Papillon

by Henri Charrière

  I stood up and took off my jacket. It was then that she noticed the butterfly tattooed at the base of my neck. She examined it closely; then seeing there were more tattoos, she took off my shirt to see the rest. Everybody crowded around. On the right side of my chest I had a guard from Calvi; on the left, the head of a woman; just above the waist a tiger’s head; on my spine, a crucified sailor, and across the kidneys, a tiger hunt with hunters, palm trees, elephants and tigers. To get a better look, the men pushed the women aside, touched me and examined each tattoo minutely. The chief expressed his opinion, then everyone else gave his. From that moment on it was clear that I’d been adopted by the men. The women had adopted me the minute the chief smiled at me and touched my shoulder.

  We went into the largest of the huts and I was completely taken aback. The hut was made of brick-red earth. It was round, with eight doors, and in a corner hung a cluster of hammocks made of brightly colored wool. In the middle of the hut was a highly polished flat, round rock and around it smaller round rocks to sit on. Several double-barreled shotguns, a sword and a great variety of bows hung from the walls. There was also a turtle shell big enough for a man to lie in and a chimney constructed of identical stones without cement. On a table a split gourd held two or three handfuls of pearls. I was handed a wooden goblet filled with a fermented fruit juice; it was bittersweet and very good. Then I was brought on a banana leaf a five-pound fish cooked over the coals. I ate slowly. When I had finished the delicious fish, the Indian girl took me by the hand and led me to the beach so that I could wash my hands and mouth in sea water. When we returned, we all sat down in a circle, the young Indian girl at my side with her hand on my thigh, and tried through words and gestures to get to know each other.

  Suddenly the chief rose, went to the back of the hut, returned with a white stone and started to draw on the table. First he drew naked Indians, then the village, then the sea. To the right of the Indian village he drew houses with windows, and men and women wearing clothes. The men carried guns or sticks. To the left, another village, men with guns and hats and ugly faces, their women also wearing clothes. I looked closely at the drawings. The chief noticed that he’d forgotten something and traced a path from the Indian village to the hamlet on the right and another path to the village on the left. To indicate their location in relation to his own village, he drew on the right side—the Venezuelan side—a round sun with rays shooting out in all directions; on the Colombian side, a sun on the horizon cut by a wavy line. His intention was clear: the sun rose on one side and set on the other. The chief examined his work with pride and everybody took turns looking at it. When he saw that I understood, he took his stone and covered the two villages with lines, leaving his own intact. I gathered that he was telling me that the men in the two villages were bad and that only his village was good. As if he needed to tell me!

  He took a damp cloth and wiped the table. When it was dry, he put the stone in my hand to indicate that it was my turn. My drawing was more complicated than his. I drew a man with bound hands flanked by two armed men who were looking at him, then the same man running and the two men running after him, their guns pointed at him. I drew this scene three times, each time putting more space between me and my pursuers. In the last one the police had stopped and I was running to their village, which I identified by drawing the Indians and the dog and, standing in front of everybody, the chief with his arms held out to welcome me.

  My drawings must have been pretty good because after a long discussion with the men, the chief opened his arms as in my picture. They had understood.

  That same night the Indian girl took me into a hut where six women and four men were living. She hung a magnificent hammock of colored wool, so big that, crosswise, two could sleep in it comfortably. I lay in the hammock lengthwise while she installed herself in another one crosswise. Then I changed my position to crosswise and she came and lay down next to me. She touched my body, my ears, my eyes, my mouth. Her fingers were long and fine, but they were very rough and covered with small scars from the cuts made by the coral when she dived for oysters. When I stroked her face in turn, she looked at my hand with astonishment that it was so smooth. We spent an hour in the hammock, then we got out and went to the chief’s hut. They had me examine the shotguns, twelve- and sixteen-bore from Saint Etienne. There were also six boxes of ammunition.

