Papillon

by Henri Charrière

  “When?”

  “When I examined him in the Réclusion.”

  “Doctor, you call that an examination?” I said. “Listening to my chest through a wicket?”

  “It’s an Administration rule that we can’t open a prisoner’s door.”

  “Perhaps so, Doctor, but for your sake I hope you’re only on loan to the Administration, not a part of it.”

  “We’ll discuss that another time. I’m going to try to get you well, you and your friend. As for the other one, I’m afraid it’s too late.”

  Chatal told me that he was suspected of preparing an escape and had been interned on the islands. I also learned that Jésus, the one who had crossed me up on my cavale, had been killed by a leper. Chatal didn’t know the leper’s name and I wondered if it might have been one of those who had helped us.

  The life of the convicts on the Iles du Salut was entirely different from what you might imagine. Most of the men were in the “dangerous” class. They ate well because there was a black market in everything: alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, chocolate, sugar, meat, fresh vegetables, fish, shellfish, coconuts, etc. As a result, everybody was healthy—as was the climate. Since only the cons with short sentences had any hope of being freed, the men with life sentences had nothing to lose. Everybody was involved in the daily black market, convicts and guards alike. It was all mixed up. The wives of the guards sought out young cons to work around the house—and often took them as lovers. They were called “houseboys,” some working as gardeners, others as cooks. They became the middlemen between the camp and the guards’ houses. There was no feeling against the houseboys because the trafficking depended on them. But we didn’t consider them as “pure” underworld. No man from the real underworld would stoop to do that kind of work, or be a turnkey or work in the guards’ mess. On the other hand, he would pay to get work where he didn’t have to deal with the guards: for instance, as a cesspool cleaner, leaf raker, animal herder, orderly, gardener, butcher, baker, boatman, postman, lighthouse keeper, etc. These jobs were done by the real hardened cons. Also, a real con never worked with the gangs that maintained the prison walls, roads, stairs, or planted coconut trees. These gangs worked in the full sun and under the eyes of the guards. The workday was from seven to noon and from two to six. It was a strange mixture of people who lived together in this little village where everybody watched everybody else, judged everybody and observed the life around him.

  Dega and Galgani came to spend Sunday with me in the hospital. We had an ailloli with fish, a fish soup, potatoes, cheese, coffee and white wine. We ate the meal in Chatal’s room—Dega, Galgani, Maturette, Grandet and me. They asked me to describe my cavale down to the last detail. Dega had decided not to try to escape. He was hoping to get five years off. With the three years he had done in France and the three years here, he had only four years to go, and he was resigned to doing them. Galgani said some Corsican senator was doing something about him.

  Then it was my turn. I asked them where the best places were around here for trying an escape. There was a great hue and cry. The question had never entered Dega’s mind, and certainly not Galgani’s. Chatal volunteered that a garden might be useful for making a raft. Grandet told me that he was a blacksmith in the workshop. He described it as a shop with a large variety of workers: painters, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, plumbers—nearly a hundred and twenty men all told. They did the maintenance for the Administration buildings. Dega, who was head clerk, said he’d see to it that I had whatever job I wanted. Grandet offered to share his gambling operation with me so I could live off what I took from the players instead of spending my plan. As I learned later, it was interesting work but very dangerous.

  Sunday went by like a flash. “Five o’clock already,” Dega said, looking at his beautiful watch. “Time to get back to camp.” As we were leaving, Dega gave me five hundred francs so I could play poker. Apparently there were some great games in our room. Grandet gave me a magnificent dagger he had tempered himself. It was an impressive weapon.

  “You’ve got to be armed day and night.”

  “Don’t they frisk you?”

  “Most of the guards who frisk you are Arab turnkeys. If they know a man is considered dangerous, they see to it they never find anything on him, even if they’ve touched it.”

  “See you at camp,” Grandet said.

  Before leaving, Galgani said he had reserved a place for me so we’d be in the same gourbi (the members of a gourbi ate together and shared all their money). Dega didn’t sleep in the camp but in a room in the Administration Building.

