Madame Guibert-Germain never did join her husband in IndoChina. He was killed in 1952, so I never saw him again, that selfeffacing medico who, together with Major Péan of the Salvation Army and a handful of others, was one of the very few men at the penal settlement who had the courage to stand up for humane ideas in favor of the convicts; and in his case, to succeed in getting some results while he was serving there. There are no words fine enough to express the respect due to people like him and his wife. In opposition to one and all and at the risk of his career, he maintained that a convict was still a man, and that even if he had committed a serious crime he was not lost forever.
The letters from Tante Ju were not the letters of a stepmother who has never known you, but real, motherly letters, saying things that only a mother’s heart could think of. Letters in which she told me about my father’s life up until the time he died, the life of that law-abiding schoolmaster, full of respect for the legal authorities, who nevertheless cried out, “My boy was innocent, I know it; and these swine have had him found guilty! Where can he be now that he has escaped? Is he dead or alive?” Every time the members of the Resistance in the Ardèche brought off an operation against the Germans, he would say, “If Henri were here, he would be with them.” Then the months of silence during which he no longer pronounced his son’s name. It was as though he had transferred his affection for me to his grandchildren, whom he spoiled more than most grandfathers.
I devoured all this like a starving man. Over and over again Rita and I read all these precious letters that renewed the links with my family; we kept them like positive relics. Truly I was blessed by the gods--without exception all my people had enough love for me and enough courage not to give a damn for what people might say, and to tell me of their joy that I was alive, free and happy. And indeed courage was necessary, because society does not easily forgive a family for having had a delinquent within it.
In 1953 we sold the hotel. Eventually the shattering heat got us down, and in any case Rita and I had never meant to spend the rest of our days in Maracaibo. All the less so as I’d heard of a tremendous boom in Venezuelan Guiana, where a mountain of almost pure iron had been discovered. It was at the other end of the country, so we were up and away for Caracas, meaning to stop there a while and look into the situation.
One fine morning we set off in my huge green De Soto station wagon, crammed with baggage, and left behind five years of quiet happiness and many friends.
Once again I saw Caracas. But hadn’t we hit on the wrong town?
At the end of Flamerich’s term Perez Jiménez had named himself president of the republic; but even before that he had set about turning the colonial town of Caracas into a typical ultramodern capital. All this during a period of unheard-of cruelty, on the part both of the government and of the underground opposition. Caldera, who has been president since 1970, escaped from a shocking attempt on his life; a powerful bomb was thrown into the room where he was sleeping with his wife and child. By an absolute miracle not one of them was killed; and with wonderful coolness--no shrieks, no panic--he and his wife just went down on their knees to thank God for having saved their lives.
But in spite of all the difficulties he had to deal with during his dictatorship, Perez Jiménez entirely transformed Caracas, and a good many other things, too. The old road from Caracas to the Maiquetia airfield and the port of La Guaira was still there. But Perez Jiménez had built a magnificent and technically outstanding thruway that meant you could get from the town to the sea in less than a quarter of an hour, whereas it had taken two hours by the old road. In the Silencio district Perez jiménez ran up enormous buildings the size of those in New York. And he built an astonishing six-lane highway right through the city from one end to the other--not to mention the building of working- and middle-class complexes that were models of urbanism, and many other changes. All this meant millions and millions of dollars swirling about; and it meant a great deal of energy burst out in this country that had been dozing for hundreds of years. Foreign capital came flowing in, together with specialists of every kind. Life changed completely; immigration was wide open, and fresh blood came in, giving a positive beat to the country’s new rhythm.
I took the opportunity of our stop in Caracas to get in touch with friends and to find out what had happened to Picolino. These last years I had regularly sent people to visit him and take him a little money. I saw a friend who had given him a small sum from me in 1952, a sum Picolino had wanted so he could settle in La Guaira, near the port. I’d often suggested that he should come live with us at Maracaibo, but every time he replied through his friends that Caracas was the only place with doctors. It seemed that he had almost recovered his speech and that his right arm more or less worked. But now nobody knew what had become of him. He had been seen creeping about the port of La Guaira, and then he had completely disappeared. Perhaps he had taken a ship back to France. I never learned; and I have always kicked myself for not having gone to Caracas earlier to persuade him to come to me in Maracaibo.
Everything was clear: if we couldn’t find what we wanted in Venezuelan Guiana, where there was this terrific boom and where General Ravard had just dynamited the burgeoning forest and its swollen streams to prove they could be tamed, we would go back and settle in Caracas.
With the De Soto full of luggage, Rita and I drove to the capital of the state, Ciudad Bolivar, on the banks of the Orinoco. After eight years I found myself once more in that charming provincial town with its kindly, welcoming people.
We spent the night at a hotel, and we had scarcely sat down on the terrace for our morning coffee when a man stopped in front of us. A man of about fifty, tall, thin and sun-dried; he had a little straw hat on his head, and he screwed up his small eyes until they almost disappeared.
“Either I’m crazy or you’re a Frenchman called Papillon,” he said.
“You’re not very discreet, buster. Suppose this lady here didn’t know?”
