Papillon

by Henri Charrière

  One, two, three, four, five and turn; one, two, three, four, five, another turn. I began to walk and suddenly it all came back to me: the position of the head, the arms, the exact length of each step to make the pendulum work properly. I decided to walk only two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon until I knew if I could count on the extra food. I mustn’t waste energy.

  Yes, it was heartbreaking to have failed at the end, even though it was only the first part of the cavale, with ninety miles on a frail raft ahead. And then, after arriving on Grande Terre, still another cavale. If I’d been able to launch the raft, the three flour sacks that had to serve as sails would have carried it at a speed of at least six miles an hour. In less than fifteen hours, maybe even twelve, we would have reached land. Assuming, of course, that it was raining that day, because only in the rain would we have dared to hoist sail. I seemed to remember that it rained the day after I was put in the dungeon. But I wasn’t absolutely certain. I tried to think of what mistakes I’d made. Only two came to mind: first, the raft had been too well made; to house the coconuts, the carpenter had had to construct a framework which amounted to making two rafts, one inside the other. The whole thing had taken too many pieces and too much time.

  The second mistake was more serious. The moment we began to have doubts about Celier—that very night—I should have killed him. If I had, just think what might have happened! Even if we’d been shipwrecked on Grande Terre or arrested as I put the raft in the water, I would have got only three years instead of eight, and I would have had the satisfaction of doing something toward a cavale. And where would I be if everything had gone well on the islands and Grande Terre? Who knows? Maybe having a chat with Bowen in Trinidad, or in Curaçao with Irénée de Bruyne. And we would have moved on only when we knew for sure which country was ready to accept us. If that hadn’t worked out, I could easily have taken a small boat alone and rejoined my tribe in Guajira.

  I went to sleep very late. It wasn’t all that depressing. Live, live, live. Each time I was tempted to despair, I would repeat three times: “As long as there’s life, there’s hope.”

  A week went by. I began to notice a change in my food. A beautiful piece of boiled meat at noon and for supper a bowl of lentils with practically no water. Like a child, I recited: “Lentils are rich in iron. Lentils are very good for you.”

  If this lasted, I’d be able to walk ten to twelve hours a day, and by evening I’d be tired enough to fly where I wanted to. But actually I went nowhere. I stayed right on earth, thinking about all the bagnards I’d known on the islands. I thought of the legends that made the rounds, and there was one I promised myself I’d check on when I got out, the one about the bell.

  As I’ve mentioned before, bagnards weren’t buried but were thrown into the sea between Saint-Joseph and Royale in an area infested with sharks. The corpse was wrapped in flour sacks and a rock attached to his feet by a strong cord. A long, narrow crate—always the same one—rested in the bow of the boat. When the boat arrived at the right spot, the six rowers feathered their oars, one man tipped the crate, another opened the trap door, and the corpse slid into the water. It was a known fact that the first thing the sharks did was to saw through the cord. The corpse never had time to sink much below the surface. It soon bobbed up again and the sharks would begin to fight for the choicest pieces. They say that to watch a man being eaten by sharks leaves a lasting impression. When the sharks were especially numerous, they sometimes lifted the shroud and its occupant right out of the water, tore away the flour bags and carried off large hunks of the corpse.

  I know that this part is accurate, but there was one thing I had not been able to verify. All the cons believed that what brought the sharks to this particular place was the sound of the bell which was rung in the chapel when a con died. They said that when you stood at the end of the jetty on Royale at six in the evening, there were sometimes no sharks at all. But when the bell rang in the chapel, the place was crowded with them in no time flat. There was no reason for them to rush to that particular spot at that hour. I hoped to God I would never be the sharks’ “blue-plate special.” If they ate me alive while I was making a cavale, okay, at least I was on the road to freedom. But to die in my cell of some disease—no, I couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Thanks to my friends, I ate well and stayed in perfect health. I walked from seven in the morning to six at night without stopping. And then came the evening soup bowl of lentils, split peas, rice, or whatever. I ate it all and happily. All that walking had a good effect: it brought on a healthy fatigue, and I even got to the point where I could spin off into the past while I was walking. For example, once I spent the whole day in the fields of a small village in Ardèche called Favras. After my mother died, I often used to go there to spend a few weeks with my aunt, my mother’s sister, who was the village schoolteacher. Well, I was in the chestnut forest picking mushrooms. I heard my friend, the shepherd, call his sheep dog and order him to bring back a wandering sheep. I tasted the cool, slightly metallic water of the spring, felt the tiny droplets bounce up my nose. Such sharp recollections of moments and events fifteen years in the past, and the ability to relive them so intensely, can only be accomplished in a cell where you’re cut off from all noise, in the most absolute silence.