  We’d been in the hospital three days, but since I had spent my nights with Clousiot, I didn’t really know what went on in the ward. Clousiot was in bad shape—he was in an isolation room with another man. Chatal had pumped him full of morphine. He was afraid he wouldn’t make it through the night.

  In the ward there were thirty beds—most of them occupied—on either side of an aisle twelve feet wide. It was lit by two gas lamps. Maturette said, “They’re playing poker over there.” I went over. There were four players.

  “Can I make a fifth?”

  “Sure, have a seat. The ante’s a hundred francs. You have to triple the ante to play, in other words, three hundred francs. Here’s three hundred francs’ worth of chips.”

  I gave two hundred to Maturette for safekeeping.

  A man from Paris named Dupont said, “We play English rules. No joker. You know how?”

  “Sure.”

  “O.K. Your deal.”

  The speed with which these men played was amazing. You had to bet like lightning or the dealer said, “Too late,” and you had to sit it out.

  These gamblers were a whole new class of bagnards. They lived for and off gambling. Nothing else interested them. They forgot everything: what they had been, their punishment, what they could do to change their lives. They didn’t even care who they played with. The one thing that mattered was gambling.

  We played all night, stopping in time for breakfast. I won three thousand three hundred francs. I was heading for bed when one of the guys—his name was Paulo—came up to me and asked if I could lend him two hundred francs so he could play two-handed belote. He needed three hundred and had only a hundred. “Here, take three hundred and we’ll go halves.”

  “Thanks, Papillon. You really are the good guy they said you were. I can see we’re going to be friends.” He held out his hand, I shook it, and he went off happy.

  Clousiot died this morning. During a moment of lucidity the night before he had told Chatal not to give him any more morphine. “I want to die conscious,” he’d said, “sitting on my bed with my friends around me.”

  It was strictly forbidden to enter the isolation ward, but Chatal took the responsibility on himself so that Clousiot could die among his friends. I closed his eyes. Maturette was broken with grief.

  “The companion of our adventures is gone. He was thrown to the sharks.”

  When I heard the words, “He was thrown to the sharks,” my blood froze. It was true; there was no cemetery for bagnards. When a convict died, he was thrown into the sea at sunset between Saint-Joseph and Royale, in a place that was infested with sharks.

  With the death of my friend the hospital became unbearable. I sent word to Dega that I wanted to leave in two days. He answered with a note saying, “Ask Chatal to get you two weeks’ rest at camp. That way you’ll have time to choose what work you want to do.” Maturette would stay a while longer; Chatal was going to try to get him a job as infirmary aide.

  I was taken from the hospital straight to the Administration Building and into the presence of Chief Warden Barrot, known to the cons as “Coco Sec.”

  “Papillon, I want to have a few words with you before I let you go to camp. You have a very powerful ally here in Louis Dega, my chief clerk. He tells me you don’t deserve the reports I’ve received from France and since, according to him, you’re innocent, it’s perfectly normal that you should be
in a state of permanent revolt. I must say I don’t entirely agree with him. But what I want to know is, what is your mental attitude right now?”

  “In the first place, sir, to answer you I would have to know what the reports say.”

  “Have a look.” And he handed me a yellow card on which I read the following:

  “Henri Charrière, called Papillon, born November 16, 1906, in—, Ardèche, condemned for first-degree murder and sentenced to hard labor for life by the Assizes of the Seine. Extremely dangerous: to be closely watched. To be given no privileges.

  “Centrale de Caen: Incorrigible. Likely to foment and lead a revolt. Keep under close observation.

  “Saint-Martin-de-Ré: Had to be disciplined. Very influential among his friends. Will always try to escape.

  “Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni: Committed savage act of aggression against three guards and a turnkey when escaping from the hospital. Was returned from Colombia. Good conduct during imprisonment there. Given light sentence of two years in solitary.

  “Réclusion de Saint-Joseph: Good conduct.”

  “That, my dear Papillon,” the warden said as I gave him back the report, “doesn’t exactly recommend you as a boarder here. Will you make a deal with me?”

  “Perhaps. It depends on the deal.”

