Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon (35 page)

15

Caracas once more. This was 1961, and sixteen years had passed since El Dorado. Nightlife had changed a great deal in Caracas, and finding a joint as clean, attractive and important as the Grand Café was impossible. A ridiculous new law held that the people who had bars and sold alcoholic drinks corrupted public morals-- which meant all kinds of abuses and exploitation on the part of certain officials, and I didn’t want to get back into that racket at all.

Something else was needed. I discovered not a mine of diamonds but a mine of very big shrimp, the kind called
camarones
and even bigger ones called
langostinos
. And all this was back at Maracaibo once again.

We settled down in an elegant apartment: I bought a stretch of shore and founded a company called the Capitan Chico, after the district that included my beach. Sole shareholder, Henri Charrière; manager, Henri Charrière; director of operations, Henri Charrière; chief assistant, Rita.

And here we were, launched into an extraordinary adventure. I bought eighteen fishing boats. They were big craft, each with a fifty-horsepower outboard and a net five hundred yards long. A crew of five to each boat. As one fully equipped boat cost twelve thousand five hundred bolIvars, eighteen meant a lot of money.

We transformed the little villages around the lake, doing away with poverty and the dislike for work (since the work I gave was well paid) and bringing a new life in place of the old listlessness.

These poor people owned nothing, so without any guarantee from them we gave one full set of fishing gear for each crew of five. They fished as they chose, and their only obligation was to sell me the
langostinos
and
camarones
at the market price less half a bolIvar, because I paid for all the equipment and its upkeep.

The business ran at a tremendous pace, and it fascinated me. We had three refrigerated trucks that never stopped hurrying about the beaches to pick up my boats’ catch.

I built a pier on the lake about a hundred feet long, and a big covered platform. Here Rita managed a team of between a hundred twenty and a hundred forty women who took off the heads of the
camanones
and
langostinos
. Then, washed and washed again in ice-cold water, the shrimp were sorted for size, according to how many would go to one American pound. There might be ten to fifteen, or twenty to twenty-five, or twenty-five to thirty. The bigger they were, the more they brought. Every week the Americans sent me a green sheet which gave the market price for
camarones
each Tuesday. Every day at least one DC-8 took off for Miami, carrying 24,800 pounds of
camarones
.

I would have made a lot of money, if I had not been such a fool as to take a Yankee partner one day. He had a moon face, and looked worthy, stupid and straight. He spoke neither Spanish nor French, and as I spoke no English we couldn’t quarrel.

This Yankee brought in no capital, but he had rented the freezers of a well-known brand of ice that was sold all over Maracaibo and in the neighborhood. As a result, our
camarones
and
langostinos
were perfectly frozen.

I had to oversee the fishing, the boats, the loading of each day’s catch into my three refrigerated trucks and the payment of the fishermen: and I had to provide these considerable sums out of my own pocket. Some days I would go down to the beach with thirty thousand bolIvars and come home withoui a cent.

We were well organized, but nothing tuns itself without a hitch, and I had a continual war with pirate buyers. As I’ve said, the fishermen who used my equipment had agreed that I should buy their catch at the market price less half a boilvar a kilo, which was fair. But the pirate buyers risked nothing. They had no boats, just a refrigerated truck. So they could afford to turn up on the beaches and buy
camarones
at the market price from no matter who. A boat carrying eight hundred kilos of
camarones
gained four hundred bolivars by selling a day’s catch to the pirate buyers. You would have to be a saint to resist a temptation like that. So whenever they could, my fishermen took the pirates’ money. That meant I had to protect my interests almost day and night; but I liked the battle--it gave me intense satisfaction.

When we sent our
camarones
and
langostinos
to the States, the payment was made in the form of a letter of credit, once the bank had seen the shipping papers and a certificate indicating that the quality of the goods and their perfect deepfreezing had been checked. The bank paid 85 percent of the total, and we then received the remaining 15 percent when Miami told Maracaibo that the consignment had arrived and had been found satisfactory.

It often happened that on Saturdays, when there were two planeloads of
camarones
, my partner would go along on one plane to accompany the consignment. On those days the freight cost five hundred dollars more, and as the Miami cargo handlers did not work on Saturdays, someone had to be on the spot to get the consignment out, loaded onto a refrigerated trailer and taken, to the buyer’s works, either in Miami itself or at Tampa or Jacksonville. As the banks were closed on Saturday there was no way of using the letters of credit; nor was there any way of insuring. But on Monday morning, in the States, the shipment sold for 10 or 15 percent more. It was a sound venture.

Things were running smoothly, and I was delighted with my partner’s elegant strokes of business when he flew off at the weekend. Until the day he did not come back.

By stinking bad luck, this happened at the season when there were few
camarones
in the lake. I had hired a big boat at the seaport of Punto Fijo to fetch a whole cargo of splendid crayfish from Los Roques. I’d come back loaded to the gunwales with extra-prime-quality goods; and I’d had their heads taken off right there. So I had a very valuable shipment, made up entirely of best crayfish tails, weighing from a pound and a half to a pound and three-quarters each.

And that Saturday two DC-8s loaded with my crayfish tails took off with this choirboy and vanished into the clouds.

Monday, no news; none on Tuesday, either. I went to the bank: nothing from Miami. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew already: I had been taken. As it was my partner who dealt with the letters of credit, and as there was no insurance on Saturday, he had sold the whole consignment the moment he got there, and walked quietly away with the dough.

