BANCO
the Further Adventures of Papillon
by Henri Charriere
translated from the French by Patrick O’Brien
Flyleaf:
In Banco, Henri Charriere tells the gripping story of his years on the loose in Venezuela after his escape from Devil’s Island. A story packed with hair-raising adventure, it is also a heart-warming account of readjustment to life on the outside and the sesolution of a conflict of motives within himself: on the one hand, the lure of the underworld, offering daring and danger, but also the possibility of revenge for the lost years in lonely, stinking cells; on the other, the appeal of going straight in a beautiful country where the free love of generous women promised to soothe even the most restless man.
Running through the story is the theme of the banco--of the chance taken, the stakes risked, when the simple exhilaration of the game inspired Papillon to say to every kind of challenge: “Deal me in ... Banco lost? Well, then, banco again!” Thus, for instance, when he joined up with an ex-con and got involved in a crooked dice game with tough, suspicious gold- and diamond-miners in the Venezuelan interior. Even when the angry miners murdered his partner and vanished with the profits accumulated during two perilous weeks and Papi, then penniless, escaped only by the skin of his teeth--even then he remained undaunted. So also with his many other, varied adventures... That lust for life, that indomitability of spirit that made Papillon unique have by no means deserted him here.
A number-one best seller in Western Europe, Banco is indeed as vibrantly alive as Papillon--ferocious, funny, tender, and crowded with incident and excitement.
English translation Copyright 1973 by Hart-Davis, MacGibbon.
Originally published in France Copyright 1972 by Editions Robert Laffont S.A.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.
Design by Helen Roberts
To the memory of Dr. Alex Guibert-Germain, to Madame Alex Guibert-Germain, to my countrymen, the Venezuelans, to my French, Spanish, Swiss, Belgian, Italian, Yugoslav, German, English, Greek, American, Turkish, Finnish, Japanese, Israeli, Swedish, Czechoslovak, Danish, Argentine, Colombian, and Brazilian friends, and all those friends who are faceless but who have done me the honor of writing to me.
Contents
Translator’s Introduction
1 First Steps into Freedom
2 The Mine
3 Jojo La Passe
4 Farewell to El Callao
5 Caracas
6 The Tunnel under the Bank
7 Carotte: the Pawnshop
8 The Bomb
9 Maracaibo: Among the Indians
10 Rita--the Vera Cruz
11 My Father
12 I Become a Venezuelan
13 My Childhood
14 The Revolution
15 Camarones
16 The Gorilla
17 Montmartre--My Trial
Translator’s Introduction
Middle-aged, impoverished by an earthquake and worried about his future, Henri Charrière sat down to write a book to restore his fortunes: it was his first, and he called it Papillon, the name by which he had been known in the underworld of Paris and in the French penal settlements. He had no great opinion of himself as an author and he was quite willing to have it improved, cut about and put into “good French”; but the first publisher he sent it to happened to employ a brilliant editor who at once realized the exceptional quality of the manuscript and who delivered it to an astonished public in its original state, merely tidying up the punctuation, the spelling and a very few points of style.
That was in 1970, the year of the phénomene Papillon, a phenomenon almost unparalleled in the annals of publishing: it was not only that an extraordinary number of people read the book (850,000 copies were sold in the first few months), but that the readers embraced the whole spectrum of literary opinion, from the Académie Française to those whose lips moved slowly as they made their fascinated way through the strange adventures of an indomitable man struggling against the society that had sent him to rot in the infamous tropical prisons of Guiana with a life sentence for a murder that he had never committed.
They were all deeply moved by the burning sense of injustice that runs right through the book and that gives it its coherence and validity, but even more by Papillon’s sheer narrative power, his innate genius for telling a story. “This is a literary prodigy,” said François Mauriac. “It is utterly fascinating reading... This new colleague of ours is a master!” And he pointed out that it was not enough to have been a transported convict and to have escaped again and again; extraordinary talent was required to give the book its ring of truth and to make its value “exactly proportional to its immense success.”
The soundness of Mauriac’s words can be seen not only from the immense quantities of hopeless manuscripts by other exprisoners (purple characters, but untouched by genius) that flow into publishers’ offices every week, but also by the baldness of the following summary that is intended to put the reader of this second volume into the picture: the main facts are here, but I am the first to admit that the heart of the matter is lacking.