“Excuse me. I was so surprised I didn’t even notice I was talking like a fool.”
“Say no more about it: sit down here, with us.”
He was an old friend, Marcel B. We talked. He was quite amazed to see me in such good shape; he felt I had done well for myself. I told him it had mostly been luck, a great deal of luck; he didn’t have to tell me, poor soul, that he had not made a go of it--his clothes did the telling. I asked him to lunch.
After a few glasses of Chilean wine he said, “Yes, Madame, although you see me like this, I was a fine upstanding guy when I was young--afraid of nothing. Why, after my first break from jail I reached Canada and joined the Canadian Mounted Police, no less! I might have stayed there all my life, but one day I had a fight, and the other guy fell right onto my knife. It’s God’s truth, Madame Papillon. This Canadian fell right onto my knife. You don’t believe me, do you? Well, I knew the Canadian police wouldn’t believe me either, so I made my getaway that very minute, and going by way of the United States, I reached Paris. I must have been sold by some bum or other, because they picked me up and sent me back to the clink. That’s where I knew your husband: we were good friends.”
“And what are you doing now, Marcel?”
“I grow tomatoes at Los Morichales.”
“Do they do well?”
“Not very. Sometimes the clouds don’t let the sun come through properly. You can’t see it, but it sends down invisible rays that slay your tomatoes for you in a few hours.”
“Christ! How come?”
“One of the mysteries of nature, man. I don’t know anything about the cause, but the result, I know that all right.”
“Are there many ex-cons here?”
“About twenty.”
“Happy?”
“More or less.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“Papi, I swear if you hadn’t said that I wouldn’t have asked for a thing. But I can tell you’re not doing so badly--so excuse me, Madame, but I’m going to ask for
something very important.”
The thought flashed through my mind, God, don’t let it cost too much, and then I said, “What do you need? Speak up, Marcel.”
“A pair of trousers, a pair of shoes, a shirt and a tie.”
“Come on: let’s get into the car.”
“That’s yours? Well, by God, you have had luck.”
“Yes, plenty of luck.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Tonight.”
“Pity. Otherwise you could have driven the bridal pair in your bus.”
“What bridal pair?”
“Of course! I never told you the clothes were to go to the marriage of an ex-con.”
“Do I know him?”
“Don’t know. He’s called Maturette.”
I couldn’t get over it! Maturette! The little fairy who had not only made it possible for us to escape from the Saint-Laurent-duMaroni hospital but had also traveled fifteen hundred miles with us in a boat on the open sea.
No question of leaving now. The next day we went to the wedding, where Maturette and a sweet little black girl were married. We could not do less than pay the bill and buy clothes for the three children they had produced before going to the altar. This was one of the few times I was sorry I had not been christened, because that kept me from being his best man.
Maturette lived in a poor district where the De Soto made a sensation, but still he owned a clean little brick house with a kitchen, a shower, and a dining room. He didn’t tell me about his second break and I didn’t tell him about mine. Just one reference to the past: “With a little more luck, we’d have been free ten years earlier.”
“Yes, but our fates would have been different. I’m happy, Maturette; and you look pretty happy, too.”
We parted, our throats tight with emotion, saying “Au revoir,” and “See you soon.”
As Rita and I drove on toward Ciudad Piar, a town springing up by an iron deposit they were getting ready to mine, I spoke about Maturette and the extraordinary ups and downs in life. He and I had been on the brink of death at sea a score of times; we had been captured and taken back to prison; and like me he had copped two years of solitary. And now as Rita and I were driving in search of some new adventure, I found him on the eve of his marriage. And to both of us at the same moment there came this thought: The past doesn’t mean a thing; all that matters is what you have made of yourself.
We found nothing suitable at Ciudad Piar and went back to Caracas to look for some business that was doing well.
Very soon we found one that answered to both our abilities and our purse. It was a restaurant called the Aragon, right next to Carabobo Park, a very beautiful spot, and it was changing hands: it suited us perfectly. The beginning was tough, because the former owners came from the Canaries, and we had to change everything from top to bottom. We adopted half-French, half-Venezuelan menus and our customers increased in number every day. Among them were plenty of professional men, doctors, dentists, chemists and attorneys. Some manufacturers, too. And in this pleasant atmosphere the months went by without incident.
It was on a Monday, on June 6, 1956, to be exact, that the most wonderful news reached us: the Ministry of the Interior informed me that my request for naturalization had been granted.
It was my reward for having spent ten years in Venezuela without giving the authorities anything to criticize in the life I had led as a future citizen. On July 5, 1956, the national holiday, I was to go swear loyalty to the flag of my new country, the country that accepted me, knowing my past. There were three hundred of us there in front of the flag. Rita and Clotilde sat in the audience. It’s hard to say what I felt, there were so many ideas milling about in my head and so many emotions in my heart. I remembered what the Venezuelan nation had given me--both material and spiritual help, with never a word about my past. I remembered the legend of the lano-Mamos, Indians who live on the Brazilian frontier, the legend that says they are the sons of Peribo, the moon. When the great warrior Peribo was in danger of being killed by his enemies’ arrows, he leapt so high to escape from death that he rose far into the air, although he had been hit several times. He kept on rising, and from his wounds there fell drops of blood that turned into Iano-Mamos when they touched the ground. Yes, I thought about that legend, and I wondered whether Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Venezuela, had not also scattered his blood to give rise to a race of generous, openhearted men, bequeathing to them the best of himself.
