Papillon

The roll-call began straight away. ‘So-and-so, present. So-and-so …’ etc. It lasted two hours and everything was correct. Then we watched the two authorities exchanging signatures on a little table brought for the purpose.

Major Barrot had as many stripes as the colonel, but they were gold and not the gendarmerie’s silver: he took his turn at the megaphone.

‘Transportees, from now on that is the name you’ll always be called by – transportee so-and-so or transportee such-and-such a number – the number that will be allotted to you. From now on you are under the special penal settlement laws and regulations: you come under its own particular tribunals which will take the necessary decision with regard to you as the case arises. For crimes committed in the penal settlement these courts can condemn you to anything from imprisonment to death. These disciplinary sentences, such as prison or solitary confinement, are of course served in different establishments that belong to the administration. The officers you see opposite you are called supervisors. When you speak to them you will say “Monsieur le surveillant” After you have eaten you will be given a kitbag containing the settlement uniform. Everything has been provided for and you will not need anything but what is in the bag. Tomorrow you will go aboard the Martinière. We shall travel together. Don’t lose heart at leaving this country: you will be better off in the settlement than in solitary confinement in France. You can talk, amuse yourselves, sing and smoke; and you needn’t be afraid of being treated roughly so long as you behave yourselves. I ask you to leave the settling of your private disagreements until we reach Guiana. During the voyage discipline has to be very strict, as I hope you will understand. If there are any men among you who don’t feel up to making the voyage, they may report to the infirmary, where they will be examined by the medical officers who are accompanying the convoy. I wish you all a pleasant trip.’ The ceremony was over.

‘Well, Dega, what do you think about it?’

‘Papillon, old cock, I see I was right when I told you that the other convicts were the worst danger we’d have to cope with. That piece of his about “leave the settling of your private disagreements until we reach Guiana” meant plenty. Christ, what killings and murdering must go on there!’

‘Never worry about that: just rely on me.’

I found Francis la Passe and said, ‘Is your brother still a medical attendant?’

‘Yes. He’s not a real convict, only a bleeding relégué.’

‘Get into touch with him as quick as possible: ask him to give you a scalpel. If he wants money for it, tell me how much. I’ll pay.’

Two hours later I had a very strong steel-handled scalpel. Its only fault was that it was rather big; but it was a formidable weapon.

I went and sat very near the latrines in the middle of the courtyard and I sent for Galgani to give him back his charger; but it was going to be very hard to find him in that milling crowd – a huge yard crammed with eight hundred men. We had never caught sight of Julot, Guittou or Suzini since we got there.

The advantage of communal life is that you belong to a new society, if this could be called a society – you live in it, talk in it, become part of it. There are so many things to say, to hear and to do that you no longer have any time to think. And it seemed to me, as I saw how the past faded away, growing less important in comparison with everyday life, it seemed to me that once you got to the penal settlement you must almost forget what you have been, how or why you had landed up there, and concentrate upon one thing alone – escape. I was wrong, because the most important and most engrossing thing is above all to keep yourself alive.

Where were the cops, the members of the jury, the assizes, the judges, my wife, my father, my friends? They were there all right, thoroughly alive, each one in his place in my heart; but what with the intense excitement of leaving, of this great leap into the unknown, these new friendships and new aspects of life, they seemed to have less importance than before. But that was only a mere impression. When I wanted, and whenever my mind chose to open each one’s file, they were all instantly alive once more.

Now here was Galgani, being led towards me, for even with his thick pebble-lenses he could scarcely see. He looked better. He came up to me and shook my hand without a word.

I said, ‘I want to give you back your charger. Now you’re well you can carry it yourself. It’s too much responsibility for me during the voyage; and then who knows whether we’ll be in touch at the settlement, or whether we’ll even see one another? So it’s better you should have it back.’ Galgani looked at me unhappily. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Come into the latrine and I’ll give it back to you.’

‘No, I don’t want it. You keep it – I give it to you. It’s yours.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I don’t want to get myself murdered for my charger. I’d rather live without money than have my throat slit for it. I give it to you, for after all there’s no reason why you should risk your life, looking after my lolly for me. If you run the risk it might as well be for your own sake.’

