of animal this strange beast might be.
Minou very nearly brought about a serious clash with the Church. The Vera Cruz stood in the Calle Venezuela; our Street led to a church, and processions often went along it. Now Minou loved sitting at the hotel door to watch the people walking about. He never barked, whatever happened in the street. But although he did not bark, he did cause a sensation; and one day the priest and the choirboys belonging to a procession found themselves all alone while, fifty yards behind, the faithful of Maracaibo stood massed in front of the hotel, gazing at this extraordinary object. They had forgotten to follow the procession. Questions ran through the group, and they jostled to see Minou close up; some were of the opinion that the unknown creature might very well be the soul of a repentant sinner, since it had sat there so quietly, watching a priest and his choirboys all dressed in red go by singing heartily. At last the priest realized that things were very silent behind, and turning around he saw there was no one left. He came striding back, crimson with fury and bawling out his parishioners for their lack of respect for the ceremony. Alarmed, they fell back into line and marched off. But I noticed that some who had been most struck by the sight walked backward so as not to lose a minute of Minou. After that we kept an eye on the Maracaibo paper, _Panorama_, for the date and time when a procession should come along our street, so that we could tie him up in the patio.
It seems this was the season for incidents with the clergy. Two French girls left Eleonore's brothel and the hotel; they had made up their minds to be independent and set up a little 'house' in the center of the town where they would just work by themselves, the two of them. It was quite a good scheme, because this way the customers would not have to get their cars and drive six miles there and back to see them. To get themselves known, they had cards printed, saying 'Julie and Nana: conscientious work' and the address. They handed them out in the town; but instead of giving them directly to the men, they often slipped them under the windshield wipers of parked cars.
They had the bad luck to put two, one under each wiper, on the car belonging to the bishop of Maracaibo. This set off a hell of an explosion. To show the profane nature of their action, the paper _ La Religion _ published a picture of the card. But the bishop and the clergy were indulgent: the little brothel was not closed, and the ladies were only begged to be more discreet. Anyhow, there was no point in going on handing out the cards; after the free publicity in _ La Religion _, a very considerable number of customers hurried to the given address. Indeed, the crowd was so great that to provide a reasonable excuse for this troop of men at their door, the girls asked a hot-dog seller to wheel his cart quite close, so it would look as if the line was standing there to buy a _perro caliente_.
That was the picturesque side of life at the hotel. But we weren't living on a planet far out in space; we were living it in Venezuela, and we were involved with the country's economic and political ups and downs. In 1948 politics were not so peaceful. Gallegos and Betancourt had been governing the country since 1945, in the first attempt at a democratic regime in the history of Venezuela. On November 13, 1948, scarcely three months after I had set to work with Rita to buy the hotel, there came the first shot directed against the regime. A major called Thomas Mendoza had the nerve to stage an uprising all by himself. He failed.
On the twenty-fourth of the same month the soldiers seized power in a coup d'etat run with clockwise precision: there were almost no victims. Gallegos, the president of the republic and a distinguished writer, was forced to resign. Betancourt, a real political lion, took refuge in the Colombian embassy.
In Maracaibo we lived through hours of very tense anxiety. There was one moment when all at once we heard a passionate voice on the radio crying, 'Workers, come out into the streets! They want to steal your freedom from you, close down your unions and impose a military dictatorship by force! Everybody occupy the squares, the. -.' Click, and it went dead, the mike snatched from the brave militant's hands. Then a calm, grave voice: 'Citizens! The army has withdrawn the power from the men to whom they entrusted it after having dismissed General Medina, because they made an unworthy use of their authority. Do not be afraid: we guarantee the life and property of one and all, without exception. Long live the army! Long live the revolution!'
That was all I saw of a revolution which caused no blood to flow at all; and when we woke up next day, there was the membership of the military junta in the papers: three colonels-Delgado Chalbaud as president, Perez Jimenez and Llovera Paez.
At first, we were afraid this new regime would mean the suppression of the rights given by the former one. But nothing of the kind. Life went on just the same, and we scarcely noticed the change of government, except that the key posts were taken over by soldiers.
Then two years later came the assassination of Delgado Chalbaud. A very ugly business with two conflicting explanations. First theory: they meant to murder all three and he was just the first to be killed. Second theory: one or both of the other colonels had had him put out of the way. The truth was never known. The murderer was arrested, and he was shot and killed while he was being transferred to prison-a lucky shot that prevented any embarrassing statement. From that day on Perez Jimenez was the strong man of the regime, and he officially became dictator in 1952.
So our life went on, and although we never went out for any fun or entertainment or even a drive, this life and our eagerness to work filled us with a wonderful joy. For what we were building up by our labors was our home-to-be, the home where we would live happily, having earned it ourselves, united as two people can be only when they love one another as we did.
And into this home would come Clotilde, Rita's daughter, who would be mine, and my father, who would be theirs. And to this house my friends would come, to catch their breath awhile when they were in need. And in this home filled with happiness we would be so thoroughly contented that never again should I think of taking my revenge upon those who had caused so much suffering to me and my people.
At last the day came-we had won. In December, 1950, a beautiful document was drawn up at the lawyer's, and we became the owners of the hotel for good and all.
11 My Father
Soon thereafter Rita set off on her journey, her heart filled with hope. She was going to find out where my father had hidden himself.