They played the national anthem. Everybody stood up. I stared hard at the starry flag as it rose, and tears flowed down my cheeks.
I who had thought I should never sing another national anthem in my life, I roared out the words of the anthem of my new country with the others, at the top of my voice--”Abajo cadenas...” Down with the chains.
Yes, that day I really felt them drop off forever, the chains I had been loaded with. Forever.
“Swear loyalty to this flag, which is now your own.”
Solemnly all three hundred of us swore it; but I am sure the one who did so with most sincerity was myself, Papillon, the man his mother country had condemned to worse than death for a crime he had not committed. Yes, although France was the land that bore me, Venezuela was my haven.
13
My Childhood
Now events moved very rapidly. As a Venezuelan I could have a passport, and I got one right away. I trembled with emotion when they handed it to me, and trembled again when I got it back from the Spanish embassy with an elegant three months’ visa. I trembled when they stamped it as I went aboard the Napoli, the splendid liner that was taking Rita and me to Europe, to Barcelona. I trembled when the Guardia Civil gave it back to me in Spain, with the entrance visa. This passport, which had made me the citizen of a country once more, was so precious that Rita sewed a zipper on each side of my inside coat pockets so that I could not lose it, whatever happened.
Everything was beautiful during this voyage, even the sea when it was rough, even the rain when it came driving across the deck, even the ill-tempered guy in charge of the hold, who unwillingly let me go below to make sure the big Lincoln we had just bought was properly stowed. Everything was beautiful because our hearts were on holiday. Whether we were in the dining room, at the bar, or in the saloon, and whether there were people around us or not, our eyes kept meeting so we could speak without anyone’s hearing--because we were going to Spain, right up by the French border, and we were going for a reason I hadn’t dared to hope for these many years.
The purpose of this hurriedly prepared voyage was to let me see my family once more, on Spanish territory out of reach of the French police. It was twenty-six years since I had seen them. We were going to spend a whole month together, and they were coming as my guests.
Day after day went by, and I often went to the bow, spending a long time there, as if this part of the ship were closer to our destination. We had passed Gibraltar; we had lost sight of land again; we were getting very near.
1 settled myself comfortably in a deckchair, and my eyes tried to pierce the horizon where any minute now the land of Europe would appear. The land of Spain, joined to that of France.
1930--1956: twenty-six years. I had been twenty-four then; I was fifty now. A whole lifetime. My heart beat violently when at last I made out the coast. The liner ran on fast, carving a huge V in the sea, a V whose far ends spread and spread until gradually they vanished and melted into the ocean.
When I left France aboard La Martinière, the accursed ship that was taking us to Guiana--yes, when she steamed away from the coast, I did not see it: I did not see the land, my land, drawing gradually away from me forever (as I thought then), because we were in iron cages at the bottom of the hold.
And now here I was with my new passport in the pocket of my yachtsman’s blazer, well protected by Rita’s zipper--the passport of my new country, my other identity. Venezuelan? You, a Frenchman, born of French parents--of schoolteachers, and from the Ardèche into the bargai
n?
I was perhaps five when my grandfather Thierry bought me a beautiful mechanical horse. How splendid he was, my lovely stallion! Almost red; and such a mane! It was black, real horsehair, and it always hung down on the right side. I pedaled so hard that on a level surface our maid had to run to keep up with me; then she would push me up the little slope I called the hill; and so, after another level stretch, I reached the nursery school.
Madame Bonnot, the headmistress and a friend of Mama’s, wel. comed me in front of the school; she stroked the long curly hair that came down to my shoulders like a girl’s and said to Louis the caretaker, “Open the door as wide as it will go so that Riri can ride in on his splendid horse.”
I pedaled with all my strength and flew into the playground. First I made a great sweep all around it and then I gently dismounted, holding the bridle so it would not roll away. I kissed Thérèse, the maid, who handed Madame Bonnot my sandwiches. And all the other boys and girls, my friends, came to admire and stroke this wonder, the one and only mechanical horse in these two little villages, Pont-d’Ucel and Pont-d’Aubenas.
Every day before I set out, Mama told me to lend it to each one in turn; this I found rather hard, but still I did it. When the bell rang, Louis the caretaker put the horse away under the lean-to, and once we were in line we marched into school, singing, “Nous n’irons plus au bois.”
I know my way of telling my story will make some people smile; but you have to understand that when I am talking about my childhood it is not a man of sixty-five who is writing but a kid--it is Riri of Pont-d’Ucel who writes, so deeply is that childhood imprinted on his mind, and he writes with the words he used then.
My childhood... A garden with gooseberries that my sisters and I ate before they were ripe, and pears that we were forbidden to pick before Papa said we could. (By crawling like a Red Indian so that no one could see me from a window in the apartment I had my fill from the pear tree, and a bellyache afterward.)