Kitabı oku: «Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon», sayfa 2

We were in the bar before I answered. It was a bar and at the same time a grocer’s shop. A dozen men were sitting about. We drank a few Cuba Libres, a mixture of rum and Coca-Cola. Several people came up to shake my hand and bid me welcome to their village. Each time José introduced me as a friend who was living at his house. We had a good many drinks. When I asked what they came to, José became almost annoyed. He wanted to pay for everything. Still, I did manage to persuade the barman to refuse his money and take mine.

Someone touched me on the shoulder: it was Maria. ‘Come home. It’s lunch-time. Don’t drink any more: you promised me not to drink too much.’ She was saying ‘thee’ to me now.

José was arguing with another man; she said nothing to him but took me by the arm and led me out.

‘What about your father?’

‘Let him be. I can never say anything to him when he’s drinking and I never come to fetch him from the café. He wouldn’t have it, anyway.’

‘Why did you come and fetch me, then?’

‘You’re different. Be good, Enrique, and come along.’ Her eyes were so brilliant and she said it so simply that I went back to the house with her.

‘You deserve a kiss,’ she said when we got there. And she put her lips to my cheek, too near my mouth.

José came back after we had had lunch together at the round table. The youngest sister helped Picolino eat, giving him his food little by little.

José sat down by himself. He was tolerably high, so he spoke without thinking. ‘Enrique is frightened of you, my girls,’ he said. ‘So frightened he wants to go away. I told him that in my opinion he could stay, and that my girls were old enough to know what they were doing.’

Maria gazed at me. She looked astonished, perhaps disappointed. ‘If he wants to go, Papa, let him. But I don’t think he’d be better off anywhere else than he is here, where everyone likes him.’ And turning to me she added, ‘Enrique, don’t be a coward. If you like one of us and she likes you, why should you run away?’

‘On account of he’s married in France,’ said her father.

‘How long since you saw your wife?’

‘Thirteen years.’

‘The way we see it, if you love a man you don’t necessarily marry him. If you give yourself to a man, it’s to love him, nothing more. But it was quite right of you to tell our father you were married, because like that you can’t promise any of us anything at all, apart from love.’ And she asked me to stay with them without committing myself. They would look after Picolino and I would be free to work. She even said I could pay a little, as if I were a lodger, to make me feel easier in my mind. Did I agree?

I had no time to think properly. It was all so new and so quick after thirteen years of life as a convict. I said, ‘OK, Maria. That’s fine.’

‘Would you like me to go with you to the gold-mine this afternoon to ask for a job? We could go at five, when the sun is lower. It’s a mile and a half from the village.’

‘Fine.’

Picolino’s movements and his expression showed how pleased he was that we were going to stay. The girls’ kindness and their care had won his heart. My staying was chiefly on account of him. Because here I was pretty sure of having an affair before long: and maybe it would not suit me.

With all that had been going on inside my head these last thirteen years, with all that had stopped me sleeping these thirteen years on end, I was not going to come to a halt as quickly as all this and settle down in a village at the far end of the world just because of a girl’s pretty face. I had a long road in front of me, and my stops must be short. Just long enough to get my wind and then full speed ahead. Because there was a reason why I had been fighting for my liberty these thirteen years and there was a reason why I had won the fight: and that reason was revenge. The prosecuting counsel, the false witness, the cop: I had a score to settle with them. And that was something I was never to forget. Never.

I wandered out to the village square. I noticed a shop with the name Prospéri over it. He must be a Corsican or an Italian, and indeed the little shop did belong to the descendant of a Corsican. Monsieur Prospéri spoke very good French. He kindly suggested writing a letter for me to the manager of La Mocupia, the French company that worked the Caratal gold-mine. This splendid man even offered to help me with money. I thanked him for everything and went out.

‘What are you doing here, Papillon? Where the hell have you come from, man? From the moon? Dropped by parachute? Come and let me kiss you!’ A big guy, deeply sunburnt, with a huge straw hat on his head, jumped to his feet. ‘You don’t recognize me?’ And he took off his hat.

‘Big Chariot! Stone the crows!’ Big Chariot, the man who knocked off the safe at the Place Clichy Gaumont in Paris, and the one in the Batignolles station! We embraced like two brothers. Tears came into our eyes, we were so moved. We gazed at one another.