‘You’re scared, Galgani. Have you been threatened already? Does anyone suspect you’re loaded?’

‘Yes: there are three Arabs who follow me all the time. That’s why I’ve never come to see you, so they won’t suspect we’re in touch. Every time I go to the latrine, day or night, one of these three comes and puts himself next to me. Without making it obvious I’ve shown them absolutely plain that I’m not loaded, but in spite of all I can do they never let up. They think someone else has my charger; they don’t know who; and they keep behind me to see when I’ll get it back again.’

I looked hard at Galgani and I saw he was terror-stricken, really persecuted. I said, ‘What part of the courtyard do they keep to?’

He said, ‘Over towards the kitchen and the laundry.’

‘Right, you stay here. I’ll be back. But no, now I come to think of it, you come with me.’ With Galgani at my side I went over towards the Arabs. I’d taken the scalpel out of my cap and I had the blade up my right sleeve, with the handle in my palm. When we had crossed the court, sure enough I saw them. Four of them. Three Arabs and a Corsican, a character by the name of Girando. I grasped the situation right away. It was the Corsican who had been cold-shouldered by the real hard men and who had put the Arabs up to this job. He must have known that Galgani was Pascal Matra’s brother-in-law and that it wasn’t possible for him not to have a charger.

‘Hi, Mokrane. OK?’

‘OK, Papillon. You OK too?’

‘Hell, no. Far from it. I’ve come to see you guys to tell you Galgani is my friend. If anything happens to him, it’s you who cop it first, Girando. And then the rest of you. And you can take that just how you like.’

Mokrane stood up. He was as tall as me – about five foot eight – and as broad-shouldered. The words had needled him and he was on the point of moving in to start things when I flashed the scalpel and with it right there shining-new in my hand I said, ‘If you stir I’ll kill you like a dog.’

He was knocked sideways by seeing me armed in a place where everybody was searched all the time, and he was shaken by my attitude and the length of the blade. He said, ‘I got up to talk, not to fight.’

I knew it was not true, but it was to my advantage to save his face in front of his friends. I left the door open for him wide and handsome. ‘OK, since you just got up to talk … ‘

‘I didn’t know Galgani was your friend. I thought he was a square. And you know very well, Papillon, that when you’re skint you have to find cash somewhere to make a break.’

‘Fair enough. You certainly have the right to struggle for your life, Mokrane, like anyone else. Only keep away from Galgani, see? You’ve got to look somewhere else.’

He held out his hand: I shook it hard. Jesus, I was well out of that one; for looking at it rightly, if I had killed that guy, I should never have left the next day. A little later I realized I had made a bleeding error. Galgani and I walked away. I said, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this caper. I don’t want to have old Dega bawling me out.’

I tried to persuade Galgani to take the charger. He said, ‘Tomorrow, before we leave.’ The next day he lay so low that I set out for penal with two chargers aboard.

That night not one of us – and we were about eleven in the cell – not one of us said a word. For we all had more or less the same thought in our minds – this was the last day we should pass on French soil. Each of us was more or less filled with homesickness at the idea of leaving France for ever, with an unknown land and an unknown way of life at the end of our journey.

Dega did not speak. He sat next to me close to the barred door on to the corridor, where the air was a little fresher. I felt completely at sea. The information we had about what was coming was so contradictory that I did not know whether to be pleased or wretched or downright hopeless.

The other men in the cell were all genuine underworld characters. The only one who did not belong was the little Corsican who had been born in the settlement. All these men were in a grey, floating state of mind. The seriousness of the moment and its importance had made them almost entirely dumb. The cigarette-smoke wafted out of the cell into the corridor like a cloud, and if you didn’t want your eyes to sting you had to sit lower than the heavy fog-blanket. No one slept except for André Baillard; it was natural enough for him, since his life had already been lost, as it were. As far as he was concerned everything else could only be unlooked-for heaven.

