Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon (36 page)

“Yes: I’m a Frenchman.”

“Really? I don’t know you. Tell me, you wouldn’t be one of Long Charlie’s gorillas, by any chance?”

The well-built guy stood up and introduced himself. “I’m Commissaire Belion, in charge of the General’s security.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“And what about you? Are you French?”

“Come off it, Commissaire. You know very well who I am; it’s not just by chance you’re here on my café terrace.”

“But--”

“Don’t go on. You put the Gauloises right out on your table so that I should talk to you. Right or wrong?”

“Right.”

“Another anisette?”

“Okay. I came to see you because since I’m responsible for the President’s security, I’m getting the embassy to draw up a list of people who might have to leave Caracas before the General arrives. The list will be shown to the minister of the interior and he’ll take the necessary steps.”

“I’m on the list?”

“Not yet.”

“What do you know about me?”

“That you have a family and that you are going straight.”

“What else?”

“That your sister is Madame X and she lives at such-and-such an address in Paris and that the other one is Madame Y, who lives in Grenoble.”

“After that?”

“That proceedings against you lapse next year, in June, 1966.”

“Who told you?”

“I knew it before I left Paris, but the consulate here has also been notified.”

“Why didn’t the consul let me know?”

“Officially he doesn’t know your address.”

“Well, thanks for the good news. Can I go to the consulate and be told officially?”

“Whenever you like.”

“But tell me, Commissaire, how come you’re sitting on the terrace of my restaurant this morning? It’s not just to tell me about the lapse of proceedings, or to let me know my sisters haven’t changed their address, eh?”

“Correct. It was to see you. To see Papillon.”

“You only know one Papillon, the guy in the Paris police file, a heap of lies, exaggerations and twisted reports. A file that never even described the man I was before, still less the man I have become.”

“Quite sincerely I believe you, and I congratulate you.”

“So now you’ve seen me, are you putting me on the list of people to be expelled during De Gaulle’s stay?”

“No.”

“Well now, do you want me to tell you why you’re here, Commissaire?”

“That would be interesting.”

“It’s because you said to yourself, a guy on the run is always a guy on the lookout for dough; and although Papillon may have become a good citizen, he’s still on the loose, he’s still an adventurer. He might refuse a considerable sum for doing something against De Gaulle himself; but as for picking up a bundle for just helping to prepare an attack--why, that’s something else again, and very possible.”

“Go on.”

“Well, you’ve got it dead wrong, dear Commissaire. In the first place, I wouldn’t get mixed up with any political crime, not even for a fortune; still less one against De Gaulle. Secondly, who could possibly gain by such a thing in Venezuela?”

“The OAS.”

“Right. That’s not only very possible but even very probable. They’ve pulled things off so many times in France that in a country like Venezuela, it’s a cinch.”

“A cinch? Why?”

“The way they’re organized, the OAS men don’t have to get into Venezuela by the ordinary ways, the ports or airfields. The land frontiers are enormous--Brazil, Colombia, British Guiana--not to mention a coastline of over a thousand miles. They can come in just when they want, on the day and at the time that suits them, without anyone’s being able to do anything about it. That’s your first mistake, Commissaire. But there’s another, too.”

“What’s that?” asked Belion, smiling.

“If these OAS guys are as sharp as people say, they’ve taken great care not to contact the French living here. Because since they know the cops are going straight to the Frenchmen, their very first precaution must be to go nowhere near a single one of them. And don’t forget, no evil-intentioned guy is ever going to stay in a hotel. There are hundreds of people here who’ll rent a room to no matter who without declaring him. So you see there’s no point in looking for people who might make an attempt on Dc Gaulle’s life among the Frenchmen here, crooks or not.”

When Belion left he told me to come and see him when I returned to Paris; and he played it straight with me. Unlike some other Frenchmen, I was not expelled from Caracas during De Gaulle’s stay--a stay that passed off with no trouble at all.

Like a fool, I went along and cheered De Gaulle.

And, like a fool, in the mere presence of this great leader who had saved my country’s honor, I forgot that that same country had sent me to the clink for life.

And, like a fool, I would have given one of my fingers to shake his hand or be there at the embassy’s reception in his honor: a reception to which I was not invited, of course. But the underworld was able to take an indirect revenge, because some old, retired French whores slipped in: they had turned over a new leaf, as you might say, by making a good marriage, and there they were with their arms full of flowers for De Gaulle’s delighted wife.

I went to see the French consul, and he read me out the notification that proceedings against me lapsed the next year. One more year and I’d go to France.

Our situation improved rapidly, and I went back into all-night bars, buying the Scotch Club in Chacaito, in the very middle of Caracas. This was an odd business, because I went into it in the first place to rescue a poor French hairdresser some ugly bastards were trying to fleece. Later this Robin Hood caper paid off very well.

So for several years I was living by night again. The Caracas nightlife was growing more and more vulgar, losing that touch of bohemianism that was its charm. The men who lived it up were no longer the same, and the new customers lacked culture and good manners.

I stayed in the bar as little as possible, living in the street almost all the time, wandering about the neighboring districts. I came to know the kids of Caracas, the urchins who drifted about all night looking for a few cents, and the wonderful inventiveness of these children whose parents lived in rabbit hutches. Not always model parents, either; for there were a good many who, in their poverty, had no hesitation in exploiting their children.