  “I haven’t the slightest doubt that you’re going to do everything you can to escape from the islands. You may even succeed. As for me, I have only five months more as warden here. Do you know what an escape costs the chief warden? A year’s pay—the entire loss of colonial pay, plus having my leave put off six months and reduced to three. And if they investigate and find the warden guilty of negligence, it means a possible demotion. You see how serious it is. Now, if I do my job honestly, I have no right to put you in a cell just because I think you’re likely to escape. Of course I could dream up some imaginary offense, but I don’t want to do that. So I’d like you to give me your word you won’t try to escape until I’ve left the islands. That’s five more months.”

  “Warden, I give you my word of honor I won’t leave while you’re here unless it goes beyond six months.”

  “I leave in a little under five. It’s definite.”

  “O.K. Dega will tell you that I keep my word.”

  “I believe you.”

  “But, in exchange, I have a request to make too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That during the five months I have to stay I can have the kind of work that will be useful to me later, and that I can be allowed to change islands.”

  “All right. It’s a deal. But strictly between us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He summoned Dega, who convinced him that I didn’t belong with the “good” boys but with the men from the underworld in the building for dangerous prisoners, where all my friends were. I was given a pack with bagnard clothing, and the warden had them add some white jackets and pants.

  So, carrying two pairs of brand-new very white pants, three jerseys and a hat of rice straw, I walked to the central camp accompanied by a guard. To get from the Administration Building to the camp, you had to cross the entire plateau. We skirted the sixteen-foot wall that surrounded the penitentiary, passed in front of the guards’ hospital and, making an almost complete tour of the huge rectangle, arrived at the main entrance—“Pénitencier des Iles—Section Royale.” The immense wooden door—it must have been at least eighteen feet high—was wide open. Two details of four guards each were on duty, and an officer sat on a chair nearby. No carbines; everybody carried revolvers. There were also four or five Arab turnkeys.

  When I arrived at the door, all the guards came forward. Their leader—a Corsican—said, “He’s new and he’s some guy!” The turnkeys were about to frisk me, but he stopped them. “He doesn’t have to empty his pack. Go on, Papillon. You have a lot of friends waiting for you in there. My name is Sofrani. Good luck on the islands!”

  “Thanks, chief.” I went into an enormous courtyard surrounded by three big buildings. The guard led me to one of the three. Above the door I read: “Bâtiment A—Groupe Spécial.” The guard called through the wide-open door, “Guard!” and an old con appeared. “Here’s a new man,” the guard said, and went off.

  I stepped into a huge rectangular room, home for a hundred and twenty men. Like in the barracks at Saint-Laurent, an iron bar ran the length of each of the longer sides, interrupted only by the door, a grill that was closed only at night. Stretched tightly between the wall and the bars were the “hammocks” that served as beds. They weren’t like the hammocks I’d known, but they were clean and comfortable. Above each one were a couple of shelves, one for clothes, the other for food, dishes, etc. Between the two rows of hammocks was an alley three yards wide which we called “the promenade.” The men lived in small communities called gourbis. Some had as few as two men in them, others as many as ten.

  I was hardly in the room when the white-clad bagnards came at me from all sides. “Papi, come over here,” or, “No, come to us.” Grandet took my pack and said, “He’s going to make gourbi with me.” I followed him. My hammock was hung up and stretched good and tight. “Mec, here’s a feather pillow for you,” Grandet said. A lot of my old friends were there: men from Corsica and Marseilles, a few from Paris, all people I’d known in France, or at the Santé or Conciergerie, or in the convoy. “Why are you all here?” I asked. “Why aren’t you out working?”

  Everybody laughed. “Nobody here works more than an hour a day. Then we come back to our gourbis.”

  I had a wonderful reception. But I soon realized something I hadn’t anticipated: in spite of the four days I spent in the hospital, I would have to learn all over again how to live in a community.

  Then, to my surprise, a man came in, dressed in white, carrying a platter covered with a white cloth and calling out, “Steaks, steaks, who wants some steaks?” He gradually made his way to us, stopped and lifted the white cloth, revealing neat piles of steaks just like in a butcher shop. It was clear that Grandet was a regular customer. He wasn’t asked if he wanted any, but how many.

  “Five.”

  “Sirloin or shoulder?”

  “Sirloin. How much do I owe you? You better give me your bill because there’s one more of us now.”

