Henri Charrière - Banco - the Further Adventures of Papillon

It would be easy enough to pinpoint and follow him, because of his father's fur shop. There were several ways of killing him, but whichever way I chose, I wanted him to recognize me before he died. If possible, I'd do what I had so often dreamed of doing-strangle him slowly with my bare hands, saying, "Sometimes the dead come to life again. You didn't expect that, brother? You didn't expect my hands to kill you? Still, you win, because you're going to die in a few minutes, whereas you sent me down to rot slowly all my life until I died of it."

I couldn't tell whether I'd manage to get out of France, because once Goldstein was dead things would be very dangerous. It was almost certain they would identify me, but I didn't give a damn. Even if I had to die for it, they must pay for my father's death. I'd have forgiven them for my suffering. But the fact that my father should have died without my being able to tell him his boy was alive and had gone straight; the fact that maybe he had died of shame, hiding from all his old friends, and that he should have lain in his grave without knowing what I was now-that, no, no, no! That I could never forgive!

During the very long silence while I went through every step of the action again to see there was no hitch anywhere, Rita had been sitting at my feet, with her head leaning against my knee. Not a word, not a sound; she almost seemed to be holding her breath.

"Rita, sweetheart, I leave tomorrow."

"You can't go." She stood up, put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. She went on, "You must not go: you can't go. There's something new for me, too. I took advantage of my journey to send for my daughter. She'll be here in a few days. You know perfectly well the reason I didn't have her with me was that I needed a settled place for her. Now I've got one, and she'll have a father, too-you. Are you going to spoil everything we've built up with the love and trust between us? Do you think killing the men who were responsible for your sufferings and perhaps for your father's death is really the only thing to do when you compare it with what we have?

"Henri, for my sake and for the sake of this girl who is coming to you, and who I am sure will love you, I ask you to give up your idea of revenge forever. If your father could speak, do you think he would approve of your idea of revenge? No. He'd tell you that neither the cops nor the false witness nor the prosecutor nor what you call the jurymen nor the wardens were worth your sacrificing a wife who loves you and whom you love, and my daughter who hopes to find a father in you, and your good, comfortable home, and your honest life.

"I'll tell you how I see your revenge: it's this-that our family should be a symbol of happiness for everybody; that with your intelligence and my help, we should succeed in life by honest means; and that when the people of this country talk about you not one would say anything but this-the Frenchman is straight and honest, a good man whose word is his bond. That's what your revenge ought to be; the revenge of proving to them all that they were terribly mistaken about you; of proving that you managed to come through the horrors of prison unspoiled and to become a fine character. That is the only revenge worthy of the love and the trust I have placed in you."

She had won. All night we talked, and I learned to drain the cup to the dregs. But I could not resist the temptation of knowing every last detail of Rita's journey. She lay on a big sofa, exhausted by the failure of this long voyage and by her struggle with me. Sitting there on the edge of it, I leaned over her, questioning her again and again and again, and little by little I dragged out everything she had meant to hide.

At the very beginning, after she left Maracaibo for the port of Caracas, where she was to take the boat, she had a foreboding that she was going to fail: everything seemed to conspire to prevent her from leaving for France. Just as she was boarding the _Colombie_ she noticed she was missing one of the necessary visas. A race against time to get it in Caracas, tearing along that dangerous little road I knew so well. Back to the port with the paper in her bag and her heart beating for fear the boat should leave before she got there. Then a terrible storm broke out, bringing landslides down over the road. It became so dangerous that the driver lost his head and turned back, leaving Rita there alone in the storm by the side of the road, among the landslides. She walked nearly two miles in the downpour and then by a miracle found a taxi that was returning to Caracas; but at the sight of the landslides it turned back for the port. And from the port she could hear ships' sirens. In her panic she was sure it was the _Colombie_ leaving.

Then when she reached her cabin at last, weeping with joy, there was some accident aboard and the ship could not leave for several hours. All this gave her a very uneasy feeling, as if the events were expressions of fate.

Then the ocean: Le Havre, Paris, and without a stop, Marseille, where she stayed with a woman she knew, who introduced her to a municipal councilor, who wrote her a cordial letter to a friend of his called Henri Champel, who lived at Vals-les-Bains in the Ardèche.

Then the train and the bus again, and it was not until she reached these wonderfully kind Champels that Rita could draw breath and begin to organize her search. Even then she was not at the end of her difficulties.

Henri Champel took her to Aubenas, in the Ardèche, where Maître Testud, the family lawyer, lived. Ah, that Testud! A heartless bourgeois. In the first place he told her my father was dead-just right out, like that. Then on his own initiative, without consulting anyone, he forbade her to go and see my father's sister and her husband, my uncle and aunt Dumarche, retired teachers who lived in Aubenas. Many years later they welcomed us with open arms, indignant at the thought that because of this wretched Testud they had not been able to put Rita up and so to get in touch with me again. The same thing with my sisters: Testud refused to give their address. Still, Rita did manage to get this stony heart to tell her where my father had died-Saint-Peray.

The journey to Saint-Peray. There Henri Champel and Rita found my father's grave and learned something else as well. After having been a widower for twenty years he had married again-a retired schoolmistress-when I was still in the penal settlement. They found her. The family called her Tante Ju, or sometimes Tata Ju.

A fine woman, said Rita, and with such a noble character that she had kept the memory of my mother alive in this new home. In the dining room Rita had seen big photographs of my mother, whom I worshipped, and of my father. She had been able to touch and fondle objects that had belonged to her. Tante Ju, who now suddenly came into my life-although at the same time I felt I already knew her-had done all she could to let Rita feel the atmosphere she and my father had wanted to keep alive-the memory of my mother and the continual presence of that vanished little boy who was still Riri to my father.

November 16 was my birthday, and every November 16 my father used to weep. Every Christmas there was a chair left empty. When the gendarmes came to tell them their son had escaped again, the Charrières almost kissed them for having brought such wonderful news. Because although Tante Ju did not know me, she had already adopted me in her heart as if I were her own son, and both she and my father shed tears of joy at hearing what was for them news of hope.

So she had received Rita more than kindly. Only one shadow: Tante Ju had not given her the address of my two sisters. Why not? I thought quickly. No doubt about it: she wasn't sure how they would take the news of my reappearance. Since she did not say to Rita, "Hurry over and see them at such-and-such a place; they'll be wild with delight to know their brother's still alive and doing well, and to meet his wife," she must have had her reasons. Maybe Tante Ju knew that neither my sister Yvonne nor my sister Hélène nor my brothers-in-law would care to be visited by the wife of their brother, the escaped jailbird, sentenced to life for murder. No doubt she did not want to take the responsibility for disturbing their peace.