They were sweeping the corridor, and it seemed to me they swept a long time outside my cell. The broom kept pushing against my door. I looked closely and noticed a piece of white paper poking through. Somebody was trying to slip me something under the door and couldn’t get it any farther. They were waiting for me to pick it up before moving on. I reached for it and unfolded a note written in phosphorescent ink. I waited until the guard had passed by and read:
“Papi, starting tomorrow you’ll find five cigarettes and a coconut in your pail every day. Chew the coconut well if you want to get the most out of it, then swallow the pulp. Smoke in the morning when they’re emptying the pails, or right after the noon and evening meals, but never after morning coffee. Enclosed is a pencil stub and a piece of paper. If you ever need anything, write it down, and when the man sweeps outside your cell, scratch the door with your fingers. If he scratches back, slip him the paper. Don’t ever give him the paper before he’s scratched back. Hide the paper behind your ear so you don’t have to use your plan, and put the pencil somewhere at the base of the wall. Chin up. We send love. Ignace—Louis.”
The message was from Galgani and Dega. A feeling of warmth crept up my throat. To have such faithful and devoted friends was a very warming thing. With even greater faith in the future and the certainty that I’d get out of this tomb alive, I started off with a gay and sprightly step: one, two, three, four, five and turn.... As I walked, I thought how remarkable those two men were. They must run a grave risk, perhaps even the risk of losing their jobs. What a wonderful gesture, not to mention how expensive it must have been. The number of people they must have had to buy off between Royale and my cell!
I should explain that dried coconut is so full of oil that if you grate six coconuts and soak the pulp in warm water, you can skim a quart of it off the top the next day. This oil made up for the lack of fat in our diet and was full of vitamins as well. A coconut a day almost guaranteed good health or, at the very least, prevented dehydration and death from starvation.
For over two months I received food and cigarettes without interruption. I took every kind of precaution when I smoked, inhaling the smoke deep down, then letting it out only a little at a time while fanning it away with my right hand.
A funny thing happened one day. I don’t know whether I did the right thing or not. A guard up on the walk leaned over the railing and peered into my cell. He lit a cigarette and, after a couple of drags, let it fall into my cell. Then he walked on. I waited for him to come back and then made a big thing of crushing the cigarette with my foot. He stopped to watch me, then moved on. Had he felt pity for me? Was he ashamed of the Administration he belonged to? Or was it a trap? I didn’t know, and it bothered me. When you’re suffering, you’re oversensitive to everything. If this guard was trying to be kind, I didn’t want to hurt him with a gesture of contempt.
As I said, I’d been here over two months. It was clear to me that at the Réclusion escape was impossible. A deal, a “combination,” was out of the question. So I worked on splitting myself in two and developed a foolproof method: in order to roam among the stars, to summon up various stages in my life or build my amazingly realistic castles in Spain, I first had to tire myself out. I would walk for hours without sitting down, never stopping, thinking about nothing in particular. Once I was truly exhausted, I stretched out on my bunk and wrapped the blanket around my head. This way, the little air there was in my cell was further cut off. My lungs became asphyxiated and my head started to burn. Suffocating with the heat and lack of air, I suddenly found myself in flight. Ah! What indescribable sensations! I spent nights of love that were more intense than real ones. I could sit down with my mother, dead these seventeen years. I could play with her dress while she stroked my curls, which she had left long to make me look like a girl. I caressed her slender fingers, her soft silky skin. She laughed over my foolish desire to dive into the river as I had seen the big boys do one day on a walk. I even saw the way she wore her hair, the love that flowed from her bright eyes, her gentle words: “My little Riri, you must be good, you must be very good so that your mummy can love you a lot. Later on, when you’re a little bigger, you can dive into the river too. You’re too small now, my treasure. The day will come soon, too soon, when you’ll be a big boy.”
