Maître Raymond Hubert did all he could, and so did Maître Beffey--a Maître Beffey so disgusted that he reached the point of open war with Mayzaud, who, in confidential police reports, tried to damage his standing as a lawyer by giving details of sexual matters that had nothing to do with the case.
Now it was the end, I was the last to speak. What could I say? “I’m innocent. I’ve been framed by the police. That’s all.”
The jury and the court withdrew. An hour later they returned and I stood up while they went back to their places. Then in his turn the president rose: he was about to read the sentence. “Prisoner at the bar, stand up.”
And so firmly did I believe I was in the court, there under the trees in the Boulevard de Clichy, that I jumped to my feet, forgetting that my legs were pinned against the back of the bench, which made me fall back on my ass.
So it was sitting, not standing as I ought to have been, that there under the boulevard trees in 1967, I heard the toneless voice of the president who, in October, 1931, pronounced this sentence: “You are condemned to penal servitude for life. Guards, take the prisoner away.”
I was just about to hold out my hands; but there was no one to put on the handcuffs; there were no Gardes républicains beside me. There was no one except a poor old woman curled up at the far end of the bench, with newspapers on her head to protect her from the cold and the rain.
I untwisted my legs. Standing at last, I let them get over their stiffness and then, lifting the papers, I put a hundred-franc note into the hands of this old woman, sentenced to extreme poverty for life. For me, “life” had hasted only fourteen years.
And still keeping under the trees in the middle of the Boulevard de Clichy, I walked along to Place Blanche, pursued by the last image of that trial--myself standing to receive the unbelievable blow that wiped me out of Montmartre, my Montmartre, for nearly forty years.
I had scarcely reached that wonderful square before the magic lantern went out, and all I saw were a few bums sitting there at the exit from the Metro, squatting with their heads on their knees, asleep.
Quickly I hooked round for a cab. There was nothing here to attract me, neither the shadow of the trees that hid the glare of artificial light nor the brilliance of the square, with its Moulin Rouge blazing away for all it was worth. One reminded me too much of my past, and the other proclaimed, “You don’t belong here anymore.” Everything, yes, everything had changed; get out quick if you don’t want to see that the memories of your twenties are dead and buried.
“Hey! Taxi! Gare de Lyon, please.”
In the suburban train that took me back to my nephew’s, I recalled all the newspaper articles that Maître Raymond Hubert had given me to read after my conviction. Not one of them could avoid speaking of the doubt that had hung over the whole case; Le Journal gave it the headline “A Dubious Case.”
I hooked up these papers later.
An article from L’Humanite of October 28 deserves to be quoted at length.
CHARRIERE-PAPILLON CONDEMNED TO PENAL SERVITUDE
FOR LIFE
In spite of the persisting doubt as to the identity of the real Papillon, the jury of the Seine convicted Charrière of being the Papillon who is said to have killed Roland Lepetit on the Butte one night in March.
At the beginning of yesterday’s hearing, the witness Goldstein, upon whose statements the whole charge rests, gave evidence. This witness, who remained in continual contact with the police and whom Inspector Mayzaud said he had seen more than a hundred times since the tragedy, made his statements on three separate occasions, each deposition being more serious than the last. It is clear that this witness is a loyal helper of the criminal police.
While the witness was uttering his accusations, Charrière listened closely. When Goldstein had finished, Charrière cried, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand this Goldstein: I have never done him any harm, and yet he comes here and pours out lies whose only aim is to get me sent to penal servitude.”
Inspector Mayzaud was recalled. This time he claimed that Goldstein’s evidence was spontaneous. But skeptical smiles were seen in court.
For the prosecution Siramy made a rambling closing speech in which he observed that there were several Papilions in Montmartre and even elsewhere. Nevertheless he asked for a conviction, though without being exact as to the sentence, which he left to the jury.
Maitre Gautrat, representing the family, comically held up penal servitude as a school of “moral betterment” and then asked that Charrière should be sent there for his own good, so as to be made an “honest man.”
The counsels for the defense, Maitres Befley and Raymond Hubert, pleaded innocence. It did not follow that since Corsican Roger, otherwise Papillon, could not be found, Charrière, otherwise Papillon, was therefore guilty.
But after a long retirement the jury came back, bringing in the verdict of guilty, and the court sentenced Henri Charrière to penal servitude for life, awarding the family one franc damages.
For years and years I have asked myself this question: why did the police go all Out to screw a little crook who they themselves said was one of their best helpers? I have found a single answer, the only logical one: they were covering up for someone else, and this someone else was a genuine informer.
The next day, in the sun, I went back to Montmartre. I found my old haunts again, the Rue Tholozé and the Rue Durantin; and the market in the Rue Lepic.
I went into 26, rue Tholozé to see the concierge, pretending to be looking for someone. My concierge had been a big fat woman with a hairy wart on her cheek. She had vanished, and a woman from Brittany had taken her place.
The Montmartre of my youth had not been stolen; no, everything was there, absolutely everything; but it had all changed. The dairy had turned into a laundromat, the local bar into a drugstore, and the fruit shop into an automat.
The Bandevez Bar, at the corner of the Rue Tholozé and the Rue Durantin, used to be the meeting place for women from the post office in the Place des Abbesses; they came and drank their little glass of blanc-cassis, and to make them fly off the handle we solemnly reproved them for getting blind drunk while their poor husbands were working. Well, the joint was still there; but the bar had been moved to the other side, and the two tables were no longer in their right place. What’s more, the owner of the bar was a pied noir from Algeria, and the customers were Arabs or Spaniards or Portuguese. Where can the old boss have vanished to--the fellow from the Auvergne?
