Papillon (2 page)

Was I dreaming or was he really speaking to me? Either way I was deeply impressed by this “devourer of men.”

“Don’t try to resist, prisoner. Above all, don’t try to defend yourself. I’m going to send you down the road of the condemned anyway. And I trust you have no faith in the jury. Have no illusions in that quarter. Those twelve know nothing of life.

“Look at them, there in front of you. Can you see them clearly, those dozen cheeseheads brought to Paris from some distant village? They’re only
petits bourgeois
, some retired, others small businessmen. Not worth talking about. You can’t expect them to understand your twenty-five years and the life you’ve led in Montmartre. To them, Pigalle and the Place Blanche are hell itself, and anybody who stays up half the night is an enemy of society. They like to serve on this jury, are extremely proud of it, in fact. Moreover, I can assure you, they’re all acutely aware of their own mean little lives.

“And here you are, young and handsome. Surely you realize I’m going to hold nothing back when I describe you as a Don Juan of Montmartre? I’ll make them your enemies straight off. You’re too well dressed. You should have worn more humble garments. Ah, that was a major tactical error. Don’t you see they envy you your clothes? They buy theirs at Samaritaine. Never have they gone to a tailor, even in their dreams.”

It was now ten o’clock, and we were ready to start. Before me were six magistrates, one of whom was an aggressive attorney who was going to use all his Machiavellian power and intelligence to convince these twelve shopkeepers that I was guilty, and that the only proper sentence was prison or the guillotine.

I was going to be judged for the murder of a pimp and stool pigeon who operated in Montmartre. There was no proof, but the cops—they got a promotion each time they brought in a lawbreaker—were going to insist I was guilty. For lack of proof, they would say they had “confidential” information that put it beyond the shadow of a doubt. They had primed a witness—a walking; tape recorder at Police Headquarters by the name of Polein—and he would be the most effective element in the prosecution. Since I maintained that I didn’t know him, in due course the President would say to me with a fine show of impartiality: “You say this witness lies. All right. But why should he lie?”

“Your Honor, if I’ve been staying awake nights since my arrest, it wasn’t because I was sorry I killed Roland le Petit—I didn’t kill him. It was because I kept trying to figure out this witness’s motive, why he was determined to harm me as much as possible, and why, each time the prosecution threatened to collapse, he found something new to prop it up with. I’ve reached the conclusion, your Honor, that the police caught him committing a crime and made a deal with him: ‘We’ll look the other way if you testify against Papillon.’”

I didn’t know then how close to the truth I was. Polein was presented to the court as an honest man with a clean record; a few years later he was arrested and found guilty for trafficking in cocaine.

Hubert tried to defend me, but he couldn’t compete with the prosecutor. Only one witness, Bouffray, boiling with indignation, gave him even a few moments’ trouble. Pradel’s cleverness won the duel. As if that weren’t enough, he flattered the jury and they swelled with pride at being treated as collaborators and equals by this impressive character.

By eleven that night the game was over. Check and mate. I, who was innocent, was found guilty.

French society in the person of Prosecutor Pradel had succeeded in eliminating for life a young man of twenty-five. And no reduced sentences, if you please! This heaping platter was served to me with the toneless voice of President Bevin.

“Will the prisoner please stand.”

I stood. The room was silent, everyone held his breath, my heart beat a little faster. The jury looked at me or bowed their heads; they seemed ashamed.

“The jury having answered ‘Yes’ to all the questions except one—that of premeditation—you are condemned to hard labor for life. Have you anything to say?”

I didn’t move; I just clutched the railing of the prisoner’s box a little harder. “Your Honor, yes, I want to say I am truly innocent, that I’m a victim of a police frame-up.”

A murmur rose from a group of specially invited ladies sitting behind the Bench.

Without raising my voice, I said to them, “Silence, you women in pearls who come here to indulge your sick emotions. The farce is played out. A murder has been solved by your police and your justice; you should be content.”

