Papillon (48 page)

We got back to the islands at three in the afternoon. I was no sooner off the boat than I noticed Juliette’s pale-yellow dress next to her husband. The warden came up to me even before we had lined up and asked, “How many?”

“Eight.”

He turned to his wife and spoke to her. She sat down on a rock, obviously stunned. Then her husband took her by the arm. She got to her feet and, looking at me somberly with her big eyes, walked away.

“Papillon,” Dega asked, “how many?”

“Eight years in solitary.” He was silent, and didn’t even dare look at me. Galgani came up, and before he could speak I said, “Don’t send me a thing. Don’t write to me. With this long sentence I can’t take any risks.”

“I understand.”

In a low voice I added quickly, “See if you can get me the best food possible at noon and at night. If you can manage it, maybe we’ll see each other again someday. Good-by.”

I headed for the boat that was to take us back to Saint-Joseph. Everybody looked at me as if I were a coffin being lowered into the grave. No one spoke.

During the short trip I repeated to Chapar what I’d said to Galgani. He replied, “That should be easy enough. Chin up, Papi.” Then he asked, “What about Carbonieri?”

“I’m sorry I forgot to tell you. The President of the council asked for more information on his case before making a decision. Is that good or bad?”

“It’s good, I think.”

I was in the first row of the column of twelve men that climbed the hill to the Réclusion. I walked fast. It’s strange, but I was actually in a hurry to get to my cell and be alone. In fact, I was rushing so fast that the guard said, “Slow down, Papillon. You look as if you were in a hurry to get home.” Then we were there.

The guard said, “Strip, everybody. The chief warden at Réclusion will address you now.”

He made his usual speech—“
Réclusionnaires
, here we …”—then turned to me. “I’m sorry to see you back, Papillon. You’re in Building A, cell one twenty-seven. It’s the best one, Papillon. You’re opposite the door to the hall so you have more light and you’ll always have fresh air. I hope you intend to behave. Eight years is a long time, but who knows? If your conduct is good, you may get a year or two off. I hope so; you’re a brave man.”

So I was in number 127. It was exactly opposite a large barred door that opened into the passageway. Although it was already six o’clock, you could see quite clearly. Nor did this cell have the odor of rot that my first one had. That was encouraging. Old man, I told myself, these four walls will be watching you for the next eight years. Don’t count every month and hour; that’s a waste of time. Try six-month periods. Sixteen times six months and you’re free again. You have one advantage anyway. If you croak in here, you have the satisfaction of dying in the light—if you die during the day, that is. It can’t be much fun to die in the dark. If you’re sick, here at least, the doctor can see your face. Don’t blame yourself for trying to escape and live again, and for God’s sake, don’t feel guilty about killing Celier. Just think how you’d suffer if he left on a
cavale
while you were in here. Anyway, maybe there’ll be an amnesty, a war, an earthquake; maybe a typhoon will destroy this place. Why not? Maybe some honest man, returning to France, will move the French to force the Penal Administration to put an end to this guillotining of men without benefit of guillotine. Maybe a doctor, sickened by what he has seen, will spill it to a journalist or to a priest. Who knows? In any event, Celier has been eaten by the sharks, but you’re here, you have your pride, you’ll get out of this tomb alive.

One, two, three, four, five and turn; one, two, three, four, five, another turn. I began to walk and suddenly it all came back to me: the position of the head, the arms, the exact length of each step to make the pendulum work properly. I decided to walk only two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon until I knew if I could count on the extra food. I mustn’t waste energy.

Yes, it was heartbreaking to have failed at the end, even though it was only the first part of the
cavale
, with ninety miles on a frail raft ahead. And then, after arriving on Grande Terre, still another
cavale
. If I’d been able to launch the raft, the three flour sacks that had to serve as sails would have carried it at a speed of at least six miles an hour. In less than fifteen hours, maybe even twelve, we would have reached land. Assuming, of course, that it was raining that day, because only in the rain would we have dared to hoist sail. I seemed to remember that it rained the day after I was put in the dungeon. But I wasn’t absolutely certain. I tried to think of what mistakes I’d made. Only two came to mind: first, the raft had been too well made; to house the coconuts, the carpenter had had to construct a framework which amounted to making two rafts, one inside the other. The whole thing had taken too many pieces and too much time.