‘A far cry from the Place Blanche and the penal, mate, eh? But where the hell have you come from? You’re dressed like an English lord: and you’ve aged much less than me.’

‘I’m just out of El Dorado.’

‘How long were you there?’

‘A year and more.’

‘Why didn’t you let me know? I’d have got you out straight away, signed a paper saying I was responsible for you. Christ above! I knew there were some hard cases in El Dorado, but I never for a moment imagined you were there, you, a buddy!’

‘It’s a bloody miracle we should have met.’

‘Don’t you believe it, Papi. The whole of Venezuelan Guiana from Ciudad Bolivar to El Callao is stuffed with right hard guys or detainees making a break. And as this is the first bit of Venezuelan territory you come across when you escape, there’s no miracle in meeting anyone at all between the Gulf of Paria and here – every last son of a bitch comes this way. All those who don’t come apart on the road, I mean. Where are you staying?’

With a decent type called José. He has four daughters.’

‘Yes, I know him. He’s a good chap, a pirate. Let’s go and get your things: you’re staying with me, of course.’

‘I’m not alone. I’ve got a paralysed friend and I have to look after him.’

‘That doesn’t matter. I’ll fetch an ass for him. It’s a big house and there’s a negrita [a black girl], who’ll look after him like a mother.’

When we had found the second donkey we went to the girls’ house. Leaving these kind people was very painful. It was only when we promised we should come and see them and said they could come and see us at Caratal that they calmed down a little. I can never say too often how extraordinary it is, the Venezuelan Guianans’ hospitality. I was almost ashamed of myself when I left them.

Two hours later we were at Chariot’s ‘château’, as he called it. A big, light, roomy house on a headland looking out over the whole of the valley running down from the hamlet of Caratal almost to El Callao. On the right of this terrific virgin forest landscape was the Mocupia gold-mine. Chariot’s house was entirely built of hardwood logs from the bush: three bedrooms, a fine dining-room and a kitchen; two showers inside and one outside, in a perfectly kept kitchen-garden. All the vegetables we had at home were growing there, and growing well. A chicken-run with more than five hundred hens; rabbits, guinea-pigs, two goats and a pig. All this was the fortune and the present happiness of Chariot, the former hard guy and specialist in safes and very delicate operations worked out to the second.

‘Well, Papi, how do you like my shack? I’ve been here seven years. As I was saying in El Callao, it’s a far cry from Montmartre and penal! Who’d ever have believed that one day I’d be happy with such a quiet, peaceful life? What do you say, buddy?’

‘I don’t know, Chariot. I’m too lately out of stir to have a clear idea. For there’s no doubt about it, we’ve always been on the loose and our young days were uncommonly active! And then…it sets me back a little, seeing you quiet and happy here at the back of beyond. Yet you’ve certainly done it all yourself and I can see it must have meant a solid dose of hard labour, sacrifices of every kind. And as far as I am concerned, you see, I don’t feel myself up to it yet.’

When we were sitting round the table in the dining-room and drinking Martinique punch, Big Chariot went on, ‘Yes, Papillon, I can see you’re amazed. You caught on right away that I live by my own work. Eighteen bolivars a day means a small-time life, but it’s not without its pleasures. A hen that hatches me a good brood of chicks, a rabbit that brings off a big litter, a kid being born, tomatoes doing well…All these little things we despised for so long add up to something that gives me a lot. Hey, here’s my black girl. Conchita! Here are some friends of mine. He’s sick; you’ll have to look after him. This one’s called Enrique, or Papillon. He’s a friend from France, an old-time friend.’

‘Welcome to this house,’ said the black girl. ‘Don’t you worry, Chariot, your friends will be properly looked after. I’ll go and see to their room.’

Chariot told me about his break – an easy one. When he reached penal in the first place he was kept at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and after six months he escaped from there with another Corsican called Simon and a detainee. ‘We were lucky enough to reach Venezuela a few months after the dictator Gomez died. These open-handed people helped us make a new life for ourselves. I had two years of compulsory residence at El Callao, and I stayed on. Little by little, I took to liking this simple life, you get it? I lost one wife when she was having a baby, and the daughter too. Then this black girl you’ve just seen, Conchita, she managed to comfort me with her real love and understanding, and she’s made me happy. But what about you, Papi? You must have had a cruelly hard time of it: thirteen years is a hell of a stretch. Tell me about it.’

