Papillon (72 page)
Authors: Henri Charriere
About the author
About the book
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From Gulags to Dungeons: Books That Hold Us Captive
Meet Henri Charrière
T
HE SON OF A LOCAL SCHOOLMASTER
, Henri Charrière was born in 1906 in the Ardèche region of the south of France. Following a shadowy career in the Paris underworld he was arrested in 1931 for murder, though he always maintained his innocence, and was sent to a penal camp on the coast of French Guiana to serve his sentence. After a series of daring attempted escapes he finally made it to Venezuela in 1945. There he married, settled in Caracas, became a Venezuelan citizen, and made a living as a restaurant owner. Information about Charrière’s life after the publication of
Papillon
is patchy at best. He appeared as a jewel thief in a small-budget heist movie called
The Butterfly Affair
in 1970, and was on set in an advisory role for the filming of the 1973 Hollywood adaptation of
Papillon
. He died of throat cancer in Spain on July 29, 1973, but is reportedly buried in France. He was sixty-six.
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The Way of the Warrior
by Howard Marks, author of
Mr. Nice: An Autobiography
H
ENRI
-A
NTOINE
C
HARRIÈRE WAS BORN
on November 16, 1906, in Saint-Etienne-de Lugares, Ardèche, where his parents taught at local schools. Charrière’s mother died when he was eleven years old, and his subsequent unruly, violent, and bad behavior led his father to enroll him in the French Navy. He was given the nickname “Papillon” due to a magnificent butterfly tattoo on his chest. Naval discipline and culture did not suit Charrière, however, and he evaded further service by amputating his own thumb. He moved to Paris and soon became respected and popular among the city’s notorious underworld of safecrackers, thieves, and prostitutes. In 1930 he was arrested for the murder of a pimp, although there was no direct evidence against him. The public prosecutor, however, produced a dubious witness whose testimony proved sufficient to establish Charrière’s guilt. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment.
“Naval discipline and culture did not suit Charrière, however, and he evaded further service by amputating his own thumb.”
Civilians are incarcerated for four reasons: to deter others from offending; to reform and rehabilitate the offender; to satisfy society’s desire for revenge by ensuring that the offender gets his or her just deserts; and to protect society from the actions of the offender. But even the most severe prison sentences will deter a potential offender only if the detection rate is high. In most countries, any offense’s detection rate has always been close to zero. High recidivism rates convinced many authorities, particularly those in latter-day France and England and the present-day United States, that prisons are not able to reform or rehabilitate; they no longer bothered to pursue such laudable aims. These countries’ penal codes served to perform two functions: to avenge by punishment and to separate the offender from society, either through imposition of the death penalty or perpetual warehousing in secure institutions. There was no parole or early release for good behavior. For many years, England achieved the required separation of offenders from society by shipping convicts to Australia. Napoleon Bonaparte established the “Safety Islands” in French-colonized South American and Caribbean territories as a wastebin for those the law adjudged to be the irreclaimable dregs of society. Prisoners were dumped where they could no longer threaten public safety and where their punishment was considered far worse than the swift and humane chop of the guillotine.
Charrière escaped after just six weeks in French Guiana by traveling a thousand grueling miles in an open boat through shark-infested waters to Colombia, where leprosy and other brutal diseases were rampant. He ate bugs for nourishment, chewed betel nuts to get high, and was befriended by a tribe who gave him young virgins to worship him and bear his children.
Recaptured, he suffered two years in solitary confinement on a starvation diet. In thirteen years he tried nine times to escape. Charrière was eventually sent to the notorious Devil’s Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped. The book follows him through every moment, every hardship, and every incredible attempt to leave the horrid life that had robbed him of his freedom. We endure the struggle alongside Charrière, urging him on with every page. His final escape, described in breathless detail, is one of the most incredible tests of human cunning, will, and endurance ever documented.
“He ate bugs for nourishment, chewed betel nuts to get high, and was befriended by a tribe who gave him young virgins to worship him and bear his children.”
Several journalists, authors, and reviewers have since accused Charrière of not writing the book on his own. It is said he stole the script from René Belbenoit (whose
Dry Guillotine
won a Pulitzer), represented adventures of his fellow inmates as his own, and fabricated much of the rest. Who cares? The end result is magnificent.
Charrière incorporates survival themes similar to those in
The Count of Monte Cristo
and
The Shawshank Redemption
, and I have yet to be incarcerated in a prison whose library is not littered with several well-thumbed copies of
Papillon
. It teaches all inmates to never give up the fight, and that even when there seems no way out the way of the warrior, win or lose, is the correct way. It more significantly inspires us to fight against all forms of adversity, not merely those meted out in confinement.
