Papillon

by Henri Charrière

  “No. All I want is to get my possessions and the provisions we left on the boat.”

  “Everything has been confiscated by the Customs except for pants, shirts, jackets and shoes for each of you. And that’s that. There’s nothing you can do about it: it’s the law.”

  We returned to the prison yard. The miserable prisoners hovered around the judge: “Doctor! Doctor!” Swelling with self-importance, the judge swept through the group without saying a word. The men in white left the prison and disappeared.

  At one o’clock the other three arrived in a truck together with seven or eight armed men. Looking ashamed, they climbed down with their suitcases. We followed them into our room.

  “That sure was a dumb-ass thing we made you do,” said the Breton. “We’re really sorry, Papillon. You can kill me if you want to. I won’t try to defend myself. We didn’t behave like men; we behaved like a bunch of fags. We did it because we were scared of the sea. Well, from what I’ve seen of Colombia and Colombians, the dangers of the sea are a joke. Did they get you because the wind died down?”

  “Yes, Breton. But I’m not about to kill anybody. We were in this thing together. I could have refused to drop you off, then nothing would have happened.”

  “You’re too damn good, Papi.”

  “No, I’m just trying to be fair.” I told them about the interrogation. “Maybe the governor will set us free.”

  “Well … let’s hope so. As the fellow said, where there’s life, there’s hope.”

  I had the impression that the officials in this hole were not in a position to decide our case. Some higher authority would determine whether we stayed in Colombia, were returned to France, or were given back our boat so that we could move on. It would be a damn shame if these people we had done nothing to took the decision on themselves. After all, we had committed no offense of any kind on their territory.

  We had now been here a week. Nothing new, except for talk that we might be transferred to a bigger town a hundred and twenty miles away called Santa Marta. Our guards with their ugly pirate’s faces were unchanged in their attitude toward us. Yesterday one of them hit me with his rifle because I tried to claim my own soap in the washroom! We were still in the same mosquito-ridden room, though it was a little cleaner since Maturette and the Breton had taken to washing it down every day. I was beginning to lose hope and confidence. The Colombians were nibbling away at my self-confidence. One of the Colombian prisoners lent me an old issue of a Santa Marta newspaper. On the front page were photographs of the six of us and, below, the chief of police with his enormous felt hat and cigar, then the photograph of a dozen armed policemen. It was clear that our capture had been romanticized and that their role in it had been much amplified. It appeared that our arrest had saved all Colombia from a terrible threat. But I must say, the pictures of the so-called outlaws made us look much more sympathetic than the police. The “outlaws” looked like honest men, whereas the police, if you’ll forgive me, starting with their chief—well, perhaps we were prejudiced....

  What should we do? I was beginning to understand a few words of Spanish: to escape, fugar; prisoner, preso; to kill, matar; chain, cadena; handcuffs, esposas; man, hombre; woman, mujer.

  THE CAVALE FROM RIO HACHA

  There was a mec in the courtyard who always wore handcuffs. I made friends with him. We would smoke the same cigar; it was long, thin and very strong, but I smoked it. I gathered that he smuggled contraband between Venezuela and the island of Aruba. He had been accused of killing some guards on the coast and was awaiting trial. Some days he was very calm, others he was nervous and excitable. I began to realize that he was calm when he’d had a visitor and was chewing the leaves he was brought. One day he gave me half a leaf and I understood. My tongue, palate and lips lost all feeling. The leaves were coca. He was thirty-five, with arms and chest covered with curly jet-black hair, and unusually strong. His feet were so callused that he could step on a piece of glass or a nail without feeling it.

