Papillon

by Henri Charrière

  We slept soundly and in the morning made some coffee. I took off my sweater and washed with a big cake of Marseilles soap I found in the boat. Maturette gave me a rough shave with my lancet, then shaved Clousiot. Maturette himself had no beard. When I picked up my sweater to put it back on, an enormous violet-black spider fell from it. It was covered with very long hair which had tiny platinum-like balls at the ends. It must have weighed at least a pound; I crushed it in disgust.

  We emptied everything out of the boat, including the barrel of water. The water was purple; Jésus must have put too much permanganate in it to keep it from going bad. We found matches and a striking pad in tightly closed bottles. The compass was no better than a child’s; it showed only north, south, east and west, with nothing in between. Since the mast was only two and a half yards high, we sewed the flour sacks into a trapeze shape with a rope around the edges for reinforcement. I made a small jib shaped like an isosceles triangle. It would help to keep us pointed into the wind.

  When we were ready to mount the mast, I saw that the bottom of the boat wasn’t solid: the hole for the mast was completely eaten away. When I inserted the screws for the pin that was to support the rudder, they went right through—the wood was like butter. The boat was rotten. That son of a bitch, Jésus, was sending us to our deaths. Reluctantly I asked the others to take a look; I had no right to hide it from them. What should we do? When Jésus returned, we’d make him find us a better boat. We would disarm him; then I, armed with the knife and the hatchet, would go with him to the village to find another boat. It was taking a big risk, but it wasn’t as bad as putting to sea in this coffin. At least we had enough food: a large bottle of oil and boxes of flour and tapioca. With that we could go a long way.

  This morning we watched a strange spectacle: a band of gray-faced monkeys staged a battle with some hairy black-faced monkeys. While the fight was raging, Maturette was hit on the head with a piece of branch and got a bump as big as a nut.

  We had now been here five days and four nights. Tonight it rained in torrents. We made a shelter of wild banana leaves. The water rolled right off their varnished surface and we stayed dry except for our feet. This morning, as I drank my coffee, I thought about Jésus and what a crook he was. To take advantage of our innocence by giving us this punky boat! For five hundred or a thousand francs, he would send three men to certain death. I wondered if, after I’d made him give us another boat, I shouldn’t kill him.

  The cry of jays startled our small world—such sharp, blood-curdling cries that I told Maturette to take the machete and find out what was going on. He returned after five minutes and beckoned me to follow. We came to a place about a hundred and fifty yards away, and there, suspended in the air, was an extraordinary pheasant or waterfowl twice as big as a large rooster. It was caught in a lasso and hung by its claws from a branch. With one whack of the machete I cut its neck to stop the ghastly noise. I felt its weight and guessed it to be at least fourteen pounds. We decided to eat it, but then it occurred to us that the snare had been put there by somebody and there might be more than one of him. We went to see and found a curious thing: a barrier twelve inches high made of leaves and creepers woven together, about thirty feet from the creek and running parallel to it. Here and there was a door, and at the door, camouflaged by twigs, a lasso made of brass thread, attached at the other end to the branch of a bush bent double. I figured that the animal would run into the barrier, then walk along it, looking for an opening. When he found the door, he’d start through, but his claw would catch in the thread which would spring the branch back. The animal would then hang in the air until the owner of the traps came to get it.

  This discovery was very disturbing. The barrier looked well maintained and quite new; we were in danger of being discovered. We should make no fires during the day, only at night when the hunter would surely not be attending his traps. We decided to mount a guard to watch them. We hid the boat under some branches and secreted our provisions in the brush.