'Rely on me, Henri. I'll bring you back your father.'
I was alone in the running of the hotel. I gave up selling my trousers and shirts, although I could make quite a bundle that way in a few hours. Rita had gone to look for my father, so I was going to look after everything not only as well as if she were there, but even better, twice as well.
To look for my father: my father, the schoolmaster of a village in the Ardeche, who twenty years before had been unable to embrace his own son, because of the bars in the visiting room. My father, to whom Rita would be able to say, 'I've come as your daughter to tell you that by his own efforts your son has regained his freedom, that he has made himself a life as a good and honest man, and that he and I have built up a home that is waiting for you.'
I got up at five o'clock and went shopping with Minou and a twelve-year-old boy called Carlitos, whom I had taken in when he came out of prison. He carried the baskets. In an hour and a half I'd done the buying for the whole day-meat, fish and vegetables. We both came back loaded like mules. There were two women in the kitchen, one twenty-four, the other eighteen. I dumped everything we had brought on the table and they sorted it out.
For me, the best moment in this simple life was at half past six in the morning, when I ate my breakfast in the dining room with the cook's daughter on my knee. She was four; she was coal-black, and she would not eat unless she had her breakfast with me. All these things-her little naked body, still cool from the shower her mother gave her when she got up, her little girl's piping voice, her lovely shining eyes that looked at me so trustingly, the jealous barking of my dogs, cross at being neglected, Rita's parrot pecking at its bread and milk by my coffee cup-yes, all this really made breakfast the top moment of my day.
Rita? No letter. Why? It was more than a month now that she'd been gone. The voyage took sixteen days, true enough; but after all she'd been in France for two weeks now-had she still found nothing, or did she not want to tell me? All I asked for was a cable, a very short cable just to say 'Your father is well and he loves you still.'
I watched for the postman. I never left the hotel unless I had to in order to keep it running smoothly, and I hurried over the shopping and the other business so I could be on the spot all the time. In Venezuela the people who bring telegrams have no uniform, but they are all young; so the moment any boy walked into the patio I hurried toward him, my eyes fixed on his hands to see if he was carrying a green paper. Not a thing. Most of the time they weren't even telegraph boys, except on two or three occasions when some young fellow did appear with a green slip in his hand: I'd rush out, snatch the telegram and then see with a sinking heart that it was addressed to someone staying at the hotel.
The waiting and lack of news put me on edge. I worked till I dropped; to keep busy, I helped in the kitchen, I worked out extraordinary menus, I checked the rooms twice a day, I talked to the guests about no matter what and listened to whatever they had to say. The only thing that mattered was filling up these hours and days of waiting. There was only one thing I couldn't do-take a hand in the poker game that started up about two o'clock every night.
There was only one really serious hitch. Carlitos got things wrong. Instead of buying paraffin for cleaning the kitchen, he bought gasoline. The cooks swilled the concrete floor with a good deal of it and then, never suspecting a thing, they lit the stove. The whole kitchen blazed up vividly and the two sisters were burned from foot to belly. I barely had time to wrap a tablecloth round Rosa 's little black girl and save her-not a second to spare. She was almost unhurt, but the other two were badly burned. I had them looked after in their room in the hotel and engaged a Panamanian cook.
Life in the hotel carried on as usual, but I began to be seriously worried about Rita's silence and her not being there.
Fifty-seven days she had been gone by the time I found myself waiting for her at the airport. Why just that simple telegram- 'ARRIVE TUESDAY 15.30 FLIGHT 705. LOVE RITA'? Why nothing more? Had she not found anyone? I couldn't tell what to think anymore, and I didn't want to make any more guesses.
Then there she was, my Rita. She was the fifth coming down the gangway. She saw me right away and we both waved at the same moment. She came toward me, just as usual. From forty yards I searched her face: she was not laughing, just smiling; no, she hadn't waved as a sign of joy and victory but just naturally, to show she'd seen me. At ten yards I saw she'd come back beaten.
'Did you find my father?'
The question hit her point-blank, after no more than a kiss, a single kiss after two months of separation. I couldn't wait any longer.
Yes, she had found him. He was lying in the graveyard of a little village in the Ardeche.
She showed me a photograph. A well-made cement tomb with 'J. Charriere' on it. He had died four months before she got there. And all Rita brought me back was this picture of his grave.
My heart, which had seen Rita go off so full of hope, almost stopped at this appalling news. I felt the collapse of all those illusions I had had as a man who still sees himself as a little boy for his father. God, not only have You struck the whole of my youth but You have also refused to let me embrace my father and to hear his voice, which would have said, I am certain of it, 'Come to my arms, my little Riri. Fate has been unmerciful to you but I love you still; I am proud that you have had the strength to become what you are.' Over and over again Rita told me the little she had been able to find out about my father's life after I was sentenced. I said nothing; something inside me was tied into a furious knot. And then all at once, as though a sluice had burst open, the idea of revenge came over me again. 'Pigs, I'll set off that trunk of dynamite at thirty-six, quai des Orfevres, not just to kill a few but to get as many as possible-a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, a thousand! And you, Goldstein, you perjurer, believe me, you'll get what's coming to you, every last bit of it. As for you, prosecuting counsel, so eager to put me away, it won't take me long
