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Second Exercise-Book On the way to Guiana
Saint-Martin-de-Ré

That evening Batton sent me in three cigarettes and a piece of paper that read, ‘Papillon, I know you’ll remember me kindly when you go. I’m provost, but I try to hurt the prisoners as little as possible. I took the job because I’ve got nine children and I can’t wait for a pardon. I’m going to try to earn it without doing too much harm. Good-bye. Good luck. The convoy is for the day after tomorrow.’

And in fact the next day they assembled us in the corridor of the punishment-block in groups of thirty. Medical orderlies from Caen gave us shots against tropical diseases. Three shots for each man, and three and a half pints of milk. Dega was close to me: he looked thoughtful. We no longer paid any attention to the rules of silence for we knew they couldn’t put us in the punishment cell just after having our injections. We gossiped in an undertone right there in front of the screws, who dared not say anything because of the orderlies from the town.

Dega said to me, ‘Are they going to have enough cellular vans to take us all in one go?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s a good way off. Saint-Martin-de-Ré, and if they take sixty a day, it’ll last ten days, because we’re close on six hundred here alone.’

‘The great thing is to have the injections. That means you’re on the list and soon you’ll be in Guiana. Keep your chin up, Dega: the next stage is beginning now. Count on me, just as I count on you.’

He looked at me, his eyes shining with pleasure; he put his hand on my arm and once again he said, ‘Life or death, Papi.’

There was nothing really much to say about the convoy, except that each man very nearly stifled in his little cupboard in the cellular van. The warders wouldn’t let us have any air, not even by letting the doors stand just ajar. When we reached La Rochelle two of the people in our van were found dead, asphyxiated.

There were people standing around on the quay – for Saint-Martin-de-Re is an island and we had to take a boat to cross – and they saw those two poor unfortunate bastards being found. Not that they showed feelings of any sort for us, I may add. And since the gendarmes had to hand us over at the citadel, living or dead, they loaded the corpses on to the boat along with the rest of us.

It was not a long crossing, but it gave us a real breath of sea-air. I said to Dega, ‘It smells of a break.’ He smiled. And Julot, next to us, said, ‘Yes. It smells of a break. I’m on my way back to the place I escaped from five years ago. Like a silly bastard I let myself be picked up just as I was on the point of carving up the fence who’d done the Judas on me at the time of my little trouble ten years ago. Let’s try and stay together, because at Saint-Martin they put you ten to a cell in any old order, just as you come to hand.’

He’d got that one wrong, brother Julot. When we got there he and two others were called out and set apart from the rest. They were three men who had got away from the penal settlement: they had been retaken in France and now they were going back for the second time.

Grouped ten by ten in our cells, we began a life of waiting. We were allowed to talk and smoke, and we were very well fed. The only danger during this period was for your charger. You could never tell why, but suddenly you would be called up, stripped and very carefully searched. The whole of your body first, even the soles of your feet, and then all your clothes. ‘Get dressed again!’ And back you went to where you came from.

Cells: dining-hall: the courtyard where we spent hours and hours marching in single file. ‘Left, right! Left, right! Left, right!’ We marched in groups of five hundred convicts. A long, long crocodile; wooden shoes going clack-clack. Compulsory total silence. Then, ‘Fall out!’ Everyone would sit down on the ground, forming groups according to class or status. First came the men of the genuine underworld: with them it scarcely mattered where you came from, and there were Corsicans, men from Marseilles, Toulouse, Brittany, Paris and so on. There was even one from the Ardèche, and that was me. I must say this for the Ardèche – there were only two Ardèchois in the whole convoy of one thousand nine hundred men, a gamekeeper who had killed his wife, and me. Which proves that the Ardéchois are good guys. The other groups came together more or less anyhow, because more flats than sharps go to the penal settlements, more squares than wide boys. These days of waiting were called observation days. And it was true enough they observed us from every possible angle.

One afternoon I was sitting in the sun when a man came up to me. A little man, spectacled, thin. I tried to place him, but with our clothing all being the same it was very difficult.

‘You’re the one they call Papillon?’ He had a very strong Corsican accent.

