Papillon (57 page)

The tic in my mouth was working and the doctor made a note of it. Then he took my hand in his and looked into my eyes. I could feel that he was troubled.

“Yes, my friend, we’ll drown them. Chatal, see that his ears are given a lavage.”

I repeated these scenes every morning, with variations, but the doctor was still undecided about sending me to the asylum.

While Chatal was giving me an injection of bromide, he warned me, “It’s going well for the moment. The doctor is definitely worried about you, but it could still be a long time before he sends you to the asylum. If you want to speed things up, show him you can be dangerous.”

“How are you, Papillon?” The doctor was accompanied by Chatal and a couple of infirmary orderlies and greeted me in his friendly way as he opened the door to my cell.

“Don’t give me that crap, Doctor!” I was very aggressive. “You know damn well how I am. I want to know which of you is in cahoots with my torturer?”

“Who’s torturing you? When? How?”

“Doc, do you know the works of Dr. d’Asonval?”

“I should hope so.”

“You know that he invented a multiple-wave oscillator for ionizing the air around a patient with duodenal ulcers. The oscillator gives off electric waves. Well, I think some enemy of mine filched one from the Cayenne hospital. Each time I go to sleep, he pushes the button and the charge hits me right in my gut. In one swoop I’m lifted five-inches off my bed. How do you expect me to sleep with that thing? It doesn’t leave off the whole night long. The minute I close my eyes—pang—the current is on. My whole body lets go like a spring. I can’t stand it any more, Doc! You tell everybody that the first man I suspect, I kill. It’s true I don’t have a weapon, but I’ve got enough strength to strangle him, whoever he is. They’re warned! So to hell with you and your hypocritical ‘How are you, Papillon?’ I repeat, don’t give me any of that crap!”

The incident bore fruit. Chatal told me that the doctor had warned the guards to watch me closely. They must never open my cell door unless there were two or three of them, and they were always to talk to me gently. I was suffering from a persecution complex, and I should go to the asylum immediately.

“With one guard I can take charge of moving him to the asylum,” Chatal suggested, to keep me out of a straitjacket.

“Did you eat well, Papi?”

“Yes, Chatal, it was very tasty.”

“You want to come with me and Monsieur Jeannus?”

“Where we going?”

“We’re taking medicine up to the asylum. It will be a nice walk for you.”

“Let’s go then.”

And the three of us set off toward the asylum. We were almost there when Chatal asked, “Aren’t you tired of camp, Papillon?”

“I’m sick to death of it, especially since my buddy Carbonieri isn’t there any more.”

“Why don’t you spend a few days at the asylum? Maybe that way the
mec
with the machine won’t be able to find you.”

“It’s not a bad idea, but do you think they’ll accept me when there’s nothing wrong with me?”

“Leave it to me. I’ll do the talking,” said the guard, all too happy to see me fall into Chatal’s supposed trap.

So I found myself in the asylum with one hundred lunatics. Living with nuts is no bed of roses. We got an airing in the yard in groups of thirty or forty while the orderlies cleaned the cells. Everybody was stark naked, day and night. Luckily it was hot. They let me wear socks.

An orderly had just handed me a lighted cigarette. I sat in the sun and reflected on the fact that I had been there five days and had not yet been able to make contact with Salvidia.

A lunatic came up to me. I knew his story. His name was Fouchet. His mother had sold her house in order to send him fifteen thousand francs through a guard so he could make his escape. The guard was to keep five and give him ten, but instead the guard took the lot and left for Cayenne. When Fouchet found out that his mother had sacrificed everything for nothing, he went off his rocker and attacked some guards. They subdued him before he could do any harm. That was three or four years ago. He had been in the madhouse ever since.

“Who are you?” he asked.

I looked at the poor bastard standing there in front of me. “Who am I? A man, like you, nothing more, nothing less.”

“That’s a stupid answer. I can see you’re a man because you’ve got a prick and balls. If you were a woman you’d have a hole. I’m asking who you are. That means, what’s your name?”

“Papillon.”

