“Why?”
“The Armenian and his friend are in the can.”
“What are they doing there?”
“They’re dead.”
“Who did it?”
“Me.”
“That was fast work. What about the others?”
“There are still four left in their gourbi. Paulo gave me his word he wouldn’t do anything until he’d talked to you.”
“Give me a knife.”
“Take mine. I’ll stay here.”
I went over to their gourbi. My eyes were now used to the semi-darkness. I finally made out the group. They were standing glued to each other in front of their hammocks.
“Paulo, you wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
Prudently I left a good four feet between us. The knife was open inside my left sleeve and its handle was well cradled in the hollow of my hand.
Paulo said, “I wanted to say I think your friend has had his revenge. You lost your closest friend; we’ve lost two. In my opinion that’s enough. What do you say?”
“Paulo, I’ll consider your offer. What we could do, if you agree, is call off any action between our two gourbis for the next week. During that time we can consider what to do next. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes.”
I left.
“What did he say?”
“They think Matthieu got his revenge with the death of the Armenian and Sans-Souci.”
“No,” Galgani said.
Grandet didn’t speak. Jean Castelli and Louis Gravon agreed to the peace treaty. “What do you think, Papi?”
“In the first place, who killed Matthieu? The Armenian, right? I suggested an agreement. I gave my word and they gave theirs that, for the next week, nobody moves.”
“Don’t you want to avenge Matthieu?” Galgani asked.
“Look, mec, Matthieu has been avenged enough. Two men died for him. Why kill still more?”
“Were they in on it or not? That’s what we have to find out.”
“Excuse me, but good night everybody. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
Or, at least, I needed to be alone. As I stretched out on my hammock, I felt a hand slide over me and gently remove the knife. A voice whispered, “Try to sleep, Papi, and don’t worry. We’re taking turns keeping watch.”
There was no real motive behind my friend’s brutal murder. The Armenian had killed him because Matthieu had made him pay up a hundred and seventy francs for a poker hand. And the son of a bitch had felt humiliated because he had to do it in front of thirty or forty players. Given the squeeze by Matthieu and Grandet, he had to cough up. So, like a coward, he killed Matthieu, a born adventurer with his life before him. It was a heavy blow for me, and my only satisfaction was that his murderer had survived him by only a few hours. But it wasn’t much.
With the speed of a champion fencer, Grandet had plunged his knife into their throats before they found time to protect themselves. The place where they fell must be damn bloody, I thought to myself. Then I wondered who had dragged them into the toilets. But I didn’t want to ask. Behind closed lids I saw the sun go down again, tragically purple and red, casting its last rays on that Dantesque scene—the sharks fighting over my friend … the mutilated torso swaying toward the boat.... So it was true that the bell summoned the sharks and those bastards knew dinner was ready when the bell rang.... I saw again the dozens of fins, flashing a dull silver, scooting like submarines around and around.... There must have been over a hundred.
It was all over for my friend; he had come to the end of the road of the condemned.
To die for nothing at forty! My poor old buddy. I couldn’t stand it here any more. I didn’t care if the sharks ate me so long as I was trying for my freedom. There’d be no flour sacks, no rock, no rope. No spectators either, no convicts, no guards. And no bell. If I had to get eaten—well, let them eat me alive, fighting the elements on the way to Grande Terre.
I’m through, I told myself. No more overplanned cavales. Just Diable, two sacks of coconuts, and off into the arms of fate.
After all, it was only a matter of physical endurance. Forty-eight to sixty hours. Would that long immersion, plus the muscular effort to stay upright on the coconuts, end by paralyzing my legs? If I had a chance to go to Diable, I’d experiment with it. At all costs, I must get off Royale and go to Diable. After that we’d see.
“Are you asleep, Papi?”
“No.”
“Want some coffee?”
“If you do.” I sat up in my hammock and took the mug of hot coffee and the lighted Gauloise Grandet handed me.