‘That’s right. What do you want with me?’

‘Come to the latrine,’ he said. And he went off.

‘That guy,’ said Dega, ‘he’s some square from Corsica. A mountain bandit, for sure. What can he possibly want with you?’

‘I’m going to find out.’

I went towards the latrines in the middle of the courtyard and when I got there I pretended to piss. The man stood next to me, in the same attitude. Without looking round he said, ‘I’m Pascal Matra’s brother-in-law. In the visiting-room he told me to come to you if I needed help – to come in his name.’

‘Yes: Pascal’s a friend of mine. What do you want?’

‘I can’t keep my charger in any more. I’ve got dysentery. I don’t know who to trust and I’m afraid it’ll be stolen or the screws will find it. Please, Papillon, please carry it for me a few days.’ And he showed me a charger much bigger than mine. I was afraid he was setting a trap – asking me to find out whether I was carrying one myself. If I said I was not sure I could hold two, he’d know. Without any expression I said, ‘How much has it got in it?’

‘Twenty-five thousand francs.’

Without another word I took the charger – it was very clean, too – and there in front of him I shoved it up, wondering whether a man could hold two. I had no idea. I stood up, buttoned my trousers … it was all right. It did not worry me.

‘My name’s Ignace Galgani,’ he said, before going. ‘Thanks, Papillon.’

I went back to Dega and privately I told him about what had happened.

‘It’s not too heavy?’

‘No.’

‘Let’s forget it then.’

We tried to get in touch with men who were being sent back after having made a break: Julot or Guittou, if possible. We were eager for information – what it was like over there, how you were treated, how you ought to set about things so as to be left paired with a friend, and so on. As luck would have it we chanced upon a very odd guy, a case entirely on his own. He was a Corsican who had been born in the penal settlement. His father had been a warder there, living with his mother on the Isles du Salut. He had been born on the Ile Royale, one of the three – the others are Saint-Joseph and Devil’s Island. And (irony of fate!) he was on his way back, not as a warder’s son but as a convict.

He had copped twelve years for housebreaking. Nineteen: frank expression and open face. Both Dega and I saw at once that he had been sold down the river. He only had a vague notion of the underworld; but he would be useful to us because he could let us know about what was in store. He told us all about life on the islands, where he had lived for fourteen years. For example, he told us that his nurse on the islands had been a convict, a famous tough guy who had been sent down after a knife-fight in Montmartre, a duel for the love of the beautiful Casque d’Or. He gave us some very valuable advice – you had to make your break on the mainland, because on the islands it was no go at all: then again you mustn’t be listed dangerous, because with that against your name you would scarcely step ashore at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni before they shut you right away – interned you for a certain number of years or for life, according to how bad your label was. Generally speaking, less than five per cent of the convicts were interned on the islands. The others stayed on the mainland. The islands were healthy, but (as Dega had already told me) the mainland was a right mess that gradually ate the heart out of you with all sorts of diseases, death in various shapes, murder, etc.

Dega and I hoped not to be interned on the islands. But there was a hell of a feeling there in my throat – what if I had been labelled dangerous? What with my lifer, the business with Tribouillard and that other one with the governor, I’d be lucky to get away with it.

One day a rumour ran through the prison – don’t go to the sick-bay whatever happens, because everybody who is too weak or too ill to stand the voyage is poisoned. It was certainly all balls. And indeed a Parisian, Francis la Passe, told us there was nothing in it. There had been a type who died of poison there, but Francis’ own brother, who worked in the sick-bay, explained just what had happened.

The guy had killed himself. He was one of the top safebreaking specialists, and it seems that during the war he had burgled the German embassy in Geneva or Lausanne for the French Intelligence. He had taken some very important papers and had given them to the French agents. The police had brought him out of prison, where he was doing five years, specially for this job. And ever since 1920 he had lived quietly, just operating once or twice a year. Every time he was picked up he brought out his little piece of blackmail and the Intelligence people hurriedly stepped in. But this time it hadn’t worked. He’d got twenty years and he was to go off with us. So as to miss the boat he had pretended to be sick and had gone into hospital. According to Francis la Passe’s brother a tablet of cyanide had put paid to his capers. Safe deposits and the Intelligence Service could sleep in peace.

