скачать книгу бесплатно
Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon
Henri Charrière
The sensational sequel to ‘Papillon’.‘Banco’ continues the adventures of Henri Charriere - nicknamed Papillon - in Venezuela, where he has finally won his freedom after thirteen years of escape and imprisonment. Despite his resolve to become an honest man, Charriere is soon involved in hair-raiding exploits with goldminers, gamblers, bank-robbers and revolutionaries - robbing and being robbed, his lust for life as strong as ever. He also runs night clubs in Caracas until an earthquake ruins him in 1967 - when he decides to write the book that brings his international fame.
Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon
Henri Charrière
Copyright (#ulink_75de76ed-c473-5931-b931-bc5b72b056e6)
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1974
First published in Great Britain by Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd 1973
Copyright © Editions Robert Laffont, S. A. 1972
This translation copyright © Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd 1973
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780586040102
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780007378890
Version: 2016-02-26
To the memory of Dr Alex Guibert-Germain, to Madame Alex Guibert-Germain, to my countrymen, the Venezuelans, to my French, Spanish, Swiss, Belgian, Italian, Yugoslav, German, English, Greek, American, Turkish, Finnish, Japanese, Israeli, Swedish, Czechoslovak, Danish, Argentine, Colombian, and Brazilian friends and all those friends who are faceless but who have done me the honour of writing to me.
‘What you think of yourself matters more than what others think of you.’
(author unknown to Papillon)
Contents
Cover Page (#u7f3acdfc-3f0d-584b-be41-2b4d39817ea9)
Title Page (#u50a41d7a-1f9e-5a91-9f81-6dba761fc2f0)
Copyright (#u228ddbb3-b16c-5c8c-8524-2e329698da2b)
Dedication (#u51f32985-c4a3-5e33-b8ba-c58bb40e2434)
Translator’s Introduction (#uf3aadc12-8d17-5c53-8378-2bb27c4de07f)
1: First Steps into Freedom (#u74ab81f1-095c-5e36-89f0-dc6e10126f70)
2: The Mine (#u0718d515-8c5e-5019-89b1-8f0c92b92fb0)
3: Jojo La Passe (#ueb915a68-6eea-5870-931f-4eb47d388992)
4: Farewell to El Callao (#u2cdd043e-d4f7-5ef1-85ce-2cfd756027af)
5: Caracas (#u0b4d4139-a9dc-5952-8f9f-563ec559926e)
6: The Tunnel under the Bank (#ub19a6ae8-4ab0-515b-ad45-ff1895e3fac8)
7: Carotte: the Pawn-Shop (#ud134a81c-a457-5456-a484-26619f8f079f)
8: The Bomb (#u8bf497e6-9d0c-53ae-970a-9ae032d1b901)
9: Maracaibo: among the Indians (#u77f03365-2efd-5fa5-94bc-f664eb285f4a)
10: Rita—the Vera Cruz (#u46e52acc-5505-5ccb-b6f1-92e5f49e78cc)
11: My Father (#u17d16607-6f2e-502d-ba1f-941b24f274e2)
12: I become a Venezuelan (#u855f3c61-c757-5b57-b0e3-db8c6affe579)
13: My Childhood (#u600dd372-5ce7-55c8-817d-3aba248480ab)
14: The Revolution (#ue5d34d25-30b2-5809-8dd7-bb97dd1fd607)
15: Camarones (#u31795fe2-c83e-5605-bf33-1cd9b8e96dc3)
16: The Gorilla (#u90661396-df99-5d92-9971-36b88b19f710)
17: Montmartre—My Trial (#u68032777-0899-5767-8673-e58983214ddd)
Keep Reading (#u036be150-0392-534d-98cc-e860638eb17b)
About the Publisher (#ua412807e-ffb9-5696-9e5b-a8954eb8703b)
Translator’s Introduction (#ulink_2bc92923-287d-55e3-83c9-60be0ff6fecb)
MIDDLE-AGED, impoverished by an earthquake and worried about his future, Henri Charrière sat down to write a book to restore his fortunes: it was his first, and he called it Papillon, the name by which he had been known in the underworld of Paris and in the French penal settlements. He had no great opinion of himself as an author and he was quite willing to have it improved, cut about and put into ‘good French’; but the first publisher he sent it to happened to employ a brilliant editor who at once realized the exceptional quality of the manuscript and who delivered it to an astonished public in its original state, merely tidying up the punctuation, the spelling and a very few points of style.
That was in 1970, the year of the phénomène Papillon, a phenomenon almost unparalleled in the annals of publishing: it was not only that an extraordinary number of people read the book (850,000 copies were sold in the first few months), but that the readers embraced the whole spectrum of literary opinion, from the Académie Française to those whose lips moved slowly as they made their fascinated way through the strange adventures of an indomitable man struggling against the society that had sent him to rot in the infamous tropical prisons of Guiana with a life-sentence for a murder that he had never committed.