I talked to this old friend for more than two hours, spilling out everything these last years had left rankling in me. It was a wonderful evening – wonderful for us both to be able to talk about our memories. It was odd, but there was not a single word about Montmartre, not a word about the underworld, no reminders of jobs that were pulled off or that misfired, nothing about crooks still at large. It was as though for us life had begun when we stepped aboard La Martinière, me in 1933, Chariot in 1935.

Excellent salad, a grilled chicken, goat cheese and a delicious mango, washed down with good Chianti and all put on the table by the cheerful Conchita, meant that Chariot could welcome me properly in his house and that pleased him. He suggested going down to the village for a drink. I said it was so pleasant here I didn’t want to go out.

‘Thanks, my friend,’ said my Corsican – he often put on a Paris accent. ‘You’re dead right: we are comfortable here. Conchita, you’ll have to find a girl-friend for Enrique.’

‘All right: Enrique, I’ll introduce you to friends prettier than me.’

‘You’re the prettiest of them all,’ said Chariot.

‘Yes, but I’m black.’

‘That’s the very reason why you’re so pretty, poppet. Because you’re a thoroughbred.’

Conchita’s big eyes sparkled with love and pleasure: it was easy to see she worshipped Chariot.

Lying quiedy in a fine big bed I listened to the BBC news from London on Chariot’s radio: but being plunged back into the life of the outside world worried me a little – I was not used to it any more. I turned the knob. Now it was Caribbean music that came through: Caracas in song. I did not want to hear the great cities urging me to live their life. Not this evening, anyway. I switched off quickly and began to think over the last few hours.

Was it on purpose we had not talked about the years when we both lived in Paris? No. Was it on purpose we had not mentioned the men of our world who had been lucky enough not to be picked up? No again. So did it mean that for tough guys like us what had happened before the trial no longer mattered?

I tossed and turned in the big bed. It was hot: I couldn’t bear it any more and I walked out into the garden. I sat down on a big stone, from where I was I looked out over the valley and the gold-mine. Everything was lit up down there. I could see trucks, empty or loaded, coming and going.

Gold: the gold that came out of the depths of that mine. If you had a lot of it, in bars or turned into notes, it would give you anything on earth. This prime mover of the world, that cost so little to mine, since the workers had such miserable wages, was the one thing you had to have to live well. And there was Chariot who had lost his freedom because he had wanted a lot of it: yet now he hadn’t even mentioned the stuff. He never told me whether the mine had plenty of gold in it or not. These days his happiness was his black girl, his house, his animals and his kitchen-garden. He had never even referred to money. He had become a philosopher. I was puzzled.

I remembered how they caught him – a guy by the name of Little Louis had tipped off the police; and during our short meetings in the Santé he never stopped swearing he would get him the first chance he had. Yet this evening he had not so much as breathed his name. And as for me – Christ, how strange! – I had not said a word about my cops, nor Goldstein, nor the prosecuting counsel, either. I ought to have talked about them! I hadn’t escaped just to end up as a cross between a gardener and a working-man.

I had promised to go straight in this country and I’d keep my word. But that didn’t mean I had given up my plans for revenge. Because you mustn’t forget, Papi, that the reason why you’re here today is not only that the idea of revenge kept you going for thirteen years in the cells but because it was your one religion too; and that religion is something you must never give up.

His little black girl was very pretty, all right; but still I wondered whether Big Chariot wouldn’t be better off in a city than in this hole at the far end of creation. Or maybe it was me who was the square, not seeing that my friend’s life had its charm. Or then again was it Chariot who was afraid of the responsibilities that modern big-town life would put upon him? That was something to chew over and reflect upon.

Chariot was forty-five, not an old man. Very tall, very strong, built like a Corsican peasant fed on plenty of good healthy food all his young days. He was deeply burnt by the sun of this country, and with his huge straw hat on his head, its brim turned up at the sides, he really looked terrific. He was a perfect example of the pioneer in these virgin lands, and he was so much one of the people and the country he did not stand out at all. Far from it: he really belonged.