  The Indian girl was of medium height, with gray eyes like the chief’s, a fine profile and braided hair that fell to her hips. Her breasts were beautiful, high and pear shaped. The nipples were darker than her bronzed skin and very long. Her kiss was a bite; she didn’t know how to kiss our way. I soon taught her. She wouldn’t walk at my side but behind me, and there was nothing I could do about it. One of the huts was uninhabited and in poor condition. With the help of the other women, she repaired the roof of coconut-palm leaves and patched the walls with the red earth. They had a wide variety of cutting tools: knives, daggers, machetes, hatchets, hoes and forks with iron teeth. They also had cooking pots of brass and aluminum, watering cans, casseroles, a grindstone, an oven, metal and wooden barrels. Their hammocks were of pure wool with braided fringes and vivid designs in blood red, Prussian blue, canary yellow and a waxy black.

  The house was soon ready and she started to fill it with contributions from the other women: an iron ring on three legs for cooking over the fire, a hammock large enough for four adults, glasses, tin pots, casseroles, not to mention a donkey harness.

  We had been caressing each other for two weeks, but she refused absolutely to go any further. I was mystified because, after all, she was the one who had started it. But when the moment came, she wouldn’t. She never wore anything but her small loincloth which hung from her slender hips by a narrow cord. Her buttocks were entirely bare. Without ceremony, we installed ourselves in the little round house. It had three doors: one in the center—the main one—and two others facing each other. The three doors formed an isosceles triangle and had strict uses: I was always to come and go by the north door, she by the south. I was never supposed to use hers or she mine. The big door in the center was for our friends, and neither she nor I was to use it unless we were with visitors.

  It was only when we had moved into the house that she let me take her. I won’t go into details, but she was an ardent mistress with intuitive skill; she enfolded me like a vine. When we were alone, I would comb and braid her hair. She loved me to do this and her face glowed with happiness. But there was fear in it, too, fear that someone might discover us, for she gave me to understand that a man was never to comb his wife’s hair, or rub her hands with a pumice stone, and he must not kiss her mouth or breasts in certain ways.

  So Lali—for that was her name—and I installed ourselves in our house. She never used iron or aluminum pots and never drank from a glass, and she cooked everything in the earthenware pots the Indians made themselves. We washed under the spray of the watering can and went to the bathroom in the sea.

  I helped open the oysters. This work was generally done by the oldest of the women. Each young pearl diver had her own sack. The pearls they found were shared: one portion went to the chief who represented the community, one to the fisherman, a half share to the woman who opened the oysters and a share and a half to the diver. When the diver lived with her family, she gave her pearls to her uncle, her father’s brother. I never did understand the role of the uncle. He was also the first person to go into the house of the betrothed; he would take the arm of the woman and draw it around the man’s waist and place the man’s right arm around the woman, placing his index finger in her navel. Once this was done, he went his way.

  So I helped with the opening of the oysters. I didn’t fish, for I had not yet been invited into the canoe. The fishing was done quite far out, about a quarter of a mile from shore. Some days Lali came back with her thighs and ribs covered with scratches from the coral. Sometimes, if her cuts were bloody, she would crush some seaweed and rub it into the wounds. I did nothing unless invi
ted. I never entered the chief’s house unless someone led me in by the hand. Lali suspected that there were three young Indian girls sleeping in the grass near our door to see or hear what we did when we were alone.

  Yesterday I met the Indian who acted as intermediary between our village and the first Colombian hamlet a mile beyond the border station. The hamlet was called La Vela. The Indian had two donkeys and a Winchester repeating rifle. He carried the pearls separated according to size in a cigar box. Like everyone else, he wore only a loincloth. He was small and dried up. He had an ugly scar that ran from under his chest on the left side across his body to his right shoulder. It formed a welt as thick as your finger.

  The chief had asked me to tattoo him, so, with the help of the dictionary, I made out a list: needles, blue and red India ink and thread. But since the intermediary didn’t speak a word of Spanish, I wondered how on earth he was able to do his business.

