“When?”
“About seven months ago.”
“What have you been doing since then?”
“I’ve been living with the Indians.”
“What? You, with the Guajiros? That’s impossible. Those savages have never allowed anyone in their territory. Not even a missionary. I refuse to believe you. Where were you really? Tell me the truth.”
“Mother, I was with the Indians and I can prove it to you.”
“How?”
“With their pearls.” I undid the bag which I’d pinned to the back of my jacket and handed it to her.
She opened it and took out a handful of pearls. “How many are there?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe five or six hundred.”
“This is no proof. You could have stolen them somewhere else.”
“Mother, to set your conscience at rest, I will stay here as long as it takes you to find out if any pearls have been stolen anywhere. I have money. I can pay for my room and board. I promise not to stir from my room without your permission.”
She looked at me intently. I knew she must be thinking, what if he escapes? He escaped from prison; it would be much easier from here.
“I’ll leave my bag of pearls with you. They are my entire fortune, but I know they’re in good hands.”
“All right, it’s agreed. But you don’t need to stay shut up in your room. You can go into the garden in the morning and afternoon while my girls are in chapel. You’ll eat in the kitchen with the help.”
The interview left me only partly reassured. I was about to go back up to my room when the Irish sister led me into the kitchen. Waiting for me was a large bowl of coffee, fresh black bread and butter. The sister watched me eat without speaking or sitting down. She simply stood there, looking troubled. I said, “Thank you for everything you’ve done, Sister.”
“I wish I could have helped more, but I’ve done all I can, Henri.” And with that she left the kitchen.
Sitting by the window, I looked at the city, the harbor, the sea. The countryside was well cultivated. But I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that I was in danger, so much so that I decided to run away the following night. To hell with the pearls. She could use them for the convent, or for herself—the old hag. I didn’t trust her at all. Besides, how come she didn’t speak French, she a Catalan and the Mother Superior of a convent and therefore supposedly well educated? That was most unusual. I would leave that very night. During the afternoon I’d go into the courtyard and study the best place to climb over the wall.
About one there was a knock on my door.
“Won’t you come down and have something to eat, Henri?”
“Yes, thank you. I’m coming.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and was just about to serve myself some meat and boiled potatoes when the door opened and there in front of me stood four policemen in white uniforms, armed with rifles, and an officer with a revolver in his hand.
“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot,” the chief said. They put me in handcuffs. The Irish sister let out a scream and fainted. Two kitchen helpers picked her up.
“Let’s go,” said the chief. They took me up to my room. There they searched my belongings and right away found the thirty-six gold pieces I still had left, but they passed over the case containing the two arrows. They must have thought they were pencils. The officer put the gold pieces in his pocket with ill-concealed satisfaction, and we left. A vehicle—if it could be called that—was waiting in the courtyard.
The five policemen and I squeezed into the piece of junk and we set off at full speed. Our driver was in a police uniform, but he was as black as coal. I was crushed; I didn’t try to resist, only to keep my dignity. There was no question of asking for pity or forgiveness. Just be a man and don’t lose hope, I said to myself. I succeeded so well that, as I stepped out of the car, the first words of the police officer who met us were: “This Frenchman looks pleased with himself. He doesn’t seem to care whether he was caught or not.” I went into his office, took off my hat and sat down without being asked, my pack between my feet.
“Can you speak Spanish?”
“No.”
“Call the cobbler.”
A few moments later in came a small man in a blue smock, a shoemaker’s hammer in his hand.
“You’re the Frenchman who escaped from Rio Hacha a year ago?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. I’m not the Frenchman who escaped from Rio Hacha a year ago.”
“Take off his handcuffs. Remove your jacket and shirt.” He took up a paper and examined it. All my tattoos were noted on it.
“You’re missing the thumb of your left hand. Yes? Then it’s you.”
“No, it isn’t me, because I didn’t escape a year ago. I escaped seven months ago.”
“Same thing.”
“For you, yes. Not for me.”
“I see. You’re a real killer, aren’t you? Frenchmen or Colombians, all you killers are alike—wild men.’ I’m only the assistant warden of this prison. I have no idea what they’re going to do with you. But for the moment, I’ll put you in with your old pals.”
“What pals?”
“The Frenchmen you brought to Colombia.”
I was taken to a cell which looked out over the courtyard. There I found my five friends. We hugged each other. “We thought you were safe forever, you old bastard,” Clousiot said, and Maturette wept like the child he was. The other three were also excited. To see them again revived my morale.
“Tell us what happened,” they said.
“Later. What about you?”
“We’ve been here three months.”
“How are you treated?”
“So-so. We’re waiting to be transferred to Barranquilla, where they say we’ll be turned over to the French authorities.”
“What a bunch of bastards. What about making a break?”
“You’ve just gotten here and you’re already thinking about a break!”
“Why not? You think I give up all that easily? How closely watched are you?”
“During the day, not much, but at night there’s a special detail.”
“How many in the detail?”
“Three.”
“How’s your leg?”
