LITMIR.BIZ

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love almost in the street. And yet nobody would lift a corner of the canvas or peer between the planks to see what was going on inside. Everybody had the utmost respect for others’ privacy. If you wanted to go and see anyone, you never went nearer than a couple of yards before calling out, by way of ringing the bell, ‘Is there anyone at home?’ If there was and he didn’t know you, you said, ‘Gentes de paz,’ the same as saying I’m a friend. Then someone would appear and say politely, ‘Adelante. Esta casa es suya.’ Come in; this house is yours.

      A table in front of a solid hut made of well-fitting logs. On the table, necklaces of real pearls from Margarita Island, some nuggets of virgin gold, a few watches, leather or expanding metal watch-straps, and a good many alarm-clocks. Mustafa’s jewellery shop.

      Behind the table, there was an old Arab with a pleasant face. We talked a while: he was a Moroccan and he’d seen I was French. It was five in the afternoon, and he said to me, ‘Have you eaten?’

      ‘Not yet.’

      ‘Nor have I. I was just going to. If you’d like to share my meal…?’

      ‘That would be fine.’

      Mustafa was a kind, cheerful guy. I spent a very pleasant hour with him. He was not inquisitive and he didn’t ask me where I came from.

      ‘It’s odd,’ he said, ‘in my own country I hated the French, and here I like them. Have you known any Arabs?’

      ‘Plenty. Some were very good and others were very bad.’

      ‘It’s the same with all nations. I class myself among the good ones. I’m sixty, and I might be your father. I had a son of thirty: he was killed two years ago – shot. He was good-looking; he was kind.’ His eyes brimmed with tears.

      I put my hand on his shoulder: this unhappy father so moved by the memory of his son reminded me of my own – he too, retired in his little house in the Ardèche must have his eyes filled with tears when he thought of me. Poor old Papa. Who could tell where he was, or what he was doing? I was sure he was still alive – I could feel it. Let’s hope the war had not knocked him about too much.

      Mustafa told me to come to his place whenever I felt like it – for a meal or if ever I needed anything: I’d be doing a kindness if I asked him a favour.

      Evening was coming on: I said thank you for everything and set off for our shack. The game would soon be beginning.

      I was not at all on edge about my first game. ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ Jojo had said, and he was quite right. If I wanted to deliver my trunk filled with dynamite at 36, quai des Orfèvres and to deal with the others I needed dough, plenty of dough. I’d be getting my hands on it precious soon: and that was a certainty.

      As it was a Saturday, and as the miners religiously took their Sundays off, the game was not to begin before nine, because it would last until sunrise. The men came crowding to the shack, too many of them to get inside. It was impossible to find room for them all, so Jojo sorted out the ones who could play high. There were twenty-four of them: the rest would play outside. I went to Mustafa’s, and he very kindly lent me a big carpet and a carbide lamp. As the big-time gamblers dropped out, so they could be replaced from outside.

      Banco, and banco again! On and on: every time Jojo rolled the dice so I kept covering the stakes. “Two to one he won’t shoot six with double threes…ten with double fives…’ The men’s eyes were ablaze. Every time one of them lifted his cup an eleven-year-old boy filled it with rum. I’d asked Jojo to let Miguel supply the rum and the cigars.

      Very soon the game heated up to boiling-point. Without asking his permission, I changed Jojo’s tactics. I laid not only on him but also on the others, and that made him look sour. Lighting a cigar, he muttered angrily, ‘Stuff it, man. Don’t scatter the gumbo.’ By about four in the morning I had a pile of bolivars, cruzeiros, American and West Indian dollars, diamonds and even some little gold nuggets in front of me.

      Jojo took the dice. He staked five hundred bolivars. I went in with a thousand.

      And he threw the seven!

      I left the lot, making two thousand bolivars. Jojo took out the five hundred he had won. And threw the seven again! Once more he pulled out his stake. And seven again!

      ‘What are you going to do, Enrique?’ asked Chino.

      ‘I leave the four thousand.’

      ‘Banco alone!’ I looked at the guy who had just spoken. A little thickset man, as black as boot-polish, his eyes bloodshot with drink. A Brazilian for sure.

      ‘Put down your four thousand bolos.’

      ‘This stone’s worth more.’ And he dropped a diamond on the blanket, just in front of him. He squatted there in his pink shorts, bare to the waist. The Chinese picked up the diamond, put it on his scales and said, ‘It’s only worth three and a half.’

      ‘OK for three and a half,’ said the Brazilian.

      ‘Shoot, Jojo.’

      Jojo shot the dice, but the Brazilian grabbed them as they rolled. I wondered what was going to happen: he scarcely looked at the dice but spat on them and tossed them back to Jojo. ‘Shoot them like that, all wet,’ he said.

      ‘OK, Enrique?’ asked Jojo, looking at me.

      ‘If that’s the way you want it, hombre.’

      Jojo hitched the fold in the blanket deeper with his left hand, and without wiping the dice he shot them – a long, long roll. And up came the seven again.

      As if he was jerked by a spring, the Brazilian leapt to his feet, his hand on his gun. Then quietly he said, ‘It’s not my night yet.’ And he went out.

      The moment he shot up like a jack-in-the-box my hand darted to my gun – it had a round in the breech. Jojo never stirred nor made a move to defend himself. And yet it was him the black man was aiming at. I saw I still had a lot to learn before I knew the exact moment when to draw and fire.

      At sunrise we stopped. What with the smoke of the damp grass and the cigars and cigarettes, my eyes stung so much they ran. My legs were completely numb from having squatted like a tailor more than nine hours on end. But there was one thing that pleased me: I hadn’t had to get up and piss, not once, and that meant I was entirely in control of my nerves and of my life.

      We slept until two in the afternoon. When I woke up, Jojo wasn’t there. I put on my trousers – nothing in the pockets! Shit! Jojo must have swiped the lot. But we hadn’t settled our accounts yet: he shouldn’t have done that. He was taking too much upon himself – coming it the boss, and coming it a trifle high. I wasn’t and never had been a boss; but I couldn’t bear people who thought themselves superior – who thought they could get away with anything. I went out and I found Jojo at Miguel’s, eating a dish of macaroni and mince. ‘OK, buddy?’ he said to me.

      ‘Yes and no.’

      ‘How come, no?’

      ‘Because you never ought to have emptied my pockets when I wasn’t there.’

      ‘Don’t talk balls, boy. I know how to behave and the reason why I did that is on account of everything depends on mutual trust. Don’t you see, during a game you might very well stuff the diamonds or the liquid some place else besides your pockets, for example? Then again, you don’t know what I won either. So whether we empty our pockets together or not, it’s all one. A matter of confidence.’

      He was right: let’s say no more. Jojo paid Miguel for the rum and the tobacco of last night. I asked whether the guys wouldn’t think it odd that he paid for them to drink and smoke.

      ‘But I’m not the one who pays! Each man who wins a packet leaves something on the table. Everyone knows that.’

      

      And night after night this life went on. We’d been here two weeks, two weeks in which every night we played high and wild, gambling with

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