kinds of vegetation: first comes a mixture of creepers, trees and plants that does not rise much above twenty feet, then over that, mounting to seventy-five or a hundred feet, there are the splendid great tops of the huge trees that climb higher and higher to reach the sun. But although their tops are in the sunlight, the foliage of their wide, leafy branches makes a thick screen, keeping off all but a dim, filtered day. In a tropical forest you are in a wonderful landscape that bursts into growth all over, so as you ride along a pique you have to hold the reins in one hand and keep slashing at everything that gets in your way. A pique where a certain number of people keep coming and going always looks like a well-kept corridor.
There’s nothing that gives a man such a sense of freedom as being in the bush and well armed. He has the feeling of being as much part of the landscape as the wild animals. He moves cautiously, but with unbounded self-confidence. He seems to be in the most natural of all possible elements, and all his senses are on the alert – hearing, sight and smell. His eyes dart perpetually from point to point, sizing up everything that moves. In the bush there is only one enemy that matters, the beast of beasts, the most intelligent, the cruellest, the wickedest, the greediest, the vilest and also the most wonderful – man.
We travelled all that night, going fairly well. But in the morning, after we had drunk a little coffee from the Thermos flask, my whore of a mule started dragging its feet, dawdling along sometimes as much as a hundred yards behind Jojo. I stabbed its arse with all kinds of thorns, but nothing did any good. And to aggravate matters, Jojo started bawling out, ‘Why, you know nothing about riding, man. It’s easy enough. Watch me.’ And he would just touch his creature with his heel and set off at a gallop. And he’d stand in his stirrups and bellow, ‘I’m Captain Cook’ or ‘Hey there, Sancho! Are you coming? Can’t you keep up with your master, Don Quixote?’
This riled me and I tried everything I could think of to make the mule get along. At last I hit on a terrific idea and straight away it broke into a gallop. I dropped a lighted cigar-end into its ear. It tore along like a thoroughbred; I rejoiced, full of glee; I even passed the Captain, waving as I went flashing by. But a mule being a vicious brute this only lasted the length of the gallop. It rammed me up against a tree, nearly crushing my leg, and there I was on the ground, my arse filled with the prickles of some plant. And there was old Jojo, screeching with laughter like a child.
I won’t tell the whole story of chasing the mule (two hours!) nor its kicking and farting and all the rest. But at last, out of breath, full of thorns, perishing with heat and weariness, I did manage to hoist myself on to the back of that cross-grained, obstinate bastard. This time it could go just as it chose: I was not going to be the one to cross it. The first mile I rode not sitting but lying on its back, with my arse in the air, trying to get the fiery thorns out of it.
The next day we left the pig-headed brute at a posada, an inn: then two days in a canoe, and then a long day’s walk with packs on our back brought us to the diamond-mine.
I dumped my load on the log table of an open-air eating-house. I was at the end of my tether, and I could have strangled old Jojo – he stood there with no more than a few drops of sweat on his forehead, looking at me with a knowing grin. ‘Well, mate, and how are you feeling? OK?’
‘Fine, fine! Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be feeling fine? But just you tell me this: why have you made me carry a shovel, a pickaxe and a sieve all day long when we aren’t going to do any digging at all?’
Jojo put on a sorrowful air. ‘Papillon, you disappoint me. Think a little: use your loaf. If a guy turned up here, not carrying these tools, what would he have come for? That’s the question everybody would ask – all these eyes that watched you coming into the village through the holes in the walls and the tin roofs. With you loaded as you were, no questions. You get it?’
‘I get it, man.’
‘It’s the same for me, since I’m carrying nothing. Suppose I turn up with my hands in my pockets and I set up my table without doing anything else: what are the miners and their girls going to say, eh, Papi? This old French type is a professional gambler, that’s what they are going to say. Well now, you’ll see what I’m going to do. If I can, I’ll try and find a secondhand motor-pump here in the village: otherwise I’ll send for one. And twenty yards of big piping and two or three sluices. A sluice is a long wooden box with divisions, and these divisions have holes in them. You pump the mud into it, and that means a team of seven men can wash fifty times more earth than a dozen working the old-fashioned way. And it’s still not looked upon as machinery. Then as the owner of the pump I get twenty-five per cent of the diamonds; and what’s more, I have a reason for being here. No one can say I live off gambling, because I live off my pump. But since I’m a gambler as well, I don’t stop gambling at night. That’s natural, because I don’t take part in the actual work. You get it?’
‘It’s as clear as gin.’
‘There’s a bright boy. Two frescos, Señora.’
A fat, friendly old light-skinned woman brought us glasses full of a chocolate-coloured liquid with an ice-cube and a bit of lemon swimming in it.
‘That’ll be eight bolivars, hombres.’
‘More than two dollars! Hell, life is not cheap here.’
Jojo paid. ‘How are things going?’ he asked.
‘So-so.’
‘Are there any or are there not?’
‘Men in plenty. But very, very few diamonds. They found this place three months ago, and since then four thousand men have come rushing in. Too many men for so few diamonds. And what about him?’ she said, jerking her chin towards me. ‘German or French?’
‘French. He’s with me.’
‘Poor soul.’
‘How come, poor soul?’ I asked.
‘Because you’re too young and too good-looking to die. The men who come with Jojo never have any luck.’
‘You shut your trap, you old fool. Come on, Papi, let’s go.’
As we stood up, the fat woman said to me by way of good-bye, ‘Look out for yourself.’
Of course, I’d said nothing about what José had told me, and Jojo was amazed that I did not try to find out what there was behind her words. I could feel him waiting for the questions that didn’t come. He seemed upset and he kept glancing at me sideways.
Pretty soon, after he had talked to various people, Jojo found a shack. Three small rooms; rings to hang our hammocks; and some cartons. On one of them, empty beer and rum bottles; on another, a battered enamel bowl and a full watering-can. Strings stretched across to hang up our clothes. The floor was pounded earth, very clean. The walls of this hutch were made of planks from packing-cases – you could still read Savon Camay, Aceite Branca, Nestlé’s Milk. Each room was about ten foot by ten. No windows. I felt stifled and took off my shirt.
Jojo turned, deeply shocked. ‘Are you crazy? Suppose somebody came in? You’ve got a wicked mug already, and now if you go and show your tattooed hide, man it’s as if you were advertising the fact that you’re a crook. Behave yourself.’
‘But I’m stifling, Jojo.’
‘You’ll get used to it – it’s all a matter of habit. But behave yourself, almighty God: above all, behave yourself.’
I managed to keep myself from laughing: he was a priceless old party, that Jojo.
We knocked two rooms into one. ‘This will be the casino,’ said Jojo, with a grin. It made a room twenty foot by ten. We swept the floor, went out to buy three big wooden crates, some rum and paper cups to drink out of. I was eager to see what the game would be like.
I didn’t have to wait long. Once we had been round a number of wretched little drinking-joints, to ‘make contact’ as Jojo put it, everyone knew that there would be a game of craps in our place at eight that evening. The last joint we went to was a shed with a