Hand in hand, we followed the river home. I was actually there, in the house of my childhood. I held my hands over my mother’s eyes so that she had to play the piano without looking at the music. I was there; it wasn’t my imagination. I was with her, standing on a chair behind the piano stool, and I pressed my small hands against her large eyes so she couldn’t see. Her nimble fingers continued to skim over the piano until she had played “The Merry Widow” to the end.
Neither you, inhuman prosecutor, nor you, dishonest policemen, nor you, miserable Polein, who bought your liberty for the price of a lie, nor the twelve jurymen who were such cheeseheads they believed the lot of you, nor the guards here in the Réclusion—worthy associates of la mangeuse d’hommes—no one, absolutely no one, not even these thick walls, nor the remoteness of this island lost in the Atlantic, nothing, nothing physical or mental, can stop my delicious wanderings, bathed in the rosy hue of bliss.
When I figured out earlier how much time I would be spending with myself, I was wrong to limit it to hours. There were times when it should have been measured in minutes. For example, the emptying of the pails took place about an hour after the distribution of the morning coffee and bread. It was with the return of the empty pail that I received the coconut, the five cigarettes and sometimes a note. Not every time, but often enough, I’d count the time in minutes. It wasn’t hard, for I’d adjusted my steps to one to the second, and with my body acting as a pendulum, I arrived at the turn at the end of five steps and mentally registered “one.” When I reached twelve, a minute had passed. But don’t think it was the food I was worried about—the coconut my life depended on—or the cigarettes—the exquisite pleasure of being able to smoke ten times every twenty-four hours (for I cut each cigarette in half). No. About coffee time I was often seized with a fear that something might have happened to the people who were helping me at the risk of their own necks. It was only when I saw the coconut that I could relax. It was there; therefore all was well with them.
Slowly, very slowly, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months passed by. I’d been here almost a year. For exactly eleven months and twenty days I had not spoken with anyone for more than forty seconds, and then only in chopped sentences that were more murmured than said. I did have one exchange in a normal voice. I’d caught a cold and was coughing a lot. Thinking this justified a visit to the infirmary, I reported sick.
The doctor came. The wicket opened and a head appeared.
“What’s the matter with you? Bronchitis? Turn around. Cough.”
Was this a joke? No, it was true, absolutely true. Somewhere they’d turned up a doctor, and he’d come to examine me through my wicket at a distance of three feet and put his ear to the opening in order to listen to my chest. Then he said, “Stick your arm through.” I was about to when I felt a sudden surge of self-respect and said, “Thanks, Doc, but don’t bother. It isn’t worth it.” At least I let him know I didn’t take his examination seriously.
“It’s up to you,” he replied in a cynical tone and left. Luckily, for I was about to explode with anger.
One, two, three, four, five and turn. One, two, three, four, five and turn. I marched, I marched without stopping, I marched with fury, my legs tense. After what had happened, I needed to trample on something. What? Under my feet was only cement. But there were still plenty of things to trample on. I trampled on that ass of a doctor who, to be in the good graces of the Administration, lent himself to such a farce. I trampled on the indifference of men to the suffering and pain of others. I trampled on the ignorance of the French people and their indifference to the human cargo that left Saint-Martin-de-Ré every two years—to where it went and how it was treated. I trample
d on the reporters who spread a man’s name all over the front page and forgot he existed a few months later. I trampled on the Catholic priests who heard the confessions and therefore knew what was going on in the bagne and said nothing. I trampled on the nature of our trials which were nothing but oratorical joustings between accuser and accused. I trampled on the League for the Rights of Man which wouldn’t lift a voice to say, “Stop your dry guillotine, forbid the collective sadism of the Administration and its employees!” I trampled on the fact that no group or association ever asked those responsible for the system why 80 percent of its population disappeared down the road of the condemned every two years. I trampled on the death notices handed out by the official doctors: suicide, illness, death from continued undernourishment, scurvy, tuberculosis, raging madness, senility. I don’t know on what else I trampled. But after what had just happened, I couldn’t bring myself to walk normally. With every step I trampled on something.