The courtyard was full of stories, some true, some false. We listened to them in either case – it passed the time.

Whenever I went to the latrines, either in the courtyard or in the cell, Dega had to go with me, on account of the chargers. He stood in front of me while I was at it and shielded me from over-inquisitive eyes. A charger is a bleeding nuisance at any time, but I had two of the things still, for Galgani was getting sicker and sicker. And there was a mystery about the whole affair: the charger I shoved up last always came out last, and the first always first. I’ve no idea how they turned about in my guts, but that’s how it was.

At the barber’s yesterday someone had a go at murdering Clousiot while he was being shaved. Two knife-stabs right next to his heart. By some miracle he didn’t die. I heard about the whole thing from a friend of his. It was an odd story and I’ll tell it one day. The attack was by way of settling accounts. The man who nearly got him died six years after this at Cayenne, having eaten bichromate of potassium in his lentils. He died in frightful agony. The attendant who helped the doctor at the post-mortem brought us five inches of gut. It had seventeen holes in it. Two months later this man’s murderer was found strangled in his hospital bed. We never knew who by.

It was twelve days now that we had been at Saint-Martin-de-Ré. The fortress was crammed to overflowing. Sentries patrolled on the ramparts night and day.

A fight broke out between two brothers, in the showers. They fought like wild-cats and one of them was put into our cell. André Baillard was his name. He couldn’t be punished, he told me, because it was the authorities’ fault: the screws had been ordered not to let the brothers meet on any account whatsoever. When you knew their story, you could see why.

André had murdered an old woman with some money, and his brother Emile hid the proceeds. Emile was shopped for theft and got three years. One day, when he was in the punishment cell with some other men, he let the whole thing out: he was mad with his brother for not sending him in money for cigarettes and he told them everything – he’d get Andre, he said; and he explained how it was André who had done the old woman in and how it was he, Emile, who had hidden the money. What’s more, he said, when he got out he wouldn’t give André a sou. A prisoner hurried off to tell the governor what he had heard. Things moved fast. André was arrested and the two brothers were sentenced to death. In death alley at the Santé their condemned cells were next door to one another. Each put in for a reprieve. Emile’s was granted the forty-third day, but André’s was turned down. Yet out of consideration for André’s feelings Emile was kept in the condemned cell and the two brothers did their daily exercise together, the one behind the other, with chains on their legs.

On the forty-sixth day at half-past four in the morning André’s door opened. They were all there, the governor, the registrar and the prosecuting counsel who had asked for his head. This was the execution. But just as the governor stepped forward to speak André’s lawyer appeared, running, followed by someone else who handed the prosecutor a paper. Everyone went back into the corridor. André’s throat was so tight and stiff he couldn’t swallow his spit. This wasn’t possible – executions were never interrupted once they had begun. And yet this one was. Not until the next day, after hours of dreadful doubt, did he hear from his lawyer that just before his execution President Doumer had been murdered by Gorguloff. But Doumer hadn’t died right away. The lawyer had stood there all night outside the hospital, having told the Minister of Justice that if the President died before the time of the execution (between half-past four and five in the morning) he would call for a postponement on the grounds that there was no head of state. Doumer died at two minutes past four. Just time to warn the ministry, jump into a cab, followed by the man with the order for putting it off; but he got there three minutes too late to stop them opening André’s door. The two brothers’ sentences were commuted to transportation and hard labour for life: for on the day of the new president’s election the lawyer went to Versailles, and as soon as Albert Lebrun was chosen, the lawyer handed him the petition for a reprieve. No president ever refuses the first reprieve he is asked for. ‘Lebrun signed,’ said Andre, ‘and here I am, mate, alive and well, on my way to Guiana.’ I looked at this character who had escaped the guillotine and I said to myself that in spite of all I had gone through it was nothing to what he must have suffered.