My life passed before my eyes like a film – childhood in a family filled with love, affectionate discipline, decent ways and good-heartedness; the wild flowers, the murmur of streams, the taste of the walnuts, peaches and plums that our garden gave us in such quantities; the smell of the mimosa that flowered every spring in front of our door; the outside of our house, and the inside with my family there – all this ran by before my eyes. It was a talking picture, one in which I heard the voice of my mother (she had loved me so), and then my father’s – always affectionate and kind – and the barking of Clara, his gun-dog, calling me into the garden to play. The boys and girls of my childhood, the ones I had played with during the happiest days of my life. All this – this film I was watching without ever having meant to see it, this magic lantern that my subconscious had lit against my will – all this filled the night of waiting before the leap into the great unknown with sweet, gentle memories and emotions.

Now was the time to get things clear in my mind. Let’s see: I was twenty-six and very fit; I had five thousand six hundred francs belonging to me in my gut and twenty-five thousand belonging to Galgani. Dega, there beside me, had ten thousand. It seemed to me I could count on forty thousand francs, for if Galgani couldn’t look after his dough here he’d be even less capable of doing so aboard the ship or in Guiana. What’s more, he knew it: and that’s why he never came to ask for his charger. So I could count on that money – taking Galgani with me, of course. He’d have to profit by it – it was his cash, not mine. I’d use it for his good; but I should gain by it too. Forty thousand francs was a lot of money, so I should find it easy to buy helpers – convicts serving their time, men who had been let out, warders.

The conclusion was positive. As soon as I got there I must escape together with Dega and Galgani, and that was the only thing I was to concentrate upon at this point. I touched the scalpel, and the feel of the cold steel handle pleased me. It gave me confidence, having such a formidable weapon as that upon me. I had already proved how useful it could be in that business with the Arabs.

About three o’clock in the morning the men for solitary piled up eleven kitbags in front of the bars of the cell: they were all crammed full and each had a big label on it. I could read one that hung in through the bars. C –, Pierre, thirty years old, five foot eight and a half, waist size forty-two, shoes eight and a half, number x. This Pierre C – was Pierrot le Fou, a guy from Bordeaux who had got twenty years hard in Paris for homicide.

He was a good type, a decent, straightforward member of the underworld, and I knew him well. The label showed me how precise and well-organized the authorities in charge of the penal settlement were. It was better than the army, where they make you try your things on by guesswork. Here everything was written down and so each man would get things his own size. I could see from a bit of canvas at the top of the bag that the uniform was white with vertical red stripes. Dressed like that, you could scarcely pass unnoticed.

I tried to force my mind to make pictures of the assizes, the jurymen, the prosecuting counsel, etc. It flatly refused to obey me, and I could only get it to produce ordinary images. It came to me that if you want to live through anything imaginary as vividly as I did at the Conciergerie or at Beaulieu you have to be alone, utterly alone. It was a relief to understand this, and I saw that the communal life that was coming would bring other needs with it, other reactions and other plans.

Pierrot le Fou came up to the bars and said, ‘OK, Papi?’

‘What about you?’

‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’d always dreamed of going to America; but I was a gambler, so I could never save enough for the trip. The cops had the idea of making me a present of it. You can’t deny it was kind of them, Papillon.’ He was speaking naturally. There was no bragging about what he said. You could feel that right down he was sure of himself. ‘The cops’ free trip to America has something to be said for it, you know. I’d much rather go to Guiana than sweat out fifteen years of solitary in France.’

‘As I see it going crazy in a cell or just falling apart in some solitary confinement hole in France is even worse than dying of leprosy or yellow fever.’

‘That’s how I see it too,’ he said.

‘Look, Pierrot, this label is yours.’

He bent down, looking very close to read it, and slowly he made out the words. ‘I can’t wait to put these clothes on. I’ve a mind to open the bag – no one will say anything. After all, they’re meant for me.’

‘You leave it alone and wait till they tell you. This isn’t the time to ask for trouble, Pierre. I need some peace and quiet.’ He grasped what I meant and moved away from the bars.

Louis Dega looked at me and said, ‘This is our last night, boy. Tomorrow they’re taking us far away from our beautiful country.’

