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.
We never went back, because now there'd be not only a furious boss, but a furious pack of women, too. Later I did find one girl who had the good taste to laugh at the whole thing with us. Apparently, in his rage, the fat cunt of a Panamanian had insisted on fixing the corrugated sheets on all the women's rooms himself, with enormous bolts.
Carotte and I were both devoted to nature, and we often flew off just to look for beautiful places. That was how we came to find one of the real wonders of the world-Los Roques, about a hundred and fifty miles out at sea, a scattering of more than three hundred and sixty little islands, close together in an oval and forming a huge lake in the ocean. A calm lake, because the islands made a barrier, and its pale green water was so clear you could see the bottom sixty or seventy feet down. Unfortunately, in those days there was no landing strip, and we flew the whole length and breadth of the cluster ten times before pitching on another island called Las Aves, some twenty miles to the west.
Carotte really was a won4erful pilot. I've seen him land on a steeply sloping beach with one wing touching the sand and the other sweeping the sea. _Isla de Aves_ means "island of birds." There were thousands and thousands of them, and they had gray feathers except when they were young; then they were white all over. They were rather slow-witted and perfectly trusting. It was an extraordinary feeling, being there, just the two of us, stark naked on an island as flat as a pancake and being surrounded by birds that landed on you or walked about without the least fear, never having seen a man. We spent hours browning in the sun, lying on the narrow beach that ran all around the island. We played with the birds, taking them in the hollow of our hands; some were deeply interested in our heads, and gently pecked our hair. We swam, sunbathed again, and when we were hungry we could always find crayfish warming themselves on the surface. We'd catch a few with our hands and grill them on the spot. The only difficulty was finding enough dry stuff for the fire, because almost nothing grew on the island.
Sitting there on that untouched beach, eating those succulent crayfish and drinking a full-bodied white wine-we always had a few bottles on board-with the sea, the sky and the birds all around us and nothing else at all, gave us such a feeling of paradise that we didn't have to speak to be wholly in touch with one another.
And when we took off again, before nightfall, our hearts were filled with sun and happiness and zest for life; we did not give a damn for anything, not even for finding the money for the fuel for the trip-a trip whose only reason was to let us live in a beautiful and unexpected world.
At Las Aves we discovered a huge sea cave: at low tide its mouth was above the surface, and light and air came in. I had a passion for this splendid grotto; you could swim into it, and inside the water was clear and shallow-not more than three feet deep. When you stood up in the middle and looked around, the roof and the walls seemed to be covered with cicadas. They weren't cicadas, of course, but thousands of little crayfish clinging to the rock. We sometimes stayed there a long while, never disturbing them. The only time we interfered was when a big octopus, a great lover of baby crayfish, put out an arm to gather a few. We jumped on him right away and turned him inside out. There he could lie and rot, if he had the time, because he was unusual treat for the crabs.
We often went to Las Aves and spent the night there. Each of us had a big flashlight, and we gathered crayfish, each weighing about two and a half pounds, until we had filled two sacks with them. We dumped all the finery we were meant to be selling at Carlotta, the airfield in the middle of Caracas, and that meant we could bring back close to half a ton of crayfish. It was insane to load the plane like that, but it was all part of the fun. We could just about get off the ground, and as for gaining height, the stars were in no danger! We would labor up the twelve miles of valley from the coast to Caracas, just skimming the housetops; and there we would sell our crayfish at the ridiculous price of two bolivars fifty apiece. At least it paid for the fuel and kept us going. But when you go after crayfish with your hands you often get hurt, and sometimes we'd come back without any. It didn't matter; we never gave a damn-we were living to the full.
One day as we were on our way to Puerto La Cruz and not very far from it, Carotte said to me over the intercom, "Papi, we're short of juice. I'm going to put her down on the San Tome oil company's field." We flew over the strip to show we wanted to come down on their private landing place, and the jackasses instantly ran a tanker full of gasoline or water, God knows which, right out into the middle of the strip. Carotte had nerves of steel, and although I told him again and again I couldn't see where we could possibly touch down, he just said, "Hold on, Papi," and sideslipped toward a fairly wide road. He landed without bumping too much, but the speed carried him along toward a turn in the route, and around this corner came a trailer filled with bullocks, tearing along as fast as it could go. The shriek of the brakes must have drowned our shrieks of horror, because if the driver hadn't lost control and run his trailer into the ditch, we should certainly have been done for. We jumped out of the plane and Carotte hushed the swearing driver-he was an Italian. "Help us push the plane and you can beef later." The Italian was still trembling all over and as white as a sheet. We helped him catch his beasts-they had escaped when the trailer came to pieces.