  I could even see the yellow of Aunt Outine’s dress. I could hear the wind in the chestnut trees, the dry noise a chestnut makes when it falls on the ground, or its soft thump when it hits a pile of leaves. A huge wild boar appeared out of a field of broom and gave me such a fright that I ran off, dropping most of the mushrooms I’d picked. Yes, I spent the whole day in Favras with my aunt and my young friend, Julien. And there was no one to stop me from rolling around in these memories and drinking in the peace so necessary to my battered soul.

  To the objective eye I was in one of the many cells of la mangeuse d’hommes. But in point of fact I had stolen an entire day and spent it in Favras in the fields, among the chestnut trees.

  Six months went by. I had promised myself to count only in intervals of six months. I kept my promise. This morning I reduced the figure from sixteen to fifteen. It was now only fifteen times six months.

  To be specific: nothing had really happened in those six months. Always the same food, but in sufficient quantity to maintain my health. There were many suicides and lunatics around me, but luckily the latter didn’t last very long. It was depressing to hear their screams, moans and complaints for hours and days on end. I found a good antidote, but it wasn’t a very healthy one. I broke off two small pieces of soap and stuck them in my ears. The noise was gone, but my ears started to run after a couple of days.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, I asked for something. One of the guards who ladled out the soup was from Montélimar, very near where I came from; I had known him at Royale. I asked him if he could bring me a ball of wax as big as a nut to drown out the madmen’s racket. He did it the next day. It was a great relief not to hear those poor crazy bastards any more.

  I established a good working relationship with the centipedes. In six months I’d been bitten only once. If I woke up and found one crawling over my body, I simply waited. You can get used to anything and it was only a matter of self-control, but the tickling of those legs and antennae was very disagreeable. It was better to let them go away by themselves, then look for them and crush them later; if you didn’t catch them the right way, you got a terrible sting. There were always a few crumbs on my cement bench. They couldn’t resist the smell of the bread, so that’s where they went. I killed them there.

  I had to get rid of one gnawing obsession: Why hadn’t I killed Bébert Celier the day we began to suspect him? I’d argue endlessly with myself: When do you have the right to kill? Then I’d arrive at the conclusion that the end justified the means. My end had been to have a successful cavale; I’d been lucky enough to finish a good raft and hide it in a safe place. Our departure was only a few days away. I knew that Celier was dangerous. I
should have finished him off. But what if I’d made a mistake? What if I’d been misled by appearances? I would have killed an innocent man. That would have been bad. But for a bagnard with a life sentence to get involved in questions of conscience …! What’s more, a con with eight years in solitary …

  Who do you think you are, a piece of trash treated by society like so much garbage? I’d like to know if those twelve cheeseheads on the jury ever asked themselves if they’d done the right thing when they sentenced you to life. And whether the prosecutor—I still hadn’t decided exactly how I’d tear out his tongue—had asked himself if he hadn’t gone a little far with his indictment. Even my own lawyer probably didn’t remember me. He might mention “that unfortunate business over Papillon at the Assizes in ’thirty-two” in general terms, saying, “You know, on that particular day I wasn’t quite up to snuff, and besides, Prosecutor Pradel was having an especially good day. He argued his case in masterly fashion, truly a first-class adversary....”

  I heard all this as if I were standing right next to Raymond Hubert as he was conversing with some lawyers at a party, or more likely in the corridors of the Palais de Justice.

  There was one man of honor, but only one—President Bevin. He might well have spoken to some of his colleagues about the danger involved in having a man judged by a jury. He might have said—choosing his words more carefully, of course—that the twelve yokels on the jury were not prepared to assume the responsibility of judgment, that they were too easily swayed by the lawyer’s eloquence—that they acquitted too fast or convicted without really knowing why, according to the positive or negative atmosphere created by the more persuasive lawyer.

  Perhaps my family felt aggrieved at the trouble I had caused them. Only my poor father probably didn’t complain at the heavy cross his son had laid on his shoulders. Of that I was certain. He probably hadn’t once criticized his child even though as a teacher he respected the law and taught his pupils to understand and accept it. I was positive that in the bottom of his heart he was saying, “You bastards, you’ve killed my child; worse than that, you’ve condemned him to a slow death at the age of twenty-five!” If he knew where his boy was and what they were doing to him now, he’d be quite capable of becoming an anarchist.

  Tonight la mangeuse d’hommes really earned its name. Two men hanged themselves and one suffocated by stuffing rags in his mouth and up his nose. Cell 127 was near where the changing of the guard took place, and I could sometimes hear snatches of the guards’ conversation. This morning I heard them discussing the events of the night. That’s how I knew what had happened.

  Another six months passed and I carved a handsome “14” into the wood. I had a nail which I used only for this purpose, hence every six months. I took stock and was glad to report that both my health and morale were good.

  Thanks to my journeys among the stars, I rarely had long bouts of depression. Also, Celier’s death was a great help in getting me through my moments of crisis. I would say to myself: I’m alive, I’m living, and I must continue to live, live now to live free again someday. The man who balked my escape is dead; he’ll never be free. If I get out at thirty-eight, I won’t be old. And the next cavale will work, that I know.

