Papillon

Trinidad

Long before we saw it, the birds had told us land was near. It was half-past seven in the morning when they began to circle round us. ‘We’re getting there, man! We’re getting there! The first part of the break, the hardest part – we’ve brought it off. Freedom, freedom, freedom for ever!’ Joy made us shout like schoolboys. Our faces were plastered with the coconut-butter that the tanker had given us for our sunburn. At about nine o’clock we saw the land. A breeze carried us in quite fast over a gentle sea. It was not until four in the afternoon that we could make out the details of a long island, fringed with little clumps of white houses and topped with great numbers of coconut-palms. So far we could not tell whether it was really an island or a peninsula, nor whether these houses were lived in. We had to wait another hour and more before we could distinguish people running towards the beach where we were going to land. In under twenty minutes a highly-coloured crowd had gathered. The entire little village had come out on to the shore to welcome us. Later we learnt that it was called San Fernando.

Three hundred yards from the beach I dropped the anchor: it bit at once. I did so partly to see how the people would take it and partly so as not to damage my boat when it grounded, supposing the bottom was coral. We furled the sails and waited. A little boat came towards us. Two blacks paddling and one white man with a sun-helmet on.

‘Welcome to Trinidad,’ said the white man in perfect French. The black men laughed, showing all their teeth.

‘Thank you for your kind words, Monsieur. Is the bottom coral or sand?’

‘It’s sand. You can run in without any danger.’

We hauled up the anchor, and the waves gently pushed us in towards the beach. We had scarcely touched before ten men waded in and with a single heave they ran the boat up out of the water. They gazed at us and stroked us, and Negro or Indian coolie women beckoned to invite us in. The white man who spoke French explained that they all wanted us to stay with them. Maturette caught up a handful of sand and kissed it. Great enthusiasm. I had told the white man about Clousiot’s condition and he had him carried to his house, which was very close to the beach. He told us we could leave all our belongings in the boat until tomorrow – no one would touch anything. They all called out, ‘Good captain, long ride in little boat.’

Night fell, and when I had asked them to heave the boat a little higher up I tied it to a much bigger one lying on the beach; then I followed the Englishman and Maturette came after me. There I saw Clousiot looking very pleased with himself in an armchair, with a lady and a girl beside him and his wounded leg stretched out on a chair.

‘My wife and my daughter,’ said the gentleman. ‘I have a son at the university in England.’

‘You are very welcome in this house,’ said the lady in French.

‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ said the girl, placing us two wicker armchairs.

‘Thank you, ladies, but please don’t put yourselves out for us.’

‘Why? We know where you come from, so be easy; and I say again, you are very welcome in this house.’

The Englishman was a barrister. Mr. Bowen was his name, and he had his office in Port of Spain, the capital, twenty-five miles away. They brought us tea with milk, toast, butter and jam. This was our first evening as free men, and I shall never forget it. Not a word about the past, no untimely questions: only how many days had we been at sea and what kind of voyage we had had. Whether Clousiot was in much pain and whether we should like them to tell the police tomorrow or wait for another day: whether we had any living relations, such as wives or children. If we should like to write to them, they would post the letters. What can I say? It was a wonderful welcome, both from the people on the shore and from this family with their extraordinary kindness to three men on the run.

Mr. Bowen telephoned a doctor, who told him to bring the wounded man in to his nursing-home tomorrow afternoon so that he could X-ray him and see what needed doing. Mr. Bowen also telephoned the head of the Salvation Army in Port of Spain. He said this man would have a room ready for us in the Salvation Army hostel and that we could go whenever we liked; he said we should keep our boat if it was any good, because we’d need it for leaving again. He asked if we were convicts or relégués and we told him convicts. He seemed pleased we were convicts.

‘Would you like to have a bath and a shave?’ asked the girl. ‘Don’t feel awkward, whatever you do – it doesn’t worry us in the least. You’ll find some things in the bathroom that I hope will fit you.’

I went into the bathroom, had a bath, shaved and came out again with my hair combed, wearing grey trousers, a white shirt, tennis shoes and white socks.

An Indian knocked on the door: he was carrying a parcel which he gave to Maturette, telling him the doctor had noticed that as I was roughly the same size as the lawyer I wouldn’t need anything; but little Maturette wouldn’t find anything to fit, because there was no one as small as him in Mr. Bowen’s house. He bowed in the Moslem way and went out. What is there I can say about such kindness? There is no describing the feelings in my heart. Clousiot went to bed first, then the five of us talked about a great number of things. What interested those charming women most was how we thought of remaking a life for ourselves. Not a word about the past: only the present and the future. Mr. Bowen said how sorry he was Trinidad wouldn’t permit escaped men to settle on the island. He’d often tried to get permission for various people to stay, he told us, but it had never been allowed.

The girl spoke very good French, like her father, with no accent or faulty pronunciation. She had fair hair and she was covered with freckles; she was between seventeen and twenty – I did not like to ask her age. She said, ‘You’re very young and your life is ahead of you: I don’t know what you were sentenced for and I don’t want to know, but the fact of having taken to sea in such a small boat for this long, dangerous voyage proves that you’re willing to pay absolutely anything for your freedom; and that is something I admire very much.’

