Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon (26 page)

I made a deal with Eléonore: the French and Italian girls could come to our hotel. We could raise the price by ten bolivars a day without worrying: they would be only too happy to be able to stay at the Vera Cruz with French people. We were supposed to take six, but after a month, I don’t quite know how, we had twice as many.

Rita laid down iron-hard rules. They were all young and all lovely, and Rita absolutely forbade them to receive any male at the hotel, even in the courtyard or the dining room. But there was no trouble at all; in the hotel these girls were like real ladies. In everyday life they were proper, respectable women who knew how to behave. In the evening, taxis came for them, and they were transformed--gorgeously dressed and made up. Discreet, without any noise, they went off to the “factory,” as they called it. Now and then a pimp would come from Paris or Caracas, drawing as little attention to himself as possible. His girl could see him at the hotel, of course. Once he had made his haul, collected his money and made his girl happy, he would go off again as quietly as he had come.

There were often little things that were good for a laugh. A visiting pimp took me aside one day and asked to have his room changed. His woman had already found another girl who was willing to switch. Reason: his neighbor was a full-blooded, wellequipped Italian, and every night, when his girl came back, this Italian made love to her at least once and sometimes twice. My pimp was not yet forty, and the Italian must have been fifty-five.

“Man, I just can’t keep up with Rital, if you follow me. There’s no getting anywhere near that kind of a performance. My broad and me being next door, we hear the lot--groans, shrieks, the whole works. And as I can barely make it with my chick once a week, I ask you to imagine what I look like. She doesn’t believe in the headache excuse anymore; and of course she makes comparisons. So if it doesn’t put you out, do this for me.”

I kept my laughter inside me, and moved by such an unanswerable argument, I switched his room.

Another time, at two o’clock in the morning, Eléonore called me up. The cop on duty had found a Frenchman who could not speak a word of Spanish perched in a tree opposite the brothel. The cop asked him how he came to be in that curious position--was he there to steal or what?--and all the fellow answered was “Enrique of the Vera Cruz.” I jumped into my car and darted out to the Tibiri-Tabara.

I recognized the fellow right away. He was from Lyons and he had already been to the hotel. He was sitting there, and the madam, too; standing in front of them were two grim-faced cops. I translated what he told me--he put it very briefly. “No, the gentleman wasn’t in the tree with the idea of doing anything wrong. It’s just that he is in love with one of the women, but he won’t say which. He climbed up to admire her in secret, because she won’t have anything to do with him. It’s nothing serious, as you see. Anyhow, I know him, and he’s a good citizen.”

We drank a bottle of champagne; he paid, and I told him to leave the change on the table--someone would surely pick it up. Then I drove him back in my car. “But what the hell were you doing, perched up in that tree? Have you gone crazy, or are you jealous of your girl?”

“It’s not that. The trouble is the take has dropped off without any reason for it. She’s one of the prettiest there and she earns more than the others. So I thought I’d come and watch how often she went to work without her knowing. That way, it seemed to me, I’d soon find out if she was holding out on me and keeping back my money.”

Although I was sore at having been pulled out of bed in the middle of the night on account of a pimp, I roared with laughter at his explanation. This “tree-perched pimp,” as I called him from that time on, left for Caracas the next day. It was no longer worth his while keeping a check. The whole business had made a lot of noise in the brothel; like everybody else, his woman knew all about it, but she was the only one who knew why her fancy man had chosen just that tree--it was dead opposite her room.

We worked hard, but the hotel was a cheerful place, and we had fun all the time. There were some evenings, after the girls had gone off to their factory, when we made the dead speak. We all sat at a round table with our hands flat on the top, and each one called up the spirit he wanted to question. It was a goodlooking woman of about thirty, a painter, who started these seances--she was a Hungarian, I think. She called up her husband every evening, and of course, with my foot under the table, I helped his spirit reply; otherwise we’d be there yet.

She said her husband was tormenting her. Why? She couldn’t tell. At last, one night the spirit came through by means of the table, and after that he never left it quiet. He accused her of having round heels. We all exclaimed that that was very serious, and that this jealous spirit might take a horrible revenge; all the more so as she was perfectly willing to admit that in fact her heels were quite round. What was to be done about it? We discussed it very gravely and we told her there was only one thing to do: at full moon she was to provide herself with a brand-new machete, stand stark naked in the middle of the patio with her hair down and no makeup on, having washed all over with yellow soap, but with no trace of scent and no jewels, clean from head to foot. Nothing but the machete in her hand. When the moon was right over the patio, casting no shadow except directly beneath her, she was to slash the air exactly twenty-one times.

It worked perfectly, and the night after the exorcism (we had laughed fit to burst, hidden behind the shutters) Rita said the joke had lasted long enough; so the table replied that from now on her late husband would leave her in peace and her heels could be as round as she liked, always provided she never slashed the air with a sword at full moon anymore, because it hurt him too much.

We had another poodle called Minou, quite a big poodle, which had been given to us by a French guest who was passing through Maracaibo. Minou was always perfectly clipped and brushed, and the stiff, thick hair on the top of his head was cut in the shape of a tall, impressive fez. He had puffed-out thighs, shaved legs, a Chaplin moustache and a little pointed beard. The Venezuelans were astonished at the spectacle, and often one of them would overcome his shyness and ask what kind of animal this strange beast might be.