Yet I never made friends with him. The idea of his killing a poor old woman to rob her made me feel sick. This André was always a very lucky man. He murdered his brother on the Ile Saint-Joseph some time later. Several convicts saw him. Emile was fishing, standing there on a rock and thinking about nothing but his rod. The noise of the heavy waves drowned every other sound. André crept up on his brother from behind with a thick ten-foot bamboo in his hand and shoved him off his balance with a single push. The place was stiff with sharks and precious soon Emile had become their lunch. He wasn’t there at the evening roll-call and he was put down as having disappeared during an attempt to escape. No one talked about him any more. Only four or five convicts gathering coconuts high up on the island had seen what happened. Everyone knew, of course, except for the screws. André Baillard never heard another word about it.

He was let out of internment for ‘good conduct’ and he had a privileged status at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. They gave him a little cell to himself. He had a disagreement with another convict and one day he treacherously asked him into this cell: there he killed him with a stab right to the heart. They wore his plea of self-defence and he was acquitted. Then, when the penal settlement was abolished, he was pardoned, still on account of his ‘good conduct’.

Saint-Martin-de-Ré was stuffed with prisoners. Two quite different sorts: eight hundred or a thousand real convicts and nine relégués – men in preventive detention. To be a convict you have to have done something serious or at least to have been accused of an important crime. The mildest sentence is seven years hard labour and then it goes up by stages to life, or perpetuity, as they say. A commuted death-sentence automatically means perpetuity. Preventive detention, or relegation, that’s something quite different. If he’s sentenced from three to seven times, a man can be relegated. It’s true they’re all incorrigible thieves and you can see that society has to protect itself. But still it’s shameful that a civilized nation should have this extra sentence of preventive detention. They are small-time thieves – clumsy operators, since they are shopped so often – who get relegation (and in my time that meant the same as life) and who have never stolen as much as ten thousand francs in their whole career as thieves. That’s the greatest bit of meaningless balls French civilization has to offer. A nation has no right to revenge itself nor to wipe out the people who hinder the workings of society. They are people who ought to be treated rather than be punished in such an inhuman way.

Now we had been seventeen days at Saint-Martin-de-Ré. We knew the name of the ship that was to carry us to the settlement: she was the Martinière. She was going to take one thousand eight hundred and seventy prisoners aboard. That morning eight or nine hundred convicts were assembled in the inner court of the fortress. We had been standing there for about an hour, lined up in ranks of ten, filling the square. A gate opened and in came men who were not dressed like the warders we were used to. They wore good, military kind of clothes: sky-blue. It wasn’t the same as a gendarme and it wasn’t the same as a soldier. They each had a broad belt with a holster; the revolver grip showed. There were about eighty of them. Some had stripes. They were all sunburnt and they were of any age between thirty-five and fifty. The old ones looked pleasanter than the young, who threw a chest and looked important – gave themselves airs. Along with these men’s officers there came the governor of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, a gendarmerie colonel, three or four quacks in overseas army uniform and two priests in white cassocks. The gendarmerie colonel picked up a speaking-trumpet and put it to his mouth. We expected shun! but nothing of the kind. He said, ‘Listen carefully, all of you. From this moment on you are taken over by the authorities of the Ministry of Justice, representing the penitentiary administration of French Guiana, whose administrative centre is the town of Cayenne. Major Barrot, I hereby hand over to you the eight hundred and sixteen convicts now present, and this is the list of their names. Be so good as to check that they are all here.’

The roll-call began straight away. ‘So-and-so, present. So-and-so …’ etc. It lasted two hours and everything was correct. Then we watched the two authorities exchanging signatures on a little table brought for the purpose.

Major Barrot had as many stripes as the colonel, but they were gold and not the gendarmerie’s silver: he took his turn at the megaphone.