‘Our beautiful country hasn’t got such a very beautiful system of justice, Dega. Maybe we’ll come to know countries that aren’t so beautiful but that have a slightly more human way of treating people who have slipped up.’ I didn’t think I was so near the truth: the future was to show me that I was dead right. Total silence fell again.

Leaving for Guiana

Six o’clock, and everything was in motion. Convicts came round with coffee and then four warders appeared. Today they were in white; they still carried their revolvers. Spotless white tunics and buttons that shone like gold. One had three gold chevrons on his left sleeve: nothing on his shoulders.

‘Transportees, come out into the corridor in twos. Each man will find the bag with his name on the label. Take the bag and move back against the wall, facing the corridor with your bag in front of you.’

It took twenty minutes before we were all lined up with our kitbags at our feet.

‘Strip: roll up your things, put them into the jacket, bundle it all up and tie the sleeves … right. You over there, pick up the rolls and put them into the cell. Now dress. Put on vest, drawers, striped drill trousers, drill jacket, shoes and socks … You’re all dressed?’

‘Yes, Monsieur le surveillant.’

‘Right. Keep the woollen jersey out of the bag in case it rains or turns cold. Bags on your left shoulder. In double file, follow me.’

With the sergeant in front, two warders at the sides and the fourth behind, our little column moved out to the courtyard. In under two hours eight hundred and ten convicts were lined up there. Forty men were called out, including Dega and me and the three who were being sent back after their escape – Julot, Galgani and Santini. These forty men were lined up in rows of ten. Each rank of the column that was taking shape had a warder beside it. No chains, no handcuffs. Three yards in front of us, walking backwards, ten gendarmes. They faced us, rifle in hand, and they marched like that all the way, each steered by another gendarme holding his shoulder-belt.

The great gate of the citadel opened, and slowly the column began to move. As the line emerged from the fortress so more gendarmes, carrying rifles or light machine-guns, joined the convoy, staying a couple of yards from it and keeping pace. Other gendarmes held back a huge crowd that had come to watch us leaving for the penal settlements. Half way to the quay I heard a quiet whistle from the windows of a house. I looked up and saw Nénette, my wife, and my friend Antoine D – at one window; Paula, Dega’s wife, and his friend Antoine Giletti were at the other. Dega saw them too, and we marched with our eyes fixed on those windows as long as we could see them. That was the last time I ever set eyes on my wife: or my friend Antoine, who died much later in an air-raid on Marseilles. No one spoke. There was a total silence. No prisoner, no warder, no gendarme, no person in the crowd disturbed that truly heart-rending moment when everyone knew that one thousand eight hundred men were about to vanish from ordinary life for ever.

We went aboard. The forty in front – that is to say us – were sent to the bottom of the hold, into a cage with thick bars. There was a marker on it. I read ‘Hall no. 1. 40 men top special category. Strict, continual surveillance.’ Each man was given a rolled-up hammock. There were quantities of rings to hang them by. Someone seized me in his arms: it was Julot. He knew all about this, because he had already made the voyage ten years before. He knew how to cope. He said, ‘This way, quick. Hang your bag where you’re going to hang your hammock. This place is near two closed port-holes, but they’ll be opened when we’re at sea, and we’ll be able to breathe better here than anywhere else in the cage.’

I introduced Dega. We were talking when a man came our way. Julot put out his arm and blocked the path. He said, ‘Never come over this side if you want to reach penal alive. Get it?’ ‘Yes,’ said the other man. ‘You know why?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then bugger off.’ The guy went. Dega was delighted with this show of strength and he didn’t hide it. ‘With you two, I’ll be able to sleep easy.’ Julot said, ‘With us, you’re safer here than in any villa on the coast that has a single window open.’

The voyage lasted eighteen days. Only one piece of excitement. Everyone was woken by an enormous shriek in the night. A character was found dead with a long knife deep between his shoulders. The knife had been driven from below upwards and it had passed through the hammock before reaching him. A really dangerous weapon, a good eight inches long in the blade. Immediately twenty-five or thirty warders turned their revolvers or rifles on us, shouting, ‘Everyone strip. Double quick time!’