“Papillon? You’re a butterfly? Well, you’re a lousy butterfly. A butterfly flies, it has wings. Where are yours?”

“I lost them.”

“You’ve got to find them. That way you can escape. The guards don’t have wings. That way you play them for suckers. Give me your cigarette.” He grabbed it from me before I had time to hand it to him. Then he sat down and smoked it with a look of rapture.

“They gypped me. Every time I’m supposed to get something, they gyp me.”

“Why?”

“Because. I’ve been killing a lot of guards. I hanged two last night. But don’t tell anybody.”

“Why did you hang them?”

“They stole my mother’s house from me. D’you know, my mother sent me her house and they thought it was pretty so they kept it and moved in. I was right to hang them, eh?”

“Right. That way they won’t be able to use your mother’s house.”

“You see that fat guard over there, behind the grill? He lives in the house. And you see that other guard over there? I’m going to bust him up, too, you can believe it.” Then he got up and left.

Christ! It’s no joke living with lunatics, and it’s not very safe either. They shout and yell all night, and during the full moon it’s even worse. Why the moon agitates a lunatic, I don’t know. But I’ve noticed it often.

The guards made reports on the men under observation. With me they double-checked. For instance, they’d deliberately forget to let me out in the yard and wait to see if I complained. Or they’d forget a meal.

I had a stick with a string hanging from it and made motions as if I were fishing.

The head guard would say, “Are they biting, Papillon?”

“They can’t. There’s this little fish following me around, and when a big one comes to bite, the little one warns him, ‘Watch out, don’t bite. That’s Papillon fishing.’ So I never catch anything. But I go on fishing all the same. Maybe one day there’ll be a fish that doesn’t believe him.”

I heard the guard say to an orderly. “That guy’s really got it!”

When they made me sit at the communal table in the dining hall, I was never able to eat my lentils. A giant at least six feet eight, with arms, legs and torso covered with hair like a monkey, had picked me out for his victim. He always sat next to me. The lentils were served very hot so you had to wait until they’d cooled off. I’d take up a few in my wooden spoon and blow on them. That way I got down a few spoonfuls. Meanwhile Ivanhoe—he thought he was Ivanhoe—picked up his plate, made a funnel of his hands and swallowed the lot in five gulps. Then he grabbed mine and did the same, after which he banged the plate down in front of me and looked at me with his enormous bloodshot eyes as if to say, “See how I eat lentils?” I was beginning to get pissed off at Ivanhoe, and since I hadn’t yet been classified mad, I decided to let him have it.

It was another lentil day. Ivanhoe was sitting there next to me, his batty face ecstatic at the prospect of downing my lentils after his. I pulled a big heavy jug of water toward me. The giant had just begun to lift my plate to his mouth when I stood up and with all my strength brought the jug down on his head. He screamed like a wounded animal and collapsed on the floor. Immediately all the lunatics jumped on each other, armed with their plates. There was a ghastly hassle to the accompaniment of screams and yells.

I was picked up bodily by four husky orderlies and returned to my cell with speed and few courtesies. I shouted that Ivanhoe had stolen my wallet with my card of identity. That did it. The doctor decided to classify me as not responsible for my actions. The guards agreed that I was a peaceful nut but with occasional dangerous moments. Ivanhoe had a splendid dressing on his head. Apparently I’d opened up more than five inches of his skull. It’s a good thing we didn’t take our walks at the same time.

I finally managed to talk to Salvidia. He’d already got hold of a duplicate key to the storeroom where the barrels were kept and was trying to find enough wire to tie them together. I told him I was afraid that, once we were afloat, the tugging of the barrels would break the wire; rope would be better since it had more give. I would try to get some and we could use both—wire and rope. He also needed three keys: one for my cell, one for the corridor that led to it, and one for the main door of the asylum. We weren’t heavily guarded. One lone guard went on duty every four hours, from nine to one at night and from one to five. Two of the guards slept through their rounds. They counted on the convict-orderly who was on duty at the same time to cover for them. So everything was fine; we had only to be patient. A month at most and we’d be off.

