Papillon

‘Ah, so that’s it. I get you. Well, now eat plenty to get your strength back.’ And he went away.

The poor bloody half-wit! He said that because he was sure I hadn’t eaten anything for eleven days and because if I stuffed myself all at once I should die of it. Not bleeding likely. Towards nightfall Batton sent me in some tobacco and cigarette-paper. I smoked and smoked, breathing out into the central-heating pipe – it never worked, of course, but at least it served that purpose.

Later I called up Julot. He too thought I had eaten nothing for eleven days and he advised me to go easy. I did not like to let him know the truth, because I was afraid of some bastard picking up the message. His arm was in plaster; he was in good form; he congratulated me on holding out. According to him the convoy was close at hand. The medical orderly had told him the shots the convicts were to be given before they left had already arrived. They usually came a month before the convoy left. Julot wasn’t very cautious, for he also asked me whether I had managed to keep my charger.

Yes, I had kept it all right, but I can’t describe what I had had to do not to lose it. There were some cruel wounds in my anus.

Three weeks later they took us out of the punishment cells. What was up? They gave us a marvellous shower with soap and hot water. I felt myself coming to life again. Julot was laughing like a child and Pierrot le Fou beamed all over himself with happiness.

Since we had come straight out of the black-hole we knew nothing about what was happening. The barber wouldn’t answer when I whispered, ‘What’s up?’ A wicked-looking character I didn’t know said, ‘I think we’re amnestied from the punishment cells. Maybe they’re scared of an inspector who’s coming by. The great thing is they have to show us alive.’ Each of us was taken to an ordinary cell. At noon, as I ate my first bowl of hot soup for forty-three days, I found a bit of wood. On it I read ‘Leave in a week’s time. Shots tomorrow.’

Who had sent it? I never knew. It must have been some convict who was decent enough to give us warning. He knew that if one of us knew it we all should. It was just chance that the message came to me. I called Julot right away and told him. ‘Pass it on,’ I said.

I heard telephoning all night long. As for me, once I’d sent it out I stopped. I was too comfortable in my bed. I didn’t want any sort of trouble. And the prospect of going back to the black-hole didn’t attract me at all. Today less than any other time.

1 (#ulink_548d2f49-1256-5bb2-9bba-8254043ba900) 10,000 francs

2 (#ulink_9f062aa4-3bc3-589a-8aa5-5156df3f8d8d) The branch of the police particularly concerned with crime.

3 (#ulink_15a6c03d-4d23-5516-8771-251c87cf6c90) The executioner in 1932.

4 (#ulink_90c5be17-93cc-5db3-8602-d7b3fd12bdf4) 1 lb. of bread and one-and-three-quarter pints of water.

Second Exercise-Book On the way to Guiana (#u3b3377bb-862d-53ee-b644-371304447e97)

Saint-Martin-de-Ré

That evening Batton sent me in three cigarettes and a piece of paper that read, ‘Papillon, I know you’ll remember me kindly when you go. I’m provost, but I try to hurt the prisoners as little as possible. I took the job because I’ve got nine children and I can’t wait for a pardon. I’m going to try to earn it without doing too much harm. Good-bye. Good luck. The convoy is for the day after tomorrow.’

And in fact the next day they assembled us in the corridor of the punishment-block in groups of thirty. Medical orderlies from Caen gave us shots against tropical diseases. Three shots for each man, and three and a half pints of milk. Dega was close to me: he looked thoughtful. We no longer paid any attention to the rules of silence for we knew they couldn’t put us in the punishment cell just after having our injections. We gossiped in an undertone right there in front of the screws, who dared not say anything because of the orderlies from the town.

Dega said to me, ‘Are they going to have enough cellular vans to take us all in one go?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s a good way off. Saint-Martin-de-Ré, and if they take sixty a day, it’ll last ten days, because we’re close on six hundred here alone.’

‘The great thing is to have the injections. That means you’re on the list and soon you’ll be in Guiana. Keep your chin up, Dega: the next stage is beginning now. Count on me, just as I count on you.’

He looked at me, his eyes shining with pleasure; he put his hand on my arm and once again he said, ‘Life or death, Papi.’

There was nothing really much to say about the convoy, except that each man very nearly stifled in his little cupboard in the cellular van. The warders wouldn’t let us have any air, not even by letting the doors stand just ajar. When we reached La Rochelle two of the people in our van were found dead, asphyxiated.

There were people standing around on the quay – for Saint-Martin-de-Re is an island and we had to take a boat to cross – and they saw those two poor unfortunate bastards being found. Not that they showed feelings of any sort for us, I may add. And since the gendarmes had to hand us over at the citadel, living or dead, they loaded the corpses on to the boat along with the rest of us.

It was not a long crossing, but it gave us a real breath of sea-air. I said to Dega, ‘It smells of a break.’ He smiled. And Julot, next to us, said, ‘Yes. It smells of a break. I’m on my way back to the place I escaped from five years ago. Like a silly bastard I let myself be picked up just as I was on the point of carving up the fence who’d done the Judas on me at the time of my little trouble ten years ago. Let’s try and stay together, because at Saint-Martin they put you ten to a cell in any old order, just as you come to hand.’

He’d got that one wrong, brother Julot. When we got there he and two others were called out and set apart from the rest. They were three men who had got away from the penal settlement: they had been retaken in France and now they were going back for the second time.

Grouped ten by ten in our cells, we began a life of waiting. We were allowed to talk and smoke, and we were very well fed. The only danger during this period was for your charger. You could never tell why, but suddenly you would be called up, stripped and very carefully searched. The whole of your body first, even the soles of your feet, and then all your clothes. ‘Get dressed again!’ And back you went to where you came from.

