pumping the water up to the tank.
That well-rounded young negrita with her big loving eyes: she must be a perfect companion for this old sea-dog on shore. I’d seen a sewing-machine in the big room. She must make those little dresses that suited her so well. Not many dressmaker’s bills for Chariot, no sir.
Maybe the reason why he hadn’t gone to the city was that he was not sure of himself, whereas here he enjoyed a life with no problems at all. You’re a great guy, Chariot! You’re the very picture of what a crook can be turned into. I congratulate you. But I also congratulate the people who helped you to change not only your life but even your way of seeing what a life can be or ought to be.
But still these Venezuelans are dangerous, with their generous hospitality. Being surrounded with human kindness and good will all the time soon turns you into a prisoner if you let yourself be caught. I’m free, free, free, and I mean to stay that way for ever.
Watch it, Papi! Above all, no setting up house with a girl. You need love when you’ve been cut off from it for so long. But fortunately I’d already had a girl in Georgetown two years ago, my Hindu, Indara. So from that point of view I was not so vulnerable as if I’d come straight from penal, which was the case with Chariot. Yet Indara was lovely and I was happy; but it wasn’t for that I had settled in Georgetown, living there in clover. Then again if the quiet life is too quiet, even though it’s happy, it’s not for me: that I know very well.
Adventure! Adventure so you feel alive, alive all through! Besides, that was why I left Georgetown and why I landed up at El Dorado. But that’s the reason too why I’m here today, in this very spot.
OK. Here the girls are pretty, full-blooded and charming and I certainly cannot live without love. It’s up to me to avoid complications. I must promise myself to stay here a year, since I’m forced to do so anyway. The less I own, the easier I’ll be able to leave this country and its enchanting people. I’m an adventurer, but an adventurer with a shift of gear – I must get my money honestly, or at least without hurting anyone. Paris, that is my aim: Paris one day, to present my bill to the people who put me through so much suffering.
I was calmer now, and my eyes took in the setting moon as it dipped towards the virgin forest, a sea of black tree-tops with waves of different heights – but waves that never stirred. I went back to my room and stretched out on the bed.
Paris, Paris, you’re still a great way off yet; but not so far that I shan’t be there again one day, walking the asphalt of your streets.
A WEEK later, thanks to the letter that Prospéri, the Corsican grocer, wrote for me, I was taken on at the Mocupia mine. Here I was, looking after the working of the pumps that sucked up the water from the shafts.
The mine looked like a coal-pit: the same underground galleries. There were no veins of gold and very few nuggets. The gold was found in very hard rock: they blasted this rock with dynamite and then broke the oversized lumps with a sledge-hammer. The pieces were put into trucks, and the trucks came to the surface in lifts; then crushers reduced the rock to a powder finer than sand. This was mixed with water, making a liquid mud that was pumped up into huge tanks as big as the reservoirs in an oil-refinery: these tanks had cyanide in them. The gold dissolved into a liquid heavier than the rest and sank to the bottom. Under heat, the cyanide evaporated, carrying off the particles of gold; they solidified and were caught by filters very like combs as they went past. Then the gold was collected, melted into bars, carefully checked for 24-carat purity and put into a strictly guarded store. But who did the guarding? I still can’t get over it. Simon, no less, the hard guy who had made his break from penal with Big Chariot.
When my work was over, I went to gaze at the sight: I went to the store and stared at the huge pile of gold ingots neatly lined up by Simon, the ex-convict. Not even a strong-room: just a concrete store-house with walls no thicker than usual and a wooden door.
‘OK, Simon?’
‘OK. And what about you, Papi? Happy at Chariot’s?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘I never knew you were in El Dorado. Otherwise I’d have come to get you out.’
‘That’s civil. Are you happy here?’
‘Well, you know, I have a house: it’s not as big as Charlot’s, but it’s made of bricks and mortar. I built it myself. And I’ve got a young wife, very sweet. And two little girls. Come and see me whenever you like – my house is yours. Chariot tells me your friend is sick: now my wife knows how to give injections, so if you need her don’t hesitate.’
We talked. He too was thoroughly happy. He too never spoke of France or Montmartre, though he had lived there. Just like Chariot. The past no longer existed; the only thing that mattered was the present – wife, children, the house. He told me he earned twenty bolivars a day. Fortunately their hens gave them eggs for their omelettes and the chickens were on the house; otherwise they wouldn’t have gone far on twenty bolivars, Simon and his brood.
I gazed at that mass of gold lying there, so carelessly stored behind a wooden door and these four walls only a foot thick. A door that two heaves on a jemmy would open without a sound. This heap of gold, at three bolivars fifty the gramme or thirty-five dollars the ounce, would easily tot up to three million five hundred thousand bolivars or a million dollars. And this unbelievable great fortune was within hand’s reach! Knocking it off would be almost child’s play.
‘Elegant, my neat pile of ingots? Eh, Papillon?’
‘It’d be more elegant still well salted away. Christ, what a fortune!’
‘Maybe: but it’s not ours. It’s holy, on account of they’ve entrusted it to me.’
‘Entrusted it to you, sure; but not to me. You must admit it’s tempting to see something like that just lying about.’
‘It’s not just lying about, because I’m looking after it.’
‘Maybe. But you aren’t here twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four.’
‘No. Only from six at night to six in the morning. But during the day there’s another guard: maybe you know him – Alexandre, of the forged postal orders.’
‘Oh yes, I know him. Well, be seeing you, Simon. Say hello to your family for me.’
‘You’ll come and see us?’
‘Sure. I’d like to. Ciao.’
I left quickly, as quickly as I could to get away from this scene of temptation. It was unbelievable! Anyone would say they were yearning to be robbed, the guys in charge of this mine. A store that could hardly hold itself upright and two one-time high-ranking crooks taking care of all that treasure! In all my life on the loose I’d never seen anything like it!
Slowly I walked up the winding path to the village. I had to go right through it to reach the headland with Chariot’s château on it. J dawdled; the eight-hour day had been tough. In the second gallery down there was precious little air, and even that was hot and wet, in spite of the ventilators. My pumps had stopped sucking three or four times and I had had to set them right away. It was half past eight now and I had gone down the mine at noon. I’d earned eighteen bolivars. If I had had a working-man’s mind, that wouldn’t have been so bad. Meat was 2-50 bolivars the kilo; sugar 0-70; coffee 2. Vegetables were not dear either: 0-50 for a kilo of rice and the same for dried beans. You could live cheaply, that was true. But did I have the sense to put up with that kind of life?
In spite of myself, as I climbed up the stony path, walking easily in the heavy nailed boots they had given me at the mine – in spite of myself, and although I did my best not to think about it, I kept seeing that million dollars in gold bars just calling out for some enterprising hand to grab it. At night, there wouldn’t be any difficulty in jumping on Simon and chloroforming him without