'You'll have supper with us, Doctor?' Charlot asked.
'I'd like to. Thanks.'
Anisette was poured out, and as he drank Bougrat said to me, 'Well, Papillon, and how are you getting along?'
'As a matter of fact, Doctor, I'm taking my first steps in life. I feel as if I'd just been born. Or rather as if I'd lost my way like a boy. I can't make out the road I ought to follow.'
'The road's clear enough. Look around and you'll see. Except for one or two exceptions, all our old companions have gone straight. I've been in Venezuela since 1928. Not one of the convicts I've known has committed a crime since being in this country. They are almost all married, with children, and they live honestly, accepted by the community. They've forgotten the past so completely that some of them couldn't tell you the details of the job that sent them down. It's all very far away, buried in a misty past that doesn't matter.'
'Maybe it's different for me, Doctor. I have a pretty long bill to present to the people who sent me down against all justice-. fourteen years of struggle and suffering. To see the bill is paid, I have to go back to France; and for that I need a lot of money. It's not by working as a laborer that I'm going to save up enough for the voyage out and back-if there is any return.'
'And do you think you're the only one of us with an account to settle? Just you listen to the story of a boy I know. George Dubois is his name. A kid from the slums of La Villette- alcoholic father, often locked up with the dt's, the mother with six children: she was so poor she went around the North African bars looking for customers. Jojo, they called him; and he'd been going from one reformatory to the next since he was eight. He started by knocking off fruit outside shops-did it several times. First a few terms in the Abbe Rollet's homes, then, when he was twelve, he got a tough stretch in a really hard reformatory. I don't have to tell you that the fourteen-year- old Jojo, surrounded by young fellows of eighteen, had to look out for his ass. He was a puny kid, so there was only one way of defending himself-a knife. One of these perverted little thugs got a stab in the belly, and the authorities sent Jojo to Esse, the toughest reformatory of the lot, the one for hopeless cases. Until the age of twenty-one. Then they gave him his marching orders for the African disciplinary battalions, because with a past like his, he wasn't allowed into the ordinary army. They handed him the few francs he had earned and farewell, adieu! The trouble was that this boy had a heart. Maybe it had hardened, but it still had some sensitive corners. At the station he saw a train destined for Paris. It was as if a switch had been triggered inside him. He jumped in double quick, and there he was in Paris. It was raining when he walked out of the station. He stood under a shelter, figuring out how he would get to La Villette. Under this same shelter there was a girl who was also keeping out of the rain. She gave him a pleasant sort of look. All he knew about women was the chief warden's fat wife at Esse and what the bigger boys at the reformatory had told him-more or less true. No one had ever looked at him like this girl. They began to talk.
''Where do you come from?'
''The country.'
''I like you, boy. Why don't we go to a hotel? I'll be nice to you and we'll be warm.'
'Jojo was all stirred up. To him this chick seemed something wonderful-and what's more her gentle hand touched his. Discovering love was a fantastic, shattering experience for him. The girl was young and very amorous. When they had made love until they could no more, they sat on the bed to smoke, and the chick said to him, 'Is this the first time you've been to bed with a girl?'
''Yes,' he confessed.
''Why did you wait so long?'
''I was in a reformatory.'
''A long time?'
''Very long.'
''I was in one too. I escaped.'
''How old are you?' Jojo asked.
''Sixteen.'
''Where are you from?'
''La Villette.'
''What Street?'
''Rue de Rouen.'
'So was Jojo. He was afraid to understand. 'What's your name?' he cried.
''Ginette Dubois.'
'It was his sister. They were completely overwhelmed and they both began to cry with shame and wretchedness. Then each described the road they had traveled. Ginette and her other sisters had had the same kind of life as Jojo-homes and reformatories. Their mother had just come out of a sanatorium. The eldest sister was working in a brothel for North Africans in La Villette- hard labor. They decided to go and see her.
'They had scarcely left the hotel before a pig in uniform called out to the chick, 'Now you little tart, didn't I tell you not to come soliciting on my beat?' And he came toward them. 'This time I'll run you in, you dirty little whore.'
'It was too much for Jojo. After everything that had just happened, he no longer really knew what he was doing. He brought out a switchblade he had bought for the army and shoved it into the pig's chest. He was arrested, and twelve 'qualified' jurymen condemned him to death. He was reprieved by the President of the Republic and sent to the penal settlement.
