Escape (12 page)

So one December night, after we'd been there less than a year, we all made our escape. We slipped away from a work party and hid in the jungle 'til nightfall. Then, before the evening roll call, when they'd notice we were missing, we sneaked down to the Maroni river and into the boat. It was a good boat – well equipped, and with food for the journey. The first bit of the trip was easy. The current was strong and we just slipped away from St. Laurent. The river got wider and wider. The closer we got to the Atlantic Ocean, the stronger the smell of the salty sea. It smelled like freedom, and I just couldn't wait to get away.

But when we got there, things went very, very wrong. The estuary out to the Atlantic is full of sand banks, and we got stuck on one. Dedé went crazy and stabbed the sailor to death. René and I, we knew we were finished from that moment onward, but the Longuevilles were such terrors we didn't like to say anything.

The boat was grounded, and we knew the guards would be out looking for us as soon as they discovered we'd gone. We had a brief, bad-tempered argument about what to do next, and all decided we'd have to head into the jungle. We got out of the boat, and started to wade towards the shore, waist deep in water. I grabbed the box full of food, but a huge wave came in from nowhere and knocked me over. All the food got washed away and Dedé wanted to kill me then and there, but Marcel talked him out of it.

The next few days were a nightmare. We couldn't find a thing to eat in the jungle, apart from a few small crabs on the riverbank, and we were starving. Then Pascal said that he and his friend would head off inland to see what they could find. We all waited by the riverside, hoping they'd come back with something tasty.

The next day, Pascal came back alone. He said he'd lost his friend, but he didn't seem that bothered about it. The Longuevilles would kill you on the spot if you fell out with them, but they had this odd sort of loyalty. They set off to look for the boy. Pascal got really fidgety, and kept telling them it wasn't worth it.

We found out soon enough why Pascal didn't want them to go. The Longuevilles hadn't gone far when they found a corpse. The boy was dead and parts of his body had been eaten. Any fool could see Pascal had killed him. They came back and killed Pascal on the spot, but that night we were all so hungry we cooked up bits of him ourselves. Yes, I did feel guilty, but he deserved it. Besides, if I hadn't eaten him, I wouldn't be talking to you now.

After that we lost heart. We wandered around for a few more days wondering what to do, until the local police caught us and we got sent back to the camp.

Then I went through the worst two years of my life. Escaping was so common, you didn't get sent to the guillotine for it. What you got was worse. They put you in a solitary confinement cell. Four out of five there went crazy or died. The guillotine's quick. You get your head cut off in less than a second, but solitary confinement kills you slowly, second by minute by hour by day. It's the worst kind of torture you could imagine.

You get sent to the island of St. Joseph and stuck in a block with row upon row of tiny cells. They're barely wide enough for you to stretch out your arms. There's a hinged plank for a bed, and an iron door with a hatch big enough for you to stick your head out of. There's a terrible, terrible silence there. No one's allowed to talk, and the guards even wear soft shoes to cut down on the noise. You get just enough food to keep you alive, and that's it.

René and I got two years apiece, but sometimes men get five years. That would kill you just as surely as any guillotine or firing squad. I kept sane by tapping messages out to other convicts and chasing the centipedes that infested my cell. I spent a lot of the time in a sleepy daze, dreaming about girls, and countries I could visit, and my childhood.

I had friends among the convicts who helped clean the block, and they probably saved my life. They smuggled in a coconut every day, and five cigarettes. The coconut kept me healthy, and the cigarettes I rationed out to break up the day. René, he had the same thing, but they found him out a year and a half into his sentence. No coconuts, no cigarettes. Then he got a bad fever and never really recovered. He died just a month before his release date.

I'll never forget the day I walked away from that place. After two years in a tiny cell, I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. People talking – that was frightening, especially when they shouted. And big, big wide-open space. It was bewildering. But I came out even more determined to escape.

This time I was more cautious, and picked my travel companions with a lot more care. After a year I managed to save up enough to join another escape plan. There were five of us this time. We all put up funds for a local fisherman, Bixier des Ages, to take us to Brazil.