  “You and me we fuga,” I said to him one evening. (On one of the Haitian’s visits I had asked him for a French-Spanish dictionary.) The mec understood and indicated he would like to escape, but what about his handcuffs? They were American handcuffs with a slot for a flat key. The Breton made me a hook out of metal thread flattened at one end. After a little practice I was able to open my friend’s handcuffs whenever I liked. At night he was put in a dungeon with very thick bars. Those in our room were thin, and I was sure we could bend them easily. So there would be only one bar that needed sawing—Antonio’s (his name was “Antonio, the Colombian”). “How do we get a saw?” “Money.” “How much?” “One hundred pesos.” “In dollars?” “Ten.” So, for ten dollars, which I gave him, he got two hacksaws. I explained by drawing on the dirt in the yard that each time he had sawed a little, he was to mix the metal sawdust with some paste from our rice balls and fill the cut. Just before we went back in, I opened his handcuffs. If they were checked, he had only to press against them and they’d close by themselves. It took him three nights to cut almost through the bar. He said one minute would see him the rest of the way through and he was sure he could bend the bar back with his hands. When he was out of the dungeon he’d come by for me.

  It rained often; he said that he’d get out on the first rainy night. My comrades knew what I was planning, but none of them wanted to go with me. I was going too far away for them. I wanted to get to a point on the Colombian peninsula next to the Venezuela frontier. On our map this territory was called Guajira and it appeared to be contested by Colombia and Venezuela. My Colombian friend said it was the land of the Indians; there were no police, either Colombian or Venezuelan, and only a few smugglers knew it. It was dangerous because the Guajiros Indians tolerated no civilized man on their territory. And the farther inland you went, the more dangerous they became. On the coast there were Indian fishermen who trafficked with the village of Castillette and a hamlet called La Vela through the intercession of less primitive Indians. Antonio didn’t want to go there. Either he or his companions must have killed some of these Indians when their boatload of contraband was forced onto the Indians’ coast. Antonio agreed to take me near Guajira, but I would have to go on from there alone. You can’t imagine how laborious these arrangements were; so many of the words he used weren’t in the dictionary.

  So, that night it rained in torrents. I stood close to the window. We had pried away a plank from the partition to help separate the bars. We had tried it two nights before and found the bars gave easily.

  “Listo [I’m ready].”

  Antonio’s face appeared between the bars. With the help of Maturette and the Breton, one tug was enough not only to bend the bars but to pry one loose. They lifted me up and pushed me through, giving me a few whacks on the rear in farewell as I disappeared. We were now in the yard. The torrential rain made an infernal noise as it fell on the tin roofs. Antonio took my hand and led me to the wall. Jumping over it was child’s play: it was only six feet high. I did cut my hand on the glass imbedded on the top, but it didn’t matter. That amazing Colombian managed to find the path even though we couldn’t see ten feet ahead of us. Because of the rain, we were able to march straight through the village until we found a road that ran between the bush and the coastline. Very late we saw a light, forcing us to make a wide detour into the brush, which fortunately was sparse at that point. Then we picked up our path again and walked in the rain until daylight. Antonio had given me a leaf of coca as we left, and I chewed it the way I’d seen him do in prison. When daylight came I still wasn’t tired. Was it the leaf? I’m sure it must have been. Even though it was now daylight, we continued walking. From time to time Antonio lay down and put his ear to the water-soaked earth. Then he’d start off again.

  He had a curious way of walking. It wasn’t a walk and it wasn’t a run. It was a succession of little leaps of exactly the same length, and he used his arms as if he were rowing the air. At one point he must have heard something
for he pulled me into the brush. Then, sure enough, along came a tractor dragging a roller to flatten the ruts.

  It was now ten-thirty in the morning. The rain stopped and the sun came out. After walking perhaps a third of a mile on the grass, we lay under a thick bush full of thorns. I thought we were out of danger, but Antonio wouldn’t let me smoke or talk even in a whisper. He kept swallowing the juice of his leaf and I did the same, though with greater moderation. He showed me his pouch, which had more than twenty leaves in it, and laughed silently, his magnificent teeth gleaming in the dim light. To fight the mosquitoes, he chewed on a cigar and we coated our faces with his nicotined saliva. That took care of them.