They were all deeply moved by the burning sense of injustice that runs right through the book and that gives it its coherence and validity, but even more by Papillon’s sheer narrative power, his innate genius for telling a story. ‘This is a literary prodigy,’ said François Mauriac. ‘It is utterly fascinating reading…This new colleague of ours is a master!’ And he pointed out that it was not enough to have been a transported convict and to have escaped again and again; extraordinary talent was required to give the book its ring of truth and to make its value ‘exactly proportional to its immense success’.
The soundness of Mauriac’s words can be seen not only from the immense quantities of hopeless manuscripts by other ex-prisoners (purple characters, but untouched by genius) that flow into publishers’ offices every week, but also by the baldness of the following summary that is intended to put the reader of this second volume into the picture: the main facts are here, but I am the first to admit that the heart of the matter is lacking.
The facts, then: in 1931 Henri Charrière, alias Papillon, was sentenced to transportation for life and he was taken away with some hundreds of others in a prison-ship bound for South America, for French Guiana. Here he found himself in an appallingly tough and savage world where corruption, terrorism, sodomy and murder were commonplace; he was well equipped for survival in this world, being as tough as any man there, perfectly loyal to his friends and perfectly uncompromising in his hatred of the official establishment, and in time he could have carved out a respectable place for himself. But he had no intention of staying; he had sworn not to serve his unjust sentence, and forty-two days after his arrival he made a break. With two companions (one broke his leg in escaping) he made his way down the Maroni river in a crazy boat; at a remote lepers’ island they changed boats and so rode out to sea, sailing under the broiling sun day after day until at last they reached Trinidad. On and on to Curaçao, where the boat was wrecked; on to Rio Hacha in Colombia, where the wind failed them and they were taken prisoner. Another break, this time with a Colombian friend, and eventually Papillon reached hostile Indian territory, alone and on foot. They took him in, gave him two wives, and then, when at last he would stay no longer, a bag of pearls. Back to Colombia, only to be arrested and imprisoned once more, and, after several abortive breaks, handed over to the French authorities. Then solitary confinement on the Île Saint-Joseph—a deeply moving account of the silence, the heat and the utter loneliness of that dim, timeless, underground cage—two years of it. When at last it was over and he was out in the light again, he began to make a raft for another break; but a fellow convict informed upon him, and having killed the informer he went back to solitary—an eight years’ sentence cut to nineteen months for rescuing a little girl from the sharks. Another attempt to escape; transfer to Devil’s Island and then the final break at last, riding two sacks of coconuts through the shark-infested sea to the mainland. A new boat and a new series of adventures brought him, by way of British Guiana (and a new wife), to Venezuela and to the Venezuelan penal settlement at El Dorado, where he was held on the charge of being a rogue and a vagabond. But a coup d’état in Caracas brought the promise of release, and the last pages of the book show Papillon, equipped with genuine papers at last, and dressed in good civilian clothes, ready to walk out into freedom after thirteen years of being in prison or on the run. That is where the present volume starts, and from now on his story is told in his own infinitely more living words.
But, before I leave Henri Charrière to tell his own story, perhaps I may be permitted to say a word about the translation. I had followed Papillon’s wild success; I had watched the splendid time the author was having (Papillon in a sledge with Brigitte Bardot, Papillon with an immense cigar and a diamond ring, Papillon in a dinner-jacket, painting Paris red) with delight and with admiration for his iron resistance; but I had been afraid that fame and wealth might alter his style and complicate my task. Not at all: as soon as I looked into Banco I recognized exactly the same voice: here and there a slightly more literary turn of phrase, here and there a literary allusion, but not the least change in the essential Papillon. So I made no alteration in the techniques I had adopted for translating his earlier book: of these the only one that seems to call for any explanation is my use of a somewhat archaic Americanized slang, particularly in the dialogue. This seemed to me the only way of rendering Papillon’s equally archaic argot; and in the few cases where even American would not quite yield the liveliness of the French, I comforted myself with the proverb from Papillon’s own country: ‘If you cannot have thrushes to eat, then you must make do with blackbirds.’
PATRICK O’BRIAN
1: First Steps into Freedom (#ulink_4ea85169-e9f4-5b3c-80f4-656d202d6737)
‘GOOD luck, Frenchman! From this moment, you’re free. Adios!’
The officer of the El Dorado penal settlement waved and turned his back.
And it was no harder than that to get rid of the chains I had been dragging behind me these thirteen years. I held Picolino by the arm and we took a few steps up the steep path from the river-bank, where the officer had left us, to the village of El Dorado. And now, sitting here in my old Spanish house on the night of 18th August 1971, to be exact, I can see myself with unbelievable clarity on that pebbly track; and not only does the officer’s voice ring in my ears in just the same way, deep and clear, but I make the same movement that I made twenty-seven years ago – I turn my head.