The second mistake was more serious. The moment we began to have doubts about Celier—that very night—I should have killed him. If I had, just think what might have happened! Even if we’d been shipwrecked on Grande Terre or arrested as I put the raft in the water, I would have got only three years instead of eight, and I would have had the satisfaction of doing something toward a
cavale
. And where would I be if everything had gone well on the islands and Grande Terre? Who knows? Maybe having a chat with Bowen in Trinidad, or in Curaçao with Irénée de Bruyne. And we would have moved on only when we knew for sure which country was ready to accept us. If that hadn’t worked out, I could easily have taken a small boat alone and rejoined my tribe in Guajira.

I went to sleep very late. It wasn’t all that depressing. Live, live, live. Each time I was tempted to despair, I would repeat three times: “As long as there’s life, there’s hope.”

A week went by. I began to notice a change in my food. A beautiful piece of boiled meat at noon and for supper a bowl of lentils with practically no water. Like a child, I recited: “Lentils are rich in iron. Lentils are very good for you.”

If this lasted, I’d be able to walk ten to twelve hours a day, and by evening I’d be tired enough to fly where I wanted to. But actually I went nowhere. I stayed right on earth, thinking about all the
bagnards
I’d known on the islands. I thought of the legends that made the rounds, and there was one I promised myself I’d check on when I got out, the one about the bell.

As I’ve mentioned before,
bagnards
weren’t buried but were thrown into the sea between Saint-Joseph and Royale in an area infested with sharks. The corpse was wrapped in flour sacks and a rock attached to his feet by a strong cord. A long, narrow crate—always the same one—rested in the bow of the boat. When the boat arrived at the right spot, the six rowers feathered their oars, one man tipped the crate, another opened the trap door, and the corpse slid into the water. It was a known fact that the first thing the sharks did was to saw through the cord. The corpse never had time to sink much below the surface. It soon bobbed up again and the sharks would begin to fight for the choicest pieces. They say that to watch a man being eaten by sharks leaves a lasting impression. When the sharks were especially numerous, they sometimes lifted the shroud and its occupant right out of the water, tore away the flour bags and carried off large hunks of the corpse.

I know that this part is accurate, but there was one thing I had not been able to verify. All the cons believed that what brought the sharks to this particular place was the sound of the bell which was rung in the chapel when a con died. They said that when you stood at the end of the jetty on Royale at six in the evening, there were sometimes no sharks at all. But when the bell rang in the chapel, the place was crowded with them in no time flat. There was no reason for them to rush to that particular spot at that hour. I hoped to God I would never be the sharks’ “blue-plate special.” If they ate me alive while I was making a
cavale
, okay, at least I was on the road to freedom. But to die in my cell of some disease—no, I couldn’t allow that to happen.

Thanks to my friends, I ate well and stayed in perfect health. I walked from seven in the morning to six at night without stopping. And then came the evening soup bowl of lentils, split peas, rice, or whatever. I ate it all and happily. All that walking had a good effect: it brought on a healthy fatigue, and I even got to the point where I could spin off into the past while I was walking. For example, once I spent the whole day in the fields of a small village in Ardèche called Favras. After my mother died, I often used to go there to spend a few weeks with my aunt, my mother’s sister, who was the village schoolteacher. Well, I was in the chestnut forest picking mushrooms. I heard my friend, the shepherd, call his sheep dog and order him to bring back a wandering sheep. I tasted the cool, slightly metallic water of the spring, felt the tiny droplets bounce up my nose. Such sharp recollections of moments and events fifteen years in the past, and the ability to relive them so intensely, can only be accomplished in a cell where you’re cut off from all noise, in the most absolute silence.

I could even see the yellow of Aunt Outine’s dress. I could hear the wind in the chestnut trees, the dry noise a chestnut makes when it falls on the ground, or its soft thump when it hits a pile of leaves. A huge wild boar appeared out of a field of broom and gave me such a fright that I ran off, dropping most of the mushrooms I’d picked. Yes, I spent the whole day in Favras with my aunt and my young friend, Julien. And there was no one to stop me from rolling around in these memories and drinking in the peace so necessary to my battered soul.