The facts, then: in 1931 Henri Charrière, alias Papillon, was sentenced to hard labor for life, and in 1933 he was taken away with some hundreds of others in a prison ship bound for South America, for French Guiana. Here he found himself in an appallingly tough and savage world where corruption, terrorism, sodomy and murder were commonplace; he was well equipped for survival in this world, being as tough as any man there, perfectly loyal to his friends and perfectly uncompromising in his hatred of the official establishment, and in time he could have carved out a respectable place for himself. But he had no intention of staying; he had sworn not to serve his unjust sentence, and forty-two days after his arrival he made a break. With two companions (one broke his leg in escaping) he made his way down the Maroni River in a crazy boat; at a remote lepers’ island they changed boats and so rode out to sea, sailing under the broiling sun day after day until at last they reached Trinidad. On and on to Curaçao, where the boat was wrecked; on to Rio Hacha in Colombia, where the wind failed them and they were taken prisoner. Another break, this time with a Colombian friend, and eventually Papillon reached hostile Indian territory, alone and on foot. They took him in, gave him two wives, and then, when at last he would stay no longer, a bag of pearls. Back to Colombia, only to be arrested and imprisoned once more, and, after several abortive breaks, handed over to the French authorities. Then solitary confinement on the Ile Saint-Joseph--a deeply moving account of the silence, the heat and the utter loneliness of that dim, timeless, underground cage-- two years of it. When at last it was over and he was out in the light again, he began to make a raft for another break; but a fellow convict informed upon him, and having killed the informer he went back to solitary--an eight years’ sentence cut to nineteen months for rescuing a little girl from the sharks. Another attempt at escape; transfer to Devil’s Island; and then the final break at last, riding two sacks of coconuts through the shark-infested sea to the mainland. A new boat and a new series of adventures brought him to Venezuela and to the Venezuelan penal settlement at El Dorado, where he was held on the charge of being a rogue and a vagabond. But a coup d’etat in Caracas brought the promise of release, and the last pages of the book show Papillon, equipped with genuine papers at last, and dressed in good c
ivilian clothes, ready to walk out into freedom after fourteen years of being in prison or on the run. That is where the present volume starts, and from now on his story is told in his own infinitely more living words.
PATRICK O’BRIAN
What you think of yourself matters more than what others think of you
(author unknown to Papillon)
1
First Steps into Freedom
“Good luck, Frenchman! From this moment, you’re free. Adios!”
The officer of the El Dorado penal settlement waved and turned his back.
And it was no harder than that to get rid of the chains I had been dragging for fourteen years. I held Picolino by the arm, and we took a few steps up the steep path from the riverbank, where the officer had left us, to the village of El Dorado. Now, sitting here in my old Spanish house on the night of August 18, 1971, to be exact, I can see myself on that pebbly track with unbelievable clarity; and not only does the officer’s voice now ring in my ears in just the same way, deep and clear, but I make the same movement that I made twenty-six years ago--I turn my head.
It is midnight: outside the night is dark. But for me, for me alone, the sun is shining: it’s ten o’clock in the morning, and I stare at the loveliest back I have even seen in my life--the back of my jailer as he moves farther and farther away, symbolizing the end of the watching, the eavesdropping, the prying that I endured every day, night, minute and second for fourteen years.
I turn my head for a last look at the river, a last look, beyond the guard, at the island with its Venezuelan penal settlement, a last look at a hideous past when I was trampled upon, degraded and ground down.
Abruptly, I catch Picolino by the arm, turn my back on the picture and lead him quickly up the path, first giving myself a shake to get rid of the filth of the past for good and all.
Freedom? Yes, but where? At the far end of the world, way back in the plateaus of Venezuelan Guiana, in a little village deep in the most luxuriant virgin forest you can imagine. I was at the southeastern tip of Venezuela, close to Brazilian frontier: an enormous sea of green, broken only here and there by the waterfalls of the rivers and streams that run through it--a green ocean dotted with little communities, each gathered around a chapel. Often these pueblitos are linked to others by only a truck or two, and looking at the trucks, you wonder how they ever got so far. In their isolation these simple, poetic people live just as people did hundreds and hundreds of years ago, free from all the taints of civilization.
When we had climbed up to the edge of the plateau where the village of El Dorado begins, we almost stopped; and then slowly, very slowly, we went on. I heard Picolino draw his breath, and, like him, I breathed in very deeply, forcing the air right down into the bottom of my lungs and letting it out gently, as though I were afraid of living these wonderful minutes too fast, these first minutes of freedom.
The broad plateau opened in front of us; to the right and left were houses, all bright and clean and surrounded by flowers. Some children had caught sight of us, and even though they knew where we came from, they approached us, not unfriendly at all; no, they were kind, and they walked beside us without a words They seemed to understand how grave this moment was, and they respected it.
In front of the first house there was a little wooden table where a fat black woman was selling coffee and are pas, corn muffins.
“Good morning, lady.”
“Buenas dias, hombres!”
“Two coffees, please.”
“Si, senores.” And the good fat creature poured us two cups of delicious coffee; we drank standing, there being no chairs.
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“How come?”
“It’s a pleasure for me to give you the first coffee of your freedom.”
“Thank you. When’s the next bus?”
