I'd been in Caracas for two weeks, and the hundred-bolIvar notes were disappearing fast. Fortunately I had decent clothes when I got to Caracas. I found a little room, cheap, though still too dear for me. There were no women anywhere on the horizon, but the girls of Caracas were lovely to look at, intelligent and full of life. The difficulty was getting to know them. This was 1946, and it wasn't the custom for women to sit in a café alone.

A big city has its secrets. To be able to take care of yourself, you have to know them; and to learn them, you have to know the teachers. And just who are these teachers of the streets? A whole mysterious tribe with their own language, laws, customs and vices, their own ways of managing to make enough to live on for twentyfour hours every day. Earning a living, as honestly as possible: that was the problem, and it wasn't easy.

Like all the others, I had my own little ways, often good for a hearty laugh and far from wicked. For example, one day I met a Colombian I'd known in El Dorado.

"What are you doing?"

He told me just then he was earning his living by running a lottery for a magnificent Cadillac.

"Hell, so you've made your fortune already? You must have, to own a Cadillac."

He choked with laughter, then he explained the job. "The Cadillac belongs to the director of a big bank. He drives himself, gets there at nine on the dot and parks like a good citizen a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards from the bank. There are two of us. One-not always the same, so we don't get spotted-follows him to the door of the bank where he sits on his ass all morning. If there's a hitch, a whistle you can't mistake for anything else; it's only happened once. So between the time he gets there and the time he goes, which is around one, we put an elegant white streamer on the Cadillac, with red letters saying, 'On sale here: tickets that may win you this Cadillac. Winning numbers the same as the Caracas lottery. Draw next month.'"

"Man, that's a better-than-average racket. So you sell tickets for a Cadillac that isn't yours? Christ, what a nerve! What about the pigs?"

"They're never the same; and seeing as there's no vice in them, it never comes into their heads that maybe the deal's a swindle. If they get a little too interested we give them a ticket or two and off they go, dreaming perhaps they'll win a Cadillac. If you want to make a little money with us, come along and I'll introduce you to my partner."

"You don't think it stinks a little, duping the poor?"

"Never on your sweet life. The tickets cost ten bolivars, so it's only well-off folk that can afford them. So there's no harm done."

Once the partner had checked me out, there I was, all involved with this knavery. It's not very elegant, but you have to eat, sleep and be, if not well dressed, at least clean. And I had to hold on to my reserve as long as possible-the few diamonds I'd brought from El Dorado and two five-hundred-bolivar notes that I hoarded like a miser in my _plan_-a short aluminum tube that I shoved up my ass for safekeeping-just as if I were still in the clink. I'd never left off carrying my _plan_ inside me, for two reasons: my hotel was in a pretty rough part of the town, where I might be robbed; and if I carried money in my pocket, I might lose it. In any case, I'd been storing this tube up my ass for fourteen years now, so a year more or less didn't make much difference, and that way I was easy in my mind.

The selling of the lottery tickets lasted more than a fortnight, and it would be going on still but for the fact that one day a very eager customer bought two tickets and examined every detail of this marvelous car he dreamed of winning. All at once he straightened up and cried, "But doesn't this car belong to Dr. Fulano, the bank director?"

Without batting an eyelid, the Colombian replied coolly, "Just so. He put it into our hands to dispose of like this. He reckons a lottery will bring him in a better price than a straight sale."

"Odd…," said the customer.

"But above all, don't mention it to him," the Colombian went on, still very calm. "He made us promise to say nothing, because he'd find it awkward if it was known."

"I can't understand it; it's really most unusual for a man of his kind."

As soon as he'd got far enough away, moving in the direction of the bank, we whipped off the streamer and folded it up. The Colombian vanished, carrying it, and I went to the door of the bank to tell our partner we were breaking camp. Inside myself I was laughing like a hyena and I couldn't help hanging around near the door so I could catch what I expected would be the sequel. It came off, all right. Three minutes later, there was the director together with the suspicious customer. He was waving his arms wildly and walking so last I knew he was in a real fury.

They saw there was nobody left around the Cadillac, and surprised, no doubt, they came back slower, stopping at a café to have a drink at the bar. As the customer hadn't recognized me, I went in, too, to hear what they would say, for the laugh.

"By God, that was a nerve! Don't you think that was an infernal nerve, Dr. Fulano?"

But the owner of the Cadillac, who, like all good Caraqueflos, had a sense of humor, burst out laughing and said, "When I think that if I had walked by they might have offered me a ticket for my own car! And that sometimes I'm so absentminded that I might actually have bought it. You must admit it makes you laugh."

Naturally enough, that was the end of our lottery. The Colombians vanished. For my part, I'd made close to fifteen hundred bolivars, enough to live on for over a month; which was important.

The days went by, and it was not at all easy to find anything worthwhile to do. This was the period when Pétain's supporters and the men who had collaborated with the Germans started reaching Venezuela from France, on the run from the justice of their own country. Since I didn't know enough about the possible distinction between collaborators and Pétainists, I lumped them all together under the label of ex-Nazis. So I did not associate with them.

A month went by and nothing much happened. At El Callao I had never thought it would be so hard to get myself going. I was reduced to selling coffee pots from door to door; they were supposed to be specially designed for offices.

You look rather foolish walking about the streets with a coffee pot in your hand; and I was doing just that when I bumped into Paulo the Boxer, an old Montmartre acquaintance.

"Why, what do you know? You must be Paulo the…"

"And you're Papillon?"

He grabbed my arm and towed me into a café.

"Well, talk of coincidence-this is a coincidence, all right."

"What are you up to, walking around the street with that coffee pot?"

"I'm selling them: it's a goddamn disaster. What with getting it out and shoving it back again, the box tore just now." I told him how things were with me and then I said, "How about you?"

"Let's drink our coffee. I'll tell you somewhere else."

We paid and stood up; I reached for my coffee pot.

"Leave that where it is. You won't want it anymore, I give you my oath."

"You don't think so?"

"I know it, man."

I left the vile pot on the table and we went out.

An hour later, in my room, after we had tossed memories of Montmartre to and fro, Paulo came to the point. He had a big job in a country not far from Venezuela. He knew he could rely on me. If I agreed, he'd take me on as one of his team.

"It's as easy as falling off a log-it's in the bag, man! I tell you very seriously, there are going to be so many dollars you'll need an iron to flatten them so they don't take up too much room."

"And where is it, this prodigious job?"

"You'll know when you get there. I can't say anything before."