I know perfectly well that what the reader expects is my own personal adventures and not a history of Venezuela. Forgive me if I feel I should mention certain important political events that happened during the time I am writing about; they had a direct influence on my life and on the decisions I took.
For many people Venezuela is just a country in South America (most aren't quite sure just where), a country exploited by the Americans as if it were a kind of oil-producing American colony. This is far from true.
To be sure, the oil companies did once have very great weight; little by little, though, the Venezuelan intellectuals have set the country almost entirely free from the influence of American policy.
At present Venezuela is completely independent politically, as it has proved at the United Nations and elsewhere. One thing all its political parties have in common is a great zeal for Venezuela 's freedom of action with respect to all foreign countries. Thus, ever since Rafael Caldera came to power, we have had diplomatic relations with every country in the world, whatever their political regimes.
It is true that economically Venezuela depends on its oil, but it has succeeded in selling the oil at a very high price and in making the oil companies hand over as much as 85 percent of their profits.
Venezuela has other things besides oil, such as iron and other raw materials; and Venezuela has a vast resource of men whose aim is to free their country entirely from all forms of economic pressure. Men who have begun to prove that Venezuela can set up a democracy as good as any other, respected and preserved.
The young people in the universities long for nothing but social justice and the radical transformation of their country. They are full of faith, and confident of succeeding without undermining the foundations of real freedom-confident of bringing happiness to the whole nation without falling into a dictatorship either of the extreme right or of the extreme left. I believe in the young people of this country: they will help make it a nation that can be held up as an example, both for its truly democratic régime and for its economy, because it must not be forgotten that its huge resources of raw materials will soon be completely industrialized. When that happens, Venezuela will have won a great battle-and Venezuela _will_ win it.
Venezuela is also an ideal country for the kind of tourism that must develop in the coming years. Everything is in its favor-its beaches of coral sand, shaded by coconut palms; its sunshine, which surpasses all other countries'; its fishing of every kind in a sea that is always warm. Venezuela also offers a lower cost of living than other countries; islands by the hundred; a welcoming, hospitable people without the least trace of a color problem. And within an hour's flying distance from Caracas you can find the Indians, the lake villages of Maracaibo, or the Andes with their everlasting snow.
In short, Venezuela is so rich in resources that the country doesn't really need a politician at the helm so much as a good accountant, who will use the profits from oil to build factories and so increase the labor market for all who need or want work.
1951… Once again, as I remember this date, I have the same feeling I had then-the feeling of having nothing more to tell. You tell about storms and shooting the rapids of a swollen river; but when the water is calm and peaceful you feel like closing your eyes and resting on the placid current. Then rain comes pouring down again, the streams rise, the quiet water grows rough, the flood carries you away, and even if you longed to live in peace from everything, outside events have such an effect on your life that they force you to follow the current, avoiding the reefs and shooting the rapids in the hope of finding a quiet harbor at last.
After the mysterious killing of Chalbaud at the end of 1950, Perez Jiménez seized power, although he hid behind Flamerich, the figurehead president of the junta. The dictatorship began. First sign: the suppression of freedom of speech. The press and the radio were throttled. The opposition went underground, and the terrible political police, the Seguridad Nacional, went into action. The Communists and the Adecos (the members of the Acción Democrática, Betancourt's party) were hunted down.
Several times we hid them at the Vera Cruz. We never closed our doors to anyone at all, never asked for any man's identification. I was only too glad to pay my tribute to these followers of Betancourt, whose régime had set me free and given me asylum. We ran the danger of losing everything, but Rita saw that there wasn't anything else we could do.
Then again, the hotel had become something of a refuge for Frenchmen in a jam-for Frenchmen who had reached Venezuela with little in their pockets and who did not know where to go. They could eat and sleep at our place without paying while they were looking for a job. Our service became so famous that in Maracaibo they called me the Frenchmen's consul.
In the course of these years something very important to me happened, something almost as important as my meeting with Rita-I renewed my ties with my family. As soon as Rita left, Tante Ju wrote to my two sisters. And all of them, both my sisters and Tante Ju, wrote to me. After twenty years the great silence was coming to an end. I trembled as I opened the first letter. Would they reject me forever, or would they…?