“Today’s a holiday, so there’s no bus; but there’s a truck at eleven.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
A black-eyed, light-skinned girl came out of a house. “Come in and sit down,” she said with a lovely smile.
We walked in and sat down with a dozen people who were drinking rum.
“Why does your friend loll out his tongue?”
“He’s sick.”
“Can we do anything for him?”
“No, nothing: he’s paralyzed. He’s got to go to the hospital.”
“Who’s going to feed him?”
‘‘Me.’’
“Is he your brother?”
“No, my friend.”
“You got money, Frenchman?”
“Very little. How did you know I was French?”
“Everything gets known here in no time. We knew you were going to be let out yesterday, and that you escaped from Devil’s Island, and that the French police are trying to catch you to put you back there again. But they won’t look for you here; they don’t give orders in this country. We are the ones who are going to look after you.”
“Why?”
“Because...”
“What do you mean?”
“Here, drink a shot of rum and give one to your friend.”
Now a woman of about thirty was taking over. She was almost black. She asked me whether I was married. No. If my parents were still alive. Only my father.
“He’ll be glad to hear you are in Venezuela.”
“That’s right.”
A tall dried-up white man spoke up--he had big, staring eyes, but they were kind--”My relative didn’t know how to tell you why we are going to look after you. Well, I’ll tell you. Because unless he’s mad--and in that case there’s nothing to be done about it--a man can be sorry for what he’s done, and he can turn into a good man if he’s helped. That’s why you’ll be looked after in Venezuela. Because we love other men, and, with God’s help, we believe in them.”
“Why do you think I was a prisoner on Devil’s Island?”
“Something very serious, for sure. Maybe for having killed someone, or for a really big theft. What did you get?”
“Life.”
“The top sentence here is thirty years. How many did you do?”
“Fourteen. But now I am free.”
“Forget all that, hombre. As quick as you can, forget everything you suffered in the French prisons and here in El Dorado. Forget it, because if you think about it too much you’ll feel ill will toward other men and maybe even hate them. Only forgetting will let you love them again and live among them. Marry as soon as you can. The women in this country are hot-blooded, and the love of the woman you choose will give you happiness and children, and help you forget whatever you have suffered in the past.”
The truck arrived. I thanked these kind, good people and went out, holding Picolino by the arm. There were about ten passengers sitting on benches in the back of the truck. They left us the best seats, next to the driver.
As we lurched along the potholed track, I thought about this strange Venezuelan nation. Neither the fishermen of the Gulf of Paria, nor the ordinary soldiers of El Dorado, nor the humble workingman who talked to me in that thatched mud hut had had any education. They could hardly read and write. So how did they come to have the charity and nobility to forgive men who had done wrong? How did it come about that the heads of the penal settlement of El Dorado, both the officers and the governor-- educated men, those--had the same ideas as the simple people, the belief in giving every man a second chance, whoever he is and whatever he’s done? That generosity could not have come from Europeans; so the Venezuelans must have got it from the Indians.
We arrived in El Callao. A big square, music. Of course: it was July 5, the national holiday. All the people in their best clothes made up a motley crowd, typical of tropical countries where so many colors are mixed--black, yellow, white and the copper of the Indians, whose race always shows in the slightly slanting eyes and the lighter skin. Picolino and I got out, along with some passengers from the back of the truck. One of them, a girl, came up to
me and said, “Don’t pay: that has been looked after.” The driver wished us good luck, and the truck set off again. Holding my little bundle in one hand while Picolino gripped the other with the three fingers he had left, I stood there wondering what to do. I had some English pounds from the West Indies, a few hundred bolivars * [ * A bolivar is worth about a quarter in U.S. money.] given me by my math pupils at the penal settlement, and some raw diamonds found among the tomatoes in the vegetable garden I had made.
The girl who had told us not to pay asked me where we were going, and I told her my idea was to find a little boardinghouse.
“Come to my place first; then you can look around.”
We crossed the square with her, and in a couple hundred yards we reached an unpaved street lined with low houses; they were all made of baked clay, and their roofs were thatch or corrugated iron. At one of them we stopped.
“Walk in. This house is yours,” the girl said. She must have been about eighteen.
She made us go in first. A clean room with a floor of pounded earth; a round table; a few chairs. A man of about forty, medium height, with smooth black hair, Indian eyes, and the same light reddish-brown skin as his daughter. And three girls of about fourteen, fifteen and sixteen.
“My father and my sisters,” she said, “here are some strangers I have brought home. They’ve come from the El Dorado prison, and they don’t know where to go. I ask you to take them in.”
“You’re welcome,” the father said. And he repeated the ritual words, “This house is yours. Sit down here, around the table. Are you hungry? Would you like coffee or rum?”
I didn’t want to offend them by refusing, so I said I’d like some coffee. I could see from the simple furniture that they were poor.