“What time is it?”
“One o’clock. I started my watch at midnight, but since you were thrashing around, I figured you weren’t asleep.”
“You were right. Matthieu’s death really hit me, but his burial and the sharks were even worse. That was horrible.”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Papi. I can imagine what it was like. You shouldn’t have gone.”
“I thought the story about the bell was so much crap. And I thought the wire around the rock would keep the sharks from reaching him on the way down. Poor Matthieu. PU see that ghastly scene for the rest of my life. Tell me, Grandet, how did you manage to rub those two out so fast?”
“I was at the end of the island, fitting an iron door in the butcher shop, when I heard they’d killed Matthieu. It was noon. Instead of going up to camp, I went to the shop, pretending I needed to get something for the door. I was able to slip a double-edged dagger into a yard-long tube. The handle of the dagger and the tube were both hollow. I carried the tube back to camp at five. The guard asked me what it was for, and I told him that the wooden bar of my hammock was broken and I was going to replace it with the tube. It was still daylight when I entered our room, so I left it in the washhouse. I went and got it before roll call, when it was beginning to get dark. The Armenian and Sans-Souci were standing in front of their hammocks, with Paulo a little behind. You know, Jean Castelli and Louis Gravon are brave men, but they’re getting old and can’t move fast enough for that kind of close infighting.
“I wanted to have it done before you got back so you wouldn’t be involved. With your record, if things didn’t work out right, you’d get the maximum. Jean put out the light at one end of the room, Gravon at the other. It was almost dark, the only light coming from the gas lamp in the middle. I had a big flashlight that Dega had given me. Jean moved forward with me following. When he reached the two men, he aimed the light right in their eyes. The Armenian was blinded and raised his arm to protect his eyes—it gave me just enough time to plunge my knife into his throat. We did the same thing to Sans-Souci. He pulled out his knife but couldn’t see to aim it. I gave it to him so hard the knife came out the other side. Paulo threw himself on the floor and rolled under the hammocks. Jean had turned off the flashlight, so I couldn’t see Paulo. That’s what saved him.”
“Who pulled them into the can?”
“I don’t know. I suspect it was the men in their gourbi who wanted to get their plans out of their gut.”
“There must have been damn near a sea of blood.”
“You’re not kidding. They were stuck like pigs. They must have been drained to the last drop. The idea of using the flashlight came to me when I was preparing my knife. A guard in the shop was changing the batteries in his. I got in touch with Dega right away and asked him to get me one. Now they can do a routine search; it doesn’t matter. An Arab turnkey returned both the flashlight and dagger to Dega. That part was easy. And I have nothing to be sorry about. They killed our friend when his eyes were blinded by soap; I killed them when their eyes were blinded by light. We’re quits. What do you say, Papi?”
“You did right. I’m grateful to you for going at it so fast and especially that you kept me out of it.”
“Never mind about that. I did my duty. You’d suffered enough, and you want your freedom so m
uch I had to do it.”
“Thanks, Grandet. It’s true, and I want to get out now more than ever. But first we have to make sure this business ends right here. To be frank, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Armenian didn’t tell his gourbi before he killed Matthieu. Paulo would never have gone along with such a cowardly murder. He knows the consequences much too well.”
“I agree. Galgani is the only one who thinks they’re guilty.”
“We’ll see what happens at six o’clock. I won’t do the latrines. I’ll pretend I’m sick so I can watch developments.”
Five A.M. Our case leader came up to us and said, “Mecs, think I should call the guardhouse? I just found two corpses in the toilets.” That seventy-year-old bagnard wanted us—of all people—to think that, since six o’clock when the mecs were bumped off, he had known nothing. The room must be covered with blood; the men couldn’t have helped tracking it around.
Grandet gave the old man some of his own back. “What? You mean to tell me there are two stiffs in the toilets? How long they been there?”
