Henri Charrière - Banco - the Further Adventures of Papillon

"Good luck, Gaston."

"Same to you, Papi."

Paulo and Auguste went home by different roads, the one to Paraguay, the other to Buenos Aires.

I managed to get on a boat for Puerto Rico: from there I took a plane to Colombia and then another boat to Venezuela.

It was only some months later that I learned what had happened. A water main had burst in the big avenue on the other side of the bank and the traffic was diverted into the streets running parallel. A huge truck loaded with iron girders took our road, passed over our tunnel, and plunged its back wheels into it. Shrieks, amazement, police; they grasped the whole thing in a moment.

In Caracas it was Christmas. Splendid lights in all the big streets, cheerfulness everywhere, carols sung with the Venezuelans' marvelous sense of rhythm. For my part I was rather depressed by our failure, but I wasn't bitter. We'd gambled and we'd lost, but I was still alive and freer than ever. And then after all, as Gaston said, it had been a lovely tunnel!

Gradually the atmosphere of these songs about the Child of Bethlehem seeped into me; and easy in my mind, my heart peaceful again, I sent Maria a telegram: "MARIA, MAY THIS CHRISTMAS FILL THE HOUSE WHERE YOU GAVE ME SO MUCH JOY."

I spent Christmas Day at the hospital with Picolino, sitting on a bench in the little hospital garden. I'd bought two _hallacas_, specialties they make only at Christmas, and they were the most expensive and the best I could find. I also had two little flat bottles of delicious Chianti in my pockets.

It was a Christmas of two men brought back to life, a Christmas ablaze with the light of friendship, a Christmas of total freedom-freedom even to splash money about as I had done. The snowless Christmas of Caracas, filled with the flowers of this little hospital garden: a Christmas of hope for Picolino, whose tongue no longer hung out now he was being treated, who no longer dribbled. Yes, a miraculous Christmas for him, since he distinctly-and happily-pronounced the word "Yes" when I asked him if the _hallacas_ were good.

But Lord above, how hard it was to make a new life! I went through some very tough weeks, yet I did not lose heart. I had two things in me: first, an unshakable confidence in the future, and second, love for life. Even when it would have been more sensible for me to be worrying, a mere trifle in the Street would make me laugh; and if I met a friend I might spend the evening with him, having fun like a twenty-year-old.

Dr. Bougrat gave me a little job in his beauty-products laboratory. I didn't earn much, but enough to be well dressed, almost elegant. I left him for a Hungarian woman who had a little yogurt factory in her villa; and it was there that I met a pilot whose real name I won't mention because at this moment he's in command of an Air France jet. I'll call him Carotte.

He was working for the Hungarian woman, too, and we made enough to be able to have some fun. Every evening we'd stroll around the Caracas bars, and we often had a drink or two at the Hotel Majestic, in the Silencio district. It has vanished now, but at that time it was the only modem place in the city.

It was then, during one of those periods when you think nothing fresh can possibly turn up, that a miracle took place. One day Carotte vanished, a little while later he came back again, from the United States, with a plane-a little observation plane with two seats, one behind the other. A wonderful gadget. I asked no questions about where it came from; the only question I did ask was what he was going to do with it.

He laughed and said, "I don't know yet. But we might be partners."

"To do what?"

"It doesn't matter what, as long as we have fun and make a little dough."

"Okay. We'll look around."

The sweet Hungarian woman, who couldn't have had many illusions about how long our jobs would last, wished us good luck; and then began an utterly demented and extraordinary month.

Oh, the things we did with that huge great butterfly!

Carotte was an ace. During the war he used to fly French agents out of England, land them by night in fields guarded by the Resistance and fly others back to London. He often came down with no more guidance than torches held by the men who were waiting for him. He was completely reckless, and he dearly loved a laugh. Once, without a word of warning, he banked so hard, right over, that I almost lost my pants, and all this just to frighten a fat woman who was quietly doing her business in the garden, her bottom bare to the winds.

I so loved that machine and our darting about in the air that when we had no money to buy juice, I brought up the brilliant idea of turning myself into a planeborne peddler.

This was the only time in my life that I ever conned anyone. He was called Coriat and he owned a men and women's clothes shop, the Almacen Rio. He was in business with his brother. Coriat was a medium-sized Jew, dark, with an intelligent head; he spoke very good French. His shop was well run and he was making money hand over fist. On the women's side he had all the newest, most fashionable dresses imported from Paris. So I had the choice of a whole range of very salable merchandise. I persuaded him to let me have a quantity of blouses, trousers and dresses, on sale or return; they were worth a good deal of money and the idea was that we would sell them in the remoter parts of the country.

We set off, going wherever we liked and coming back whenever it suited us. But although we sold our stuff pretty well, we didn't make enough to cover our expenses, and Coriat's share vanished in gas for the plane. There was nothing left for him.

Our best customers were the whores, and of course we never failed to go around the brothels. It was a great temptation for them when I spread our things out on the dining-room table- garish blouses, the latest in the way of pants, silk scarves, flowered skirts-and started my spiel. "And listen to what I say, ladies. This is not a useless luxury as far as you are concerned. If I may say so, it is more like a business investment, because the more attractive you are, the more the customers come crowding in. As for those ladies who just think of saving, I can tell them for sure that it's a deeply unwise economy not to buy from me. Why? Because all the really well-dressed girls are going to be dangerous competitors."

There were some pimps who didn't much care for our doing business this way; it made them feel bad to see money going into pockets other than their own. A good many of them sold "professional equipment" to their girls-on credit, sometimes-and the bastards wanted to monopolize the profit.

We often went to Puerto La Cruz, because there was a good airfield at Barcelona, a town a short way off. The best-run, classiest brothel there had sixty women in it, but the boss was an ugly great sod of a man, vulgar, pretentious and obstinate. He was a Panamanian. His wife was a Venezuelan, and she was charming; but unfortunately he was the one who gave the orders, and there was no question of even opening our cases for a quick look, far less of spreading things out on a table.

One day he went too far. He fired a girl then and there for having bought a scarf I was wearing around my neck. The argument turned nasty, and the cop on duty told us to get out and never come back.

"Okay, you fat shit," Carotte said. "We won't come back by land but by air. You can't keep us from doing that."

I didn't understand the threat until the next morning, when we were taking off at dawn from Barcelona and he said to me on the intercom, "We'll go and say hello to the Panamanian. Don't be frightened and hold on tight."

"What are you going to do?"

He made no reply, but when we came within sight of the brothel he climbed a little and then he dived straight for it at full throttle, shot under the high-tension cable just outside and roared over the corrugated-iron roof, almost touching it. Several of the sheets of iron were loose, and they flew off, displaying the rooms, with their beds and the people in them. We banked, climbed and flew back a little higher to contemplate the sight. I've never seen anything more utterly comic than those naked women and their naked customers, hopping mad in their lidless boxes, shaking furious fists at the plane, which had cut them short either in their games or in an exhausted sleep. Carotte and I laughed until we were almost sick.