  When the Indian was about to leave, the chief gave me permission to go along with him for a bit. To make sure I came back, the chief lent me a shotgun with six rounds of ammunition. He was convinced that I would feel obligated to return since naturally I would never take anything that didn’t belong to me. The Indian got on one donkey and I on the other. We rode the whole day over the same path I’d used coming to the village; then when we were about two miles from the border station, we turned away from the sea and headed inland.

  About five o’clock we came to the edge of a stream where there were five Indian houses. Everybody came and looked at me. The Indians talked on and on among themselves until a weird character appeared: his eyes, hair, nose and everything else were those of an Indian, except his color. He was the palest white and had the red eyes of an albino. He wore khaki pants. It was then that I understood that our intermediary never went farther than this.

  The white Indian said in Spanish, “Hello. You are the killer who escaped with Antonio? Antonio is a relative of mine; we are bound by the pact of blood.” (In order to become “bound,” two men gash each other’s arm with their knives, rub the two wounds together, then coat their hands with the blood and lick them.) “What you need?”

  “Needles, red and black India ink, thread. That’s all.”

  “I’ll have it here at the beginning of the next quarter-moon.”

  His Spanish was better than mine and I had the feeling he knew how to strike a bargain that would benefit his people. As we were leaving, he gave me a necklace made of Colombian coins set in very white silver. He said it was for Lali.

  “Come see me again.” And to make sure I returned, he gave me a bow.

  I started the trip back alone, but I hadn’t gone more than halfway when Lali appeared with one of her sisters—a girl of about twelve or thirteen. Lali herself must have been somewhere between sixteen and eighteen. She pounced on me like a mad woman, clawed my chest—I was protecting my face—and bit my neck. Using all my strength, I was barely able to control her. Then she suddenly calmed down. I put the younger girl on the donkey, and Lali and I walked slowly back, our arms around each other. On the way I killed an owl. I shot it without knowing what it was; all I saw were two eyes gleaming in the shade. Lali was determined to have it and hung it from the saddle. We arrived at dusk. I was tired and wanted to wash. Lali washed me; then, right in front of me, she removed her sister’s loincloth, washed her, and finally washed herself.

  When they returned to the house, I was sitting waiting for water to boil to make some lemonade. Then a thing happened that I only understood much later: Lali pushed her sister between my legs, took my arms and placed them around the girl’s waist—I noticed she wasn’t wearing her loincloth and had the necklace I’d given Lali around her neck. I didn’t really know what to make of this. I removed her gently from between my legs, took her in my arms and laid her down in the hammock. I took off the necklace and put it back on Lali. Then Lali lay down next to her sister, and I lay next to Lali. Long afterward, I learned that Lali had thought I was making inquiries about leaving because I wasn’t happy with her and that she was hoping her sister might be able to hold me better. I woke up with Lali’s hands shading my eyes. It was very late—eleven in the morning. The younger one had left. Lali looked at me, her large gray eyes full of desire, and bit me gently on the corner of my mouth. She wanted me to know how happy she was that I loved her and that I hadn’t gone away because she had failed me.

  The Indian who usually paddled Lali’s canoe was sitting in front of the house, waiting for her. He smiled at me charmingly and closed his eyes to indicate that he knew Lali was still asleep. I sat down next to him and he started a conversation which, of course, I couldn’t understand. He was young and had the powerful muscles of an athlete. He looked longingly at my tattoos and I gathered he wanted to be tattooed too. I nodded in agreement, but he seemed to get the idea that I didn’t know how. Lali appeared. She had covered her body with oil. She knew I didn’t like it, but she explained that with the cloudy weather the water would be very cold. Her mimicking—half laughing, half serious—was so engaging that I made her repeat it several times, each time pretending I didn’t understand. When I asked her to do it yet again, she pouted as if to say, “Either you’re stupid, or I’m no good at explaining.”