To the objective eye I was in one of the many cells of
la mangeuse d’hommes
. But in point of fact I had stolen an entire day and spent it in Favras in the fields, among the chestnut trees.

Six months went by. I had promised myself to count only in intervals of six months. I kept my promise. This morning I reduced the figure from sixteen to fifteen. It was now only fifteen times six months.

To be specific: nothing had really happened in those six months. Always the same food, but in sufficient quantity to maintain my health. There were many suicides and lunatics around me, but luckily the latter didn’t last very long. It was depressing to hear their screams, moans and complaints for hours and days on end. I found a good antidote, but it wasn’t a very healthy one. I broke off two small pieces of soap and stuck them in my ears. The noise was gone, but my ears started to run after a couple of days.

For the first time since I’d arrived, I asked for something. One of the guards who ladled out the soup was from Montélimar, very near where I came from; I had known him at Royale. I asked him if he could bring me a ball of wax as big as a nut to drown out the madmen’s racket. He did it the next day. It was a great relief not to hear those poor crazy bastards any more.

I established a good working relationship with the centipedes. In six months I’d been bitten only once. If I woke up and found one crawling over my body, I simply waited. You can get used to anything and it was only a matter of self-control, but the tickling of those legs and antennae was very disagreeable. It was better to let them go away by themselves, then look for them and crush them later; if you didn’t catch them the right way, you got a terrible sting. There were always a few crumbs on my cement bench. They couldn’t resist the smell of the bread, so that’s where they went. I killed them there.

I had to get rid of one gnawing obsession: Why hadn’t I killed Bébert Celier the day we began to suspect him? I’d argue endlessly with myself: When do you have the right to kill? Then I’d arrive at the conclusion that the end justified the means. My end had been to have a successful
cavale;
I’d been lucky enough to finish a good raft and hide it in a safe place. Our departure was only a few days away. I knew that Celier was dangerous. I should have finished him off. But what if I’d made a mistake? What if I’d been misled by appearances? I would have killed an innocent man. That would have been bad. But for a
bagnard
with a life sentence to get involved in questions of conscience …! What’s more, a con with eight years in solitary …

Who do you think you are, a piece of trash treated by society like so much garbage? I’d like to know if those twelve cheeseheads on the jury ever asked themselves if they’d done the right thing when they sentenced you to life. And whether the prosecutor—I still hadn’t decided exactly how I’d tear out his tongue—had asked himself if he hadn’t gone a little far with his indictment. Even my own lawyer probably didn’t remember me. He might mention “that unfortunate business over Papillon at the Assizes in ’thirty-two” in general terms, saying, “You know, on that particular day I wasn’t quite up to snuff, and besides, Prosecutor Pradel was having an especially good day. He argued his case in masterly fashion, truly a first-class adversary....”

I heard all this as if I were standing right next to Raymond Hubert as he was conversing with some lawyers at a party, or more likely in the corridors of the Palais de Justice.

There was one man of honor, but only one—President Bevin. He might well have spoken to some of his colleagues about the danger involved in having a man judged by a jury. He might have said—choosing his words more carefully, of course—that the twelve yokels on the jury were not prepared to assume the responsibility of judgment, that they were too easily swayed by the lawyer’s eloquence—that they acquitted too fast or convicted without really knowing why, according to the positive or negative atmosphere created by the more persuasive lawyer.

Perhaps my family felt aggrieved at the trouble I had caused them. Only my poor father probably didn’t complain at the heavy cross his son had laid on his shoulders. Of that I was certain. He probably hadn’t once criticized his child even though as a teacher he respected the law and taught his pupils to understand and accept it. I was positive that in the bottom of his heart he was saying, “You bastards, you’ve killed my child; worse than that, you’ve condemned him to a slow death at the age of twenty-five!” If he knew where his boy was and what they were doing to him now, he’d be quite capable of becoming an anarchist.