This prodigious landing made such a stir that the government bought Carotte's plane and made him a civilian instructor at the Carlotta camp.
My life as an airman was over. Sad. I'd had a few hours of lessons and I was coming on well. Never mind. The only one who came out of this business a loser was Coriat. The extraordinary thing was he never sued me. Some years later I paid him back every penny; and here I should like to thank him for the generosity of his attitude.
But at that particular moment, not only had I lost the plane, and not only had my job with the Hungarian woman been taken by someone else, but I also had to avoid the central parts of Caracas, because Coriat's shop was there and I had no wish to bump into him. So once more the position was far from brilliant. But I didn't care: those few weeks with Carotte had been too marvelous for me to regret anything at all.
Carotte and I often saw one another after that; we used to meet in a quiet little joint run by an old Frenchman who had retired from the Compagnie Transatlantique. One night when we were playing dominoes in a corner with a Spanish republican and an ex-con who now made a peaceful living by selling perfume on credit, two men wearing sunglasses came in-we didn't know them-and asked if it was true that a Frenchman often came here, a pilot.
Carotte stood up and said, "That's me."
I examined these strangers from head to foot and right away, in spite of his dark glasses, I recognized one of them. I felt a sudden wave of emotion. I went up to him. Before I could speak he knew me. "Papi!"
It was Big Leon, one of my best friends in the penal colony. A tall guy with a thin face; a real man, openhearted. This was not the moment to seem too friendly and he just introduced me to his sidekick Pedro the Chilean and said no more. We had a drink in a corner, and Leon said he was looking for a light plane with a pilot, and he had been told about this Frenchman.
"The pilot's here," said Carotte, "and I'm him. But the plane is not. It belongs to other people now."
"That's sad," Leon said laconically.
Carotte returned to his game of dominoes; someone else took my place. Pedro the Chilean went and stood at the bar, so we could talk quietly.
"Well, Papi?"
"Well, Leon?"
"The last time we met was more than ten years ago."
"Yes. You were coming out of solitary just as I was going in. How are you doing, Leon?"
"Not bad, not bad at all. And you, Papi?"
Since it was Leon, I felt I could talk. "I'll tell you plain, Leon: I'm a little pissed off. It's not so easy to climb up the hill. It's all very well coming out of stir filled with the best intentions: life's so tough when you have no trade that all you think of is hustling again. Leon, you're older than me and you aren't the ordinary bum. I can tell you what's on my mind. Speaking dead serious and dead straight, as far as I'm concerned I owe this country everything. I came back to life here and I've promised myself to respect this great community-to do the least possible number of things that could be criticized. It's not easy, but I'm perfectly certain that even with my love for pulling things off I could set myself up here, starting from nothing and going straight, if only I hadn't a long bill to present to some people in Paris, _and I can't wait, in case those assholes should die before I get there_.
"When I see the young people of this country, utterly carefree and full of the joy of life, then in spite of myself I look back at the best years of my life. And I see the black holes of the Réclusion, and the three years of waiting before the trial and after it, and that stinking clink where I was treated far worse than a mad dog. And then for hours, sometimes for whole days on end, I walk about the streets of Caracas turning it all over in my mind. I feel I'm back in those places where I was buried alive; I keep seeing them, and I go back to my _one, two, three, four, five, turn_, just as I did when I was buried there and walked to and fro like a bear in a cage. It's beyond my control; it's a real obsession. I can't tolerate the idea that those who unjustly put me through that hell should die in peace, without having paid.
"So when I'm walking along the streets like that, I don't look around like an ordinary man. Every jeweler's shop, every place that is sure to hold the money I need-I can't help casing it and working out just how I could get my hands on everything it contains. It's not because I don't feel like it that I haven't yet pulled anything off; there are jobs here so dead easy they almost cry out to be done.
"Up until now I've managed to keep a hold on myself; I've done nothing serious against this country that trusts me. That would be vile, as odious as raping the daughters of a house that had taken you in. But I'm afraid one day I may not be able to resist the temptation of pulling off a big job. Because I'll never, never be able to scrape together the huge sum I need for my revenge, not by working honestly. Between you and me, Leon, I'm at the end of my rope."
