to find a way of getting hold of your tongue and tearing it out, to cause as much agony as you can suffer!
'Rita, we must part. Try to understand: they prevented me from embracing my father and having his forgiveness. I must have my revenge; they can't get away with this. I know where to find the money for the journey and to carry out my plan. All I ask is that you let me take five thousand bolIvars out of our saving for my first expenses.'
An interminable silence settled; I no longer saw Rita; her face disappeared behind the unfolding vision of the plan I had worked out so often.
What did I need to put it into action? Less than two hundred thousand bolivars, in fact. I'd asked too much before. I'd have plenty to spare with these sixty thousand dollars. There were two jobs I'd left alone out of respect for this country. First, El Callao with its heap of gold guarded by ex-cons. Then right in the middle of Caracas, the cashier of a big firm. He was a pushover: he carried large sums of money without an escort. The entrance to the building was perfect; so was the fourth-floor corridor: both were badly lit. I could work alone, unarmed, with chloroform.
As for the getaway, that would have to be through British Guiana. I'd get to Georgetown with just a little gold melted down into nuggets-easy enough with a blowtorch. I'd be certain of finding a buyer for the lot. The fence and I would carry out the deal on the basis of notes cut in two; he'd keep one half and only give it to me when I delivered the goods on the British side of the Caroni, where I would have the stuff hidden. That way, there would be confidence all round.
Transfer the dough to Buenos Aires through a bank; carry a certain amount in notes; take a plane from Trinidad to Rio de Janeiro. At Rio, change passports and get into Argentina.
No problem there. I had friends in Rio, ex-cons; and it must be easy to find former Nazis with their trunks full of papers. Leave for Portugal from Buenos Aires with four sets of passports and identity papers-different nationalities but all in the same name to avoid confusion.
From Lisbon, take the road into Spain and reach Barcelona; still traveling by road, into France on a Paraguayan passport. I spoke Spanish well enough by now for an inquisitive French gendarme to take me for a South American.
In Paris I'd stay at the Georges V. Never go out at night: have dinner at the hotel and send for tea in my suite at ten. The same thing every day of the week. That's the hallmark of a serious man who leads an exactly regulated life. In a hotel such things get noticed right away.
I'd have a moustache, of course, and hair cut _en brosse_, like an officer. Only say what was strictly necessary and use a Spanish sort of French to say it. Have Spanish newspapers put in my pigeonhole at the reception desk every day.
Thousands and thousands of times I'd considered which man or men to begin with, so that the three jobs would never be connected with Papillon.
The first to get their deserts would be the pigs, with the trunk stuffed with explosives at 36, quai des Orfevres. There would be no reason to think of me if I did it cleverly. To begin with I'd have a look at the premises and check the exact time it took to go up the stairs to the report room and then get back to the entrance. I didn't need anyone to work out the fuse for the detonator; I'd make all the necessary experiments at the FrancoVenezuelan garage.
I'd turn up in a van with MAISON SO-AND-SO: OFFICE EQUIPMENT painted on it. Dressed as a delivery man, with my little crate on my shoulder, I should get away with it easily. But when I first went over the place I'd have to find some inspector's card on a door or else manage to get hold of the name of an important character with his office on that floor. Then I could say the name to the pigs on duty at the door; or indeed I could show them the invoice, as if I didn't remember who the trunk was for. And then all aboard for the fireworks. It would take diabolical bad luck for anyone to connect the explosion-a sort of anarchist's job, after all-with Papillon.
Thus the prosecutor Pradel would remain unsuspecting. To cope with him, and to prepare the trunk, the fuse, the explosives and the bits of old iron, I'd take a villa, using my Paraguayan passport if I hadn't managed to get hold of a French identity card. I was afraid it might be too dangerous to get into contact with the underworld again. Better not risk it: I'd make out with the passport.
The villa would be near Paris, somewhere along the Seine, because I'd have to be able to get there by water and by road. I'd buy a light, fast little boat with a cabin, and it would have moorings right by the villa and on the banks of the Seine in the middle of Paris, too. For the road, I'd have a small, high-powered car. It was only when I got there, when I knew where Pradel lived and worked and where he spent his weekends and whether he took the Metro, the bus, a taxi or his own car, that I'd take the necessary steps to kidnap him and shut him up in the villa.
The main thing was to make dead sure of the times and the places he was alone. Once he was in my cellar, I had him on toast. This prosecutor who, way back in 1931, at the trial, had seemed to say to me, with his vulture look, 'You won't escape from me, young cock; I'm going to make use of everything that can look bad for you, all this ugly muck in your file, so the jury will turn you out of society for good and all'-this prosecutor, who had used all his abilities and all his education to paint the vilest and most hopeless picture of a boy of twenty-four, and with such success that the twelve incompetent bastard jurymen sent me to hard labor for life-this prosecutor I'd have to torture for at least a week before he died. And at that he wouldn't have paid too dear.
The last to pay the bill would be Goldstein, the perjurer. I'd take him last, since he Was the most dangerous for me. Because once I'd killed him, they'd look back over his life, and the pigs were not always half-wits-they'd soon see the part he had played in my trial. And as they'd know right away that I was on the run, it wouldn't take them long to figure out there might be a Papillon fluttering about in the Paris air. At that point everything-hotels, streets, stations, ports and airfields-would become extremely dangerous for me. I'd have to make my getaway quickly.