  The chief passed by with two Indian women. They were carrying a green lizard weighing at least twelve pounds. He had just caught it with his bow and arrow and invited me to come and help eat it later on. Lali spoke to him, then he touched my shoulder and pointed to the sea. I gathered that it meant I could now go with Lali if I wanted to. The three of us left together, Lali, her usual fishing companion and I. The boat was made of cork and was therefore very light. Carrying it on their shoulders, they walked into the water. The Indian got in the back, holding a huge paddle. Up to her chest in water, Lali held the canoe to keep it steady and prevent it from floating back to shore. I got in and sat in the middle; then with one bound Lali landed in the canoe, and the Indian gave a powerful shove with his paddle. The waves were rolling in and getting bigger and bigger the farther out we went. About fifteen hundred feet from shore there was a kind of channel where two boats were already fishing. Lali had tied her hair on top of her head with red leather laces. The Indian dropped the big iron bar that served as anchor and Lali followed the rope down into the water, a heavy knife in her hand. The boat was very unsteady and bobbed up and down with each roller.

  For over three hours Lali dived and surfaced, dived and surfaced. You couldn’t see the bottom—it must have been all of fifty feet down. She came up with oysters every time and the Indian emptied her sack into the canoe. During the whole three hours Lali never once got into the canoe. Her only rest was hanging onto the side for five or ten minutes. We changed our location twice. In the second spot the oysters were bigger and more plentiful. Then we went back to shore. Lali had got into the canoe and a wave rolled us in. An old Indian woman was waiting. She and Lali’s fishing partner carried the oysters across the sand. When all the oysters had been gathered there, Lali pushed the old woman aside and started to open them herself. Using the point of her knife, she opened a good thirty before she found a pearl. (I had eaten at least two dozen by that time.) She gently pried it loose; it was in the largest category—as big as a chickpea. And how it gleamed! Nature had given it a great variety of subtle colors. Lali picked up the pearl, put it in her mouth, left it there a moment, then took it out and put it in mine. Then she went through some motions with her jaw, indicating she wanted me to crush it between my teeth and swallow it. I refused, but her pleading was so persuasive that I finally did what she asked. She opened four or five more oysters and gave them to me to swallow so that the crushed pearl would be washed down well inside me. Then, like a child, she opened my mouth to see if there were any fragments left between my teeth. After that we went off, leaving the other two to go on with the work.

  I had now been here a month. The reason I knew was that I had marked each day and its date on a piece of paper. The needles and inks had arrive
d long ago. I discovered that Zato, the chief, had three razors. He didn’t use them for shaving, the Indians being beardless, but for cutting his hair. Lali had removed all the hair on my body. The minute she saw one, she pulled it out and rubbed me with a paste made of seaweed mixed with ashes. This seemed to discourage growth. I tattooed the chief on the arm with an Indian crowned by a headdress of many colored feathers. He was ecstatic and gave me to understand that I was to tattoo nobody else until I’d done a larger tattoo on his chest. He wanted the same tiger I had, with its huge teeth. I laughed, for I didn’t have the talent to do justice to the splendid head.

  The Indians of Guajira lived on the coast and the inland plain up to the foothills of the mountains. There were other communities in the mountains called Motilones. Years later I was to have dealings with them. As I explained earlier, the Guajiros dealt with civilized people only through the medium of barter. The coastal Indians delivered their pearls and live turtles to the albino Indian. Some of the turtles weighed as much as four hundred pounds. They never reached the size or weight of those in the Orinoco or the Maroni—these sometimes weighed a thousand pounds and had shells six or seven feet long and over three feet wide. Once on their backs, turtles can’t turn over. I’ve seen them stay on their backs three weeks without food or drink and still be alive. As for the big green lizards, they were very good to eat. Their flesh is deliciously tender, and when their eggs have been cooked in the sand by the sun’s heat, they, too, have a fine flavor. Only their appearance makes them unappetizing.