One, two, three, four, five … and the slow passing of the hours gradually wore down my silent revolt.
Ten days later I was halfway through my sentence at the Réclusion. It was an anniversary worthy of a feast, for, my grippe aside, I was in good health. I wasn’t crazy or anywhere near becoming so. I was even 100 percent certain that at the end of the next year I’d get out alive and sound of body and mind.
I was awakened by the sound of muffled voices:
“Monsieur Durand, he’s dry as a bone. How could you have not noticed him?”
“I don’t know, chief. The way he’s hanging in the corner under the walk. I never saw him.”
“It’s not important, but you must admit it’s pretty funny you didn’t see him.”
So my neighbor on the left had committed suicide. They carried him away. The door closed. It was all according to the rules, since the door was opened and shut in the presence of a “higher authority.” (It was the head warden, for I recognized his voice.) The fifth loss from those around me in ten weeks.
On the day of my anniversary I found a can of Nestlé’s condensed milk in my pail. It was a real extravagance on the part of my friends, expensive to buy and very risky to get to me. It was a day of triumph over adversity. In addition, I promised myself I wouldn’t take my usual flight. I would stay in the Réclusion in mind as well as body. A year had passed since I’d arrived and I felt quite capable of leaving en cavale tomorrow if the opportunity arose. It was a positive assertion and I was proud of it.
The afternoon sweeper—that was most unusual—gave me a note from my friends: “Chin up. Only one more year. We know you’re in good health. We’re O.K. too. We send love. Louis—Ignace. If you can, send us a word through the man who gave you this.”
On the small piece of paper attached to the note I wrote: “Thanks for everything. I feel strong, and thanks to you, I hope for the same a year from now. Have you any news of Clousiot and Maturette?” The sweeper came back and scratched on my door. I slipped him the piece of paper and it disappeared immediately. I spent the whole day and part of the night in the real world, something I promised myself I’d do more often. One year more and I’d be on one of the islands. Which one? Royale or Saint-Joseph? I’d get drunk with talking, smoking and planning my next escape.
I began the next day—the first of the three hundred and sixty-five that remained—with confidence, and for the following eight months all went well. But in the ninth there was trouble. One morning, when my pail was being emptied, the man was caught red-handed just as he was pushing the coconut and the five cigarettes into my cell.
The situation was so serious that for several minutes the rule of silence was forgotten. We could hear all too clearly the beating they gave the poor guy. Then the rattle of a dying man. My wicket opened and the flushed face of a guard bellowed at me: “You’ll get yours, you son of a bitch!”
“Just try something, shithead!” I yelled back, furious at the treatment they’d given the poor devil.
All this happened at seven o’clock. It wasn’t until eleven that I was visited by a delegation headed by the deputy warden. The door, which had been closed for twenty months, opened. I was in the rear of the cell with my mug in my hand, ready to fight. I wanted to give as good as I got and be knocked out as quickly as possible. No chance. “Get out!”
“If you want me, come and get me. I’m not going out there to be attacked from all sides. Here I can slug the first man who touches me.”
“We’re not going to hit you, Charrière.”
“Whose word do I have?”
“Mine, the assistant warden’s.”
“What’s your word worth?”
“Don’t insult me. There’s no point in it. I give you my word of honor you won’t be touched. Come on now. Get out.”
I held on to my mug.
“You can keep it. You won’t be needing it.”
“O.K.” I came out and, surrounded by six guards and the assistant warden, I walked the length of the corridor. When I emerged into the courtyard, I felt dizzy and had to close my eyes against the brilliance of the light. Eventually I made out the little house where we had gone on arrival. A dozen guards stood by as I was led into the room marked “Administration.” A man was moaning on the floor, covered with blood. The clock on the wall said eleven, and I thought, They’ve been torturing the poor bastard for four hours. The head warden was sitting behind his desk with the deputy warden next to him.