“How should I know?” the old man said. “I’ve been asleep since six o’clock. Just now I was going in to piss and slipped on a slimy puddle and landed on my face. I lit my lighter, saw it was blood, then I found the mecs in the toilets.”
“Why don’t you call for help and see what happens?”
“Guards! Guards!”
Guards came running. “What you yelling about, you old goat? Is your case on fire?”
“No, chief, but there’re two corpses in the can.”
“What you expect me to do? Bring ’em back to life? It’s five-fifteen now. We’ll do something about it at six. Don’t let anybody near the toilets.”
“That’s impossible. How can I? The men have to piss.”
“I suppose you’re right. Wait. I’ll report it to the duty guard.”
Five guards appeared. We thought they were coming into the room, but they stopped by the grill.
“You say two dead men are in the toilets?”
“Yes, chief.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know. I just found them now.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. I just found them now as I was going to piss.”
“Well, then, stupid, I’ll tell you. One of them is the Armenian. Go have a look.”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s the Armenian and Sans-Souci.”
“O.K. We’ll wait for roll call.” And they left.
At six o’clock the first bell rang. The door opened and the two men who distributed coffee went from place to place with the bread man immediately behind.
Six-thirty, second bell. It was now daylight and the alley was full of bloody footprints.
The two wardens arrived. They were accompanied by eight guards and the doctor.
“Everybody strip and stand at attention in front of your hammocks! My God, this is a real slaughterhouse. There’s blood everywhere!”
The deputy warden was the first to go into the toilets. When he came out, he was as white as a sheet. “They were completely drained. Of course, nobody saw or heard anything?”
Absolute silence.
“You, you old fool, you’re supposed to be the guard here. These men are bone-dry. Doctor, how long would you say they’ve been dead?”
“Eight to ten hours.”
“And you didn’t find them until five? You saw nothing, heard nothing?”
“No. I’m hard of hearing; I can barely see. Besides, I’m seventy years old, and forty of them I spent in the bagne. So you see, I sleep a lot. I go to sleep at six, and it was only because I needed to piss that I woke up at five. It was pure luck, because usually I only wake up with the bell.”
“You’re right there. It was pure luck,” the warden said with heavy irony. “Everybody slept peacefully the whole night through—guards and convicts alike. Please have the stretcher-bearers take the two corpses to the hospital amphitheater. I’d like you to do autopsies, Doctor. As for the rest of you, file out into the yard as you are.”
We each filed past the wardens and the doctor. They examined every inch of our bodies. No one had a wound, although many were splattered with blood. They explained it was from slipping on the way to the toilets. Grandet, Galgani and I were examined even more minutely.
“Papillon, which is your place?” They searched through everything I owned. “Where’s your knife?”
“My knife was taken from me by the guard at the door. Last night at seven.”
“That’s true,” the guard said. “He made a big stink about it, too, said there were people who wanted to kill him.”
“Grandet, is that knife yours?”
“Well, it’s here in my place, so it must be.”
The warden examined it carefully and saw that it was as clean as a new penny.
The doctor returned from the toilets. “It was a double-edged dagger that killed the men. They were knifed standing up. It’s hard to understand. No bagnard would let himself be killed like a rabbit without trying to defend himself. Somebody here has to have been wounded.”
“But you saw for yourself, Doctor. No one has so much as a nick.”
“Were these two men dangerous?”
“Very. The Armenian was almost certainly Carbonieri’s murderer. He was killed in the washhouse at nine yesterday morning.”
“We’ll shelve it,” the warden said. “But keep Grandet’s knife. Everybody to work now, except those of you who are sick. Papillon, did you report sick?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You didn’t waste much time avenging your friend. I’m not a fool, you know. Unfortunately I have no proof and I know we’ll find none. For the last time, does anybody have anything to say? Anyone who can cast light on this double crime will be disinterned and sent to Grande Terre. You have my word.”
Absolute silence.