  I was on duty the next day at ten. We had eaten the pheasant, or whatever it was, the night before. The bouillon had tasted marvelous and the meat, even though boiled, was delicious. We each ate two bowlfuls. So there I was, supposed to be on watch, but I became fascinated by some very large black tapioca ants, each one carrying a large piece of leaf to an enormous anthill. The ants were over a quarter of an inch long and stood very high on their legs. I followed them to the plant they were defoliating and I saw a vast organization at work. First there were the cutters, who did nothing but cut up the pieces. With great speed they sheared through the enormous leaves, which were similar to those of a banana tree, cut them with amazing dexterity into pieces of the exact same size, then let them fall to earth. Below them was a line of ants of the same general species but a little different. They had a gray line running down the sides of their jaws. These ants formed a semicircle and observed the carriers. The carriers approached in a line from the right, then headed left toward the anthill. First they loaded up, then they got in line, but from time to time, in their hurry to claim their burden and get back into line, there was a traffic jam. This brought on the police ants, who shoved the worker ants into their proper places. It wasn’t clear to me what grave error one of the worker ants had committed, but it was pulled from the ranks and two police ants took over, one cutting off its head, the other slicing its body in two at the waist. The police then stopped two worker ants, who dropped their bits of leaf and made a hole with their feet. Then the ant’s three sections—head, chest and the rest—were buried and covered with earth.

  I was so absorbed in watching this small world and waiting to see whether the police carried their surveillance as far as the anthill that I was completely taken by surprise when I heard a voice say:

  “Don’t move or you’re dead. Turn around.”

  There stood a man naked from the waist up, wearing khaki shorts and red leather boots, and carrying a double-barreled shot-gun. He was bald, sunburned, of medium height, thickset, and his eyes and nose were masked by a bright blue tattoo. A cockroach was tattooed in the middle of his forehead.

  “Are you armed?”

  “No.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No.”

  “How many are you?”

  “Three.”

  “Take me to your friends.”

  “I can’t, because one of them has a carbine and I don’t want you killed before I know your intentions.”

  “Ah! Then don’t move and talk quietly. Are you the three who escaped from the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which one is Papillon?”

  “I am.”

  “Well, your escape sure caused a revolution in the village! Half the libérés are under arrest at the police station.” He came nearer and, pointing the barrel of his gun to the ground, held out his hand. “I’m the Masked Breton,” he said. “You’ve heard of me?”

  “No. But I can see you don’t belong to the manhunt.”

  “Right. I set traps here to catch hoccos. A cat must have finished one off, unless it was you people.”

  “It was us.”

  “Want some coffee?” He took a thermos from a pack on his back, gave me a swallow and drank some himself.

  I said, “Come meet my friends.”

  He followed me and sat down with us. He laughed over the scare I’d given him with the carbine. He said, “I believed you because the manhunt wouldn’t go after you when they learned you’d left with a carbine.”

  He explained that he had been in Guiana for twenty years and liberated for five. He was forty-five. Stupidly he had had the mask tattooed on his face, so he had been forced to give up any idea of returning to France. He loved the bush and his whole life centered around it: snake and jaguar skins, collecting butterflies and, most of all, catching hoccos alive—the bird we had eaten. He sold them for two hundred to two hundred and fifty francs. I offered to pay him, but he refused indignantly. Then he told us about the
hoccos: “This wild bird is a cock of the bush. Naturally he’s never seen a hen, rooster, or man. So I catch one, take him to the village and sell him to someone who has a chicken coop. They’re in great demand. O.K. You don’t clip his wings, you don’t do anything to him, you just put him in a coop at the end of the day and in the morning, when you open the door, there he is right in front, looking as if he were counting the hens and roosters as they file out. He follows them, and as he pecks along with them, he watches them high, low and in the surrounding brush. He’s the best watchdog there is. In the evening he stations himself by the coop door, and how he knows that one or two of the chickens are missing is a mystery, but he knows it and he goes looking for them. And, hen or rooster, he drives them back with sharp pecks of his beak to teach them that it’s time to go home. He kills rats, snakes, shrews, spiders, centipedes, and the moment a bird of prey is sighted in the sky, he sends everyone scurrying into the grass while he stares it down. And furthermore, he never runs away.”