  It was now seven in the evening. Night had fallen, but the moonlight was too bright for us to proceed. He pointed to nine o’clock on my watch and said, “Rain.” I understood: at nine o’clock it would rain. And sure enough, at nine-twenty it started to rain, and we took off. In order to keep up with him, I copied his leaps and rowed with my arms. It wasn’t hard to do, and you moved faster than at a fast walk, yet you weren’t running. During the course of the night we had to hide in the brush three times, once to let a car go by, once a truck, and once a wagon pulled by two donkeys. Thanks to the leaves, I wasn’t tired when day came. The rain stopped at eight and then, as before, we walked cautiously on the grass for over half a mile before going into the bush to hide. The one thing I didn’t like about the I leaves was that you couldn’t sleep. We hadn’t closed an eye since we started. Antonio’s pupils were so dilated that the irises had disappeared completely. Mine must have done the same.

  It was now nine at night and the rain had returned. It was as if the rain were waiting for nine o’clock. I learned later that in the tropics, at whatever hour the rain first started to fall, it would start and stop at just about the same time during that moon’s quarter. As we started the night’s march, we heard voices and then saw lights. “Castillette,” Antonio said. The extraordinary man took me firmly by the hand, led me into the brush, and after more than two hours’ painful marching allowed us to return to the road. We marched, or rather leaped, the rest of the night and a good part of the next morning.

  The sun dried our clothes. We had been wet for three days, and for three days we had eaten only some brown sugar, and that on the first day. Now Antonio seemed quite confident that we were out of danger. He was walking unconcernedly, and several hours had gone by since he last put his ear to the ground. The road followed the shore, and after a while Antonio cut himself a stick and we walked over to where the sand was wet. He stopped to examine a trail of flattened sand about twenty inches wide, running from the sea to the dry sand. We followed it to where it widened and made a circle. Antonio plunged his stick into the circle. When he pulled it out, the end was covered with a yellow liquid that looked like egg yolk. Which it was. We dug a hole in the sand with our hands and soon uncovered a mass of eggs, perhaps three or four hundred of them. They were sea turtles’ eggs, covered with skin instead of shells. We filled Antonio’s shirt with as many as it would hold, a hundred or so, left the beach, crossed the road and went into the brush. Once safely hidden, we began our feast. Following Antonio’s instructions, I ate only the yolk. He would penetrate the skin with one snap of his teeth, allow the white to run out and suck in the yolk. One for him, one for me, and so on. He went on and on, opening, swallowing, first him, then me. Filled to bursting, we stretched out on the ground with our jackets for pillows. Antonio said in Spanish, “Tomorrow, you continue alone for two more days. From tomorrow on there won’t be any more police.”

  At six o’clock we came to the last border outpost. We recognized it from the barking of dogs and the bright lights in the little house. Thanks to Antonio’s masterful tactics, we managed a successful detour and walked the rest of the night without taking precautions. The path was narrow, but the lack of grass underfoot showed that it was used. It was about twenty inches wide and skirted the brush next to the beach, which was about six feet below us. From time to time we saw the hoofprints of horses and mules. Antonio sat down on a large root and motioned me to do the same. The sun was beating down hard. My watch said eleven, but when I stuck a small stick in the ground it made no shadow. It must therefore be noon. I reset my watch. Antonio emptied his pouch; he had seven leaves left. He gave me four and kept three. I went off into the brush and came back with a hundred and fifty Trinidad dollars and sixty florins. He was startled. He reached out and touched the bills, unable to understand how they could look so new and why they hadn’t gotten wet. Holding them in his hands, he thanked me, thought for a long time, took six bills of five florins each and gave me back the rest. I insisted, but he wouldn’t take more. At that point he seemed to change his mind: he had decided previously that we should go our separate ways; now he seemed to want to continue with me another day. After that he’d make a half-turn and go on alone. O.K. We swallowed a few egg yolks and lit a cigar after a half hour’s struggle to get a fire going by rubbing two stones together and igniting a handful of dried moss. Then we set off.

  We’d been walking three hours when we saw a man on a horse coming straight at us. He was wearing an enormous straw hat, boots, something that resembled a long leather slip instead of pants, a green shirt and a faded green jacket. He was armed with a beautiful carbine and a huge revolver hung from his belt.

  “Caramba! Antonio, my son!” Antonio had recognized the rider from far away. The big bronzed cavalier dismounted and the two men slapped each other lustily on the shoulder. (This was the typical greeting of the region, I learned later.)

  “Who is that?”

