Henri Charrière - Banco - the Further Adventures of Papillon

"Is that the lot, Papi?"

"You've thought of lining the tunnel?"

"Yes. There's a workbench and everything we need in the garage."

"Fine. What about the earth?"

"First we'll spread it out right over the whole yard, and then we'll make raised flower beds and lastly a platform all along the walls a yard wide and as high as it'll go without looking queer."

"Are there any inquisitive bastards around here?"

"On the right everything's fine. A tiny little old couple who apologize every time they see me, because their dog shits just outside our gate. On the left, not so hot. There are two kids of eight and ten who never get off their swing for an instant, and the silly little buggers fly so high they can easily look over the wall and see what's happening in our place."

"But however high they swing they can't see more than part of the yard-they can't possibly see the stretch against their own wall."

"True enough, Papi. Okay. Now, suppose we've made the tunnel and we're under the vault. There we'll have to make a big hollow, a kind of room, so as to store the tools and be able to work properly, perhaps two or three of us together. And then once we've hit the center of the rooms we'll make a space under each, two yards square."

"Right. And what are you going to cut the steel of the safes with?"

"That's something we'll have to talk over."

"You start."

"Well, the job could be done with oxyacetylene: that's something I understand-it's my trade. Or there's the electric welder, and I understand that, too. But there's a snag-you need two hundred and twenty volts and this villa only has one hundred and twenty. So I decided to let another guy in on the job. But I don't want him to work on the tunnel: he'll come a couple of days before we move in."

"What'll he come with?"

"Here comes my big surprise. Thermit is what he'll come with. He's a positive artist in the Thermit line. What do you say to that, everybody?"

"It'll make five shares instead of four," said Gaston.

"There'll be more than you can carry, Gaston! Five or four, it's all one."

"As for me, I'm in favor of the Thermit guy; because if there are a dozen safes to open, it goes quicker with Thermit than with anything else."

"Well then, there's the overall plan. Are you all in agreement?"

Everyone said yes. Paulo said one other thing: neither Gaston nor I should show our noses out of doors during the daytime on any pretext whatsoever. We could go out at night from time to time, but as little as possible and then very carefully dressed, with a tie and all. Never all four of us together.

We went into the room next door; it had once been an office. They had already dug a hole a yard across and three deep, and I was admiring the sides, as straight as a wall, when the thought of ventilation came to me. "And what have you laid on for air down there?"

"We'll pump it down with a little compressor and plastic tubing. If the one working begins to suffocate, someone'll hold the tube to his face while he gets on with the job. I bought a compressor in Caracas -it's almost silent."

"What about an air conditioner?"

"I thought of that, and I've got one in the garage; but it blows the fuses every time you switch it on."

"Listen, Paulo. Nobody can tell what may happen to the Thermit guy. If he doesn't turn up, the oxyacetylene is slow and the electric welder is the only thing for the job. We have to install two hundred and twenty volts. To make it look natural, you say you want a deepfreeze and air conditioning and so forth, and a little circular saw in the garage as well, because you like screwing around with wood. There shouldn't be any difficulty."

"You're right. There's everything to be said for putting in two hundred and twenty volts. Well now, that's enough about the job for the moment. Auguste's the spaghetti king; as soon as it's ready, let's eat."

Dinner was very cheerful. After we'd exchanged a few unpleasant memories, we all agreed that when talking about the past we'd never bring up stories about life inside-only about happy things like women, the sun, the sea, games in bed, etc. We laughed like a pack of kids. Nobody had a second's remorse at the idea of attacking society in the shape of the greatest symbol of its selfish power, _a bank_.

There was no difficulty about installing the 220-volt current, because the transformer was close to the house. No problem at all. To finish the shaft, we gave up the short-handled pick, which was too awkward in such a confined space. Instead we cut out blocks of earth with the circular saw, digging out each block with a handy trowel and putting it into a bucket.

It was a titanic job, but little by little it advanced. In the house you could scarcely hear the sound of the circular saw at the bottom of the shaft, now four yards deep. From the yard you heard absolutely nothing; there was nothing to be feared.

The shaft was finished. We started the tunnel, and it was Paulo, compass in hand, who dug the first yard through the very wet clay earth that stuck to everything. We no longer worked half naked but in dungarees that came down under our feet; so when we quit and took the dungarees off, there we were, as clean as a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. Apart from our hands, of course.

According to our calculations, we still had thirty cubic yards of earth to bring out.

"This is genuine convict's work," said Paulo, when he was feeling rough.

But gradually we pushed on. "Like moles or badgers," Auguste said.

"We'll get there, men! And we'll roll in cash for the rest of our lives. Isn't that right, Papillon?"

"Sure, sure! And I'll have the prosecutor's tongue and I'll get my false witness and I'll spring such fireworks at thirty-six quai des Orfèvres! On with the job, boys-this is no time to talk bullshit or play games. Here, lower me down the hole. I'm going to work another couple of hours."

"Calm down, Papi. We're all of us on edge. Sure, it's not going fast, but we're getting on, and the jackpot's only fifteen yards ahead of us."

I agreed to play a hand of cards to please the others and to relax a little.

No difficulty about carrying the earth out into the yard; it was eighteen yards long and ten wide, and we spread the stuff out over the whole width except for the garage path. But seeing the earth we dug was not the same as the topsoil, we had a truckload of garden loam brought in from time to time. Everything was going fine.

How we dug, and how we heaved up the buckets full of earth! We laid a wooden floor in the tunnel, because the water seeping in turned it to mud; and the buckets slid easily on these planks when you heaved on the rope.

This is how we worked: There was one man at the far end of the tunnel; with the circular saw and a little pick he filled a bucket with the earth and stones. Another stood at the bottom of the shaft and pulled the bucket back along the tunnel. At the top there was a third who hauled it up and emptied it into a rubber-wheeled barrow. We broke through the wall that divided the house from the garage, so the fourth man only had to take the wheelbarrow, push it out through the garage and appear quite naturally in the yard.

We worked for hours on end, spurred on by a furious urge to win. The far end of the tunnel was very uncomfortable in spite of our precautions: the air conditioner and the blast of pure air coming down the pipe we carried rolled around our neck so as to take a suck every now and then. I was covered with little red heat pimples; there were great blotches of them all over my body. It looked like nettle rash, and it itched horribly. The only one who did not have it was Paulo, because he just looked after the wheelbarrow and spread the earth in the garden. When we came out of that hellhole it took over an hour to recover even after a shower; then, breathing normally and covered with Vaseline and cocoa butter, at last we felt more or less all right. "Anyhow, we were the ones who started this labor of Hercules. Nobody makes us do it. So help yourself, bear it, shut your trap and heaven will help you." That's what I said to myself and what I said two or three times a day to Auguste, whenever he began to beef about having got himself mixed up with this kind of a job.