Finding this solution took a great load off my mind. As for the prosecutor’s tongue, I had plenty of time to work that one out. In fact, it was as good as done. I’d tear it out in small pieces; that’s what I’d do.
But, meantime, I had to heal my feet so I could walk as soon as possible. I wouldn’t go before the tribunal for three months, and in three months a lot could happen. One month to get walking again, one month to make arrangements, then good night, gentlemen. Direction: British Honduras. But this time nobody would get his hands on me.
Yesterday, three days after our return, I was carried into the communal cell. There were forty men there, awaiting their fate. Among their crimes were theft, looting, arson, murder, attempted murder, attempted escape, escape and even cannibalism. There were twenty of us on each side, all chained to the same fifty-foot-long iron bar. At six in the evening each man’s left foot was shackled to the bar. At six in the morning the shackles were removed, and we could spend the whole day sitting, walking about, playing checkers, and talking things over in what we called our “promenade”—a sort of alley six feet wide that went the length of the room. There wasn’t time to be bored during the day. I had constant visits from people who wanted to hear about the cavale. They went out of their minds when I told them that of my own free will I had abandoned my tribe of Guajiros, and Lali and Zoraima.
“What the hell do you want, man?” a guy from Paris asked. “Métros? Elevators? Movies? Electricity? With high-tension wires for working the electric chair? Or did you want to take a bath in the fountain in the Place Pigalle? Are you crazy, man?” the guy continued. “You had two chicks, one more stacked than the other. The whole lot of you spent your time running naked through the woods; you ate, you drank, you hunted. You had the sea, the sun, warm sand, you even had the pearls and oysters free, and you couldn’t think of anything better to do than give it all up? And for what? Tell me. So that you can dodge cars in the streets, so that you can pay rent, pay your tailor, your electricity and telephone bill, and if you want a secondhand wreck of a car, you steal or else work like a dog for somebody just to make enough to keep from starving? I don’t get it, mec! You were in heaven and you willingly return to hell where, on top of the usual problems, you have to keep all those cops off your tail. It’s true you’re still full of that fresh French blood and you haven’t had time to lose your faculties. I’ve had ten years in the bagne and I don’t understand you. Anyway, you’re welcome here, and since I can see you want to start all over again, you can count on us to help you. That’s right, isn’t it, mecs?”
The mecs agreed, and I thanked them all.
I could see that these were men to be reckoned with. Because of the way we were jammed in together, it was hard to hide the fact that I had a plan. At night, since we were all chained to the same bar, it was easy to murder someone. All you had to do was slip a little something to the Arab turnkey during the day so he wouldn’t quite close your shackle at night. Then when night came, the would-be killer did his bit, came back to his place, lay down quietly and closed his shackle. Since the Arab was indirectly an accomplice, he kept his mouth shut.
I’d now been back three weeks. The time had gone quite fast. I was beginning to walk a little, holding onto the bar in the passageway between the rows of bunks. Last week, at our interrogation, I caught sight of the three hospital guards we’d knocked out and disarmed. They were clearly delighted to see us back and expressed the fervent hope that we might all find ourselves together in some secluded spot where they could return the compliment. After our cavale they had been severely punished: their six months’ holiday in France had been canceled, along with their supplementary colonial pay for a year. You might say that our reunion was not exactly cordial. We thought it wise to report this to our interrogators.
The Arab behaved better. He spoke only the truth without exaggerating and skipped over the role played by Maturette. The examining judge kept trying to find out who had provided us with the boat. We didn’t help our cause when we told him the unlikely story that we had made a raft ourselves.
Because we had assaulted the guards, he said he would try his best to get Clousiot and me five years and three for Maturette.
“And since your name is Papillon, I think I’ll clip your wings so you won’t be flying off again very soon.”
Only two months to go before I went before the tribunal. I was angry I hadn’t put the small poisoned arrows in my plan. Maybe if I’d had them, I could have made it from the disciplinary quarter. However, I was making daily progress, walking better and better. François Sierra never missed his morning and evening visits to massage my feet with camphorated oil. He was a great help, both to my feet and to my morale. Thank God for true friends!
I’ve already mentioned that our long cavale had given us great prestige among our fellow convicts. I was certain that we were safe and ran little risk of being killed for our money. Most of the men wouldn’t have tolerated it, and I had no doubt that if anybody tried, he’d be killed straight off. Without exception, everybody respected us; they even felt a certain admiration. And since we had dared to knock out the guards, they figured we’d do anything. It was an interesting sensation to feel safe.
Every day I walked a little longer, and Sierra left a little bottle with me so that my friends could massage my feet and the muscles of my legs, which were atrophied from long disuse.
THE CAVALE OF THE CANNIBALS
“They ate the wooden leg!” “A little wooden-leg stew, please!” Then a voice imitating a woman’s: “Waiter, a piece of well-done mec without pepper, please!”
It was a rare night one of these strange phrases didn’t shatter the silence. Clousiot and I wondered what it was all about.
I got the key to the mystery one afternoon when one of the men involved told me the story. His name was Marius de La Ciotat and he was a safecracker (like me). When he learned that I knew his father, Titin, he decided to talk to me.