I went up the steps that lead from the Rue Tholozé to the Moulin de Ia Galette. At least the handrail had not changed; it still ended as dangerously as ever. It was here that I had picked up a poor little old man who had fallen on his nose, not seeing well enough to make out that the rail stopped so soon. I stroked the rail: I saw the scene again and I heard the old man thank me: “Young man, you are truly kind and very well brought up. I congratulate you upon it, and I thank you.” These simple words so disturbed me that I did not know how to set about picking up the gun I had dropped as I leaned over him; I did not want him to see that the good young man was maybe not as kind as all that.
Yes, my Montmartre was still there all right. It had not been stolen from me--they had just stolen the people.
That evening I went into a rough bar. I chose the oldest of all the old guys there and I said to him, “Excuse me, but do you know So-and-so?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“Inside.”
“And So-and-so?”
“Dead.”
“And So-and-so?”
“Don’t know him. But you ask a lot of questions. Who are you?”
He raised his voice a little on purpose, to attract the others’ attention. It never misses. An unknown who just walks into a men’s bar like that without introducing himself or having a friend--you have to find out what he’s after.
“My name’s Henri. I’m from Avignon and I’ve been in Colombia. That’s why you don’t kno
w me. Be seeing you.”
I did not linger but hurried off to catch my train so I’d be sure to sleep outside the Département of the Seine. At no price did I want them to notify me that I was forbidden to be there.
But I was in Paris. I was there. I went and danced at the little places round the Bastille. At Boucastel’s and at the Bal.à-Jo I shoved my hat back and took off my tie. I even had the nerve to ask a skirt to dance just as I used to do when I was twenty, and in the same way. And as we waltzed to the sound of an accordion almost as good as Mimile Vacher’s when I was young, the chick asked me what I did for a living and I told her I kept a house in the provinces: so I was looked upon with great respect.
I went and had lunch at La Coupole, and as if I had returned from another world I was simpleminded enough to ask a waiter whether they still bowled on the flat roof. He had been there twenty-five years, but my question absolutely stunned him.
At La Rotonde I looked for the painter Foujiya’s corner, but in vain: my eyes gazed hopelessly at the furniture, the layout of the tables and the bar, looking for something that belonged to the past: disgusted at seeing that everything had been turned upsidedown and that they had destroyed everything I had known and loved, I walked straight out, forgetting to pay. The waiter grabbed my arm at the entrance to the Vavin Metro just by, and, as manners have been forgotten in France, he bawled the amount of the bill into my face and told me to pay up quick if I didn’t want him to call a cop. Of course I paid, but I gave him such a paltry tip that as he left he threw it at me. “You can keep that for your mother-in-law. She must need it more than me!”
But Paris is Paris. As brisk as a young man, I walked right up the Champs-Elysées and then right down again, the Champs-Elysées lit with thousands of lights, with that light of Paris that warms you through and through and casts its wonderful spell, giving you a song in your heart. Ah, life is sweet in Paris!
There was not the least overexcitement in me, not the least longing for violence, as I stood there at the Porte Saint-Denis or in front of the old L’Auto office in the Faubourg Montmartre, where Rigoulot, then champion of the world, used to lift a huge roll of newsprint. My heart was quiet as I passed in front of the chub where I used to play baccarat with Stavisky; and I went to watch the Lido show alone and perfectly calm. Quietly I mixed in the turmoil of Les Halles for a few hours--they, at least, were more or hess the same as before. It was only when I was in Montmartre that bitter words rose in my heart.
I stayed eight days in Paris. Eight times I went back to the scene of that famous murder.
Eight times I stroked the tree and then sat on the bench.
Eight times, with closed eyes, I put together all I knew of the inquiry and my two trials.
Eight times I saw the ugly faces of all those swine who manufactured my conviction.
Eight times I whispered, “This is where it all began, the theft of those fourteen years of your youth.”
Eight times I repeated, “You have given up your revenge; that’s fine; but never will you be able to forgive.”
Eight times I asked God that as a reward for my giving up my revenge the same kind of thing should never happen to anyone else.
Eight times I asked the bench whether the false witness and the shifty pig had cooked up their next statement in this very place.
Eight times I went away, less and less bowed down, so that the last time I walked off as straight and supple as a young man, whispering to myself, “You won after all, man, since you’re here, free, fit, beloved and master of your future. Don’t go trying to find out what has happened to those others--they belong to your past. You’re here, and that’s chose to a miracle. And you can be sure that of all the people involved in this business, you’re the happiest.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henri Charriere (“Papillon”) was born in the south of France in 1906. In 1933, having been convicted of a murder of which he steadfastly insisted he was innocent, he was transported to the French penal colony of Guiana. In the course of the next twelve years he made nine escape attempts--the last from the dread Devil’s Island--and was finally granted sanctuary in Venezuela in 1945. His first volume of autobiography, Papillon, published in France in 1969, has since been translatede into every major language and has been a phenomenal best seller all around the world. The motion picture version stars Steve McQueen (as Papillon) and Dustin Hoffman.
Henri Charriere died in Madrid July 29, 1973.
Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon Page 30