“When Napoleon set up the penal settlements and they said to him, ‘Who are you going to have to look after these hard cases?’ he answered, ‘Harder cases still.’”
—from
Papillon
F
RENCH
G
UIANA WAS FIRST USED
as a place of exile during the Revolution, but it wasn’t until 1852 that the French Emperor Napoleon III established a permanent penal colony or
bagne
there. What in time came to be known collectively as “Devil’s Island” was actually comprised of a mainland prison on the outskirts of the capitol, Cayenne, and the infamous Îles du Salut (Salvation Islands), so called because earlier settlers in French Guiana were driven there by the malaria, storms, and inhospitable jungles of the mainland. Indeed, so awful were conditions in the penal colony that until 1884 the French government transported only African and Arab convicts to Guiana.
“Inmates were exposed upon arrival to a brutal cocktail of dysentery, consumption, and yellow fever. They were forced to work cutting timber or constructing the infamous ‘Route Zero’ road.”
Inmates were exposed upon arrival to a brutal cocktail of dysentery, consumption, and yellow fever. They were forced to work cutting timber or constructing the infamous “Route Zero” road out of Kourou under a blazing tropical sun. A huge number of the 80,000
bagnards
sent to French Guiana did not survive the terms of their sentences; for most, escape—by sea or through impenetrable jungle to Dutch Guiana or Brazil—was a death sentence in itself.
The Îles du Salut offshore were reserved for the most dangerous and disruptive prisoners. Royale and Saint-Joseph housed the solitary confinement units, while the Île du Diable (Devil’s Island) was reserved for political prisoners such as Alfred Dreyfus. Before Dreyfus’s case the French public remained blissfully unaware of conditions on Devil’s Island. Indeed, it took reports in 1923 from investigative journalist Albert Londres and inmate René Belbenoit’s 1938 memoir
Dry Guillotine: Fifteen Years Among the Living Dead
to finally turn public opinion in favor of closing the camp.
The penal colony was slowly phased out between 1938 and the early 1950s. In 1946 French Guiana became an overseas
département
of France, much like Guadeloupe or Martinique. Devil’s Island is now a tourist attraction, while the Île Royale now serves as a tracking station for the European Space Agency’s rocket launch site at Kourou.
W
HEN
P
APILLON IS FINALLY SENT
to the Île du Diable, the previously escape-proof island reserved for political prisoners, he draws strength from the memory of Alfred Dreyfus, the most famous inmate in the penal colony’s long history. But who was this man whose imprisonment sent shockwaves throughout the French Republic and whose case achieved such notoriety that it became known simply as “The Affair”?
In 1894 Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish Captain in the French Army, was convicted of selling military secrets to Germany and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. The evidence against him was decidedly flimsy, and it was widely thought that anti-Semitic elements within the army had simply made him a convenient scapegoat for a lapse in security. The right-wing press, however, seized on the case as proof of a wider Jewish conspiracy against the republic, and even when new evidence came to light proving beyond doubt Dreyfus’s innocence, the military establishment scandalously chose to cover up the matter instead and keep him in French Guiana.
“[Papillon drew] strength from the memory of Alfred Dreyfus, the most famous inmate in the penal colony’s long history.”
What followed quickly grew into a political firestorm, as Dreyfus’s case became a touchstone for a wider schism between the reactionary establishment on one side and radical social elements on the other. While Dreyfus himself wasted away on Devil’s Island, France divided itself into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. Anti-Semitic riots flared and activists on both sides used the case as a springboard to launch a wider debate on such issues as militant nationalism, the case for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the separation of church and state.
“The Dreyfus affair inspired one of the most famous and influential pieces of political journalism in history: … [Émile Zola’s ‘J’Accuse!’]”
The Dreyfus affair inspired one of the most famous and influential pieces of political journalism in history. On January 13, 1898, the French novelist and social reformer Émile Zola was moved to post an open letter to the president of the republic in the literary newspaper
L’Aurore
outlining the minutiae of Dreyfus’s case. Entitled “J’Accuse!” (“I Accuse!”), Zola’s piece denounced both the falsified evidence that led to Dreyfus’s imprisonment and the cover-up that followed when it became clear that a certain Major Esterhazy was guilty of having sold the secrets to Germany.
“La verité est en marche et rien ne l’arretera”
(“Truth is on the march and nothing can stop it”), he wrote. Indeed, when the French Army prosecuted Zola for libel the consequent publicity simply added more fuel to the wider debate. Left-wing groups that had formerly been divided now joined forces to become a powerful presence in the French parliament, while the rise in anti-Semitic feeling invoked by Dreyfus’s perceived treachery convinced Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl that Jews could never find a home in non-Jewish societies. As a result, he founded the worldwide Zionist movement that eventually resulted in the birth of the state of Israel.