Big Leon listened to me in silence, gazing at me attentively. We had a last drink, hardly exchanging another word. He got up and gave me a time to come and have lunch with him and Pedro the Chilean the next day.
We met in a quiet restaurant with an arbor. The sun was shining.
"I've been thinking about what you said to me, Papi. So listen, and I'll tell you why we're in Caracas."
They were only passing through, on their way to another South American country. There they were going to pay serious attention to a pawnshop, where, according to their own inquiries and information supplied by one of the chief employees, there was enough jewelry for each of them to come out with a very elegant fortune, once the jewels were turned into dollars. That was why they were looking for Carotte. They had meant to make him a proposition for his plane and himself; but now there was no point in talking about it.
"You can come in with us, if you like, Papi," Leon concluded.
"I've no passport and nothing much in the way of savings either."
"We'll look after the passport. Isn't that right, Pedro?"
"It's just as if you had it already," said Pedro. "In a phony name: that way you'll officially neither have gone out of Venezuela nor come back."
"What'll it cost, roughly?"
"About a thousand dollars. Have you got that much dough?"
"Yes."
"Well then, considering how you're placed, you shouldn't hesitate."
Two weeks later I was some miles from a South American capital, having hired a car the day after the job, busy burying a cookie tin with my share of the jewels in it.
The carefully programmed operation had been simple. We went in through a tie shop next door to the pawnbroker's. Leon and Pedro had been there to buy ties several times so as to get a good look at the lock and settle on the exact spot where they would make the hole in the wall. These were no safes, only locked cupboards all around. We went in at ten on Saturday evening, and we came out at eleven on Sunday night.
A smooth, well-run job. So there I was, a dozen miles from the town, burying my tin at the foot of a huge tree. I knew I would find the place again without any difficulty, because even without the mark I'd cut with my knife, the tree was easy to spot: the forest began just after a bridge, and the first tree of this forest, right by the road, was mine. Driving back, I threw the pick away some five miles along the road.
That evening we all met in a classy restaurant. We walked in separately and behaved as if we'd met by chance at the bar and then decided to have dinner together. Each of us had hidden his share, Leon with a friend and Pedro in the forest, like me.
"It's much better for each to have his own private hole," Leon said. "That way, no one of us knows what the others have done with theirs. It's a precaution they often take in South America, because if the pigs pull you in, what they put you through is no fun at all. Then if a poor guy starts to talk, why, he can only rat on himself. So that's sewn up: tell me, Papi, are you satisfied with the shares?"
"I think our rough estimate of each piece was dead right. Everything's fine: I don't have any gripes."
So all was satisfactory and everyone was pleased.
"Hands up!"
"Why, what the hell?" cried Leon. "Are you crazy?"
No time for further observations: in a flash we were clubbed, handcuffed and wheeled off to the police headquarters. We hadn't even finished the oysters.
In that country, the pigs do not coddle you at all; the party went on all night. Eight hours at the very least. First questions: "Do you like ties?"
"Go fuck yourself."
And so it went. By five in the morning we were nothing but lumps of bruised flesh. The pigs were furious at not having been able to get anything out of us; they frothed with rage. "Okay. Since you're all in a sweat and your temperature's too high, we'll cool you." We could scarcely stand, but they tossed us into a paddy wagon and a quarter of an hour later we were in front of a huge building. The pigs went in and then we saw workmen coming out; the pigs must have asked them to leave. Then it was our turn to go in, each propped up by two pigs and almost dragged along.
An enormous corridor; steel doors right and left, each with a kind of clock over it: a clock with only one hand. Thermometers. Right away I grasped that we were in the corridor of the deepfreeze of a big slaughterhouse. We stopped at a place where there were several tables standing in the corner. "Well, now," said the chief pig. "I'll give you one last chance to think it over. These are meat lockers. You understand what that means? So for the last time, where have you put the jewels and the other things?"
"We know nothing about any jewels or about any ties," said Leon.
"Okay, lawyer. You can go first."
The cops unbolted a door and opened it wide. A kind of icy fog came out and wafted down the corridor. Having taken off Leon 's shoes and socks they shoved him in.
"Shut it quick," said the chief, "or we'll be frozen, too."
"Now, Chilean. Are you going to talk, yes or no?"
"I've nothing to talk about."
They opened another door and pushed the Chilean in.
