Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon by Henri Charrière Page A

her glass of anisette in her hand. When I put mine to my lips, she raised hers, too, but only to hide the fact that she was talking to me. “It was better him than you,” she said. “Now you can go wherever you want in peace.”
    “What do you mean, in peace?”
    “Because everybody knows you always sold your winnings to the Lebanese.”
    “Yes, but suppose the Lebanese is killed?”
    “That’s true. One more problem.”
    I told Doña Carmencita the drinks were on me and walked off by myself, leaving my friends sitting there. Without really knowing why, I took the path that led to what they called the graveyard, a piece of cleared ground of about fifty square yards.
    Eight graves there in the cemetery: Jojo’s was the latest. And there in front of it stood Mustafa. I went over to him. “What are you doing, Mustafa?”
    “I’ve come to pray for an old friend--I was fond of him--and to bring him a cross. You forgot to make one.”
    Hell, so I had! I’d never thought of it. I shook the good old Arab’s hand and thanked him.
    “You’re not a Christian?” he asked. “I didn’t see you pray when they threw the earth on him.”
    “Well, I mean... there’s certainly a God, Mustafa,” I said, to please him. “And what’s more, I thank Him for having looked after me instead of sending me away forever, along with Jojo. And I do more than say prayers for this old man; I forgive him: he was a poor little kid from the Belleville slums, and he was able to learn just one profession--shooting craps.”
    “What are you talking about, brother? I don’t understand.”
    “It doesn’t matter. But remember this: I’m really sorry he’s dead. I did try to save him. But no one should ever think he’s brighter than the rest, because one day he’ll find a man who moves faster than him. Jojo is fine here. He’ll sleep forever with what he loved, adventure and the wild landscape; and he’ll sleep with God’s forgiveness.”
    “Yes, God will forgive him for sure, because he was a good man.”
    “That’s a fact.”
    I walked slowly back to the village. It was true that I did not feel resentful toward Jojo, although he had very nearly been the death of me. His enthusiasm, his prodigious energy, and, in spite of his sixty years, his youth, and his underworld good breeding-- “Behave properly, God almighty, behave properly!” And then I’d been warned. I’d willingly send up a little prayer to thank José for his advice. Without him I shouldn’t be here.
    Swinging gently in my hammock and smoking fat cigar after fat cigar, as much to soak myself in nicotine as to chase the mosquitoes away, I took stock of my accounts.
    Right. I had ten thousand dollars after only a few months of freedom. And both here and at El Callao I had met men and women of all races and backgrounds, every one of them full of human warmth. Because of them and this life in the wild, in this atmosphere so unlike that of the city, I’d come to know how wonderful freedom was, the freedom I’d fought for so hard.
    Then again the war had come to an end, thanks to Charlie de Gaulle and the Yankees, and in all this churning about of millions of people, a convict didn’t amount to much. So much the better for me: with all these problems to settle, they would have other things to do besides worrying about what I had been.
    I was thirty-nine: fourteen years of penal settlement, fifty-three months of solitary confinement, counting the Sante, the Conciergerie and Beaulieu as well as the prison on the island, the Réciusion. It was hard to put a label on me. I wasn’t a poor bastard only capable of working with a pick or a shovel or an ax; nor did I have a real trade that would let me earn a decent living anywhere in the world, as a mechanic or an electrician, say. On the other hand, I couldn’t take on important responsibilities; I hadn’t enough education for that. While you’re in school you should always learn a good manual trade; then if school goes