“O.K. I don’t even limp any more.”
“Are you always locked up in the cell?”
“No, we get to walk in the yard two hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon.”
“What are the others like, the Colombian prisoners?”
“There are some really tough ones here. They say the thieves are just as bad as the murderers.”
In the afternoon I was in the yard having a private talk with Clousiot when I was called away. I followed the policeman into the same office I’d been in that morning. The head warden was there with the man who had questioned me earlier. The seat of honor was occupied by a very dark-skinned man. His color was more like a Negro’s than an Indian’s. He had the short frizzy hair of a Negro too. He was almost fifty, with mean black eyes, thick lips and a small mustache. His shirt was open at the neck, and on the left side he wore a green and white decoration of some sort. The cobbler was there too.
“Frenchie, you escaped seven months ago. What have you been doing since then?”
“I’ve been living with the Guajiros.”
“Don’t give me that crap or you’ll get the shit kicked out of you.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Nobody’s ever lived with the Indians. Only this year they killed more than twenty-five of our guards.”
“No, the guards were killed by smugglers.”
“How do you know?”
“I lived with them for almost seven months. They never left their territory.”
“O.K. Maybe you’re right. Where did you steal those thirty-six gold pieces?”
“They’re mine. Justo gave them to me—he’s chief of a mountain tribe.�
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“How could an Indian have such a fortune and then give it to you?”
“O.K., chief. Have any gold pieces been stolen in the last seven months?’
“No, you’re right. We’ve had nothing about it in our reports. But that won’t keep us from looking into it.”
“Please do. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
“Frenchie, you committed a serious offense when you escaped from the prison in Rio Hacha, and a still more serious one when you helped Antonio escape. He was to be shot for the murder of several coastal guards. And we know that you’re wanted by the French authorities and that you have a life sentence. You’re a killer—and I’m not about to risk your escaping from here by putting you in with the other Frenchmen. You’re going to be put in a dungeon until you leave for Barranquilla. You’ll get your gold pieces back if we find you didn’t steal them.”
I was led to some stairs that went underground. We went down about twenty-five steps and arrived in a dimly lit passage with cages opening off to the right and the left. They opened one of them and I was pushed inside. When they had closed the door, I got the full benefit of the stink that rose from the slimy floor. I heard calls from all sides. Inside each barred hole were one, two, or three prisoners.
“Frenchie? Frenchie? What did you do? Why are you here? Do you know these dungeons are deathtraps?” they called in Spanish.
“Shut up! Let him talk!” a voice shouted.
“I’m here because I escaped from the prison at Rio Hacha.” They seemed to understand my Spanish gibberish well enough.
“Listen, Frenchie, want a few facts? At the back of your cell there’s a plank. That’s to sleep on. To the right there’s a can with water in it. Don’t drink it too fast: you get a little each morning and you can’t ask for more. To the left there’s a pail to do your business in. Cover it with your jacket. You don’t need your jacket here; it’s too hot already. Cover the pail so it doesn’t smell so bad. We all do it.”
I drew closer to the bars to see their faces. I could make out only the two men opposite—they were glued to the bars, their legs planted outside. One was a Spanish-Indian type like the first policeman who arrested me in Rio Hacha; the other was a young and handsome light-skinned black. The black warned me that each time the tide came up, the water rose in the cells. I mustn’t be scared because it never rose higher than your stomach. And I shouldn’t try to catch the rats that crawled over me but just give them a whack on the head. If you tried to catch them, they bit you.
“How long have you been in this hole?” I asked him.
“Two months.”
“What about the others?”
“Nobody more than three months. If you haven’t been taken out before three months, it means you’re here to die.”
“Who’s been here the longest?”
“One man eight months, but he’s about had it. He hasn’t been able to stand up for a month. The next time we get a real high tide, he’ll drown.”
“Are you a bunch of savages in this country?”
“I never said we were civilized. Yours isn’t all that civilized either: they gave you a life sentence. Here in Colombia it’s twenty years or death. Never life.”
“Look, it’s the same all over.”
“Did you knock off a lot of people?”
“No, only one.”
“I don’t get it. They can’t give you a long sentence like that for just one man.”
“They did, though.”
“So your country’s as primitive as mine.”
“O.K. So let’s not argue about our countries. You’re right. The police are shits all over. What did you do?”
“I killed a man, his son and his wife.”
“Why?”
“He fed my kid brother to a sow.”
“What! I don’t believe it.”
“My little brother used to throw stones at their kid and he hurt him in the head a couple of times.”
“That’s still no reason.”
“That’s what I said when I found out.”
“How did you find out?”
“My little brother had been gone for three days. I kept looking for him, and then I found his sandal in the manure pile. It was the manure from the barn where the sow was. I dug around and found a white sock covered with blood. Then I understood. The wife confessed before I killed her. I made them say their prayers and then I shot them. The first shot shattered the father’s legs.”
“You were right to kill them. What will they give you for it?”
“Twenty years at the most.”
“Why are you here in the dungeon?”