Seven years he’d been here, this still-young Montmartre safe-breaker! He must certainly have worked more than two years to clear this stretch of plateau and build his house. He had to go out into the bush, choose the trees, cut them down, bring them back, fit them together. Every beam in his house was made of the hardest and heaviest timber in the world, the kind they call ironwood. I was sure all he earned at the mine had gone into it, because he must have had help and have paid for the labour, the cement (the house was concreted), the well and the windmill for pumping the water up to the tank.

That well-rounded young negrita with her big loving eyes: she must be a perfect companion for this old sea-dog on shore. I’d seen a sewing-machine in the big room. She must make those little dresses that suited her so well. Not many dressmaker’s bills for Chariot, no sir.

Maybe the reason why he hadn’t gone to the city was that he was not sure of himself, whereas here he enjoyed a life with no problems at all. You’re a great guy, Chariot! You’re the very picture of what a crook can be turned into. I congratulate you. But I also congratulate the people who helped you to change not only your life but even your way of seeing what a life can be or ought to be.

But still these Venezuelans are dangerous, with their generous hospitality. Being surrounded with human kindness and good will all the time soon turns you into a prisoner if you let yourself be caught. I’m free, free, free, and I mean to stay that way for ever.

Watch it, Papi! Above all, no setting up house with a girl. You need love when you’ve been cut off from it for so long. But fortunately I’d already had a girl in Georgetown two years ago, my Hindu, Indara. So from that point of view I was not so vulnerable as if I’d come straight from penal, which was the case with Chariot. Yet Indara was lovely and I was happy; but it wasn’t for that I had settled in Georgetown, living there in clover. Then again if the quiet life is too quiet, even though it’s happy, it’s not for me: that I know very well.

Adventure! Adventure so you feel alive, alive all through! Besides, that was why I left Georgetown and why I landed up at El Dorado. But that’s the reason too why I’m here today, in this very spot.

OK. Here the girls are pretty, full-blooded and charming and I certainly cannot live without love. It’s up to me to avoid complications. I must promise myself to stay here a year, since I’m forced to do so anyway. The less I own, the easier I’ll be able to leave this country and its enchanting people. I’m an adventurer, but an adventurer with a shift of gear – I must get my money honestly, or at least without hurting anyone. Paris, that is my aim: Paris one day, to present my bill to the people who put me through so much suffering.

I was calmer now, and my eyes took in the setting moon as it dipped towards the virgin forest, a sea of black tree-tops with waves of different heights – but waves that never stirred. I went back to my room and stretched out on the bed.

Paris, Paris, you’re still a great way off yet; but not so far that I shan’t be there again one day, walking the asphalt of your streets.

2: The Mine

A WEEK later, thanks to the letter that Prospéri, the Corsican grocer, wrote for me, I was taken on at the Mocupia mine. Here I was, looking after the working of the pumps that sucked up the water from the shafts.

The mine looked like a coal-pit: the same underground galleries. There were no veins of gold and very few nuggets. The gold was found in very hard rock: they blasted this rock with dynamite and then broke the oversized lumps with a sledge-hammer. The pieces were put into trucks, and the trucks came to the surface in lifts; then crushers reduced the rock to a powder finer than sand. This was mixed with water, making a liquid mud that was pumped up into huge tanks as big as the reservoirs in an oil-refinery: these tanks had cyanide in them. The gold dissolved into a liquid heavier than the rest and sank to the bottom. Under heat, the cyanide evaporated, carrying off the particles of gold; they solidified and were caught by filters very like combs as they went past. Then the gold was collected, melted into bars, carefully checked for 24-carat purity and put into a strictly guarded store. But who did the guarding? I still can’t get over it. Simon, no less, the hard guy who had made his break from penal with Big Chariot.

When my work was over, I went to gaze at the sight: I went to the store and stared at the huge pile of gold ingots neatly lined up by Simon, the ex-convict. Not even a strong-room: just a concrete store-house with walls no thicker than usual and a wooden door.

‘OK, Simon?’

‘OK. And what about you, Papi? Happy at Chariot’s?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘I never knew you were in El Dorado. Otherwise I’d have come to get you out.’

‘That’s civil. Are you happy here?’