‘Transportees, from now on that is the name you’ll always be called by – transportee so-and-so or transportee such-and-such a number – the number that will be allotted to you. From now on you are under the special penal settlement laws and regulations: you come under its own particular tribunals which will take the necessary decision with regard to you as the case arises. For crimes committed in the penal settlement these courts can condemn you to anything from imprisonment to death. These disciplinary sentences, such as prison or solitary confinement, are of course served in different establishments that belong to the administration. The officers you see opposite you are called supervisors. When you speak to them you will say “Monsieur le surveillant” After you have eaten you will be given a kitbag containing the settlement uniform. Everything has been provided for and you will not need anything but what is in the bag. Tomorrow you will go aboard the Martinière. We shall travel together. Don’t lose heart at leaving this country: you will be better off in the settlement than in solitary confinement in France. You can talk, amuse yourselves, sing and smoke; and you needn’t be afraid of being treated roughly so long as you behave yourselves. I ask you to leave the settling of your private disagreements until we reach Guiana. During the voyage discipline has to be very strict, as I hope you will understand. If there are any men among you who don’t feel up to making the voyage, they may report to the infirmary, where they will be examined by the medical officers who are accompanying the convoy. I wish you all a pleasant trip.’ The ceremony was over.

‘Well, Dega, what do you think about it?’

‘Papillon, old cock, I see I was right when I told you that the other convicts were the worst danger we’d have to cope with. That piece of his about “leave the settling of your private disagreements until we reach Guiana” meant plenty. Christ, what killings and murdering must go on there!’

‘Never worry about that: just rely on me.’

I found Francis la Passe and said, ‘Is your brother still a medical attendant?’

‘Yes. He’s not a real convict, only a bleeding relégué.’

‘Get into touch with him as quick as possible: ask him to give you a scalpel. If he wants money for it, tell me how much. I’ll pay.’

Two hours later I had a very strong steel-handled scalpel. Its only fault was that it was rather big; but it was a formidable weapon.

I went and sat very near the latrines in the middle of the courtyard and I sent for Galgani to give him back his charger; but it was going to be very hard to find him in that milling crowd – a huge yard crammed with eight hundred men. We had never caught sight of Julot, Guittou or Suzini since we got there.

The advantage of communal life is that you belong to a new society, if this could be called a society – you live in it, talk in it, become part of it. There are so many things to say, to hear and to do that you no longer have any time to think. And it seemed to me, as I saw how the past faded away, growing less important in comparison with everyday life, it seemed to me that once you got to the penal settlement you must almost forget what you have been, how or why you had landed up there, and concentrate upon one thing alone – escape. I was wrong, because the most important and most engrossing thing is above all to keep yourself alive.

Where were the cops, the members of the jury, the assizes, the judges, my wife, my father, my friends? They were there all right, thoroughly alive, each one in his place in my heart; but what with the intense excitement of leaving, of this great leap into the unknown, these new friendships and new aspects of life, they seemed to have less importance than before. But that was only a mere impression. When I wanted, and whenever my mind chose to open each one’s file, they were all instantly alive once more.

Now here was Galgani, being led towards me, for even with his thick pebble-lenses he could scarcely see. He looked better. He came up to me and shook my hand without a word.

I said, ‘I want to give you back your charger. Now you’re well you can carry it yourself. It’s too much responsibility for me during the voyage; and then who knows whether we’ll be in touch at the settlement, or whether we’ll even see one another? So it’s better you should have it back.’ Galgani looked at me unhappily. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Come into the latrine and I’ll give it back to you.’

‘No, I don’t want it. You keep it – I give it to you. It’s yours.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I don’t want to get myself murdered for my charger. I’d rather live without money than have my throat slit for it. I give it to you, for after all there’s no reason why you should risk your life, looking after my lolly for me. If you run the risk it might as well be for your own sake.’

‘You’re scared, Galgani. Have you been threatened already? Does anyone suspect you’re loaded?’

‘Yes: there are three Arabs who follow me all the time. That’s why I’ve never come to see you, so they won’t suspect we’re in touch. Every time I go to the latrine, day or night, one of these three comes and puts himself next to me. Without making it obvious I’ve shown them absolutely plain that I’m not loaded, but in spite of all I can do they never let up. They think someone else has my charger; they don’t know who; and they keep behind me to see when I’ll get it back again.’

I looked hard at Galgani and I saw he was terror-stricken, really persecuted. I said, ‘What part of the courtyard do they keep to?’

