to do then was carry the two hundred ingots out of the mine and load them into something – a truck or a cart. I’d have to prepare several caches in the forest, all along the road, to salt the ingots away in little packets of a hundred kilos each. If it was a truck, then once it was unloaded I’d have to carry right on as far as possible, pick the deepest place in the river and toss it in. A cart? There were plenty in the village square. The horse? That would be harder to find, but not impossible. A night of very heavy rain between eight and six in the morning would give me all the time I needed for the job and it might even let me get back to the house and go to bed meek as a monk.
By the time I reached the lights of the village square, in my mind I had already brought it off, and was slipping into the sheets of Big Chariot’s bed.
‘Buenos noches, Francès,’ called a group of men sitting at the village bar.
‘Hello there, one and all. Good night, hombres.’
‘Come and join us for a while. Have an iced beer: we’d like you to.’
It would have been rude to refuse so I accepted. And here I was sitting among these good souls, most of them miners. They wanted to know whether I was all right, whether I’d found a woman, whether Conchita was looking after Picolino properly, and whether I needed money for medicine or anything else. These generous, spontaneous offers brought me back to earth. A gold-prospector said that if I didn’t care for the mine and if I only wanted to work when I felt like it I could go off with him. ‘It’s tough going, but you make more. And then there’s always the possibility you’ll be rich in a single day.’ I thanked them all and offered to stand a round.
‘No, Frenchman, you’re our guest. Another time, when you’re rich. God be with you.’
I went on towards the château. Yes, it would be easy enough to turn into a humble, honest man among all these people who lived on so little, who were happy with almost nothing, and who adopted a man without worrying where he came from or what he had been.
Conchita welcomed me back. She was alone. Chariot was at the mine – when I left for work so he came back. Conchita was full of fun and kindness: she gave me a pair of slippers to rest my feet after the heavy boots.
‘Your friend’s asleep. He ate well and I have sent off a letter asking for him to be taken into the hospital at Tumereno, a little town not far off, bigger than this.’
I thanked her and ate the hot meal that was waiting for me. This welcome, so homely, simple and happy, made me relax; it gave me the peace of mind I needed after the temptation of that ton of gold. The door opened.
‘Good evening, everybody.’ Two girls came into the room, just as if they were at home.
‘Good evening,’ said Conchita. ‘Here are two friends of mine, Papillon.’
One was dark, tall and slim; she was called Graciela, and was very much the gypsy type, her father being a Spaniard. The other girl’s name was Mercedes. Her grandfather was a German, which explained her fair skin and very fine blonde hair. Graciela had black Andalusian eyes with a touch of tropical fire; Mercedes’ were green and all at once I remembered Lali, the Goajira Indian. Lali…Lali and her sister Zoraïma: what had become of them? Might I not try to find them again, now I was back in Venezuela? It was 1945 now, and twelve years had gone by. That was a long, long time, but in spite of all those years I felt a pain in my heart when I remembered those two lovely creatures. Since those days they must have made themselves a fresh life with a man of their own race. No, honestly I had no right to disturb their new existence.
‘Your friends are terrific, Conchita! Thank you very much for introducing me to them.’
I gathered they were both free and neither had a fiancé. In such good company the evening went by in a flash. Conchita and I walked them back to the edge of the village, and it seemed to me they leant very heavily on my arms. On the way back Conchita told me both the girls liked me, the one as much as the other. ‘Which do you like best?’ she asked.
‘They are both charming, Conchita; but I don’t want any complications.’
‘You call making love “complications”? Love, it’s the same as eating and drinking. You think you can live without eating and drinking? When I don’t make love I feel really ill, although I’m already twenty-two. They are only sixteen and seventeen, so just think what it must be for them. If they don’t take pleasure in their bodies, they’ll die.’
‘And what about their parents?’
She told me, just as José had done, that here the girls of the ordinary people loved just to be loved. They gave themselves to the man they liked spontaneously, wholly, without asking anything in exchange apart from the thrill.
‘I understand you, poppet. I’m as willing as the next man to make love for love’s sake. Only you tell your friends that an affair with me doesn’t bind me in any way at all. Once warned, it’s another matter.’
Dear Lord above! It wasn’t going to be easy to get away from an atmosphere like this. Chariot, Simon, Alexandre and no doubt a good many others had been positively bewitched. I saw why they were so thoroughly happy among these cheerful people, so different from ours. I went to bed.
‘Get up, Papi! It’s ten o’clock. And there’s someone to see you.’
‘Good morning, Monsieur.’ A greying man of about fifty; no hat; candid eyes; bushy eyebrows. He held out his hand. ‘I’m Dr Bougrat.* I came because they told me one of you is sick. I’ve had a look at your friend. Nothing to be done unless he goes into hospital at Caracas. And it’ll be a tough job to cure him.’
‘You’ll take pot-luck with us, Doctor?’ said Chariot.
‘I’d like to. Thanks.’
Pastis was poured out, and as he drank Bougrat said to me, ‘Well, Papillon, and how are you getting along?’
‘Why, Doctor, I’m taking my first steps in life. I feel as if I’d just been born. Or rather as if I’d lost my way like a boy. I can’t make out the road I ought to follow.’
‘The road’s clear enough. Look around and you’ll see. Apart from one or two exceptions all our old companions have gone straight. I’ve been in Venezuela since 1928. Not one of the convicts I’ve known has committed a crime since being in this country. They are almost all married, with children, and they live honestly, accepted by the community. They’ve forgotten the past so completely that some of them couldn’t tell you the details of the job that sent them down. It’s all very vague, far away, buried in a misty past that doesn’t matter.’
‘Maybe it’s different for me, Doctor. I have a pretty long bill to present to the people who sent me down against all justice – thirteen years of struggle and suffering. To see the bill is paid, I have to go back to France; and for that I need a lot of money. It’s not by working as a labourer that I’m going to save up enough for the voyage out and back – if there is any return – quite apart from what my plan will cost. And then the thought of ending my days in one of these God-forsaken holes…I like the idea of Caracas.’
‘And do you think you’re the only one of us with an account to settle? Just you listen to the story of a boy I know. Georges Dubois is his name. A kid from the slums of La Villette – alcoholic father, often inside with delirium tremens, the mother with six children: she was so poor she went around the North African bars looking for customers. Jojo, they called him; and he’d been going from one reformatory to the next since he was eight. He started with the crime of knocking off fruit outside shops – did it several times. First a few terms in the Abbé Rollet’s homes, then, when he was twelve, a tough stretch in a really hard reformatory. I don’t have to tell you that the fourteen-year-old Jojo, surrounded by young fellows of eighteen, had to look out for his arse. He was a weakly kid, so there was only one way of defending himself – a knife. One of these perverted little thugs got a stab in the belly, and the authorities sent Jojo to Esse – the toughest reformatory of the lot, the