And these kids bravely launched themselves into the night to bring home the amount required of them. They were any age between five and twelve; some were shoeshine boys, others waited at the door of all-night joints, offering to guard the customer’s car as he went in, and others rushed to open the car door ahead of the doorman. A thousand dodges, a thousand clever gimmicks to add bolIvar to bolivar until they had ten or thereabouts, so that at five or six in the morning they could go home.

Often, when a customer I knew was just going to get into his big car, I would urge him to be generous, using this formula: “Be handsome, now! Think of the money you’ve spent in this joint-- a hundredth part of what you’ve splashed about would be a godsend to this poor kid.” Nine times out of ten it worked, and the playboy would give the kid a ten- or twenty-bolIvar note.

My best friend was named Pablito. He was rather small and thin, but he was tough, and he fought older, bigger boys like a lion. For there were conflicting interests in this struggle for life, and if a customer had not specially pointed out one boy to guard his car, then when the man came out again, the quickest off the mark got the coin. That meant a pitched battle.

My little friend was bright, and he had learned to read from the papers he sold now and then. There was none like him at outstripping all competition when a car drew up; and he was the quickest at running little errands--fetching things the bar was short of, like sandwiches or cigarettes.

Every night my little Pablito carried on the struggle so that he could help his grandmother; she was a very, very old grandmother, it seemed, with white hair, faded blue eyes and rheumatism so bad she couldn’t work at all. His mother was in jail for having crowned a neighbor with a bottle when he tried to steal her radio. And he, at nine, was the only breadwinner in the family. He wouldn’t let his grandmother, his little brother or his little sister come out into the streets of Caracas, either by day or by night. He was the man of the house, and he had to look after all his people and protect them.

So I helped Pablito when he had had a bad night or in cases of emergency, with money for his grandmother’s medicines or for a taxi to take her to see a doctor at the free hospital.

“And she has these bouts of asthma, too, my grandmother. Do you realize what that costs, Enrique?”

And every night Pablito gave me a report on his grandmother’s health. One day there was an important request: he needed forty bolivars to buy a secondhand mattress. His grandmother could not lie in a hammock anymore, because of her asthma: the doctor said it compressed her chest.

He often used to sit in my car, and one day the policeman on guard was talking to him, leaning on the door and playing with his revolver: without the least bad intention he put a bullet into Pablito’s shoulder. They rushed him to the hospital and operated. I went to see him the next day. I asked where his hut was and how to get to it; he said it was impossible to find it without a guide, and the doctor wouldn’t let him get up in that condition.

That night I looked for Pablito’s friends, hoping one of them would take me to his grandmother. The terrific solidarity of street urchins: they all said they did not know where he lived. I didn’t believe a word of it, because every day a whole gang of them waited for one another to go home together.

I was interested and puzzled, and I asked the nurse to call me when Pablito had a visitor she knew was a member of the family or a neighbor. Two days later she called and I went to the hospital.

“Well, Pablito, and how are you coming along? You look worried.”

“No, Enrique; it’s only that my back hurts.”

“Yet he was laughing only a few minutes ago,” said his visitor.

“Are you one of his family, Madame?”

“No. I’m a neighbor.”

“How are his grandmother and the little ones?”

“What grandmother?”

“Why, Pablito’s grandmother.”

“But Pablito hasn’t got a grandmother.”

I took the woman aside. Yes, he had a little sister, and yes, he had a little brother, but no grandmother. His mother was not in prison; she was a wreck of a woman, very dim-witted.

That wonderful Caracas street kid did not want his friend Enrique to know his mother was half crazy, and he had invented this splendid asthmatic grandmother so that his buddy the Frenchman, giving because of her, might relieve his poor mother’s unhappiness and distress.

I went back to my little friend’s bed: he was ashamed to look me in the face. Gently I pulled his chin up; his eyes were closed, but when at last he opened them I said, “
Pablito, eres un tronco de hombre
.” (You’re a real man.)

I slipped him a hundred-boilvar note for his family and walked out, thoroughly proud and pleased with myself for having such a friend.

17

By 1967 proceedings against me had lapsed. I left for France by myself; to keep the business running properly you had to have authority and courage and the power of making yourself respected, and only Rita could do that. She said to me, “Go and embrace your people in their own homes; go and pray at your father’s grave.”

I went back to France by way of Nice. Why Nice? Together with my visa, the French consulate in Caracas had given me a document verifying the lapse of proceedings; but as he handed the papers to me, the consul said, “Wait until I have instructions from France about the conditions under which you can return.” They didn’t have to spell it out. If I went back to the consul and he had received the reply from Paris, he would tell me I was
forbidden to enter the Département of the Seine
for
life
. But I had every intention of making a trip to Paris.

This way I avoided getting the notification; and since I had neither received nor signed it, I would be committing no offense unless the consul learned that I’d left and told the police at the Paris airport to hand me the notification. Hence my two stops-- I should arrive at Nice as though I were coming from Spain.

1930--1967: thirty-seven years had gone by.

Fourteen years of the road down the drain: twenty-two years of freedom, twenty of them with a home, which meant that I could go straight, reintegrated into society.

In 1956, there’d been a month with my people in Spain; then a gap of eleven years, though during these eleven years our many letters had kept me in contact with my family.

In 1967 I saw them all. I went into their homes, I sat at their tables, I had their children on my knee and even their grand. children. Grenoble, Lyons, Cannes, Saint-Priest and then SaintPeray, where I found Tante Ju in my father’s house, still faithful at her post.