Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon Read Free

the West Indies, a few hundred bolivars * [ * A bolivar is worth about a quarter in U.S. money.] given me by my math pupils at the penal settlement, and some raw diamonds found among the tomatoes in the vegetable garden I had made.
    The girl who had told us not to pay asked me where we were going, and I told her my idea was to find a little boardinghouse.
    “Come to my place first; then you can look around.”
    We crossed the square with her, and in a couple hundred yards we reached an unpaved street lined with low houses; they were all made of baked clay, and their roofs were thatch or corrugated iron. At one of them we stopped.
    “Walk in. This house is yours,” the girl said. She must have been about eighteen.
    She made us go in first. A clean room with a floor of pounded earth; a round table; a few chairs. A man of about forty, medium height, with smooth black hair, Indian eyes, and the same light reddish-brown skin as his daughter. And three girls of about fourteen, fifteen and sixteen.
    “My father and my sisters,” she said, “here are some strangers I have brought home. They’ve come from the El Dorado prison, and they don’t know where to go. I ask you to take them in.”
    “You’re welcome,” the father said. And he repeated the ritual words, “This house is yours. Sit down here, around the table. Are you hungry? Would you like coffee or rum?”
    I didn’t want to offend them by refusing, so I said I’d like some coffee. I could see from the simple furniture that they were poor.
    “My daughter Maria, who brought you here, is the eldest. She takes the place of her mother, who left us five years ago with a gold prospector. I’d just as soon tell you that myself, before you hear it from someone else.”
    Maria poured coffee for us. Now I could look at her more closely, because she had taken a seat next to her father, right opposite me. The three sisters stood behind her. They looked closely at me, too. Maria was a girl of the tropics, with big, black, almond-shaped eyes. Her jet-black curling hair, parted in the middle, fell to her shoulders. She had fine features, and although you could detect the drop of Indian blood from the color of her skin, there was nothing Mongolian about her face. She had a sensuous mouth and splendid teeth. Every now and then she revealed the tip of a very pink tongue. She was wearing a white, flowered, wide-open blouse that showed her shoulders and the beginning of her breasts, covered by a brassiere that was visible under the blouse. This blouse, a little black skirt, and flat-heeled shoes were what she had put on for the holiday--her best. Her lips were painted bright red, and she had penciled two lines at the corners of her huge eyes to make them seem even larger.
    “This is Esmeralda [Emerald],” she said, introducing her youngest sister. “We call her that because of her green eyes. This is Conchita; and the other is Rosita, because she looks like a rose. She is much lighter than the rest of us, and she blushes at the least thing. Now you know the whole family. My father’s name is José. The five of us are the same as one, because our hearts beat all together. And what’s your name?”
    “Enrique.” *   [* Enrique is the Spanish form of Henri.]
    “Were you in prison long?”
    “Fourteen years.”
    “Poor thing. How you must have suffered.”
    “Yes, a great deal.”
    “Papa, what do you think Enrique can do here?”
    “I don’t know. Do you have a trade?”
    “No.”
    “Well then, go to the gold mine. They’ll give you a job.”
    “And what about you, José? What do you do?”
    “Me? Nothing. I don’t work--they pay you very little.”
    Well, well, well. They were poor, sure enough; yet they were quite well dressed. Stiff, I couldn’t very well ask him what he used for money--whether he stole instead of working. Wait and see, I said to myself.
    “Enrique, you’ll sleep here tonight,” Maria said. “There’s a room where my father’s brother