It went really well to start with. Des Ages met us where he said he would, we handed over the money, and off we went down the river. Des Ages was a good sailor, and he'd taken us out to the Atlantic Ocean by dawn of the next day. He seemed OK, very quiet and distant. He just sat there puffing his pipe. Then later on the first morning, he said we'd have to sail near the coast, and navigate through some tricky sand banks.

As we got to the sand banks, he told us we'd all have to get out and push the boat over a particularly shallow piece of water. So off we got, and immediately sank in the mud up to our knees. No sooner were we all off the boat than des Ages fired up the motor and pulled away a few feet. We all stood there in the water, wondering what on earth was going on.

Then he went into the cabin and got out a rifle. It was all over so quickly… I remember him quite clearly, standing on the side of the deck, pipe in his mouth, calmly picking us all off, very business-like, a shot a piece. He came to me last, and I just stood there, completely frozen, like a rabbit cornered by a snake. Everything seemed to move very slowly. Everyone around me was dropping in the water, and he pointed the rifle straight at me and his finger squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Des Ages looked a bit rattled then, and he started to fiddle with the bolt on the gun, and curse to himself.

I turned and waded off as fast as I could through the mud and into the jungle, which came right up to the coast. I expected a bullet in the back of the head at any second, but des Ages must have run out of ammunition. I could hear him laughing. A horrible mocking laugh.

“You run off, you little maggot,” he yelled. “There's plenty in the jungle to finish you off.”

But this time I was lucky. As I made my way along the coast, I came across a rickety raft made from four barrels lashed together around a couple of ladders. Whoever had been using it even left a paddle next to it. I found out soon enough why they'd abandoned it. As I pushed the raft out to sea, intending to drift with the current away from French Guiana, I was quickly surrounded by sharks. But I'd come too far now to stop.

The sharks circled around me, but they soon got bored and by nightfall I'd almost reached the Brazilian border. There was a small settlement by the coast, and I managed to pilfer a bit of food to keep me going. The next day I slipped into Brazil and headed for Belem, the nearest big town.

With amazing good luck, I arrived in the town during their annual carnival, and there in the street was a costume parade. I passed myself off as a beggar, and no one looked at me twice. After that it was easy. I managed to walk off with some fellow's wallet, and booked myself into a hotel. I got cleaned up, bought some clothes, and soon found work in the town. After a year I had saved up enough to buy a ticket back to France.

So here I am. Back “home”. I work in a bakery in Paris, on the ovens at the back of the shop, away from the customers. I live in a small apartment in St. Dennis, near the middle of the city. I like Paris. All that bustle, all those people. Far enough away from my old home in the south to make it unlikely I'll bump into someone I know.

But sometimes I think I never really escaped. I never remarried. I like to keep a distance from people, in case I give myself away. At every street corner, I wonder if someone I know will see me, and betray me.

At home in the evening, or in my bed at night, I'll hear voices outside my apartment. Then I start to shake and shake, and expect a knock at the door. No one comes to visit, so it could only mean the police have found me. I couldn't go back again. That trip on the Martinière, another spell in solitary confinement, and more awful years in the jungle of French Guiana. And do you know, I've been back here 22 years now.

After the escape

Between 1854 and 1937, over 70,000 men were sent to the prison camps of French Guiana. Of that number, over 50,000 attempted to escape, and one in six succeeded. Shipments of convicts stopped shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, food supplies from France virtually dried up, and prisoners in the colony suffered terribly from starvation. After the war, the French government decided to close the prison camps and bring back the remaining prisoners to serve their sentences in France.

Bixier des Ages was eventually betrayed by an escaper he failed to kill, and was arrested. He was sentenced to 20 years in the prison camps, but even here he continued to bring grief to the convicts of the colony. He became a turnkey, a trusted prisoner whose job it is to track down escapers.

Several books have been written about life in the camps of French Guiana. The most famous is probably
Papillon
, by ex-convict Henri Charrière, which was made into a famous film of the same name starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

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