“Charrière, how long have you been getting food and cigarettes?”
“Hasn’t that guy already told you?”
“I’m asking you.”
“I have amnesia. I have no idea.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you know? I’m surprised it isn’t down in my file. I got amnesia from a blow on the head.”
Totally unprepared for my reply, the warden turned to a guard and said, “Ask Royale if they have any record of this.”
While they were telephoning, he continued, “You do remember that your name is Charrière?”
“That, yes.” Then, very fast, to confuse him still further, I rattled out like an automaton, “My name is Charrière I was born in 1906 in the department of Ardèche I was given a life sentence in Paris Seine.” His eyes grew as big as marbles and I knew I’d thrown him.
“You had your coffee and bread this morning?”
“Yes.”
“What vegetable did you have last night?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, if we’re to believe you, you have absolutely no memory?”
“For events, no. For faces, yes. For example, I know it was you who received me here once. But when, I don’t remember.”
“So you don’t know how much more time you have to do?”
“Of my life sentence? Until I die, I suppose.”
“No, no. Your sentence in solitary.”
“I have a sentence in solitary? Why?”
“Now that’s too much! Are you trying to tell me you don’t remember you’re doing two years for an escape? I don’t believe it!”
At that point I really gave it to him. “Escape? Me? Warden, I’m no fool. I’m an intelligent person and perfectly capable of assuming my responsibilities. Come to my cell and see for yourself if I’ve escaped from it.”
A guard broke in, “Royale on the line, Warden.”
He picked up the phone. “Nothing there? That’s funny. He claims to have been stricken with amnesia.... How? A blow on the head.... I see. He’s faking. Well, we’ll see about that.... O.K. Sorry, Warden. I’ll check it. Good-by. Yes, I’ll keep you informed.
“Hey, faker, let’s have a look at your head. Yes, he does have a scar, and a long one. How is it you remember you lost your memory when you got hit? Answer me that!”
“I can’t explain it. I only know that I remember being hit, that my name is Charrière, and a few other things.”
“So what are you trying to tell me?”
“That’s what we’re talking about. Y
ou asked me how long I’ve been sent food and cigarettes. This is my answer: I don’t know if it was the first time or the thousandth. Because of my amnesia, I can’t tell you. That’s all there is to it. You can make of it what you want.”
“What I want is simple enough. You’ve had too much to eat for a long time. Now you’re going to lose a little weight. No more supper until the end of your sentence.”
That same day I received a note during the second sweeping. Unfortunately I couldn’t read it because it wasn’t phosphorescent. During the night I lit a leftover cigarette that had escaped the search. As I puffed it, it made enough light so I could read: “The guy didn’t give us away. He said it was only the second time he’d given you food, and that he did it only because he’d known you in France. It hasn’t bothered anybody at Royale. Chin up.”
So I was now deprived of my coconut, cigarettes and news of my friends at Royale. And on top of that, they’d taken away my evening meal. I’d got used to not being hungry, and, in addition, the ten smokes gave shape to the day. I was also worried about the poor devil they had beaten on my account. I hoped to God they didn’t punish him further.
One, two, three, four, five and turn.... One, two, three, four, five and turn.... It wasn’t going to be easy on these short rations. With so little to eat, I thought I ought to change my tactics. For example, if I stayed lying down, I could conserve my energy. The less I moved, the fewer calories I’d burn up. During the day I would just sit. I’d have to learn a whole new way of life. Four months: one hundred and twenty days. On this new diet, how long would it be before I became seriously anemic? Two months at least. So that would leave me with two crucial months. Once I became really weak, I’d be fertile ground for all kinds of sickness. I decided to stay down from six in the evening to six in the morning. I’d walk from after coffee till after they’d picked up the pails, or about two hours. At noon, after the soup, another two hours. Four hours’ walking in all. The rest of the time I’d sit or lie down. It would be difficult to take my flights without the fatigue. But I had to try all the same.
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