I flew into a terrible rage and went off to look for Moonface fn America, with a souvenir for him in my pocket. I had no trouble picking up his trail, but at each address I found a woman who said that, though he was her lawful wedded husband, she didn’t know where he was. And this three times, in three different towns! I never did find my worthy partner.

There I was, flat broke. We had lost a hundred and fifty thou. sand dollars. We still had the boats, of course; but they were in poor condition, and so were the outboards. And as this was a business in which you had to have a lot of ready cash to carry on day by day, we could not stand the loss, nor get on our feet again. We were pretty well ruined, and we sold everything. Rita never complained or blamed me for having been so trusting. Our capital, the savings of fourteen years of hard work, more than two years of useless sacrifice and continual effort--everything was lost; or very nearly everything.

With our eyes filled with tears, we left the great family of fishermen and workers we had brought into being. They were appalled, too; they told us how it grieved them to see us go and how grateful they were to us for having brought them a prosperity they had never known before.

16

There was a knock at the door (the bell was not working) and I went to open it. It was my buddy, Colonel Bolagno. He and his family had always called me Papillon; they were the only people in Venezuela to do so. All the others called me Enrique or Don Enrique, according to how I was doing at the moment. The Venezuelans have a feeling for that; they know right away if you are prosperous or on the rocks.

“Hey there, Papillon. It’s three years since we’ve met.”

“True enough, Francisco: three years.”

“Why haven’t you been to see me in my new house?”

“You never asked me.”

“You don’t ask a friend. He comes when he feels like it, because if his friend has a house it’s his house, too. To invite him would be an insult.”

I made no answer; I knew he was right.

Bolagno embraced Rita. He sat there with his elbows on the table, looking disturbed and uneasy; he had taken off his colonel’s cap. Rita gave him a cup of coffee, and I asked, “How did you find my address?”

“That’s my business. Why didn’t you send it to me?”

“A great deal of work and a great deal of worry.”

“You have worries?”

“All I want.”

“Then I’ve come at the wrong moment.”

“Why?”

“I came to ask you to lend me five thousand boll vars. I’m in a jam.”

“Impossible, Francisco.”

“We are ruined,” said Rita.

so you’re ruined? You’re ruined, Papillon? It’s true you’re ruined? Is that why you did not come to see me, so as not to let me know about your worries?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let me tell you you’re an ass. Because when you have a friend, he’s there so you can tell him your worries and so you can rely on him to do something to get you out of a hole. You’re an ass not to have thought of me, your friend, to back you up and give you a hand. I heard about your difficulties from other people, and that’s why I’m here to help you.”

Rita and I were so moved we scarcely knew where we were; we couldn’t say a word, we were so touched. We had never asked anyone for anything, and that was a fact; but there were a good many people I had helped a lot, some who even owed me their jobs, and although they knew we were ruined, not one had come to give us a hand in any way at all. Most were French; some straight, others crooked.

“What do you want me to do for you, Papillon?”

“Setting up a business we could live off would cost too much. Even if you have the money, you couldn’t spare it.”

“Go and get dressed, Rita. We’ll all three of us go and eat at the best French restaurant in town.”

By the end of the meal, it was agreed that I should look for a business and tell him how much it would cost to buy. And Bolagno said, “If I have the money, there’s no problem; and if I haven’t enough, then I’ll borrow from my brothers and my brother-in-law. But I give you my word I’ll get hold of what you need.”

All the rest of that day, Rita and I talked about his wonderful consideration. “When he was just a corporal at El Dorado,” I said, “he gave me his only civilian suit, so that I could leave decently dressed; and now here he is giving us a hand to make a fresh start.”

We paid our overdue rent and moved to a pleasant, well-situated café-restaurant in the top avenue of La Delicias, still in the Gran Sabana district. It was called the Bar-Restaurant Gab, and that was where we were at the time of Long Charlie’s arrival.

Charles de Gaulle, then president of the republic, came on an official visit, invited by Raul Leoni, the president of Venezuela.

Caracas and the whole of Venezuela celebrated the occasion. The people, the real people, the ones with horny hands, straw hats and rope-soled shoes, all these openhearted people without exception were waiting, filled with emotion, to cheer Charles de Gaulle.

The Gab had a charming covered terrace, and I was sitting there quietly drinking anisette with a Frenchman. He explained the mysteries of the processing of fish meal; and in a low voice he also told me about an invention he was just perfecting--one that would bring him millions, once it was accepted. The discovery was cinema in relief; he whispered and looked sideways to seem more confidential and also to tell me how much money I could invest in his researches.

It is always amusing to listen to the line ofa guy who is trying to con you, and his spiel was so smooth and so charmed me that I did not notice a neighbor pricking up his ears and leaning over to listen to us--until I unfolded a little note from Rita, who was at the cash desk and had sent the message discreetly by one of the waiters: “I don’t know what you are talking about, but there’s no doubt your neighbor is very interested in catching what you say. Looks like a foreign pig.”

To get rid of the inventor, I strongly advised him to carry on with his researches, and I told him I was so sure he would succeed that I should certainly have come in with him if only I had any savings, which was unfortunately not the case. He went away; I got up, turned around and faced the table behind me.

Sitting there I saw a well-built guy, too well built and too well dressed, with a tie and all, and a steel-blue suit; and there on the table in front of him, an anisette and a pack of Gauloises. No need to ask his trade, or his nationality either.

“Excuse me, are those French cigarettes you are smoking?” I asked in Spanish.