Everyone stripped. I saw there was going to be a search and I put my bare right foot over the scalpel, taking my weight on the left, because the blade was cutting into me. Nevertheless my foot covered the scalpel. Four warders came inside the cage and began rummaging through the shoes and clothes. Before they came in they left their weapons outside and the door was closed on them, but those who were the other side of the bars kept watch on us, keeping us covered. ‘The first man to stir is a goner,’ said a head screw’s voice. During the search they found three knives, two long roofing-nails, sharpened, a corkscrew, and a gold charger. Six men were brought out on to the deck, still naked. Major Barrot, the officer in command of the convoy, appeared together with two colonial army doctors and the captain of the ship. When the screws left our cage everyone dressed again, without waiting for the order. I picked up my scalpel.

The warders moved back to the far end of the deck. In the middle there was Barrot, just by the companion-way, with the other officers. The six naked men were lined up opposite them, standing to attention.

‘This is his,’ said the screw who had conducted the search, picking up a knife and pointing to its owner.

‘Fair enough. It’s mine.’

‘Right,’ said Barrot. ‘He’ll make the rest of the voyage in a cell over the engines.’

Each man was pointed out as responsible either for the nails, or the corkscrew or the knives, and each acknowledged that the weapon that had been found belonged to him. Each one, still naked, went up the ladder, accompanied by two screws. Lying there on the floor there was still one knife and the gold charger: and only one man for both of them. He was young – twenty-three or twenty-five – well-built, at least five foot ten, athletic, blue eyes.

‘This is yours, isn’t it?’ said the screw, holding out the gold charger.

‘Yes, it’s mine.’

‘What’s in it?’ asked Major Barrot, taking it.

‘Three hundred pounds sterling, two hundred dollars and two five-carat diamonds.’

‘Right. We’ll have a look.’ He opened it. The major was surrounded by other people and we couldn’t see a thing. But we heard him say, ‘Just so. What’s your name?’

‘Salvidia Romeo.’

‘You’re Italian?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’ll not be punished for the charger: but you will be for the knife.’

‘Excuse me, but the knife isn’t mine.’

‘Don’t talk balls,’ said the screw, ‘I found it in your shoe.’

‘I say again the knife isn’t mine.’

‘So I’m lying, am I?’

‘No, you’re just mistaken.’

‘Whose is the knife, then?’ asked Major Barrot. ‘If it’s not yours, it must be somebody’s.’

‘It’s not mine, that’s all.’

‘If you don’t want to be put in the punishment cell – and you’ll fry there, because it’s over the boiler – just tell me whose the knife is.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you trying to make a fool of me? A knife’s found in your shoe and you don’t know whose it is? Do you think I’m a fool? Either it’s yours or you know whose it is. Speak up.’

‘It’s not mine and it’s not for me to say whose it is. I’m not an informer. You don’t by any chance think I look like a bleeding prison officer, do you?’

‘Warder, put on the handcuffs. This kind of undisciplined conduct costs a packet, my friend.’

The two commanding officers, the captain of the ship and the head of the convoy, talked privately. The captain gave an order to a quartermaster, who went up on deck. A few moments later a Breton sailor appeared, a giant of a man, with a wooden bucket of sea water and a rope as thick as your wrist. The convict was tied to the bottom step of the ladder, on his knees. The sailor wetted the rope in the bucket and then deliberately, with all his strength, he set about flogging the poor devil’s back and buttocks. Not a sound came from the convict: blood flowed from his buttocks and his sides. A shout from our cage broke the graveyard silence. ‘You bloody sods!’

That was all that was needed to start everybody roaring. ‘Murderers! Swine! Bastards!’ The more they threatened to fire if we did not shut up the more we bellowed until suddenly the captain shouted, ‘Turn on the steam!’

Sailors turned various wheels and jets of steam shot out at us with such force that in a split second everyone was flat on his belly. The jets came at chest-height. We were all struck with panic. The men who had been scalded dared not cry out. The whole thing lasted under a minute, but it terrified every man there.