“I hit a policeman who was a member of their family. He was here in the prison. But he isn’t here any more. They sent him away, so I’m O.K.”
The door to the passage opened. A guard came in with two prisoners carrying a barrel hanging from two wooden bars. Behind them you could just make out two more guards carrying guns. Cell after cell, they brought out the pails that served as our toilets and emptied them into the barrel. Crap and urine reeked to the point of suffocation. Nobody spoke. When they got to me, the prisoner took my pail and dropped a small parcel on the floor. After they had moved on, I opened the package and found two packs of cigarettes, a tinderbox and a note written in French. First, I lit two cigarettes and threw them over to the two men across from me. Then I called to my neighbor and asked him to pass the cigarettes along to the other prisoners. After the distribution I lit my own and tried to read the paper by the light in the passage. It couldn’t be done, so I made a tight roll of the paper the package was wrapped in and, after several tries, managed to set it on fire. I read fast:
“Chin up, Papillon. You can count on us. Tomorrow we’re sending you paper and pencil so that you can write to us. We’re with you to the death.”
It warmed my heart. I wasn’t alone after all; I could count on my friends.
Nobody talked. Everybody was smoking. The distribution of the cigarettes showed there were nineteen of us in this deathtrap. So here I was, back on the road of the condemned for sure! Those little sisters of the Lord were really sisters of the devil. I was sure it wasn’t the Irish or the Spanish sister who had turned me in. But what a damn fool I’d been to trust them all the same! No, it wasn’t them. The man driving the wagon? We’d talked French two or three times. Had he heard us? Oh God, what’s the difference! You’re in it, you’re really in it this time, Papillon. Sisters, the wagon driver, or the Mother Superior, it doesn’t matter a damn.
So here I was, in a filthy hole that flooded twice a day. The heat was so stifling I took off my shirt, then my pants, then my shoes, and hung them all from the bars.
To think I’d gone fifteen hundred miles to fetch up here! Some great success that was. God had been good to me, but it looked as if He was abandoning me now. Maybe He was angry because He’d already done the best He could for me: He’d given me freedom, real freedom, and a community that adopted me completely. He’d given me not one but two wonderful wives. The sun, and the sea. A hut in which I was lord and master. And a life with nature, an existence that may have been primitive, but so calm, so peaceful. He’d given me the unique gift of freedom without police, judges, or mean and envious men. And I hadn’t appreciated it. The blue of the sea—when it wasn’t green or almost black—those dawns and sunsets that brought such sweet serenity, living without money yet lacking nothing essential—all that I had spurned. And for what? A society that had no intention of helping me. Men who couldn’t be bothered to find out if I was worth salvaging. A world that had rejected me and cast me beyond the reach of hope, into holes like this, where they had only one thing on their minds: to kill me off, no matter what.
When the news of my capture got out, they’d have a good laugh over it—those twelve cheeseheads on the jury, that rat Polein, the cops and the prosecutor. For there was bound to be some journalist who’d send the news to France.
And what about my own people? When the police annou
nced my escape, they must have been so happy to learn that their boy had given his executioners the slip! And when they learned I’d been caught once more, they’d suffer all over again.
I’d been wrong to renounce my tribe. Yes, I have every right to say “my tribe,” for they had truly adopted me. I’d been wrong and I deserved my fate. And yet … I hadn’t done a cavale in order to increase the Indian population of South America! Dear God, you’ve got to realize that I must live among civilized people and show them I’m capable of taking part in their lives without being a threat to them. That’s my real goal—with or without Your help.
I must prove that I can be, that I am and will be, a normal person. Perhaps no better, but certainly no worse than the rest.
I smoked. The water began to rise. It was about up to my ankles. I called out, “Heh, black man! How long does the water stay in the cell?”
“It depends on the tide. One hour. Two at the most.”
I heard several prisoners cry out, “It’s coming!”
Slowly the water rose. The half-breed and the black had climbed up the bars, their legs sticking out into the passage. I heard something in the water: a sewer rat as big as a cat was splashing around. It was trying to climb up the grill. I grabbed one of my shoes and clouted it over the head as it came near me. It squealed and moved on down the passage.
The black said, “Frenchie, if you think you can kill them all, you’re out of your mind. Climb up the grill, grab the bars and wait it out.”
I followed his advice, but the bars cut into my thighs, making it impossible for me to stay in that position for long. I took my jacket from the toilet pail, tied it to the bars and perched there. It made a kind of seat, and I could now stay in one position.
The invasion of the water, filled with rats, centipedes and tiny crabs, was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever experienced. When the water finally retreated after about an hour, the floor was covered with slime half an inch thick. I put on my shoes to protect my feet from the filth. The black threw me a piece of wood six inches long and told me to push the mud out into the passage, starting with the plank I slept on. This took me a half hour and kept me from thinking about anything else. It helped. Until the next tide I’d be free of water. That meant eleven hours. Six hours for the tide to go out and five to come back. A funny thought crossed my mind:
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