Cells: dining-hall: the courtyard where we spent hours and hours marching in single file. ‘Left, right! Left, right! Left, right!’ We marched in groups of five hundred convicts. A long, long crocodile; wooden shoes going clack-clack. Compulsory total silence. Then, ‘Fall out!’ Everyone would sit down on the ground, forming groups according to class or status. First came the men of the genuine underworld: with them it scarcely mattered where you came from, and there were Corsicans, men from Marseilles, Toulouse, Brittany, Paris and so on. There was even one from the Ardèche, and that was me. I must say this for the Ardèche – there were only two Ardèchois in the whole convoy of one thousand nine hundred men, a gamekeeper who had killed his wife, and me. Which proves that the Ardéchois are good guys. The other groups came together more or less anyhow, because more flats than sharps go to the penal settlements, more squares than wide boys. These days of waiting were called observation days. And it was true enough they observed us from every possible angle.

One afternoon I was sitting in the sun when a man came up to me. A little man, spectacled, thin. I tried to place him, but with our clothing all being the same it was very difficult.

‘You’re the one they call Papillon?’ He had a very strong Corsican accent.

‘That’s right. What do you want with me?’

‘Come to the latrine,’ he said. And he went off.

‘That guy,’ said Dega, ‘he’s some square from Corsica. A mountain bandit, for sure. What can he possibly want with you?’

‘I’m going to find out.’

I went towards the latrines in the middle of the courtyard and when I got there I pretended to piss. The man stood next to me, in the same attitude. Without looking round he said, ‘I’m Pascal Matra’s brother-in-law. In the visiting-room he told me to come to you if I needed help – to come in his name.’

‘Yes: Pascal’s a friend of mine. What do you want?’

‘I can’t keep my charger in any more. I’ve got dysentery. I don’t know who to trust and I’m afraid it’ll be stolen or the screws will find it. Please, Papillon, please carry it for me a few days.’ And he showed me a charger much bigger than mine. I was afraid he was setting a trap – asking me to find out whether I was carrying one myself. If I said I was not sure I could hold two, he’d know. Without any expression I said, ‘How much has it got in it?’

‘Twenty-five thousand francs.’

Without another word I took the charger – it was very clean, too – and there in front of him I shoved it up, wondering whether a man could hold two. I had no idea. I stood up, buttoned my trousers … it was all right. It did not worry me.

‘My name’s Ignace Galgani,’ he said, before going. ‘Thanks, Papillon.’

I went back to Dega and privately I told him about what had happened.

‘It’s not too heavy?’

‘No.’

‘Let’s forget it then.’

We tried to get in touch with men who were being sent back after having made a break: Julot or Guittou, if possible. We were eager for information – what it was like over there, how you were treated, how you ought to set about things so as to be left paired with a friend, and so on. As luck would have it we chanced upon a very odd guy, a case entirely on his own. He was a Corsican who had been born in the penal settlement. His father had been a warder there, living with his mother on the Isles du Salut. He had been born on the Ile Royale, one of the three – the others are Saint-Joseph and Devil’s Island. And (irony of fate!) he was on his way back, not as a warder’s son but as a convict.

He had copped twelve years for housebreaking. Nineteen: frank expression and open face. Both Dega and I saw at once that he had been sold down the river. He only had a vague notion of the underworld; but he would be useful to us because he could let us know about what was in store. He told us all about life on the islands, where he had lived for fourteen years. For example, he told us that his nurse on the islands had been a convict, a famous tough guy who had been sent down after a knife-fight in Montmartre, a duel for the love of the beautiful Casque d’Or. He gave us some very valuable advice – you had to make your break on the mainland, because on the islands it was no go at all: then again you mustn’t be listed dangerous, because with that against your name you would scarcely step ashore at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni before they shut you right away – interned you for a certain number of years or for life, according to how bad your label was. Generally speaking, less than five per cent of the convicts were interned on the islands. The others stayed on the mainland. The islands were healthy, but (as Dega had already told me) the mainland was a right mess that gradually ate the heart out of you with all sorts of diseases, death in various shapes, murder, etc.

Dega and I hoped not to be interned on the islands. But there was a hell of a feeling there in my throat – what if I had been labelled dangerous? What with my lifer, the business with Tribouillard and that other one with the governor, I’d be lucky to get away with it.

One day a rumour ran through the prison – don’t go to the sick-bay whatever happens, because everybody who is too weak or too ill to stand the voyage is poisoned. It was certainly all balls. And indeed a Parisian, Francis la Passe, told us there was nothing in it. There had been a type who died of poison there, but Francis’ own brother, who worked in the sick-bay, explained just what had happened.

The guy had killed himself. He was one of the top safebreaking specialists, and it seems that during the war he had burgled the German embassy in Geneva or Lausanne for the French Intelligence. He had taken some very important papers and had given them to the French agents. The police had brought him out of prison, where he was doing five years, specially for this job. And ever since 1920 he had lived quietly, just operating once or twice a year. Every time he was picked up he brought out his little piece of blackmail and the Intelligence people hurriedly stepped in. But this time it hadn’t worked. He’d got twenty years and he was to go off with us. So as to miss the boat he had pretended to be sick and had gone into hospital. According to Francis la Passe’s brother a tablet of cyanide had put paid to his capers. Safe deposits and the Intelligence Service could sleep in peace.

The courtyard was full of stories, some true, some false. We listened to them in either case – it passed the time.

Whenever I went to the latrines, either in the courtyard or in the cell, Dega had to go with me, on account of the chargers. He stood in front of me while I was at it and shielded me from over-inquisitive eyes. A charger is a bleeding nuisance at any time, but I had two of the things still, for Galgani was getting sicker and sicker. And there was a mystery about the whole affair: the charger I shoved up last always came out last, and the first always first. I’ve no idea how they turned about in my guts, but that’s how it was.