Henri Charrière - Banco - the Further Adventures of Papillon

So fare you well, buddies,. and thanks for all your kindness. Then I was on my way to the airport. I got there at six in the morning; I hired a car, and at nine I reached the spot.

I crossed the bridge. Christ above, what had happened? Had I gone mad, or was it a mirage? I stared around, but my tree was not there. And not only my tree but hundreds of others. The road had been made much wider, and the bridge and the stretch leading up to it had been entirely changed. Working it out from the bridge, I managed to more or less pinpoint the place where my tree and my wealth must have been. I was flabbergasted. Not a trace!

A kind of madness came over me, a stupid fury. I ground my heels into the asphalt, just as though it could feel anything. I was filled with an enormous rage and I looked around for something to destroy: all I could see was the white lines painted on the road-I kicked them, as if knocking off little bits of paint could destroy the road.

I went back to the bridge. The approach road on the other side had not been altered, and judging from that I reckoned they must have shifted the earth to a depth of more than twelve feet. And since my loot had not been buried deeper than a yard, it couldn't have lasted long, poor thing.

I leaned on the parapet and for a while I watched the water flow by. Gradually I calmed down, but still the thoughts whirled about inside my head. Was I always going to lose out like this? Should I give up trying to pull things off? What was I going to do now? My knees sagged. But then I got hold of myself and I said, "How many times did you fail before you brought off your break? Seven or eight times, right? Well, it's the same thing in life. You lose one banco, you go and win another. That's life, when you really love it."

I didn't stay long in this country that felt called upon to change its roads so fast. It made me sick to think that a civilized nation didn't even respect ancient trees. And why, I ask you, why widen a road that was quite broad enough for all the traffic it had to carry?

In the plane taking me back to Caracas, I laughed to think that men can suppose they are the masters of their fate, that they imagine they can build the future and foresee what they'll be doing the next year or the year after. All so much bullshit, Papi! The brightest calculator, the cleverest imaginable organizer of his life is no more than a toy before fate. Only the present is certain: all the rest is something we know nothing about-something that goes by the name of luck, misfortune, destiny or indeed the mysterious and incomprehensible hand of God.

Only one thing really matters in life, and that is never to admit you're beaten and to start up again after every flop. That was what I was going to do.

When I'd left, I'd said good-bye for keeps. Because once I'd dug up the loot I meant to go to other countries, not Venezuela, alter the jewels so they could not be recognized, sell them and move on to Spain. From there it would be easy to go and pay a call on Prosecuting Counsel and Co. So you can imagine the terrific uproar when the musketeers saw me turn up at the garage door. Dinner and a party cake to celebrate my return, and Dédée put four flowers on the table. We drank to the re-formed team, and life started off again at full throttle. But still, I was no longer as carefree as I had been.

I felt sure Armando and Deloifre had designs on me that they were keeping back, probably something to do with the coup d'etat, although both knew my position as far as that was concerned. They often asked me to come and have a drink or to eat at Deloifre's place. Wonderful food, and no witnesses. Deloifre did the cooking, and his faithful chauffeur Victor waited table. We talked about a great many things, but in the end the conversation always came round to the same subject-General Medina Angarita. The most liberal of all Venezuelan presidents; not a single political prisoner during his régime; no one persecuted because of his ideas; a policy of coexistence with all other states, all other regimes, even to the point of setting up diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union; he was good, he was noble, and the people so loved him for his simplicity that one day, during a celebration at El Paralso, they carried him and his wife in triumph, like toreros.

Constantly telling me about this wonderful Medina, who walked around Caracas with just one aide-de-camp and went to the cinema like an ordinary citizen, Armando and Deloifre almost persuaded me that only a man with his heart in the right place would do anything to bring Medina back to power. They painted a very dark picture of the present government's injustice and its vengeful attitude towards a whole section of the population; and to make me like their marvelous president even more, Deloifre told me Medina lived it up with the very best of them. On top of that, he was a personal friend, although he knew Deloifre had escaped from jail.

At last, almost won over-mistakenly, as I learned afterward- I began to think of taking part in the coup d'etat. My hesitation vanished entirely (I have to say this because I want to be honest) when I was promised the money and all the facilities I needed to set my plan of revenge in motion.

So this is how it was that one night Deloffre and I were sitting there at his place, me dressed as a captain and Deloffre as a colonel, ready to go into action.

It began badly. To identify one another, the civilian conspirators were supposed to wear a green armband, and the password was Aragua. We were supposed to be at action stations at two in the morning. But about eleven that night four guys turned up in the one horse-drawn cab left in Caracas; they were totally plastered, and they were singing at the top of their voices, to the accompaniment of a guitar. They stopped just in front of the house, and to my horror I heard them singing songs full of allusions to tonight's coup d'etat-allusions as obvious as an elephant. One of them bawled out to Deloifre, "Pierre! Tonight the nightmare comes to an end at last! Courage and dignity, arnigo! Our Papa Medina must return!"

For goddamned utter foolishness you could not have asked better. The time between some joker's telling the pigs and the cops' coming to call on us would be very short. I was hopping mad, and I had every reason to be: we had three bombs there in the car, two in the trunk and one on the back seat, covered with a rug.

"Well, they're a terrific bunch, your friends. If they're all like this, we needn't bother: we might just as well go straight to prison."

Deloifre howled with laughter, as calm as if he were going to a ball; he was delighted with himself in his colonel's uniform, and he kept admiring his reflection in the mirror. "Don't you worry, Papillon. Anyhow, we aren't going to hurt anyone. As you know, these three gas bottles have got nothing but powder in them. Just to make a noise, that's all."

"And what's going to be the point of this little noise of yours?"

"It's merely to give the signal to the conspirators scattered about the town. That's all. There's nothing bloody or savage about it, you see-we don't want to hurt anybody. We just insist on their going away, that's all."

Okay. Anyhow, whether I liked it or not I was up to the neck in this. It was not my job to quiver with alarm or be sorry: all I had to do was wait for the given time.

I refused Deloffre's port-it was the only thing he drank: two bottles a day at least. He tossed back a few glasses.

The three musketeers arrived in a command car transformed into a crane. It was going to be used to carry off two safes, one belonging to the airline company and the other to the Model Prison; one of the governors-or maybe the man in command of the garrison-was in the plot. I was to have 50 percent of what was inside and I had insisted on being there when the prison safe was grabbed: they had agreed. It would be a sweet revenge on all the prisons in the world. This was a job very near to my heart.