The Armenian’s entire gourbi reported sick. When they saw that, Grandet, Galgani, Jean Castelli and Louis Gravon became sick at the last minute. The room emptied. We were the five in my gourbi, the four in the Armenian’s, plus the watch repairer, the old fellow who kept muttering about the cleanup he had in store, and two or three others, including the Alsatian—big Sylvain.
Sylvain lived alone and had only friends in the bagne. He was a highly respected man of action and the author of a singular deed that had got him twenty years at hard labor. All by himself, he had attacked the mail wagon on the Paris-Brussels Express, knocked out the two guards, and thrown the mail sacks onto the bank where his accomplices picked them up. They had netted a very pretty sum out of it.
Seeing the two gourbis whispering in their respective corners and unaware that we had agreed not to fight for a week, Sylvain spoke up. “I hope you don’t have a pitched battle à la The Three Musketeers in mind?”
“Today, no,” Galgani said. “That’s for later on.”
“Why later on?” Paulo said. “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Though for myself, I don’t see the point of us killing each other. What do you say, Papillon?”
“I have just one question. Did you know what the Armenian was going to do?”
“On my word of honor, Papi, we didn’t know a thing. And you want to know something else? If the Armenian weren’t dead already, I’m not sure I would have let him get away with it.”
“Well, if that’s the way it is, why don’t we bury the hatchet right now?” Grandet said.
“It’s O.K. with me. Let’s shake on it and forget the whole sad mess.”
“Agreed.”
“I’m a witness,” Sylvain said, “and I’m glad it’s over.”
At six o’clock the bell rang. When I heard it, I couldn’t help seeing last evening’s scene once again: my friend’s body, upright, bearing down on our boat. The picture was so vivid, even twenty-four hours later, that I couldn’t wish the same fate even on the Armenian and Sans-Souci.
Galgani wasn’t speaking. He too knew what had happe
ned to Carbonieri. He was sitting astride his hammock, staring straight ahead. Grandet hadn’t come in yet. Still looking off, Galgani said in a low voice, “I only hope that Armenian son of a bitch isn’t eaten by the same sharks that got Matthieu. It would be too much if the two of them ended up in the same shark’s belly.”
The loss of that wonderful friend left a big empty space. I had to get away from Royale as soon as possible.
THE MADMEN’S CAVALE
“Now there’s a war on and the punishment is even tougher, this is no time to louse up a cavale, is it, Salvidia?”
I was talking with the Italian of the gold plan I’d known on the convoy. We were sitting in the washhouse, having just read the bulletins describing the new measures pertaining to escapes.
I told him, “But no death sentence is going to keep me from trying. What about you?”
“Papillon, I can’t take any more of this. I’ve got to go, no matter what. I’ve asked for a job as orderly in the lunatic asylum. In the storeroom there they have two fifty-five-gallon barrels which would make a very nice raft. One is full of olive oil, the other of vinegar. If they were carefully tied together, I think you’d have a good chance of reaching Grande Terre. There’s no surveillance on the outside wall surrounding the building. Inside there’s only one infirmary guard with a few cons who concentrate on the patients. Why don’t you go up there with me?”
“As an orderly?”
“Not a chance, Papillon. You know damn well they’ll never give you a job at the asylum. It’s too far from camp and there’s very little surveillance—they’d never let you near the place. But you might get in as a lunatic.”
“That would be a really tough one, Salvidia. When a doctor classifies you as loony, he’s giving you the right to do anything you like. You’re no longer responsible for your actions. Just think of the responsibility the doctor takes on when he admits that and signs the diagnosis. You can kill a con, a guard, a guard’s wife, a kid, anyone. You can escape, commit any crime in the book, and justice has no recourse. The worst they can do is wrap you up in a straitjacket and put you in a padded cell. And they can’t even do that for very long; after a certain time they have to relax the treatment. So, no matter how serious your crime, even if it’s an escape, you get off scot-free.”
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