It is midnight: outsidé, the night is dark. And yet it’s not. For me, for me alone, the sun is shining: it’s ten o’clock in the morning and I stare at the loveliest shoulders, the loveliest back I have ever seen in my life – my gaoler’s back moving farther and farther away, symbolizing the end of the watching, the spying, the surveillance that had gone on every day, night, minute and second, never stopping for thirteen years.
A last look at the river, a last look beyond the warder at the island in the middle with the Venezuelan penal settlement on it, a last look at a hideous past that lasted thirteen years and in which I was trampled upon, degraded and ground down.
All at once pictures seemed to be forming against the mists raised from the water by the blazing tropical sun, to show me the road I had travelled these thirteen years, as though it were on a screen. I refused to watch the film; I caught Picolino by the arm, turned my back on the weird picture and led him quickly up the path, first giving myself a shake to get rid of the filth of the past for good and all.
Freedom? Yes, but where? At the far end of the world, way back in the plateaux of Venezuelan Guiana, in a little village deep in the most luxuriant virgin forest you can imagine. This was the south-east tip of Venezuela, close to the Brazilian frontier: an enormous sea of green broken only here and there by the waterfalls of the rivers and streams that ran through it – a green ocean with widely-scattered little communities with ways and customs worthy of biblical times, gathered round a chapel, where no priest even had to talk about love for all men and simplicity because that was the way they lived naturally, all the year round. Often these pueblitos are only linked to others, as remote as themselves, by a truck or two: and looking at the trucks, you wondered how they ever got so far. And in their way of life these simple, poetic people live just as people did hundreds and hundreds of years ago, free from all the taints of civilization.
When we had climbed up to the edge of the plateau where the village of El Dorado begins, we almost stopped; and then slowly, very slowly, we went on. I heard Picolino draw his breath, and like him I breathed in very deeply, drawing the air right down into the bottom of my lungs and letting it out gently, as though I were afraid of living these wonderful minutes too fast – these first minutes of freedom.
The broad plateau opened in front of us: to the right and the left, little houses, all bright and clean and surrounded by flowers. Some children had caught sight of us: they knew where we came from. They came up to us, not unfriendly at all; no, they were kind, and they walked beside us without a word. They seemed to understand how grave this moment was, and they respected it.
There was a little wooden table in front of the first house with a fat black woman selling coffee and arepas, maize cakes.
‘Good morning, lady.’
‘Buenos dias, hombres.'
‘Two coffees, please.’
‘St, señores.’ And the good fat creature poured us out two cups of delicious coffee: we drank them standing, there being no chairs.
‘What do I owe you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How come?’
‘It’s a pleasure for me to give you the first coffee of your freedom.’
‘Thank you. When’s there a bus?’
‘Today’s a holiday, so there’s no bus; but there’s a truck at eleven.’
‘Is that right? Thanks.’
A black-eyed, light-skinned girl came out of a house. ‘Come in and sit down,’ she said with a lovely smile.
We walked in and sat down with a dozen people who were drinking rum.
‘Why does your friend loll out his tongue?’
‘He’s sick.’
‘Can we do anything for him?’
‘No, nothing: he’s paralysed. He’s got to go to hospital.’
‘Who’s going to feed him?’
‘Me.’
‘Is he your brother?’
‘No; my friend.’
‘You got money, Frenchman?’
‘Very little. How did you know I was French?’
‘Everything gets known here in no time. We knew you were going to be let out yesterday: and that you escaped from Devil’s Island and that the French police are trying to catch you to put you back there again. But they won’t come and look for you here: they don’t give orders in this country. We are the ones who are going to look after you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Here, drink a shot of rum and give one to your friend.’
Now it was a woman of about thirty who took over. She was almost black. She asked me whether I was married. Yes, in France. If my parents were still alive. Only my father.
‘He’ll be glad to hear you are in Venezuela.’
‘That’s right.’
A tall dried-up white man then spoke – he had big, staring eyes, but they were kind – ’My relation didn’t know how to tell you why we are going to look after you. Well, I’ll tell you. Because unless he’s mad – and in that case there’s nothing to be done about it – a man can be sorry for what he’s done and he can turn into a good man if he’s helped. That’s why you’ll be looked after in Venezuela. Because we love other men, and with God’s help, we believe in them.’
‘What do you think I was a prisoner on Devil’s Island for?’
‘Something very serious, for sure. Maybe for having killed someone, or for a really big theft. What did you get?’
‘Penal servitude for life.’
‘The top sentence here is thirty years. How many did you do?’
‘Thirteen. But now I am free.’