  And we had eaten this remarkable bird as if it were a common rooster.

  The Breton told us that Jésus, L’Enflé and about thirty libérés were in prison at the police station in Saint-Laurent, where they were being questioned about our escape. The Arab was in a cell, too, under suspicion of being an accomplice. The two blows that put him out had done no damage, but the guards had slight swellings on their heads. “Nobody bothered me because everybody knows I never get involved in cavales.” He told us that Jésus was a bastard. When I told him about the boat, he asked if he could have a look at it.

  When he saw it, he cried out, “He was sending you to your deaths, that son of a bitch! At sea, this tub wouldn’t last an hour. The first big wave would break it in two. Whatever you do, don’t leave in that thing; it would be suicide.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You have money?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell you what you do; better still, I’ll help you. You certainly deserve it. And I’ll do it for nothing because I want to see you and your friends succeed. First, don’t go near the village, no matter what. To get a good boat, you’ll have to go to the Ile aux Pigeons. About two hundred lepers live on the island. There are no guards there and no healthy person ever goes ashore, not even a doctor. Every morning at eight a boat brings them a twenty-four-hour supply of food. The orderly at the hospital gives a case of medication to their two orderlies—they’re lepers too. They alone take care of the islanders. Nobody—no guards, no manhunts, no priests—ever goes to the island. The lepers live in little straw huts they make themselves and they have a common room where they get together. They raise chickens and ducks to supplement their ordinary diet. Officially they can’t sell anything off the island, but they have a black-market trade with Saint-Laurent and Saint-Jean and with the Chinese at Albina in Dutch Guiana. They’re all murderers. They don’t often kill each other, but they commit lots of crimes when they’re off the island, then they return to take cover. For these expeditions they have a few boats stolen from a neighboring village. The worst offense they can commit is to have a boat. The guards fire on anything they see going or coming from the Ile aux Pigeons. What the lepers do is they sink their boats by filling them with rocks; when they need them again, they dive down, take out the rocks, and the boats float up to the surface. There are all kinds of people on the island, all races, and from every part of France. This boat of yours is good only for the Maroni, and lightly loaded at that! To go out to sea, you’ll have to find another, and the best place is the Ile aux Pigeons.”

  “How do we get there?”

  “Like this: I’ll go with you up the river until we come in sight of the island. Alone you’d never find it, or you might make a mistake. It’s about sixty miles from the mouth of the river, so you’ll have to backtrack. It’s about twenty miles beyond Saint-Laurent. We’ll attach my boat to yours. I’ll bring you as close as possible and, after that, I’ll get back into my own boat. Then you head for the island.”

  “Why can’t you come to the island with us?”

  “Oh, God,” the Breton said, “all I needed was to put one foot on the wharf where the Administration boat docks. It was in full daylight, but what I saw was enough. Forgive me, Papi, but I will never set foot on that island again. I wouldn’t be able to hide how I felt. I’d do you more harm than good.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “At nightfall.”

  “What time is it now, Breton?”

  “Three o’clock.”

  “O.K. I’ll sleep for a little while.”

  “No, you don’t. You’ve got to load the boat.”

  “No, I’m going with the boat empty. Then I’ll come back for Clousiot, who’ll stay and watch over our things.”

  “Impossible. You’ll never find this place again, not even in broad daylight. And don’t ever be on the river during the day. They’re still looking for you. The river is still plenty dangerous.”

  Evening came. He went to find his boat and we attached it to ours. Clousiot sat next to the Breton, who took the tiller. Maturette sat in the middle. I went up front. We had trouble getting out of the creek and by the time we reached the river, night was falling. An enormous reddish-brown sun was ablaze on the horizon across the sea. We could see clearly, twelve miles ahead, the estuary of the majestic river as it threw off pink and silver sequins in its rush to meet the sea.

  The Breton said, “The tide is out. In an hour it will begin to rise. We’ll use it to go back up the Maroni. That way we’ll reach the island with the least effort.” Night fell suddenly.