  The steak seller took out a notebook and started to add up. “A hundred and thirty-five francs all told.”

  “Here’s your money. We’ll start from scratch now.”

  When the man had gone, Grandet said, “If you don’t have money here, you starve. But we have a system so you’ll never be without it. We call it ‘the deal.’”

  In the hard-labor camps “the deal” was the way each person managed to get money. The camp cook sold the meat intended for the prisoners. When the meat arrived at his kitchen, he cut up about half. Depending on the cuts, he made steaks, or stew or soup meat. One part went to the guards—their wives did the buying—and one part to the cons who could afford it. Naturally the cook gave a share of his earnings to the kitchen guard. The first building he went to with his merchandise was always ours—Special Building A.

  So “the deal” was that the cook sold meat and fats; the baker sold the rolls and long loaves intended for the guards; the butcher sold meat too; the orderly sold injections; the clerk took money to get you a good job or to release you from a work gang; the gardener sold fresh vegetables and fruits; the cons who worked in the labs sold analyses and would even work up a fake tuberculosis, leprosy, dysentery, etc.; there were specialists in robbery who lifted chickens, eggs and French soap from around the guards’ houses; the houseboys trafficked with their employers to provide you with whatever you asked for—butter, condensed milk, powdered milk, canned tuna fish, sardines, cheese, and of course wines and liquor (our gourbi was never without a bottle of Ricard, and English or American cigarettes); and the same for the men who fished for lobsters.

  But the best and most dangerous “deal” was to be a croupier. There was a rule that no building could have more than
five croupiers. If you decided you wanted to be one, you presented yourself at the start of the evening’s game and said, “I want to be croupier.”

  The players would say, “No.”

  “Everybody says no?”

  “Everybody.”

  “All right, then. I want So-and-so’s place.”

  The man he singled out understood. He got up, they went to the center of the room, and there the two men fought it out with knives. Whoever won became croupier. Croupiers got 5 percent of each winning hand.

  The gambling also gave rise to other smaller “deals.” There was the man who prepared the tightly stretched blanket we played on, someone else who rented out small benches for players who couldn’t sit cross-legged on the floor, and the cigarette vendor who scattered cigar boxes containing French, English, American and even hand-rolled cigarettes on the blanket. Each cigarette had its price, and as the player took one, he dropped the exact amount in the box. And then there was the man who prepared the gas lamps and watched to see that they didn’t smoke. (The lamps were made from milk containers with a wick that was stuck through a hole in the top. It needed a lot of trimming.) For non-smokers there were candy and cakes baked through a special “deal.” Each building had at least one Arab-style coffee maker. Covered with a couple of jute bags, it kept hot the whole night. From time to time the coffee vendor passed through the door selling hot coffee or cocoa from a handmade pot.

  Then there was camelote. It was a kind of artisans’ “deal.” Some worked the tortoiseshell from turtles caught by the fishermen. A shell with thirteen plates could weigh as much as four and a half pounds. They were made into bracelets, earrings, necklaces, cigarette holders, combs, the backs of brushes. I saw a small box of pale tortoiseshell that was really beautiful. Other craftsmen worked coconuts, cattle and buffalo horns, ebony and the wood on the islands. Still others did very fine cabinetwork using only joints—never nails. The cleverest of all worked in bronze. And there were also painters.

  Sometimes several talents were combined to make one object. For example, a fisherman caught a shark and fixed his mouth in an open position, the teeth straight and well-polished. Then a cabinetmaker fashioned a small-scale anchor out of a smooth, finegrained piece of wood, with enough space in the middle for a painting. The shark’s jaw was attached to the anchor and the artist painted a scene showing the Iles du Salut surrounded by water. One of the favorites was a view of the point of Ile Royale, the channel and He Saint-Joseph, with the setting sun casting bright rays over the blue sea and, in the water, a boat with six convicts naked from the waist up, their oars held upright, behind them three guards holding submachine guns. In the prow of the boat two men were raising a casket from which slid a flour sack containing the corpse of a dead con. Sharks were swimming about with their mouths open, waiting for the body. In the lower right-hand corner of the painting was the inscription: “Burial at Royale,” and the date.