He said, ‘Over towards the kitchen and the laundry.’

‘Right, you stay here. I’ll be back. But no, now I come to think of it, you come with me.’ With Galgani at my side I went over towards the Arabs. I’d taken the scalpel out of my cap and I had the blade up my right sleeve, with the handle in my palm. When we had crossed the court, sure enough I saw them. Four of them. Three Arabs and a Corsican, a character by the name of Girando. I grasped the situation right away. It was the Corsican who had been cold-shouldered by the real hard men and who had put the Arabs up to this job. He must have known that Galgani was Pascal Matra’s brother-in-law and that it wasn’t possible for him not to have a charger.

‘Hi, Mokrane. OK?’

‘OK, Papillon. You OK too?’

‘Hell, no. Far from it. I’ve come to see you guys to tell you Galgani is my friend. If anything happens to him, it’s you who cop it first, Girando. And then the rest of you. And you can take that just how you like.’

Mokrane stood up. He was as tall as me – about five foot eight – and as broad-shouldered. The words had needled him and he was on the point of moving in to start things when I flashed the scalpel and with it right there shining-new in my hand I said, ‘If you stir I’ll kill you like a dog.’

He was knocked sideways by seeing me armed in a place where everybody was searched all the time, and he was shaken by my attitude and the length of the blade. He said, ‘I got up to talk, not to fight.’

I knew it was not true, but it was to my advantage to save his face in front of his friends. I left the door open for him wide and handsome. ‘OK, since you just got up to talk … ‘

‘I didn’t know Galgani was your friend. I thought he was a square. And you know very well, Papillon, that when you’re skint you have to find cash somewhere to make a break.’

‘Fair enough. You certainly have the right to struggle for your life, Mokrane, like anyone else. Only keep away from Galgani, see? You’ve got to look somewhere else.’

He held out his hand: I shook it hard. Jesus, I was well out of that one; for looking at it rightly, if I had killed that guy, I should never have left the next day. A little later I realized I had made a bleeding error. Galgani and I walked away. I said, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this caper. I don’t want to have old Dega bawling me out.’

I tried to persuade Galgani to take the charger. He said, ‘Tomorrow, before we leave.’ The next day he lay so low that I set out for penal with two chargers aboard.

That night not one of us – and we were about eleven in the cell – not one of us said a word. For we all had more or less the same thought in our minds – this was the last day we should pass on French soil. Each of us was more or less filled with homesickness at the idea of leaving France for ever, with an unknown land and an unknown way of life at the end of our journey.

Dega did not speak. He sat next to me close to the barred door on to the corridor, where the air was a little fresher. I felt completely at sea. The information we had about what was coming was so contradictory that I did not know whether to be pleased or wretched or downright hopeless.

The other men in the cell were all genuine underworld characters. The only one who did not belong was the little Corsican who had been born in the settlement. All these men were in a grey, floating state of mind. The seriousness of the moment and its importance had made them almost entirely dumb. The cigarette-smoke wafted out of the cell into the corridor like a cloud, and if you didn’t want your eyes to sting you had to sit lower than the heavy fog-blanket. No one slept except for André Baillard; it was natural enough for him, since his life had already been lost, as it were. As far as he was concerned everything else could only be unlooked-for heaven.

My life passed before my eyes like a film – childhood in a family filled with love, affectionate discipline, decent ways and good-heartedness; the wild flowers, the murmur of streams, the taste of the walnuts, peaches and plums that our garden gave us in such quantities; the smell of the mimosa that flowered every spring in front of our door; the outside of our house, and the inside with my family there – all this ran by before my eyes. It was a talking picture, one in which I heard the voice of my mother (she had loved me so), and then my father’s – always affectionate and kind – and the barking of Clara, his gun-dog, calling me into the garden to play. The boys and girls of my childhood, the ones I had played with during the happiest days of my life. All this – this film I was watching without ever having meant to see it, this magic lantern that my subconscious had lit against my will – all this filled the night of waiting before the leap into the great unknown with sweet, gentle memories and emotions.