  “A companion in escape, a Frenchman.” “Where are you going?”

  “As near to the Indian fishermen as we can. He wants to go through the Indians’ territory and into Venezuela to get back to Aruba or Curaçao.”

  “The Guajira Indians are bad people,” the man said. “You’re unarmed. Take this.” He handed me a dagger with a polished horn handle in a leather sheath. We sat by the side of the path. I took off my shoes; they were bloody. Antonio and the rider talked very fast, and I could tell that they did not approve of my plan for crossing Guajira. Antonio motioned that I should get up on the horse and that I should hang my shoes over my shoulder to let my bleeding feet dry out. The rider got back on his horse and I climbed on behind. I had no idea what was going on. We galloped all that day and the following night. From time to time we stopped; he’d pass me a bottle of anisette and I’d take a swallow. When the sun rose, he stopped. He gave me a piece of cheese as hard as a rock, two biscuits, and six coca leaves. To carry them, he made me a present of a waterproof bag which I attached to my belt. He threw his arms around me and slapped me on the shoulders the way he had Antonio. Then he got back on his horse and galloped off.

  THE INDIANS

  I walked on until one in the afternoon. The bush ended, there wasn’t a tree to be seen. The sea shimmered silver under the burning sun. I walked barefoot, my shoes hanging over my left shoulder. As I was deciding whether to lie down, I saw far away five or six trees—or perhaps they were rocks—set back from the beach. I tried to figure the distance: six miles or so. I took out a large piece of leaf and, chewing away, set off again. An hour later I was able to identify the five or six shapes: they were huts with thatched roofs of straw or some kind of light-brown leaf. Smoke was coming out of one of them. Then I saw people. They saw me. I could hear their voices and saw them gesturing in the direction of the sea. Then I saw four boats coming in to shore and about ten people getting out. Everybody gathered in front of the houses and looked in my direction. The men and women were naked except for small loincloths. I approached slowly. Three of the men were leaning on bows, the arrows in their hands. They made no motion of either hostility or welcome. A dog let out a bark and rushed at me in a fury. He bit my calf and tore off a piece of my pants. When he lunged again, a small arrow from somewhere nipped his rear (I learned later it was shot from a blowpipe); he ran off howling and disappeared into
a house. I limped on—for he had given me quite a bite. I was now perhaps thirty feet from the group. Not one of them moved or spoke, and the children hid behind their mothers. Their bodies were splendid: bronzed and well muscled. The women had firm, hard breasts with large nipples. There was only one with sagging breasts.

  One man had an especially noble bearing; he had fine features and was obviously superior to the rest. I went straight to him. He was not holding a bow. He was as tall as I and his hair was well cut. It hung down to his eyebrows and to his earlobes on the sides, so black it looked purple. His eyes were steel gray. There was no hair on his body. His bronzed thighs were well muscled and his legs beautifully proportioned. He was barefoot. I came to a stop about ten feet in front of him. He took two steps forward, his eyes looking directly into mine. The examination lasted two minutes. His motionless face with the hooded eyes was like a bronze bust. Then he smiled and touched my shoulder. That was the signal. Everybody came and touched me, and a young Indian girl took me by the hand and led me into the shade of one of the huts. All the others followed and sat in a circle. One of the men handed me a lighted cigar; I took it and smoked it. They all laughed at the way I smoked, for they—women as well as men—held the burning end in their mouths. The girl pushed up my pants leg. The bite had stopped bleeding, but a piece of me the size of a quarter was missing. She pulled out all the hairs, and once the skin was smooth, she washed the wound with sea water which another young Indian had brought. Then she squeezed the wound to make it bleed. Still not satisfied, she scratched each pore with a piece of sharpened steel. I made an effort not to flinch, for everyone was watching. Another young Indian girl wanted to help, but she was pushed away. For some reason everybody laughed. I gathered that the one dressing my wound wished to make it clear to the other girl that I was her property; this is what had made them laugh. Then she cut my pants well above the knee, prepared a poultice of seaweed on a stone and laid it on the wound, holding it in place with strips of cloth she ripped from my pants. Finally satisfied with her labors, she motioned me to get up.