'Well now, Papillon, he escaped and at present he's living at Cumana, a fair-sized port. He's a shoemaker, he's married, and he has nine children, all well cared for and all going to school. Indeed, one of the eider children has been at the university this last year. Every time I'm in Cumana I go and see them. That's a pretty good example, eh? Yet believe you me, he, too, had a long bill to present to society. You're no exception, Papilion. Plenty of us have reasons for revenge. But as far as I know, not one of us has left this country to take it. I trust you, Papilion. Since you like the idea of Caracas, go there; but I hope you'll have the sense to live the city life without falling into any of its traps.'
Bougrat left very late that afternoon. My ideas were in a turmoil afterward. Why had he made such an impression on me? Easy to see why. During these first days of freedom I had met convicts who were happy and readjusted but leading lives that weren't the least bit extraordinary. It was a prudent, very modest kind of life. Their position was lowly-they were workmen or peasants. Bougrat was different. For the first time I had seen an ex-con who was now a monsieur, a gentleman. That was what had made my heart thump. Would I be a monsieur, too? Could I become one? For him, as a doctor, it had been comparatively easy. It would be harder for me, maybe; but even if I didn't yet know how to set about it, I was sure that one day I was going to be a monsieur, too.
Sitting on my bench at the bottom of the second gallery the next day, I watched my pumps; they had run without a hitch. The thoughts ran pell-mell through my head. 'Papillon, I trust you.' But could I put up with living like my companions? I didn't think so. After all, there were plenty of other ways of getting enough money honestly. I wasn't forced to accept a life that was too small for me. I could carry on as an adventurer-I could prospect for gold or diamonds, vanish into the bush and come out some day with enough to set me up in the kind of position I was after.
At eight o'clock the hoist brought me up to the surface. I took the long way around so as not to go by the storehouse. The less I saw of it, the better. I passed quickly through the village, greeting people and saying sorry to the ones who wanted me to stop- I was in a hurry, and I climbed fast to the house. Conchita was waiting for me, as black and cheerful as ever.
'Well, Papillon, and how are you doing? Charlot told me to pour you out a stiff anisette before dinner. He said you looked as though you had problems. What's wrong, Papi? You can tell me, your friend's wife, Would you like me to fetch Graciela for you, or maybe Mercedes if you like her better? Don't you think that would be a good idea?'
'Conchita, you're my little black pearl of El Callao, you're wonderful, and I see why Charlot worships you. Maybe you're right: maybe to set me up I need a girl beside me.'
'That's for sure. Unless it's Charlot who was right.'
'How do you mean?'
'Well, I was saying what you needed was to love and be loved. And he told me to hold on before I put a girl in your bed-perhaps it was something else.'
'How do you mean, something else?'
She hesitated for a moment and then blurted, 'I don't care if you do tell Charlot; but he'll box my ears.'
'I won't tell him anything. I promise.'
'Well, Charlot says you aren't built for the same kind of life as he and the other Frenchmen here.'
'What else? Come on, Conchita, tell me the lot.'
'And he said you must be thinking that there's too much useless gold lying about at the mine and that you'd find something better to do with it. There! And he went on that you aren't the sort that can live without spending a lot; and that you had a revenge you couldn't give up and for that you wanted a great deal of money.'
I looked her straight in the eye. 'Well, Conchita, your Charlot got it wrong, wrong, wrong. You're the one who was right. As for my future-no problem at all. You guessed it: what I want is a woman to love. I didn't like to say so, on account of I'm rather shy.'
'That I don't believe, Papillon.'
'Okay. Go and fetch the blonde, and just you see if I'm not happy when I have a girl of my own.'
'I'm on my way,' she said, going into the bedroom to change her dress. 'Oh, that Mercedes, how happy she will be!' she called. Before she had time to come back there was a knock at the door. 'Come in,' Conchita said. The door opened and there was Maria, looking a trifle confused.
'You, Maria, at this time of night? What a marvelous surprise! Conchita, this is Maria, the girl who took me in when Picolino and I first landed up in El Callao.'
'Let me kiss you,' Conchita said. 'You're as pretty as Papillon said you were.'
'Who's Papillon?'
'That's me. Enrique or Papillon, it's all one. Sit down by me on the divan and tell me everything.'
Conchita gave a knowing laugh. 'I don't think it's worth my while going out now,' she said.
Maria stayed all night. As a lover she was shy, but she reacted to the slightest caress. I was her first man. Now she was sleeping. The two candles I had lit instead of the raw electric light were guttering. Their faint glow showed the beauty of her young body even better, and her breasts still marked by our embrace. Gently I got up to make myself some coffee and to see what time it was. Four o'clock. I knocked over a saucepan and woke Conchita. She came out of her room, wearing a dressing