We slept until eight the next morning. When we got up we found the table laid. The two ladies calmly told us that Mr. Bowen had left for Port of Spain and would only be back that afternoon, bringing the information he needed to see what could be done for us.

By leaving his house to three escaped convicts like this he gave us a lesson that couldn’t have been bettered: it was as though he were saying, ‘You are normal decent human beings; you can see for yourselves how much I trust you, since I am leaving you alone in my house with my wife and daughter.’ We were very deeply moved by this silent way of saying, ‘Now that I’ve talked to you, I see that you are perfectly trustworthy – so much so that I leave you here in my home like old friends, not supposing for a moment that you could possibly do or say anything wrong.’

Reader – supposing this book has readers some day – I am not clever and I don’t possess the vivid style, the living power, that is needed to describe this immense feeling of self-respect – no, of rehabilitation, or even of a new life. This figurative baptism, this bath of cleanliness, this raising of me above the filth I had sunk in, this way of bringing me overnight face to face with true responsibility, quite simply changed my whole being. I had been a convict, a man who could hear his chains even when he was free and who always felt that someone was watching over him; I had been all the things I had seen, experienced, undergone, suffered; all the things that had urged me to become a marked, evil man, dangerous at all times, superficially docile yet terribly dangerous when he broke out: but all this had vanished – disappeared as though by magic. Thank you, Mr. Bowen, barrister in His Majesty’s courts of law, thank you for having made another man of me in so short a time!

The very fair-haired girl with eyes as blue as the sea around us was sitting with me under the coconut-palms in her father’s garden. Red, yellow and mauve bougainvillaeas were all in flower, and they gave the garden the touch of poetry that the moment called for. ‘Monsieur Henri, [she called me Monsieur! How many years had it been since anyone called me Monsieur?] as Papa told you yesterday, the British authorities are so unfair, so devoid of understanding, that unfortunately you can’t stay here. They only give you a fortnight to rest and then you must go off to sea again. I went to have a look at your boat early this morning: it looks very small and frail for such a long voyage as you have to make. Let’s hope you reach a more hospitable, understanding country than ours. All the English islands do the same in these cases. If you have a horrid time in the voyage ahead of you, I do ask you not to hold it against the people who live in these islands. They are not responsible for this way of looking at things: these are orders that come from England, from people who don’t know you. Papa’s address is 101 Queen Street, Port of Spain, Trinidad. If it’s God’s will that you can do so. I beg you to send us just a line to tell us what happens to you.’

I was so moved I didn’t know what to say. Mrs. Bowen came towards us. She was a very beautiful woman of about forty with chestnut hair and green eyes. She was wearing a very simple white dress with a white belt, and a pair of light-green sandals. ‘Monsieur, my husband won’t be home till five. He’s getting them to allow you to go to Port of Spain in his car without a police escort. He also wants to prevent your having to spend the first night in the Port of Spain police-station. Your wounded friend will go straight to a nursing-home belonging to a friend of ours, a doctor; and you two will go to the Salvation Army hostel.’

Maturette joined us in the garden: he’d been to see the boat, and he told us it was surrounded by an interested crowd. Nothing had been touched. The people looking at it had found a bullet lodged under the rudder: someone had asked whether he might pull it out as a souvenir. Maturette had replied, ‘Captain, captain,’ and the Indian had understood that the captain had to be asked. Maturette said, ‘Why don’t we let the turtles go?’

‘Have you got some turtles?’ cried the girl. ‘Let’s go and see them.’

We went down to the boat. On the way a charming little Hindu girl took my hand without the least shyness. All these different-coloured people called out ‘Good afternoon.’ I took the turtles out. ‘What shall we do? Put them back into the sea? Or would you like them for your garden?’

‘The pool at the bottom is sea-water. We’ll put them there, and then I’ll have something to remember you by.’

‘Fine.’ I gave the onlookers everything in the boat except for the compass, the tobacco, the water-cask, the knife, the machete, the axe, the blankets and the revolver, which I hid under the blankets – no one had seen it.

At five o’clock Mr. Bowen appeared. ‘Gentlemen, everything is in order. I’ll drive you to the capital myself. First we’ll drop the wounded man in at the nursing-home and then we’ll go to the hostel.’ We packed Clousiot into the back seat of the car: I was saying thank you to the girl when her mother came out bringing a suitcase and said to us, ‘Please take these few things of my husband’s – we give them to you with all our heart.’ What could we say in the face of such very great kindness? ‘Thank you, thank you again and again and again.’ We drove off in the car. At a quarter to six we reached the nursing-home – Saint George’s nursing-home. Nurses carried Clousiot’s stretcher to a ward with a Hindu in it, sitting up in his bed. The doctor came, and shook Bowen’s hand: he spoke no French but through Mr. Bowen he told us that Clousiot would be well looked after and that we could come and see him as often as we liked. We went through the town in Mr. Bowen’s car.

