2 The Mine
A week later, thanks to the letter that Prosperi, the Corsican grocer, wrote for me, I was taken on at the Mocupia mine. There I was, looking after the working of the pumps that sucked up the water from the shafts.
The mine looked like a coal pit, with its underground galleries. There were no veins of gold and very few nuggets. The gold was found in very hard rock; they blasted this rock with dynamite and then broke the oversized lumps with a sledgehammer. The pieces were put into trucks, and the trucks brought to the surface in elevators; then crushers reduced the rock to a powder finer than sand. This was mixed with water, making a liquid mud that was pumped up into tanks as big as the reservoirs in an oil refinery. These tanks had cyanide in them. The gold dissolved into a liquid heavier than the rest and sank to the bottom. Under heat, the cyanide evaporated, carrying off the particles of gold; they solidified and were caught by filters very like combs as they went past. Then the gold was collected, melted into bars, carefully checked for 24-carat purity and put into a strictly guarded store. But who did the guarding? I still can't get over it. Simon, no less, the crook who had made his break from the penal colony with Big Charlot.
When my work was over, I went to gaze at the sight. I went to the store and stared at the huge pile of gold ingots neatly lined up by Simon, the ex-convict. Not even a strongroom, just a concrete storehouse with walls no thicker than usual, and a wooden door.
'Everything okay, Simon?'
'Okay. And what about you, Papi? Happy at Charlot's?'
'Yes, I'm fine.'
'I never knew you were in El Dorado. Otherwise I'd have come to get you Out.'
'That's a good guy. Are you happy here?'
'Well, you know, I have a house: it's not as big as Charlot's, but it's made of bricks and mortar. I built it myself. And I've got a young wife, very sweet. And two little girls. Come and see me whenever you like-my house is yours. Charlot tells me your friend is sick; my wife knows how to give injections, so if you need her don't hesitate.'
We talked. He, too, was thoroughly happy. He, too, never spoke of France, of Montmartre, though he had lived there. Just like Charlot. The only thing that mattered was the present-wife, children, the house. He told me he earned twenty bolIvars a day. Fortunately their hens gave them eggs for their omelettes, and the chickens were on the house; otherwise they wouldn't have gone far on twenty bolivars, Simon and his brood.
I gazed at that mass of gold lying there, so carelessly stored behind a wooden door, and the four walls only a foot thick. A door that two heaves on a jimmy would open without a sound. This heap of gold, at three boilvars fifty a gram or thirty-five dollars an ounce, would easily add up to three million five hundred thousand boilvars, or almost a million dollars. And this unbelievable fortune was within hand's reach! Knocking it off would be almost child's play.
'Elegant, my neat pile of ingots? Eh, Papillon?'
'It'd be more elegant still well salted away. Christ, what a fortune!'
'Maybe, but it's not ours. It's holy, on account of they've entrusted it to me.'
'Entrusted it to you, sure; but not to me. You must admit it's tempting to see something like that just lying about.'
'It's not just lying about, because I'm looking after it.'
'Maybe. But you aren't here twenty-four hours a day.'
'No. Only from six at night to six in the morning. But during the day there's another guard: maybe you know him-Alexandre, of the forged postal orders.'
'Yes, I know him. Well, I'll see you later, Simon. Say hello to your family for me.'
'You'll come and visit us?'
'Sure. I'd like to. _Ciao_.'
I left quickly, as quickly as I could to get away from this scene of temptation. It was unbelievable! Anyone would say they were yearning to be robbed, the guys in charge of this mine. A store that could hardly hold itself upright, and two onetime high-ranking crooks taking care of all that treasure! In all my life on the loose I'd never seen anything like it!
Slowly I walked up the winding path to the village. I had to go right through it to reach the headland where Charlot's chateau was. I dawdled; the eight-hour day had been tough. In the second gallery there had been precious little air, and even that was hot and wet, in spite of the ventilators. My pumps had stopped sucking three or four times and I had had to set them right again. It was half past eight now, and I had gone down the mine at noon. I'd earned eighteen boilvars. If I had had a workingman's mind, that wouldn't have been so bad. Meat was 2.50 bolIvars per kilo; sugar 0.70; coffee 2. Vegetables weren't dear either: 0.50 for a kilo of rice and the same for dried beans. You could live cheaply, that was true. But did I have the sense to put up with this kind of life?
In spite of myself, as I climbed the stony path, walking easily in the heavy nailed boots they had given me at the mine-in spite of myself, and although I did my best not to think about it, I kept seeing that million dollars in gold bars just calling out for some enterprising hand to grab it. At night, it wouldn't be hard to jump Simon and chloroform him without being recognized. And then the whole thing was in the bag, because they carried their fecklessness to the point of leaving him the key to the store so he could take shelter if it rained. Criminal irresponsibility! All I'd have to do then was carry the two hundred ingots out of the mine and load them into something-a truck or a cart. I'd have to prepare several caches in the forest, all along the road, to salt the ingots away in little bundles of a hundred kilos each. If it was a truck, then once it was unloaded I'd have to carry on as far as possible, pick the deepest place in the river and toss it in. A cart? There were plenty in the village square. The horse? That would be harder to find, but not impossible. A night of very heavy rain would give me all the time I needed for the job, and it might even let me get back to the house and go to bed meek as a monk.