I told him something of my cavale, and then I asked him casually, “What about you?”
“Me? Man, I’m really screwed up. I’m afraid I’m going to get five years for a simple escape. I was in the cavale they call the ‘cannibals’ cavale.’ All that stuff you hear in the night is for the Graville brothers.
“There were six of us who escaped from Kilometer Forty-two. In our cavale were Dédé and Jean Graville, two brothers in their thirties from Lyon, an Italian from Marseilles, me from La Ciotat, a mec with a wooden leg from Angers and a kid of twenty-three who acted as his wife. We got out of the Maroni fine, but we could never get going once we reached the sea. In a few hours we were beaten back to the Dutch Guiana coast.
“We couldn’t save anything from the wreck, no food or anything. We found ourselves in the bush. In that area there’s no beach and the sea runs right up into the forest. It’s a jungle, and impassable because of the fallen trees uprooted by the sea and all tangled together.
“We walked for a whole day before we reached dry land. Then we split up into three groups: the Graville brothers, me and Guesepi, and the wooden leg with his little friend each went in different directions. To make a long story short, after twelve days we met up with the Graville brothers in almost the exact same spot where we’d separated. The whole place was surrounded by a kind of quicksand and we couldn’t find a way out. We had spent thirteen days with nothing to eat but roots and young shoots. We were dying of hunger and fatigue; we were at the end of our rope. It was decided that with what strength we had left Guesepi and I would go back to the coast and hang a shirt as high as possible on a tree and give ourselves up to the first Dutch coast guard that came along. The two brothers were to rest a few hours, then try to pick up traces of the other two.
“To make things easier, we agreed when we separated that each group would indicate where it had gone by cutting branches along the way.
“A few hours after we left, they saw the man with the wooden leg coming toward them alone.
“‘Where’s the
boy?’
“‘I left him way back there; he couldn’t walk any more.’
“‘You’re a son of a bitch to leave him there alone.’
“‘It was his idea.’
“At that moment Dédé noticed that the guy was wearing the queer’s boot on his good foot.
“‘Along with everything else, you left him barefoot so that you could wear his shoe? Congratulations! And you look in good shape, not like the rest of us at all. You must have been eating well.’
“‘Yes. I found a big wounded monkey.’
“‘Lucky you.’ At that, Dédé got up with his knife in his hand. Wooden-leg’s knapsack looked well stuffed, too, and Dédé was beginning to get the pitch.
“‘Open your knapsack. What you got in it?’
“He opened the sack and in it Dédé saw a piece of flesh.
“‘What’s that?’
“‘A piece of the monkey.’
“‘You bastard, you killed your boyfriend and ate him!’
“‘No, Dédé, I swear I didn’t. He died of exhaustion and I only ate a little bit. Don’t hold it against me …’
“He didn’t have time to finish; Dédé’s knife was already in his gut. Then he searched the body and found a leather pouch with matches and a striking pad.
“Dédé was wild with rage at the thought that the man hadn’t even shared his matches before they separated originally; then, with his hunger being what it was … To cut it short, they lit a fire, cooked the mec and started to eat him.
“Guesepi arrived in the middle of the feast. They invited him to join in, but he refused. He’d eaten some crabs and raw fish by the edge of the sea. So he watched without taking part as the brothers put more pieces of flesh on the fire, adding the wooden leg to keep the fire going. That day and the next the brothers ate the mec and Guesepi looked on, even noting which parts they ate: the shinbone, the thigh and the buttocks.
“I was still waiting by the sea when Guesepi came for me. We filled a hat with small fish and crabs and cooked them on the Gravilles’ fire. I didn’t see the corpse. They must have dragged it off somewhere. But I did see several pieces of meat scattered about in the ashes.
“Three days later a coast-guard boat picked us up and returned us to the penitentiary at Saint-Laurent.
“Guesepi couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Everybody in this room knows the story, even the guards. That’s why I’ve told you and that’s why you hear those voices in the night.
“Officially, our offense is attempted escape, aggravated by cannibalism. The bad thing is that, to defend myself, I’d have to expose the others, and I can’t do that. Everybody, including Guesepi, would deny it at the interrogation. They’d say that the others disappeared into the bush. And that’s my situation, Papillon.”
“I’m sorry for you, mec. Obviously your only defense is to accuse the others.”
A month later, in the middle of the night, someone plunged a knife into Guesepi’s heart. We didn’t need to guess who’d done it.
Tonight I took another place along the bar. I replaced a man who had left, and by asking everybody to move over one, I got next to Clousiot.
Where I was now, by sitting up I could see what was going on in the yard, even with my left foot shackled to the bar.
Surveillance was so tight that the rounds had no rhythm. They never stopped, and guards were relieved at any and all times.
My feet bore my weight well now; they hurt only when it rained. I was even considering getting something new under way. But how? There were no windows in the room, only a grill that spanned the entire width and reached up to the roof. It was facing so that it was open to the wind from the northeast. After a week’s careful observation I still couldn’t find the smallest gap in the surveillance. For the first time I came close to admitting that they’d be locking me up in solitary on Saint-Joseph after all.