It astonished us, with all its lights and cars and bicycles. White men, black men, yellow men, Indians and coolies all mingled there, walking along the pavements of Port of Spain, a town of wooden houses. We reached the Salvation Army, a building whose ground floor alone was made of stone – the rest of wood. It was well placed in a brightly-lit square whose name I managed to read – Fish Market. We were welcomed by the captain of the Salvation Army together with all his staff, both men and women. He spoke a little French and all the others said things to us in English, which we did not understand; but their faces were so cheerful and their eyes so welcoming that we were sure the words were kind.

We were taken to a room on the second floor with three beds in it – the third being laid on for Clousiot. There was a bathroom just at hand, with towels and soap for us. When he had shown us our room, the captain said, ‘If you would like to eat, we all have supper together at seven o’clock, that is to say in half an hour’s time.’

‘No. We’re not hungry.’

‘If you’d like to walk about the town, here are two West Indies dollars to have some tea or coffee, or an ice. Take great care not to get lost. When you want to come back just ask your way by saying “Salvation Army, please”’

Ten minutes later we were in the street. We walked along the pavements; we pushed our way among other people; nobody looked at us or paid any attention to us: we breathed deeply, appreciating these first steps, free in a town, to the full. This continual trust in us, letting us go free in a fair-sized city, warmed our hearts: it not only gave us self-confidence but made us aware that we must wholly deserve this trust. Maturette and I walked slowly along in the midst of the throng. We needed to be among people, to be jostled, to sink into the crowd and form part of it. We went into a bar and asked for two beers. It seems nothing much just to say ‘Two beers, please.’ It’s so natural, after all. Yet still to us it seemed absolutely extraordinary when the Indian girl with the gold shell in her nose served us and then said, ‘Half a dollar, sir.’ Her pearly smile, her big dark violet eyes a little turned up at the corners, her shoulder-long black hair, her low-cut dress that showed the beginning of her breasts and let one guess the rest was splendid – all these things that were so trifling and natural for everybody else seemed to us to belong to some unheard-of fairyland. Hold it, Papi: this can’t be true. It can’t be true that you are turning from a convict with a life sentence, a living corpse, into a free man so quickly!

It was Maturette who paid: he had only half a dollar left. The beer was beautifully cool and he said, ‘What about another?’ It seemed to me that this second round was something we shouldn’t do. ‘Hell,’ I said, ‘it’s not an hour since you’ve been really free and you’re already thinking of getting drunk?’

‘Easy, easy now, Papi! Having two beers and getting drunk, those are two very different things.’

‘Maybe so. But it seems to me that rightly speaking, we shouldn’t fling ourselves on the first pleasures that come to hand. I think we ought to just taste them little by little and not stuff ourselves like hogs. Anyhow, to begin with this money’s not ours.’

‘Fair enough: you’re right. We must learn how to be free in slow stages – that’s more our mark.’

We went out and walked down Watters Street, the main avenue that runs clean through the town; and we were so wonderstruck by the trams going by, the donkeys with their little carts, the cars, the lurid cinema and dance-hall advertisements, the eyes of the young black or Indian girls, who looked smilingly at us, that we went all the way to the harbour without noticing it. There in front of us were ships all lit up – tourist ships with bewitching names, Panama, Los Angeles, Boston, Quebec; cargo-ships from Hamburg, Amsterdam and London. And side by side all along the quay there were bars, pubs and restaurants, all crammed with men and women jammed together, drinking, singing, bawling one another out. Suddenly I felt an irresistible urge to mingle with this crowd – common maybe, but so full of life. On the terrace of one bar there were oysters, sea-eggs, shrimps, solens and mussels arranged on ice, a whole display of sea-food to excite the appetite of the passer-by. There were tables with red-and-white checked cloths to invite us to sit down – most of them were occupied. And there were coffee-coloured girls with delicate profiles, mulattoes without a single negroid feature, tight in their many-coloured, low-cut blouses, to make you feel even more eager to make the most of what was going.

I went up to one of them and said, ‘French money good?’ showing her a thousand-franc note. ‘Yes, I change for you.’ ‘OK.’ She took the note and vanished into a room crammed with people. She came back. ‘Come here.’ And she led me to the cash desk, where there was a Chinese sitting.

‘You French?’

‘Yes.’

‘Change thousand francs?’

‘Yes.’

‘All West Indies dollars?’

‘Yes.’

‘Passport?’

‘Got none.’

‘Sailor’s card?’

‘Got none.’

‘Immigration papers?’

‘Got none.’

‘Fine.’ He said something to the girl: she looked over the room, went up to a nautical character with a cap like mine-gold band and anchor – and brought him to the cash desk. The Chinese said, ‘Your identity card?’

‘Here.’

And calmly the Chinese wrote out an exchange-form for a thousand francs in the stranger’s name and made him sign it; then the girl took him by the arm and led him away. He certainly never knew what had happened. I got two hundred and fifty West Indies dollars, fifty of them in one and two-dollar notes. I gave the girl one dollar; we went outside, and sitting there at a table we treated ourselves to an orgy of sea-food, washed down with a delightful dry white wine.