Papillon (35 page)

“On the second charge, since we all have life sentences, I believe that the offense of escaping is less serious than for a man with a short sentence. At our age it’s very hard to accept the idea of never returning to a normal life. I beg the tribunal’s indulgence.”

The President whispered to the two assistants, then banged on his desk with the gavel.

“Will the accused please stand.”

Stiff as ramrods, we stood, waiting.

The President said, “The tribunal has set aside the accusation of attempted murder. For the offense of escaping, we find you guilty in the second degree. The tribunal condemns you to two years in solitary.”

We said, “Thank you, sir,” and I added, “I thank the tribunal.”

The guards watching the trial couldn’t believe their ears.

When we got back to our friends, everybody was pleased with our news. No one seemed jealous, and even those who hadn’t been so lucky congratulated us. François Sierra came and hugged me. He was wild with joy.

T
HE
I
LES DU
S
ALUT

W
E WERE TO SAIL TO
the islands the next day. For all my long struggle, in a few hours I’d be interned for life, starting with two years in solitary on the Ile Saint-Joseph. I only hoped I could give the lie to its nickname, la
mangeuse d’hommes
.

I had lost the game, but I didn’t feel like a loser. I could even be thankful that I’d have only two years in this prison within a prison. As I had promised myself, I would not give in to the mental aberrations that complete isolation induced. I had a good remedy: from the very start I would think of myself as free, healthy in mind and body—an ordinary convict on the islands. And I’d be only thirty when I got out.

I knew that escapes from the islands were few and far between. But even if you could count them only on one hand, some men had managed it. And so I’d escape, and that was that. I told Clousiot that in two years I’d make my escape.

“Papillon, there’s just no way to keep you down, is there? I wish I had as much faith as you do. You’ve been trying
cavales
for a year now and you still haven’t given up. No sooner does one go up in smoke than you start another. I’m surprised you haven’t tried one from here.”

“
Mec
, from here there’s only one way: to start a revolt. And I don’t have the time to organize all these bastards. I almost started one, and it damn near swallowed me up. The forty men here are old cons. They’ve been taken in by the system; they don’t react the way we do. Take those cannibals, and the one who put poison in the soup and killed seven innocent men just to get one: they aren’t like us.”

“But everybody’ll be like that on the islands.”

“Sure, but to escape from the islands, I won’t need anybody. I’ll do it alone or, at most, with one other man. Why are you smiling?”

“Because of the way you won’t give up. Because you’re so fired up with the idea of getting back to Paris and getting even with your buddies that you won’t believe it can’t be done.”

“Good night, Clousiot. See you tomorrow. I guess we’re going to see the Iles du Salut after all. But what I want to know is why these goddamned islands are called ‘the islands of salvation.’”

I turned away from Clousiot and leaned out to catch the night wind.

We set off for the islands early the next morning. There were twenty-six of us on a forty-ton tub called the
Tanon
, a coastal boat that shuttled between Cayenne, the islands and Saint-Laurent. Two by two, we were chained by the feet and handcuffed. There were two groups of eight men in the bow with four guards, their guns at the ready. Then came a group of ten at the stern with six guards and the two escort leaders. Everybody was on deck, and the boat was clearly ready to go under at the first sign of bad weather.

I had decided not to think during the trip, so I looked around for some sort of distraction. Just to annoy him, I said to a gloomy-looking guard standing near, “With these chains, we don’t have a prayer if the boat sinks. In view of its punk condition, that’s very likely in a heavy sea.”

Barely awake, the guard reacted as I had anticipated he would. “Go ahead and drown; we don’t give a damn. We have orders to chain you and that’s it. The responsibility is with the people who give the orders. We’re in the clear.”

“Quite right, sir. With or without chains, if this coffin splits open, we’ll all go to the bottom together.”

“Oh,” the idiot replied, “this boat’s been making this trip for a long time and nothing’s happened yet.”

“Exactly. It’s been around so long that something’s bound to happen sooner or later.” I’d accomplished my goal; the nerve-racking silence was broken. Other guards and convicts immediately joined the conversation. One of the cons said, “This boat is dangerous, and on top of that, we’re in chains. Without chains, we might at least have a chance.”