The head guard gave me a terrible cigar as I was going into the yard. But terrible as it was, it seemed delicious. I looked at the herd of naked men, singing, weeping, making convulsive motions, talking to themselves. They were still wet from the showers they had to take before coming into the yard; their pathetic bodies were battered from the beatings they’d received or had inflicted on themselves, or from the marks left by straitjackets. This was the last circle of hell all right. I wondered how many of these crazy bastards had been unfairly held responsible for their actions in France.

Titin had been in my convoy in 1933. He had killed a guy in Marseilles, hailed a cab, put his victim inside and driven to the hospital where he announced, “Take care of him. I think he’s sick.” He had been arrested immediately, and the jury had had the gall to hold him responsible. But clearly he must have been mad already to do a thing like that. Only a madman wouldn’t have known he’d get arrested. So here Titin was, sitting next to me. With his chronic dysentery he was a walking corpse. He looked at me with his blank, iron-gray eyes. “I got little monkeys in my belly, pal. The bad ones bite my gut and then I bleed. That’s when they’re angry. The other ones are covered with hair and have hands as soft as feathers. They caress me gently and keep the bad ones from biting me. When the gentle little monkeys defend me, there’s no blood.”

“Do you remember Marseilles, Titin?”

“What do you mean, do I remember Marseilles? I remember it very well. The Place de la Bourse, with the pimps and thieves …”

“Do you remember any of their names? L’Ange? Le Lucre? Le Gravat? Clement?”

“No, I don’t remember any names. I only remember the fucking cabby that took me to the hospital with my sick friend and told me I was the reason he was sick. That’s all.”

“Your friends?”

“I don’t remember.”

Poor Titin. I gave him the butt of my cigar and got up, feeling an immense pity for this poor bastard who was dying like an animal. Yes, it was dangerous to live with lunatics, but what could I do? It was the only way I could see to make a
cavale
without risking another sentence.

Salvidia was almost ready. He had two of the keys and needed only the one for my cell. He had also found a stout rope and had made another with strips of hammock which he braided together, five strands thick. That part of our
cavale
was looking good.

I was in a hurry to start the action. It was too hard keeping up this game and, to stay in my section of the asylum, I had to put on an occasional performance.

I brought off one that was such a success the orderlies put me in a hot bath with two injections of bromide. The bath was covered with a very strong canvas to keep me from getting out. Only my head poked through a hole. I’d been in it for about two hours when Ivanhoe came in. The look he gave me was terrifying. I was sure he was going to strangle me, and I had no way of defending myself with my arms inside the canvas.

He came nearer, his big eyes scrutinizing me as if he were trying to place the head sticking out of the strange contraption. The stink of his breath engulfed me. I wanted to cry for help, but I was afraid that would only enrage him. I closed my eyes and waited, convinced he was about to strangle me with his giant hands. It will be a long time before I forget those few seconds of terror. Finally he moved away toward the faucets. He turned off the cold water and opened wide the hot. I screamed. I was being literally scalded to death. Then Ivanhoe left. The room was full of steam. I was choking and making superhuman efforts to tear my way out of the death-dealing canvas. Finally the guards came to my rescue. They had seen the steam rolling out of the window and came to pull me out of the cauldron. I was seriously burned and suffered like the damned, especially around the genitals, where the skin had been literally boiled away. They basted me with picric acid and put me to bed in the small infirmary in the asylum. The doctor gave me some injections of morphine which got me through the next twenty-four hours. When he asked me what had happened, I said a volcano had erupted in the bathtub. Nobody was able to figure out what had really happened. The infirmary guard accused the man who had prepared the bath of not properly regulating the flow of water.

Salvidia just left, having smeared me with picric ointment. He was ready, and he remarked that it was a lucky thing I was in the infirmary because, if the
cavale
was a bust, we could return to this part of the asylum without being seen. He had just made a print of the infirmary key on a piece of soap and he’d have it by tomorrow. It was up to me to let him know when I was sufficiently healed; then we’d take advantage of the first watch by one of the guards who slept through his tour.