Victory! These letters were a cry of joy-joy at knowing I was alive, earning an honest living and married to a woman Tante Ju described with all the kindness she had felt. Not only had I found my sisters once again, but I had also found their families, who now became _my_ family.
My elder sister had four fine children, three girls and a boy. Her husband wrote himself to say that his affection had remained unaltered and that he was more than happy to know I was free and doing well. Photos and still more photos, pages and still more pages told the story of their lives and of the war and of what they had had to go through to bring up their children. I read every word, weighing and analyzing so I could understand their story thoroughly and savor all its charm.
After the great black hole of the prisons and the penal settlement my own childhood came to the surface: "My dear Riri," wrote my sister. Riri… I could hear my mother calling me and see her lovely smile. It seemed that from a photo I had sent them my family decided I was the image of my father. My sister was convinced that if I was like him physically I must be like him in personality. Her husband and she were not afraid of my turning up again. The gendarmes must have heard about Rita's journey in the Ardèche, because they had gone to ask about me, and my brother-in-law had replied, "Yes indeed, we have news of him. He's very happy and he's doing fine, thank you very much."
My other sister was in Paris, married to a Corsican lawyer. They had two sons and a daughter, and he had a good job. The same cry: "You are free, you are loved, you have a home, a good position and you are living like everybody else. Well done, little brother! My children, my husband and I bless God for having helped you to come out a winner from that terrible prison into which they threw you."
My elder sister offered to take our daughter so she could go on with her studies in France. But what warmed our hearts most was that not one of them seemed to be ashamed of having a brother who was an ex-convict who had escaped from the penal settlement.
To round off this influx of wonderful news, I managed to get hold of the address of my friend Dr. Guibert-Germain, the former doctor of the settlement, who had treated me as one of his family when I was on Royale, inviting me to his house, and protecting me from the screws. It was thanks to Dr. Guibert-Germain that the solitary confinement at Saint-Joseph was done away with; and it was thanks to him that I was able to get myself transferred to Devil's Island and escape. I wrote to him, and one day I had the immense happiness of receiving this letter:
Lyons, 21 February 1952
My dear Papillon,
We are very glad to have news of you at last. For a long while now I have felt sure you were trying to get in touch with me. When I was in Jibuti my mother told me she had received a letter from Venezuela, although she could not say exactly who had sent it. Then, very recently, she sent me the letter you wrote through Mme. Roesberg. So after a fair amount of trial we have managed to find you again. Since September 1915, when I left Royale, a good many things have happened.
… And then in October 1951 I was posted to IndoChina; I am to stay there for two years, and I leave very soon, that is to say on 6 March. This time I am going by myself. Perhaps when I am there, and according to where they send me, I may be able to arrange for my wife to come out and join me.
So you see that since the last time we met I have traveled a fair number of miles! I retain some pleasant memories of those days; but alas I have not been able to get in touch with any of the men I used to like asking to the house. For quite a long while I did hear from my cook (Ruche), who settled at Saint-Laurent; but since leaving Jibuti I have had no word. Still, we were very pleased to know that you were happy, in good health and comfortably established at last. Life is a strange thing; but I remember you never gave up hope, and indeed you were quite right.
We were delighted with the photograph of you and your wife-it shows that you have been really successful. Who knows, perhaps one day we may come and see you! Events move faster than we do. We see from the photograph that you have excellent taste: Madame seems charming, and the hotel has a very agreeable look. My dear Papillon, you must forgive me for still using this nickname; but it brings back so many memories for us!
… So there you have some idea of our doings, old fellow. We often talk about you, you may be sure, and we still remember that stirring day when Mandolini poked his nose into a place he should have left alone. * [* This was Bruet, the warder who found the raft in the grave in Papillon.]
My dear Papillon, I enclose a photograph of both of us; it was taken at Marseitle, on the Canebière, about two months ago.
And so I leave you, with all kinds of good wishes and hoping to hear from you now and then.
My wife and I send our kind regards to your wife and our best wishes to you.
A. Guibert-Germain
And following that, a few lines from Madame Guibert-Germain: "With my best compliments on your success and kindest wishes to you both for the New Year. Greetings to my protégé."
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.