"You're the youngest, Wop [my passport had an Italian identity]. Take a good look at these thermometers. They show minus forty. That means that if you don't talk and we stuff you in there in a sweat, after the party you've been through, its ten to one you'll catch pneumonia and die in hospital in less than forty-eight hours. I'm giving you one last chance, you see: did you rob the pawnbroker's by going through the tie shop, yes or no?"
"I've nothing to do with those men. I only knew one of them, long ago, and I just met them by chance in the restaurant. Ask the waiters and barmen. I don't know whether they had anything to do with this job, but I'm dead certain I didn't."
"Well, Macaroni, you can perish, too. I'm sorry to think of you dying at your age; but it's your own fault. You asked for it."
The door opened. They shot me into the darkness, and hitting my head on an iron-hard side of beef hanging from a hook, I fell flat on the floor: it was covered with ice and hoarfrost. Immediately I felt the appalling cold seize upon my flesh, pierce right through and reach my bones. With a terrible effort I got to my knees, then, clinging to a side of beef, I stood upright. Every movement hurt, after the beating they had given us, but in spite of that I thumped my arms and rubbed my neck, cheek, nose and eyes. I tried warming my hands under my armpits. All I had on were my pants and a torn shirt. They had taken my shoes and socks, too, and the soles of my feet hurt terribly as they stuck to the ice; I felt my toes beginning to freeze.
I said to myself, "This can't go on for more than ten minutes- a quarter of an hour at the most. Otherwise I'll be like one of these sides of beef: a lump of deep-frozen meat. No, no, it's not possible. They can't do that to us! Surely they can't freeze us alive? Stick it out, Papi. A few minutes more and the door will open. That icy corridor will seem as warm as toast." My arms were not working anymore; I could no longer close my hands or move my fingers; my feet were sticking to the ice and I no longer had the strength to pull them away. I felt I was going to faint, and in the space of a few seconds I saw my father's face, then the prosecutor's floating over it, but that was not so clear, because it merged with the faces of the cops. Three faces in one. "How strange," I thought. "They are all alike, and they are laughing because they've won." Then I passed out.
What was happening? Where was I? As I opened my eyes there was a man's face leaning over me, a handsome face. I could not speak, because my mouth was still frozen stiff with cold, but inside my head I asked myself what I was doing here, stretched out on a table.
Big, powerful, efficient hands rubbed me all over with warm grease, and gradually I felt heat and suppleness coming back. The chief cop was watching, two or three yards away. He looked hot and bothered. Several times they opened my mouth to pour a drop of spirits into it. Once they poured too much; I choked and shot it out.
"There we are," said the masseur. "He's saved."
They went on rubbing me for at least half an hour. I felt that I could talk if I wanted to, but I preferred keeping my mouth shut. I realized that over there on the right there was another body lying on a table the same height as mine. He was naked, too, and they were rubbing and massaging him. Who was it? Leon or the Chilean? There had been three of us: but with me on this table and the guy on the other, that only made two. Where was the third? The other tables were empty.
Helped by the masseur I managed to sit up, and I saw who the other one was. Pedro the Chilean. They dressed us and put us into those padded overalls specially made for men who work inside deepfreezes.
The chief pig returned to the attack. "Can you speak, Chilean?"
"Yes."
"Where are the jewels?"
"I don't know anything."
"And what about you, Spaghetti?"
"I wasn't with those men."
"Okay."
I slipped off the table. I could barely stand, but once I was up I felt a healthy burning on the soles of my feet. That pleased me although it hurt, and I felt the blood flowing inside me, racing round my whole body with such strength that it thumped in the farthest veins and arteries.
I thought that for one day I had gone as far in horror as possible, but I had got it wrong, quite wrong.
They put Pedro and me side by side, and the chief, who had now recovered his self-assurance, called out, "Take off their overalls."
They took them off, and there I was, naked to the waist: straight away I started shivering with cold again.
"And now take a good look at this, _hombres_."
From under a table they dragged a kind of rigid parcel and stood it up on end in front of us. It was a frozen corpse, as stiff as a board. Its eyes were wide open and fixed, like two marbles: it was hideous to see, terrifying. Big Leon! They had frozen him alive!
"Take a good look, horn bres," said the chief again. "Your accomplice wouldn't talk; so all right, we went all the way with him. Now it's your turn, if you're as stubborn as he was. I've been given orders to be merciless, because this job of yours is much too serious. The pawnshop is run by the state, and there's an ugly rumor in the town-people think it's a racket worked by some of the officials. So either you talk, or in half an hour you'll be like your friend here."