By the time I reached the lights of the village square, I had already brought the heist off in my mind, and was slipping into the sheets of Big Charlot's bed.
'_Buenos noches_,' called a group of men sitting at the village bar.
'Hello there, one and all. Good night, _hombres_.'
'Come and join us for a while. Have an iced beer.'
It would have been rude to refuse, so there I was sitting among those good souls, most of them miners, who wanted to know whether I was all right, whether I'd found a woman, whether Conchita was looking after Picolino properly, and whether I needed money for medicine or anything else. These generous, spontaneous offers brought me back to earth. A gold prospector said that if I didn't care for the mine and if I only wanted to work when I felt like it I could go off with him. 'It's tough going, but you make more. And then there's always the possibility you'll be rich in a single day.' I thanked them all and offered to stand a round.
'No, Frenchman, you're our guest. Another time, when you're rich. God be with you.'
I went on toward the chateau. Yes, it would be easy enough to turn into a humble, honest man among all these people who lived on so little, who were happy with almost nothing, and who adopted a man without worrying where he came from or what he had been.
Conchita welcomed me back. She was alone. CharIot was at the mine-so when I left for work he'd be coming back. Conchita was full of fun and kindness; she gave me a pair of slippers so I could rest my feet after the heavy boots.
'Your friend's asleep. He ate well and I've sent off a letter asking them to take him into the hospital at Tumereno, a little town not far off, bigger than this.'
I thanked her and ate the hot meal that was waiting for me. This welcome, so homely, simple and happy, made me relax; it gave me the peace of mind I needed after the temptation of that ton of gold. The door opened.
'Good evening, everybody.' Two girls came into the room, just as if they were at home.
'Good evening,' Conchita said. 'Here are two friends of mine, Papillon.'
One was dark, tall and slim; she was called Graciela and was very much the gypsy type, her father being a Spaniard. The other girl's name was Mercedes. Her grandfather was a German, which explained her fair skin and very fine blond hair. Graciela had black Andalusian eyes with a touch of tropical fire; Mercedes' were green and suddenly reminded me of Lali, the Goajira Indian. Lali… Lali and her sister Zoralma: what had become of them? It was 1946 now, and twelve years had gone by, but in spite of all those years I felt a pain in my heart when I remembered those two lovely creatures. Since those days they must have made themselves a fresh life with men of their own race, and honestly I had no right to disturb their new existence.
'Your friends are terrific, Conchita! Thank you very much for introducing me to them.'
I gathered they were both free and neither had a fiance. In such good company the evening went by in a flash. Conchita and I walked them back to the edge of the village, and it seemed to me they leaned very heavily on my arms. On the way back Conchita told me both the girls liked me, the one as much as the other, 'Which do you like best?' she asked.
'They are both charming, Conchita; but I don't want any complications.'
'You call making love complications? Love, it's the same as eating and drinking. You think you can live without eating and drinking? When I don't make love I feel really ill, although I'm already twenty-two. They are only sixteen and seventeen, so just think what it must be for them. If they don't take pleasure in their bodies, they'll die.'
'And what about their parents?'
She told me, just as Jose had done, that the daughters of the ordinary people loved just to be loved. They gave themselves to the man they liked spontaneously, wholly, without asking anything in exchange except the thrill.
'I understand you, poppet. I'm willing as the next man to make love for love's sake. Only you tell your friends that an affair doesn't bind me in any way at all. Once they're warned, it's another matter.'
Dear Lord above! It wasn't going to be easy to get away from an atmosphere like this. Charlot, Simon, Alexandre and no doubt a good many others had been positively bewitched. I saw why they were so thoroughly happy among these cheerful people, so different from ours. I went to bed.
'Get up, Papi! It's ten o'clock. And there's someone to see you.'
'Good morning, Monsieur.' A graying man of about fifty; no hat; candid eyes; bushy eyebrows. He held out his hand. 'I'm Dr. Bougrat. * [* The hero of a well- known criminal affair in Marseille during the twenties. A dead man was found in a cupboard in his consulting room. Bougrat pleaded professional error in the amount of an injection. The court said it was murder. They gave him a life sentence, but he soon escaped from Devil's Island and made himself a new life in Venezuela.] I came because they told me one of you is sick. I've had a look at your friend, and there's nothing to be done unless he goes into the hospital at Caracas. It'll be a tough job to cure him.'