‘Well, you know, I have a house: it’s not as big as Charlot’s, but it’s made of bricks and mortar. I built it myself. And I’ve got a young wife, very sweet. And two little girls. Come and see me whenever you like – my house is yours. Chariot tells me your friend is sick: now my wife knows how to give injections, so if you need her don’t hesitate.’

We talked. He too was thoroughly happy. He too never spoke of France or Montmartre, though he had lived there. Just like Chariot. The past no longer existed; the only thing that mattered was the present – wife, children, the house. He told me he earned twenty bolivars a day. Fortunately their hens gave them eggs for their omelettes and the chickens were on the house; otherwise they wouldn’t have gone far on twenty bolivars, Simon and his brood.

I gazed at that mass of gold lying there, so carelessly stored behind a wooden door and these four walls only a foot thick. A door that two heaves on a jemmy would open without a sound. This heap of gold, at three bolivars fifty the gramme or thirty-five dollars the ounce, would easily tot up to three million five hundred thousand bolivars or a million dollars. And this unbelievable great fortune was within hand’s reach! Knocking it off would be almost child’s play.

‘Elegant, my neat pile of ingots? Eh, Papillon?’

‘It’d be more elegant still well salted away. Christ, what a fortune!’

‘Maybe: but it’s not ours. It’s holy, on account of they’ve entrusted it to me.’

‘Entrusted it to you, sure; but not to me. You must admit it’s tempting to see something like that just lying about.’

‘It’s not just lying about, because I’m looking after it.’

‘Maybe. But you aren’t here twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four.’

‘No. Only from six at night to six in the morning. But during the day there’s another guard: maybe you know him – Alexandre, of the forged postal orders.’

‘Oh yes, I know him. Well, be seeing you, Simon. Say hello to your family for me.’

‘You’ll come and see us?’

‘Sure. I’d like to. Ciao.’

I left quickly, as quickly as I could to get away from this scene of temptation. It was unbelievable! Anyone would say they were yearning to be robbed, the guys in charge of this mine. A store that could hardly hold itself upright and two one-time high-ranking crooks taking care of all that treasure! In all my life on the loose I’d never seen anything like it!

Slowly I walked up the winding path to the village. I had to go right through it to reach the headland with Chariot’s château on it. J dawdled; the eight-hour day had been tough. In the second gallery down there was precious little air, and even that was hot and wet, in spite of the ventilators. My pumps had stopped sucking three or four times and I had had to set them right away. It was half past eight now and I had gone down the mine at noon. I’d earned eighteen bolivars. If I had had a working-man’s mind, that wouldn’t have been so bad. Meat was 2-50 bolivars the kilo; sugar 0-70; coffee 2. Vegetables were not dear either: 0-50 for a kilo of rice and the same for dried beans. You could live cheaply, that was true. But did I have the sense to put up with that kind of life?

In spite of myself, as I climbed up the stony path, walking easily in the heavy nailed boots they had given me at the mine – in spite of myself, and although I did my best not to think about it, I kept seeing that million dollars in gold bars just calling out for some enterprising hand to grab it. At night, there wouldn’t be any difficulty in jumping on Simon and chloroforming him without being recognized. And then the whole thing was in the bag, because they carried their fecklessness to the point of leaving him the key of the store so he could take shelter if it rained. Criminal irresponsibility! All that would be left to do then was carry the two hundred ingots out of the mine and load them into something – a truck or a cart. I’d have to prepare several caches in the forest, all along the road, to salt the ingots away in little packets of a hundred kilos each. If it was a truck, then once it was unloaded I’d have to carry right on as far as possible, pick the deepest place in the river and toss it in. A cart? There were plenty in the village square. The horse? That would be harder to find, but not impossible. A night of very heavy rain between eight and six in the morning would give me all the time I needed for the job and it might even let me get back to the house and go to bed meek as a monk.

By the time I reached the lights of the village square, in my mind I had already brought it off, and was slipping into the sheets of Big Chariot’s bed.

‘Buenos noches, Francès,’ called a group of men sitting at the village bar.

‘Hello there, one and all. Good night, hombres.’

‘Come and join us for a while. Have an iced beer: we’d like you to.’