It would be easy enough to pinpoint and follow him, because of his father's fur shop. There were several ways of killing him, but whichever way I chose, I wanted him to recognize me before he died. If possible, I'd do what I had so often dreamed of doing-strangle him slowly with my bare hands, saying, 'Sometimes the dead come to life again. You didn't expect that, brother? You didn't expect my hands to kill you? Still, you win, because you're going to die in a few minutes, whereas you sent me down to rot slowly all my life until I died of it.'
I couldn't tell whether I'd manage to get out of France, because once Goldstein was dead things would be very dangerous. It was almost certain they would identify me, but I didn't give a damn. Even if I had to die for it, they must pay for my father's death. I'd have forgiven them for my suffering. But the fact that my father should have died without my being able to tell him his boy was alive and had gone straight; the fact that maybe he had died of shame, hiding from all his old friends, and that he should have lain in his grave without knowing what I was now-that, no, no, no! That I could never forgive!
During the very long silence while I went through every step of the action again to see there was no hitch anywhere, Rita had been sitting at my feet, with her head leaning against my knee. Not a word, not a sound; she almost seemed to be holding her breath.
'Rita, sweetheart, I leave tomorrow.'
'You can't go.' She stood up, put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. She went on, 'You must not go: you can't go. There's something new for me, too. I took advantage of my journey to send for my daughter. She'll be here in a few days. You know perfectly well the reason I didn't have her with me was that I needed a settled place for her. Now I've got one, and she'll have a father, too-you. Are you going to spoil everything we've built up with the love and trust between us? Do you think killing the men who were responsible for your sufferings and perhaps for your father's death is really the only thing to do when you compare it with what we have?
'Henri, for my sake and for the sake of this girl who is coming to you, and who I am sure will love you, I ask you to give up your idea of revenge forever. If your father could speak, do you think he would approve of your idea of revenge? No. He'd tell you that neither the cops nor the false witness nor the prosecutor nor what you call the jurymen nor the wardens were worth your sacrificing a wife who loves you and whom you love, and my daughter who hopes to find a father in you, and your good, comfortable home, and your honest life.
'I'll tell you how I see your revenge: it's this-that our family should be a symbol of happiness for everybody; that with your intelligence and my help, we should succeed in life by honest means; and that when the people of this country talk about you not one would say anything but this-the Frenchman is straight and honest, a good man whose word is his bond. That's what your revenge ought to be; the revenge of proving to them all that they were terribly mistaken about you; of proving that you managed to come through the horrors of prison unspoiled and to become a fine character. That is the only revenge worthy of the love and the trust I have placed in you.'
She had won. All night we talked, and I learned to drain the cup to the dregs. But I could not resist the temptation of knowing every last detail of Rita's journey. She lay on a big sofa, exhausted by the failure of this long voyage and by her struggle with me. Sitting there on the edge of it, I leaned over her, questioning her again and again and again, and little by little I dragged out everything she had meant to hide.
At the very beginning, after she left Maracaibo for the port of Caracas, where she was to take the boat, she had a foreboding that she was going to fail: everything seemed to conspire to prevent her from leaving for France. Just as she was boarding the _Colombie_ she noticed she was missing one of the necessary visas. A race against time to get it in Caracas, tearing along that dangerous little road I knew so well. Back to the port with the paper in her bag and her heart beating for fear the boat should leave before she got there. Then a terrible storm broke out, bringing landslides down over the road. It became so dangerous that the driver lost his head and turned back, leaving Rita there alone in the storm by the side of the road, among the landslides. She walked nearly two miles in the downpour and then by a miracle found a taxi that was returning to Caracas; but at the sight of the landslides it turned back for the port. And from the port she could hear ships' sirens. In her panic she was sure it was the _Colombie_ leaving.
Then when she reached her cabin at last, weeping with joy, there was some accident aboard and the ship could not leave for several hours. All this gave her a very uneasy feeling, as if the events were expressions of fate.
Then the ocean: Le Havre, Paris, and without a stop, Marseille, where she stayed with a woman she knew, who introduced her to a municipal councilor, who wrote her a cordial letter to a friend of his called Henri Champel, who lived at Vals-les-Bains in the Ardeche.
Then the train and the bus again, and it was not until she reached these wonderfully kind Champels that Rita could draw breath and begin to organize her search. Even then she was not at the end of her difficulties.
Henri Champel took her to Aubenas, in the Ardeche, where Maitre Testud, the family lawyer, lived. Ah, that Testud! A heartless bourgeois. In the first place he told her my father was dead-just right out, like that. Then on his own initiative, without consulting anyone, he forbade her to go and see my father's sister and her husband, my uncle and aunt Dumarche, retired teachers who lived in Aubenas. Many years later they welcomed us with open arms, indignant at the thought that because of this wretched Testud they had not been able to put Rita up and so to get in touch with me again. The same thing with my sisters: Testud refused to give their address. Still, Rita did manage to get this stony heart to tell her where my father had died-Saint-Peray.
The journey to Saint-Peray. There Henri Champel and Rita found my father's grave and learned something else as well. After having been a widower for twenty years he had married again-a retired schoolmistress-when I was still in the penal settlement. They found her. The family called her Tante Ju, or sometimes Tata Ju.
A fine woman, said Rita, and with such a noble character that she had kept the memory of my mother alive in this new home. In the dining room Rita had seen big photographs of my mother, whom I worshipped, and of my father. She had been able to touch and fondle objects that had belonged to her. Tante Ju, who now suddenly came into my life-although at the same time I felt I already knew her-had done all she could to let Rita feel the atmosphere she and my father had wanted to