Everybody said it was a terrible place. They called it la mangeuse d’hommes [the devourer of men]. And another thing: in the eighty years of its existence, no one had ever escaped from it.
This partial acceptance that I’d lost the ball game made me look toward the future. I was twenty-eight, and the judge was going to give me five years in solitary. It would be hard to get away with less. So, by the time I got out, I’d be thirty-three. I still had a lot of money in my plan. Therefore, if I didn’t escape—and it didn’t appear I was going to—the least I could do was keep myself in good health. Five years of complete isolation would be hard to bear without going mad. From the first day of my sentence I would discipline my brain according to a carefully thought-out and varied program: I would avoid as much as possible all dreams of castles in Spain and, particularly, all dreams of revenge. From that moment on I would prepare to surmount the terrible punishment that lay ahead. Yes. I’d make it a big waste of their time. I’d leave solitary strong and in full possession of my mental and moral faculties.
I felt better for having set up my code of behavior and accepted with a certain serenity what lay ahead.
I was the first to feel the breeze that penetrated the room. It felt good. Clousiot knew when I didn’t want to talk; he just went on smoking. A few stars were out. I asked him, “Can you see the stars from where you are?”
“Yes,” he said, leaning forward a little. “I don’t like to look at them. They remind me too much of our cavale.”
“Don’t take it so hard. You’ll be seeing thousands of them on our next one.”
“When? In five years?”
“Clousiot, don’t you think the year we’ve just spent, the adventures and the people we got to know are worth five years in solitary? Would you rather have been on the islands all this time? Knowing what lies ahead—and I grant you it’s going to be tough—how do you really feel about our cavale? Tell me the truth. Do you regret it or not?”
“Papi, you forget you had something I didn’t: your seven months with the Indians. If I’d been with you, I might agree. But I was in prison.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s O.K. Sure, I’m glad we had our cavale because I had some good times too. It’s only that I’m a little worried about what to expect at la mangeuse d’hommes. I don’t know if it’s possible to last five years there.”
I explained my plan and he seemed to think it a good idea. I was glad to see his spirits pick up. We were to appear before the tribunal in fifteen days. According to rumor, the presiding officer was severe but fair. He wouldn’t be a pushover for the Administration’s lies, and that was good news.
Clousiot and I refused to use a guard as our lawyer. We decided that I should speak for the three of us and that I’d handle our defense myself.
THE JUDGMENT
I had a haircut and a shave and was dressed in new denims with red stripes; I was even wearing shoes. We were waiting in the courtyard to go before the tribunal. Clousiot had been without his cast for two weeks now and walked naturally, with no trace of a limp.
The tribunal had begun Monday. It was now Saturday morning. The first five days had been spent on a variety of cases. The Graville brothers got only four years, for lack of proof. Their case took over half a day. The other murder cases got four or five years. In general, among the fourteen cases tried, the sentences were on the severe side, but in proportion to the crime.
The tribunal started at seven-thirty. We were standing in the room when an officer came in dressed in the uniform of the Camel Corps and accompanied by an old infantry captain and a lieutenant who were to serve as assistant judges. On the President’s right sat a captain representing the Administration.
“The case of Charrière, Clousiot and Maturette.”
We were about twelve feet from the President. I could see the officer’s face in detail: it was weathered by the desert, and his hair was silver about the temples. He appeared to be a little over forty years old, with bushy eyebrows and magnificent black eyes that looked right into your own. A real military man. But without meanness. He j
ust looked at us, taking us in. My eyes met his, then I deliberately lowered mine.
The captain representing the Administration overstated his case, and that’s what lost it for him. He labeled our knocking out the guards as attempted murder and claimed that it was a miracle the Arab hadn’t died from our treatment. Another bad move was when he said that we had brought more dishonor on France than any convicts in the history of the bagne: “Mr. President! These men have covered fifteen hundred miles! Trinidad, Curaçao, Colombia—all these countries have had to listen to their smears and lies about the French penal administration! For Charrière and Clousiot, I ask for two sentences to be served consecutively for a total of eight years: five for attempted murder and three for escape. For Maturette, I ask only three years for escape, as the testimony indicates that he did not participate in the attempted murder.”
The President spoke. “The tribunal would be interested in hearing a very brief recital of your odyssey.”
So I described our trip to Trinidad, skipping over the Maroni part, and told them about the Bowen family and their kindness. I quoted the chief of police in Trinidad: “It’s not for British authorities to judge French justice. But what we don’t approve of is the way they send their convicts to French Guiana. It’s inhuman and unworthy of a civilized nation like France.” Then I told them about Irénée de Bruyne of Curaçao, the incident over the bag of florins, then Colombia and why and how we got there. Then I gave them a quick description of my life among the Indians. All the while the President listened without interruption, except when he asked for a few more details about the Indian episode, which seemed to interest him greatly. Then I told him about the Colombian prisons in general, and the underwater dungeon in Santa Marta in particular.
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