“Will a guard please remove the prisoner,” said the President.

Before I was led away, I heard a voice cry out, “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll follow you there.” It was my good and true Nénette shouting her love. And those of my underworld friends who were in the courtroom applauded. They knew the truth about this murder and this was their way of showing they were proud of me for not squealing.

We went back to the small room where we had waited before the trial. There the police handcuffed me, and then I was chained to one of them, my right wrist to his left. No one spoke. I asked for a cigarette. The guard gave me one and lit it. Each time I lifted it to my mouth or took it away, the policeman had to raise or lower his arm to follow my motions. I finished about three-quarters of the cigarette. Still not a word. Finally I looked at the guard and said, “Let’s go.”

I went down the stairs escorted by a dozen policemen and came out into the inner courtyard of the Palais. The paddy wagon was waiting for us. We all found places on the benches. The sergeant said: “Conciergerie.”

When we arrived at Marie Antoinette’s last château, the police turned me over to the head warden, who signed a paper. They left without a word, but just before leaving—surprise—the sergeant shook my handcuffed hand.

The head warden asked me, “What’d they give you?”

“Life.”

“I can’t believe it.” But he took another look at the police and saw it was so. Then this fifty-year-old jailer who had seen everything and knew my own case very well had these kind words for me:

“Those bastards! They must be crazy!”

Gently he removed my handcuffs and accompanied me to the padded cell specially designed for those condemned to death, madmen, the very dangerous and those sentenced to hard labor.

“Chin up, Papillon,” he said as he shut the door. “They’ll be sending you your things and the same food you had in the other cell. Chin up!”

“Thanks, chief. Believe me, my chin is up and I hope they choke on their ‘for life.’”

A few minutes later I heard a scratching on my door. “What is it?”

A voice answered, “Nothing. It’s only me. I’m hanging up a sign.”

“Why? What does it say?”

“‘Hard labor for life.’ Watch closely.”

They really are crazy, I thought. Do they actually think the blow that just hit me could make me want to commit suicide? My chin’s up and I’m going to keep it that way. I’m going to fight them all. Starting tomorrow, I go into action.

As I was drinking my coffee the next morning, I asked myself, Should I appeal? Would I have better luck in another court? And how much time would I lose doing it? One year, maybe eighteen months … and what for? To get twenty years instead of life?

Since I had decided to escape at all cost, the number of years didn’t matter. I recalled the question another convict had addressed to the presiding judge: “Your Honor, how long does hard labor for life last in France?”

I paced back and forth in my cell. I had sent a consoling wire to my wife and another to my sister, who, alone against the world, had tried to defend her brother.

It was over. The curtain was down. My people would suffer more than I, and my poor father far away in the provinces would have a hard time carrying this heavy cross.

With a start I came to my senses. You’re innocent, sure, but who believes you? I asked myself. Stop going around claiming your innocence; they’ll just laugh at you. Getting life for a pimp, and on top of that saying it was somebody else who did it—that’s too thick. Better keep your trap shut.

So much for that. The first thing to do was to make contact with another con who wanted to break out.

I thought of a man from Marseilles called Dega. I’d probably see him at the barber’s. He went every day for a shave. I asked to go too. When I arrived, there he was with his nose to the wall. I noticed him just as he was surreptitiously letting another man go ahead of him so that he would have longer to wait his turn. I took a place directly next to him, forcing another man to step aside. I spoke very fast, under my breath.

“Well, Dega, how’s it going?”

“O.K., Papi. I got fifteen years. What about you? I heard they really screwed you.”

“Yes. I got life.”

“Are you going to appeal?”

“No. I’m going to eat and keep in shape. You’ve got to be strong, Dega. Someday we’re going to need strong muscles. Got any money?”

“Yes. Ten thousand francs in pounds sterling.
*
What about you?”

“Not a sou.”