My wits had not yet come back, and the sight so churned me up that for three long seconds I felt like talking. The only thing that prevented me was that I didn't know where the other hiding places were. They'd never believe me and I'd be in worse danger than ever.
To my utter amazement I heard a very collected voice, Pedro's voice, say, "Come on now; you can't frighten us with that stuff. Why, of course it was an accident-you never meant to freeze him; it was an error of judgment, that's all; but you don't want another error with us. One you can get away with; but three, three foreigners turned into blocks of ice, that mounts up. And I can't see you giving airtight explanations to two different embassies. One, okay. Three, it's too much."
I could not help admiring Pedro's steely nerve. Very calmly the pig looked at the Chilean, not speaking. Then, after a little pause, "You're a crook, and that's for sure; but I have to admit that you've also got guts." Turning to the others he said, "Find them each a shirt and take them back to the prison: the judge will look after them. With brutes like this there's no point in going on with the party-it's a waste of time." He turned his back and walked off.
A month later they let me out. The tie merchant admitted I had never been to his shop, which was true: the barmen stated that I had had two whiskies by myself, that I had already booked a table for one before the other two appeared, and that we had seemed very surprised to meet one another in this town. Still, they ordered me to leave the country in five days, because they were afraid that as Leon 's so-called countryman (Leon also had an Italian passport) I would go and tell the consulate what had happened.
During the inquiries, we had been brought face to face with a guy I did not know but Pedro did-the pawnshop employee who had put him on to the job. The very evening we divided up the take, this silly cunt presented a girl from an all-night bar with a splendid antique ring. The pigs were tipped off, and they had no difficulty in making him talk: that was why Big Leon and Pedro were identified so quickly. Pedro the Chilean stayed there, hooked on this business.
I took the plane with five hundred dollars in my pocket. I never went near my hiding place; it was too risky. I took stock, to see how things stood after the hideous nightmare I had just been through; the papers reckoned the pawnshop job at two hundred thousand dollars; even if they had exaggerated and doubled it, that still left a hundred thousand; so in my hole I had about thirty thousand. Since the value had been reckoned according to the amount lent on the jewels, that is to say half their real value, and if I sold them without going through a fence, then by my calculations I should be the owner of more than sixty thousand dollars! So I had what I needed for my revenge, as long as I did not break into it for living. This money was sacred; it was for a sacred purpose, and I must never use it for anything else _upon any pretext whatsoever_.
In spite of the horrible way it ended for my friend Leon, this job had been a triumph for me. Unless indeed I was forced to help the Chilean; but in a few months he was sure to send a trusted friend to collect his nest egg so he could pay his lawyer and maybe organize a break. Anyhow, that was our agreement- each with his own hiding place so that no one of us should be connected with the fate of the others. I hadn't been in favor of that method, but it was the customary way of working in the South American underworld-once the job was done, then each for himself and God for all.
And God for all… if it was really Him that had saved me, then He had been more than noble; He had been magnanimous. And yet God could not possibly have been the artisan of my revenge. He did not want me to take it, and that I knew. I remembered that day in El Dorado, the day before I was to be let out for good. I had wanted to thank the God of the Catholics, and in my emotion I had said to Him, "What can I do to prove that I am sincerely grateful for your kindness?" And it seemed to me that I heard the words, just as though a voice were speaking to me, "Give up your revenge."
And I'd said no; anything else, but not that. So it could not have been God who took care of me in this business. Impossible. I'd had luck, that was all, the luck of the devil. The good Lord above had nothing to do with that kind of shit.
But the result-oh, the result was there all right, buried at the foot of an ancient tree. It was a huge weight off my mind, knowing I possessed what I needed to carry out the plan I had been feeding my heart with these last fourteen years.
How I hoped the war had spared the villains who sent me down! Now all I had to do, while I waited for my D-Day, was to look for a job and live quietly until I could go and dig up my treasure.
The plane was flying at a great height in a brilliant sky, way above a carpet of snow-white clouds. It was purity up here, and I thought of my people, my father, my mother, my family and of my childhood bathed in light. Beneath that white cumulus there were dirty clouds, a grayish, unclean rain-a fine image of the earthly world: that desire for power, that desire to prove to others that you are better than them, that dry, heartless desire you see in the kind of people who do not give a damn if they destroy a human being as long as by doing so they gain something or prove something.