front legs were shorter than its back ones; and over its mouth it had a short but distinct trunk. It went over to a creeper and ate a good deal of it--so it was a herbivore. Then I saw it go down to the stream again, walk in toward a stretch of slack water. There it stopped, and began to sort of belch, like a cow--so it was a ruminant. Then it brought up a green liquid through its trunk. Very cleverly it mixed this stuff with the water, stirring with its big head. I was still wondering about the reason for all this when a few minutes later, to my astonishment, I saw fish come to the surface, belly uppermost, moving slowly as though they had been drugged or put to sleep. And then there was my
danta
taking the fish one by one, not hurrying at all; and calmly he ate them up. I was absolutely amazed.

After that, I had a try. I carefully marked down the creeper I had seen the
danta
eating, gathered an armful and crushed it between two stones, collecting the juice in a gourd. Then I poured the juice into a part of the river where there was no current. Victory! A few minutes later I saw the fish come to the top, knocked out, just as they had done for the
danta
. There’s only one precaution you have to take: if the fish are edible, you must gut them right away, otherwise they go bad in two hours. After this experiment, the geologists’ table often had splendid fish dishes. I told the men that they should never, under any circumstances, kill such a charming fisherman, particularly since tapirs are perfectly harmless.

Sometimes, in these expeditions, 1 took a family of alligator hunters along as guides, the Fuenmayors, a father and his two sons. This suited everybody, because the Fuenmayors knew the region very well; but if they were alone they would be easy prey for the Motilón Indians. Going along with the expedition, they guided us by day in exchange for their keep, and at night they hunted alligators.

They were people from Maracaibo, Maracuchos, very sociable souls. They spoke in a musical way, and they had a very high notion of friendship. There was a great deal of Indian blood in their veins and they had the Indian qualities of wisdom and intelligence. I had some wonderful, indestructible friendships with the Maracuchos, and I have them still. The women are beautiful, and they know how to love and how to make themselves loved.

Hunting alligators, creatures seven to ten feet long, is a very dangerous business. One night I went along with Fuenmayor and his elder son. The father sat at the back of this very narrow, very light canoe, steering, with me in the middle and his son in front. It was pitch dark; all you could hear was the noises of the bush, and, very faintly, the lapping of the water against the canoe. We didn’t smoke; we didn’t make the slightest sound. The paddle that moved the canoe and at the same time steered it was never allowed to scrape against the side.

Every now and then we sent the beam of a huge flashlight sweeping the surface, and pairs of red dots appeared. Two red points: one alligator. In front of these eyes there would be the nostrils, because the eyes and the nose are the only two parts of an alligator that show when it is resting on the surface. The victim was chosen according to the shortest distance between the hunters and the red dots. Once it was selected, we felt our way toward it with the light out. Old Fuenmayor was wonderfully skillful at fixing the alligator’s exact position, by just one flash of the light lasting no more than a second. We paddled quickly toward it and aimed the beam, and almost always the brute just lay there, dazzled. The beam stayed on the alligator until we were two or three yards away. In the front of the canoe young Fuenmayor kept his flashlight aimed with his left hand and with all the strength of his right arm he threw a harpoon weighted with twenty pounds of lead--the only thing that could pierce a hide that tough and go through to the flesh.

Now we had to get moving, because the second the alligator was harpooned it dived; we took our three paddles and rapidly made for the shore. You really have to hop to it, because if you give the alligator time it comes to the surface again, rushes for you and with one sweep of its tail capsizes the canoe, turning the hunters into a quarry for the other alligators, who’ve been warned by the turmoil. You have scarcely reached the bank before you jump out, rush for a tree and loop the rope around it. He comes along, you feel him coming along to see what’s holding him. He can’t tell what’s happening to him, apart from the pain in his back. So he comes to find out. Gently, without pulling, you take in the slack and pass it round the tree. He’s going to come out--he’s almost at the edge. Just as he emerges, young Fuenmayor, holding a thin, razor-sharp American ax, gives his head a tremendous crack. Sometimes it takes three to finish the alligator off. At each blow the animal gives a sweep with his tail that would send the axman to heaven if it touched him. Occasionally the ax does not kill the alligator, and then you have to give slack right away so the brute can go off into deep water, because he is so strong he would wrench out even a deeply planted harpoon. You wait a minute and then start heaving again.

That was a wonderful night: we killed several alligators, leaving them on the bank. At daybreak, the Fuenmayors returned and skinned the belly and the underside of the tail. The skin of the back is too hard to be of any use. Then they buried each huge creature--if the carcasses were thrown back they would poison the river. Alligators don’t eat other alligators, not even dead ones.

I made several of these expeditions, earning a good living and managing to save a fair amount. And then there occurred the most extraordinary event in my life.

10

When I was in the solitary-confinement cells at Saint-Joseph I used to take off for the stars and invent wonderful castles in Spain, trying to people the loneliness and the terrible silence. Often I would imagine myself free, a man who had conquered “the road down the drain” and who’d begun a new life in some big city. Yes, it was a genuine resurrection; I pushed back the tombstone that crushed me down in the darkness and I came back into the daylight, into real life; and among the pictures my mind thought up, there would appear a girl as good as she was beautiful.

Yes, there in the stifling damp heat that deprived the unhappy prisoners of the Reclusion of the least waft of living air, when, half smothered, I breathed in that unbearable steam that hurt my lungs--gasping in the hope of finding some hint of freshness--and when in spite of my weakness, my unquenchable thirst and the anxiety that wrung my heart, I took off for the stars where the air was cool and the trees had fresh green leaves, and where the cares of everyday life did not exist because I had grown rich, there, in every vision, appeared the one I called my
belle princesse
. She was always the same, down to the very last detail. Nothing ever varied, and I knew her so well that every time she stepped into these different scenes it seemed to me quite natural-- wasn’t it she who was to be my wife and my good angel?

Coming back from one of these geological trips, I decided to give up my room in the Richmond Company’s camp and live right in Maracaibo. So one day a company truck set me down with a small suitcase in my hand, in a shady little square somewhere in the city center. I knew there were several hotels or
pensions
thereabouts and I took the Calle Venezuela, a street in a very good position, running between the two main squares of Maracaibo, the BolIvar and the Baralt. It was one of those narrow colonial streets lined with low houses--one story or at the most two. The heat was shattering, and I walked in their shade.

Hotel Vera Cruz. A pretty colonial house dating from the conquest, painted a pale blue. I liked its clean, welcoming look and I walked into a cool passage that gave onto a patio. And there, in the airy, shaded courtyard I saw a woman; and this woman was
she
.

I could not be wrong--I had seen her thousands of times in my dreams when I was a wretched prisoner. Now my
belle princesse
was before me, sitting in a rocking chair. I was certain that if I went closer I should see her hazel-colored eyes and even the minute beauty spot on her lovely oval face. And these surroundings--I had seen them, too, thousands of times. So it was impossible that I could be wrong: the princess of my dreams was there before me; she was waiting for me.

“
Buenas dias, Señora
. Have you a room to let?” I put my bag down. I was certain she was going to say yes. I did not just look at her; I ate her up with my eyes. She stood up, rather surprised at being stared at so hard by someone she did not know, and came toward me.

“Yes, Monsieur, I have a room for you,” said my princess, in French.