  “Push off,” said the Breton. “Paddle hard to get into the middle of the river. And no smoking.”

  The paddles sliced the water and we sped across the current. The Breton and I pulled in rhythm and Maturette did his best. The farther we got into the middle of the river, the more we felt the rising tide push us. We were skimming along fast now. The tide grew stronger and pushed us even faster. Six hours later we were very close to the island and heading straight for it: a black spot, almost in the middle of the river, slightly to the right. “That’s it,” the Breton said in a low voice. Although it wasn’t a very dark night, it would be hard to see us from that distance because of the mist on the water’s surface. We came nearer. When the outline of the rocks was clear, the Breton got into his boat, untied it quickly and whispered, “Good luck, boys!”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  THE ILE AUX PIGEONS

  With the Breton no longer at the tiller, the boat made for the island broadside. I tried to bring it around but couldn’t, and with the current pushing us, we went sideways into the vegetation that hung down into the water. For all my frantic back-paddling, we struck with such force that, had we landed against rock instead of leaves and branches, we would surely have cracked up and lost everything. Maturette jumped into the water, pulled the boat under a thicket and tied her up. We shared a cup of rum and I climbed the bank alone, leaving my two friends in the boat.

  I walked compass in hand, cutting back the brush and attaching strips of flour sacking to branches along the way. I saw a faint light ahead, suddenly heard voices and made out three straw huts. I moved forward, and since I didn’t know how I should present myself, I decided to let them discover me. I lit a cigarette. As the light flared, a small dog came barking at me and nipped at my legs. Just so long as he isn’t a leper, I thought. Then: Idiot, dogs don’t get leprosy.

  “Who’s there? Who is it? Is that you, Marcel?”

  “It’s an escaped prisoner.”

  “What are you doing here? You want to rob us? You think we’re too well off?”

  “No, I need help.”

  “For free or for pay?”

  “Oh, shut up, La Chouette!”

  Four shadows emerged from the hut.

  “Approach gently, friend. I bet you’re the man with the carbine. If you’ve got it with you, put it on the ground; you have nothing to fear
from us.”

  “Yes, that’s me. But I don’t have the carbine now.”

  I inched forward. I was close now, but it was dark and I couldn’t make out their features. Stupidly I put out my hand. No one took it. I understood too late that such a gesture was not made here: they didn’t want to contaminate me.

  “Let’s go back to the hut,” La Chouette said.

  The little cabin was lit by an oil lamp on a table. “Have a seat.”

  I sat down on a stool. La Chouette lit three more lamps and placed one of them on a table directly in front of me. The smoke of the coconut oil had a sickening smell. The five of them stood, so that I couldn’t make out their faces. Mine was well lighted because I was at the same height as the lamp, which is what they had intended.

  The voice which had told La Chouette to shut up now said, “L’Anguille, go ask at the main house if they want us to bring him over. Come back with the answer right away. And make sure it’s all right with Toussaint. “We can’t offer you anything to drink here, friend, unless you don’t mind swallowing eggs.” He placed a basket full of eggs in front of me.

  “No, thank you.”

  Then one of them sat down near me and that’s when I saw my first leper. It was horrible. I had to make an effort not to look away or otherwise show my feelings. His nose was completely eaten away, flesh and bone; there was only a hole in the middle of his face. I mean what I say: not two holes, but a single hole, as big as a silver dollar. The right side of the lower lip was also eaten away and exposed three long yellow teeth that jutted out of the bone of the upper jaw. He had only one ear. He was resting a bandaged hand on the table. It was his right hand. With the two fingers remaining on his left hand he held a long, fat cigar. He had probably made it from a half-ripe tobacco leaf, for it was greenish in color. Only his left eye had an eyelid; the lid of his right eye was gone and a deep scar stretched from the eye to the top of his forehead, where it disappeared into his shaggy gray hair.