“Want a piece of advice? Get some and get it fast. Hubert’s your lawyer? He’s a bastard, he’ll never lift a finger. Send your wife to Dante with a loaded
plan
. Tell her to give it to Dominique-le-Riche and I guarantee you’ll get it.”

“Ssh. The guard’s looking at us.”

“So you’re having a little chat?”

“Oh, nothing interesting,” Dega answered. “He says he’s feeling sick.”

“What’s he got? Courtroom indigestion?” The slob burst out laughing.

So this was it. I was on the road of the condemned already. A man makes jokes and laughs like crazy at the expense of a kid of twenty-five who’s in for life.

I got my
plan
. It was a highly polished aluminum tube, that unscrewed right in the middle. It had a male half and a female half. It contained 5600 francs in new bills. When I got it, I kissed it. Yes, I kissed that little tube, two and a half inches long and as thick as your thumb, before shoving it into my anus. I took a deep breath so that it would lodge in the colon. It was my strongbox. They could make me take off all my clothes, spread my legs apart, make me cough or bend over double, for all the good it would do them. The
plan
was high up in the large intestine. It was a part of me. Inside me I carried my life, my freedom … my road to revenge. For that’s what was on my mind. Revenge. That’s all that was, in fact.

It was dark outside. I was alone in my cell. A bright light shone from the ceiling so that the guard could see me through a little hole in the door. The powerful light blinded me. I placed a folded handkerchief over my sore eyes. I stretched out on the mattress on my iron bed and, lying there without a pillow, went over and over the details of that terrible trial.

To make you understand this long story as it unfolds and what sustained me in my struggle, I may have to be a little long-winded just now. I must tell you everything that happened and what I saw in my mind’s eye during those first days after I was buried alive.

What would I do after I escaped? For now that I had my
plan
I never doubted for a moment that I would.

Well, I’d make it back to Paris as fast as possible. And the first man I’d kill would be that stool pigeon, Polein. Then the two informers. But two informers weren’t enough, I had to kill
all
informers. Or at least as many as possible. I’d fill a trunk with all the explosives it would hold. I didn’t know exactly how much that would be: twenty, thirty, forty pounds? I tried to figure what I’d need for lots of victims.

I kept my eyes closed, the handkerchief over them for protection, and I could see the trunk very clearly, looking very innocent but crammed with explosives, the trigger carefully primed to set them off. Wait a minute … It must explode at exactly ten in the morning, in the dispatch room on the second floor at Police Headquarters, 36 Quai des Orfèvres. At that hour there would be at least one hundred and fifty cops in the room, receiving their orders for the day and listening to reports. How many steps were there to climb? I had to get it right.

I must figure exactly the time it would take to get the trunk from the street to its destination at the very second it was to explode. And who would carry the trunk? All right; be bold. I’d arrive in a taxi immediately in front of the entrance, and with an authoritative voice I’d tell the two guards: “Take this trunk up to the dispatch room. I’ll be right up. Tell Commissioner Dupont that Chief Inspector Dubois sent it and that I’ll be along in a minute.”

But would they obey? What if it was my luck that, out of all those idiots, I picked the only two intelligent men in the force? Then I’d be finished. I must think of something else. And I thought and thought. I would not admit that nothing would ever be 100 percent sure.

I got up for a drink of water. So much thinking had given me a headache.

I lay down again without the blindfold. The minutes dragged. And that light, that goddamned light! I wet the handkerchief and put it back on. The cold water felt good and its weight made the cloth stick to my eyes. From then on I always did this.

The long hours I spent piecing together my future revenge were so intense that I began to feel as if the project were already under way. Every night, and even parts of the day, I wandered through Paris as if my escape were already a fact: I
would
escape and I would return to Paris. And, naturally, I’d present my bill to Polein first, then to the informers. But what about the jury? Were those bastards to go on leading peaceful lives? Those old crocks must have gone home, smug and satisfied at having done their duty with a capital D—full of importance, puffed up with pride in front of their neighbors, and the wives waiting, hair uncombed, to guzzle soup with them.