Minou very nearly brought about a serious clash with the Church. The Vera Cruz stood in the Calle Venezuela; our Street led to a church, and processions often went along it. Now Minou loved sitting at the hotel door to watch the people walking about. He never barked, whatever happened in the street. But although he did not bark, he did cause a sensation; and one day the priest and the choirboys belonging to a procession found themselves all alone while, fifty yards behind, the faithful of Maracaibo stood massed in front of the hotel, gazing at this extraordinary object. They had forgotten to follow the procession. Questions ran through the group, and they jostled to see Minou close up; some were of the opinion that the unknown creature might very well be the soul of a repentant sinner, since it had sat there so quietly, watching a priest and his choirboys all dressed in red go by singing heartily. At last the priest realized that things were very silent behind, and turning around he saw there was no one left. He came striding back, crimson with fury and bawling out his parishioners for their lack of respect for the ceremony. Alarmed, they fell back into line and marched off. But I noticed that some who had been most struck by the sight walked backward so as not to lose a minute of Minou. After that we kept an eye on the Maracaibo paper,
Panorama
, for the date and time when a procession should come along our street, so that we could tie him up in the patio.

It seems this was the season for incidents with the clergy. Two French girls left Eléonore’s brothel and the hotel; they had made up their minds to be independent and set up a little “house” in the center of the town where they would just work by themselves, the two of them. It was quite a good scheme, because this way the customers would not have to get their cars and drive six miles there and back to see them. To get themselves known, they had cards printed, saying “Julie and Nana: conscientious work” and the address. They handed them out in the town; but instead of giving them directly to the men, they often slipped them under the windshield wipers of parked cars.

They had the bad luck to put two, one under each wiper, on the car belonging to the bishop of Maracaibo. This set off a hell of an explosion. To show the profane nature of their action, the paper
La Religion
published a picture of the card. But the bishop and the clergy were indulgent: the little brothel was not closed, and the ladies were only begged to be more discreet. Anyhow, there was no point in going on handing out the cards; after the free publicity in
La Religion
, a very considerable number of customers hurried to the given address. Indeed, the crowd was so great that to provide a reasonable excuse for this troop of men at their door, the girls asked a hot-dog seller to wheel his cart quite close, so it would look as if the line was standing there to buy a
perro caliente
.

That was the picturesque side of life at the hotel. But we weren’t living on a planet far out in space; we were living it in Venezuela, and we were involved with the country’s economic and political ups and downs. In 1948 politics were not so peaceful. Gallegos and Betancourt had been governing the country since 1945, in the first attempt at a democratic régime in the history of Venezuela. On November 13, 1948, scarcely three months after I had set to work with Rita to buy the hotel, there came the first shot directed against the régime. A major called Thomas Mendoza had the nerve to stage an uprising all by himself. He failed.

On the twenty-fourth of the same month the soldiers seized power in a coup d’etat run with clockwise precision: there were almost no victims. Gallegos, the president of the republic and a distinguished writer, was forced to resign. Betancourt, a real political lion, took refuge in the Colombian embassy.

In Maracaibo we lived through hours of very tense anxiety. There was one moment when all at once we heard a passionate voice on the radio crying, “Workers, come out into the streets! They want to steal your freedom from you, close down your unions and impose a military dictatorship by force! Everybody occupy the squares, the . - .” Click, and it went dead, the mike snatched from the brave militant’s hands. Then a calm, grave voice: “Citizens! The army has withdrawn the power from the men to whom they entrusted it after having dismissed General Medina, because they made an unworthy use of their authority. Do not be afraid: we guarantee the life and property of one and all, without exception. Long live the army! Long live the revolution!”

That was all I saw of a revolution which caused no blood to flow at all; and when we woke up next day, there was the membership of the military junta in the papers: three colonels--Delgado Chalbaud as president, Perez Jiménez and Llovera Páez.

At first, we were afraid this new régime would mean the suppression of the rights given by the former one. But nothing of the kind. Life went on just the same, and we scarcely noticed the change of government, except that the key posts were taken over by soldiers.

Then two years later came the assassination of Delgado Chalbaud. A very ugly business with two conflicting explanations. First theory: they meant to murder all three and he was just the first to be killed. Second theory: one or both of the other colonels had had him put out of the way. The truth was never known. The murderer was arrested, and he was shot and killed while he was being transferred to prison--a lucky shot that prevented any embarrassing statement. From that day on Perez Jiménez was the strong man of the régime, and he officially became dictator in 1952.

So our life went on, and although we never went out for any fun or entertainment or even a drive, this life and our eagerness to work filled us with a wonderful joy. For what we were building up by our labors was our home-to-be, the home where we would live happily, having earned it ourselves, united as two people can be only when they love one another as we did.

And into this home would come Clotilde, Rita’s daughter, who would be mine, and my father, who would be theirs. And to this house my friends would come, to catch their breath awhile when they were in need. And in this home filled with happiness we would be so thoroughly contented that never again should I think of taking my revenge upon those who had caused so much suffering to me and my people.

At last the day came--we had won. In December, 1950, a beautiful document was drawn up at the lawyer’s, and we became the owners of the hotel for good and all.

11

Soon thereafter Rita set off on her journey, her heart filled with hope. She was going to find out where my father had hidden himself.

“Rely on me, Henri. I’ll bring you back your father.”

I was alone in the running of the hotel. I gave up selling my trousers and shirts, although I could make quite a bundle that way in a few hours. Rita had gone to look for my father, so I was going to look after everything not only as well as if she were there, but even better, twice as well.

To look for my father: my father, the schoolmaster of a village in the Ardèche, who twenty years before had been unable to embrace his own son, because of the bars in the visiting room. My father, to whom Rita would be able to say, “I’ve come as your daughter to tell you that by his own efforts your son has regained his freedom, that he has made himself a life as a good and honest man, and that he and I have built up a home that is waiting for you.”