It would have been rude to refuse so I accepted. And here I was sitting among these good souls, most of them miners. They wanted to know whether I was all right, whether I’d found a woman, whether Conchita was looking after Picolino properly, and whether I needed money for medicine or anything else. These generous, spontaneous offers brought me back to earth. A gold-prospector said that if I didn’t care for the mine and if I only wanted to work when I felt like it I could go off with him. ‘It’s tough going, but you make more. And then there’s always the possibility you’ll be rich in a single day.’ I thanked them all and offered to stand a round.

‘No, Frenchman, you’re our guest. Another time, when you’re rich. God be with you.’

I went on towards the château. Yes, it would be easy enough to turn into a humble, honest man among all these people who lived on so little, who were happy with almost nothing, and who adopted a man without worrying where he came from or what he had been.

Conchita welcomed me back. She was alone. Chariot was at the mine – when I left for work so he came back. Conchita was full of fun and kindness: she gave me a pair of slippers to rest my feet after the heavy boots.

‘Your friend’s asleep. He ate well and I have sent off a letter asking for him to be taken into the hospital at Tumereno, a little town not far off, bigger than this.’

I thanked her and ate the hot meal that was waiting for me. This welcome, so homely, simple and happy, made me relax; it gave me the peace of mind I needed after the temptation of that ton of gold. The door opened.

‘Good evening, everybody.’ Two girls came into the room, just as if they were at home.

‘Good evening,’ said Conchita. ‘Here are two friends of mine, Papillon.’

One was dark, tall and slim; she was called Graciela, and was very much the gypsy type, her father being a Spaniard. The other girl’s name was Mercedes. Her grandfather was a German, which explained her fair skin and very fine blonde hair. Graciela had black Andalusian eyes with a touch of tropical fire; Mercedes’ were green and all at once I remembered Lali, the Goajira Indian. Lali…Lali and her sister Zoraïma: what had become of them? Might I not try to find them again, now I was back in Venezuela? It was 1945 now, and twelve years had gone by. That was a long, long time, but in spite of all those years I felt a pain in my heart when I remembered those two lovely creatures. Since those days they must have made themselves a fresh life with a man of their own race. No, honestly I had no right to disturb their new existence.

‘Your friends are terrific, Conchita! Thank you very much for introducing me to them.’

I gathered they were both free and neither had a fiancé. In such good company the evening went by in a flash. Conchita and I walked them back to the edge of the village, and it seemed to me they leant very heavily on my arms. On the way back Conchita told me both the girls liked me, the one as much as the other. ‘Which do you like best?’ she asked.

‘They are both charming, Conchita; but I don’t want any complications.’

‘You call making love “complications”? Love, it’s the same as eating and drinking. You think you can live without eating and drinking? When I don’t make love I feel really ill, although I’m already twenty-two. They are only sixteen and seventeen, so just think what it must be for them. If they don’t take pleasure in their bodies, they’ll die.’

‘And what about their parents?’

She told me, just as José had done, that here the girls of the ordinary people loved just to be loved. They gave themselves to the man they liked spontaneously, wholly, without asking anything in exchange apart from the thrill.

‘I understand you, poppet. I’m as willing as the next man to make love for love’s sake. Only you tell your friends that an affair with me doesn’t bind me in any way at all. Once warned, it’s another matter.’

Dear Lord above! It wasn’t going to be easy to get away from an atmosphere like this. Chariot, Simon, Alexandre and no doubt a good many others had been positively bewitched. I saw why they were so thoroughly happy among these cheerful people, so different from ours. I went to bed.

‘Get up, Papi! It’s ten o’clock. And there’s someone to see you.’

‘Good morning, Monsieur.’ A greying man of about fifty; no hat; candid eyes; bushy eyebrows. He held out his hand. ‘I’m Dr Bougrat.^* I came because they told me one of you is sick. I’ve had a look at your friend. Nothing to be done unless he goes into hospital at Caracas. And it’ll be a tough job to cure him.’

‘You’ll take pot-luck with us, Doctor?’ said Chariot.

‘I’d like to. Thanks.’

Pastis was poured out, and as he drank Bougrat said to me, ‘Well, Papillon, and how are you getting along?’

‘Why, 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. Apart from 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 vague, far away, buried in a misty past that doesn’t matter.’