  One, two, three, four, five and turn; one, two, three, four, five, another turn. For some days now my legs had been black and my gums were always bleeding. Should I report sick? I pressed my thumb against my calf and the thumbprint stayed. It was as if I were full of water. For the last week I hadn’t been able to walk ten or twelve hours a day; six hours, even with a rest period, tired me out. I usually cleaned my teeth by rubbing them with the rough soapy towel, but now it hurt my gums, making them bleed. And yesterday a tooth fell out just like that, an incisor in the upper jaw.

  This last six months wound up with a real revolution. Yesterday we were told to stick our heads out of our cells and a doctor came by and lifted everybody’s upper lip. Then this morning, after only eighteen months in my cell, the door opened and I was told:

  “Come out. Stand up against the wall and wait.”

  I was the man nearest the door. About seventy of us filed out. We were told to turn left, and I found myself at the tail of a line moving toward the opposite end of the building and out into the yard.

  It was nine o’clock. A young doctor in a short-sleeved khaki shirt was sitting at a small wooden table in the middle of the yard. Near him stood two convict orderlies and an infirmary guard. I didn’t recognize any of them. Ten armed guards kept us covered, and the chief warden and the head guards watched in silence.

  “Everybody strip,” the head guard called out. “Hold your clothes under your arms. First man. Your name?”

  “X …”

  “Open your mouth, spread your legs apart. Remove these three teeth. Apply some iodine, then methylene blue, and give him ascorbic acid twice a day before meals.”

  I was last.

  “Name?”

  “Charrière.”

  “That’s interesting. You’re the only one in good shape. Did you just arrive?”

  “No.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Eighteen months today.”

  “Why aren’t you as thin as the others?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. Either you eat better or you masturbate less. Open your mouth, spread your legs apart. Two lemons a day, one in the morning, one at night. Suck the lemons and rub the juice into your gums. You have scurvy.”

  They cleaned my gums with iodine, painted them with methylene blue and gave me a lemon. Left about-face and, last in line, I returned to my cell.

  That was a real revolution, having sick cons go all the way into the yard, into the sun, to see a doctor face to face. Nothing like it had ever happened before at Réclusion. What was going on? Was it possible that a doctor had at last defied the inhuman regulations? That doctor, whose name was Germain Guibert, later became my friend. He died in Indochina. His wife sent me word in Maracaibo, Venezuela, many years afterward.

  Every ten days we went into the sun. Always the same prescription: iodine, methylene blue and two lemons. I wasn’t getting worse, but I wasn’t getting better either. I twice asked the doctor for Cochlearia and twice he refused me. This made me mad; I still couldn’t walk more than six hours a day and my legs were still black and swollen.

  One day, as I was waiting my turn, I noticed that the spindly little tree I used for shade was a non-bearing lemon tree. I broke off a leaf and chewed it; then, without thinking, I broke off a twig with a few leaves on it.

  When the doctor called me, I stuck the branch up my rear end and said, “Doctor, I don’t know if it’s because of all those lemons you’ve been giving me, but look what’s growing out of my ass.” I turned so he could see the little branch sticking out.

  The guards broke out into guffaws, but the head guard said, “Papillon, you’ll be punished for not showing the doctor the proper respect.”

  “Not at all,” the doctor said. “You can’t punish him if I don’t lodge a complaint. So you don’t want any more lemons? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Yes, Doctor. I’ve had enough damn lemons. They aren’t doing me any good. I want to try the Cochlearia.”

  “I haven’t given it to you because I have very little and I’ve been saving it for the sickest men. However, I’ll give you a spoonful a day, but you have to have the lemons as well.”

  “Doctor, I’ve seen the Indians eat seaweed. There was the same kind on Royale. There must be some here too.”

  “That’s a good idea, Papillon. Yes, I’ve seen the kind you mean down by the edge of the water. I want you to distribute some daily to all the men. Did the Indians eat it cooked or raw?”

  “Raw.”

  “Very good. Thank you. And, Warden, make sure this man isn’t punished. I’m counting on you.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  It was a miracle. To go into the sun for two hours every ten d
ays and wait for the doctor, to watch the others file by, see faces, say a few words … Who would have dreamed that anything so glorious could ever happen? It wrought the most fantastic transformations: the dead rose and walked in the sun; men buried alive spoke a few words. It was like breathing a bottle of oxygen and feeling life flow back into us.

  Click, click, many, many clicks, and one Thursday morning at nine all the cell doors opened. Everybody was to stand in his door. “Réclusionnaires,” a voice called out, “the governor’s inspection.”

  With five colonial officers in his train—probably all doctors—a large, elegant man with silver-gray hair moved slowly down the corridor, stopping at each cell. I could hear someone tell him each man’s sentence and crime. Before he reached me, they had to lift up a man who hadn’t been able to keep standing.