The guards replied, “We’re no better off. We have our uniforms, boots and guns. They’re not all that light either.”

“The guns don’t count. If there’s a shipwreck, you get rid of them right away.”

Seeing that I’d hit the mark, I tried a second ploy. “Where are the lifeboats? I can only see one and it will take eight men at the most. The commander and the crew would fill it straight off. As for the others, who gives a damn?”

We were off and running.

“That’s right. There isn’t anything. It’s the worst kind of irresponsibility to permit fathers of families to risk their lives for this batch of monsters.”

I was in the group at the stern of the boat with the two leaders of the convoy.

One of them looked at me and said, “Are you Papillon, the one who came back from Colombia?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t surprise me you got so far. You seem to know a lot about the sea.”

I stuck out my chest. “Yes, I do know a lot.”

That cooled him. On top of that, the captain came down off the bridge to meet me. He had stayed at the helm while we were in the Maroni estuary: that was the most dangerous part of the trip. But now that we were out, he had turned it over to someone else. So this fat little black man asked to meet the jokers who had gone all the way to Colombia on a piece of kindling wood.

“It was this one, that one, and the one over there,” said the convoy leader.

“Which one was the captain?” asked the little man.

“I was, sir.”

“Well, kid, I want to congratulate you. You’re no ordinary guy. Here!” And he put his hand in the pocket of his jacket. “Take this package of tobacco and the cigarette papers. Be my guest!”

“Thanks, sir. And I congratulate you for having the courage to sail this hearse.”

He burst out laughing. This was more than the guards could stand.

He said, “You’re right there! This tub should have been sent to the graveyard long ago, but the company’s waiting for it to sink to collect the insurance.”

I made a final thrust. “Aren’t you lucky you and the crew have a lifeboat?”

“Yes, aren’t we, though?” he said without thinking, and disappeared up the stairs.

The sea was fairly calm, but the wind was against us. We were going northeast, which meant heading into the wind and the waves, and this made the boat roll and pitch. Several guards and cons were sick. Luckily the man chained to me was a good sailor. There’s nothing worse than having to watch someone throw up. My neighbor was a real street-type from Paris. He’d come to the
bagne
in ’27, which meant he’d been on the islands seven years. He was relatively young—thirty-eight. “I’m called Titi la Belote, and if I do say so, belote is my strong suit. It’s what I live on on the islands. Belote all night at two francs a point.”

“You mean there’s that much money on the islands?”

“You bet there is,
mec
! The islands are full of
plans
bursting with cash. Some have it all on them, others pay half and get the rest from guards who act as brokers. I can see you’re new here, friend. You don’t seem to know anything.”

“No, I don’t know much about the islands. All I know is it’s hard to escape.”

“Escape?” Titi said. “Forget it. I’ve been on the islands for seven years, and during that time there’s been two
cavales
. Result: three dead and two caught. And nobody got away. That’s why there’s not too many candidates willing to take the chance.”

“Why have you been on Grande Terre?”

“I went for X-rays to see if I had an ulcer.”

“And you didn’t try to escape from the hospital?”

“Look who’s talking. You’re the one who ruined everything. What’s more, I ended up in the same room you escaped from. You should have seen the security! Every time I went near a window for a breath of air, somebody made me pull back. And when I asked why, they said, ‘Just in case you start doing a Papillon.’”

“Tell me, Titi, who’s the big guy sitting next to the leader of the convoy? Is he a stoolie?”

“Are you crazy? That
mec
is O.K. He may not be a ‘pro,’ but he knows how to handle himself. He doesn’t hang around the guards and he asks no favors; he’s very careful about his rank as a con. He gives good advice, he’s a good pal, he keeps his distance from the pigs. Even the priest and the doctor can’t get to him. He may look like a stoolie, but the fact is he’s a descendant of Louis the Fifteenth. That’s right, pal. He’s a count, a real count, and his name is Count Jean de Bérac. After he arrived, it took him a long time to win the men over because what he did to get here was pretty awful.”

“What did he do?”

“He threw his kid off a bridge into a stream. But the boy landed in a shallow place, so he went down, picked him up and dumped him where the water was deeper.”

“Jesus! That’s like killing the kid twice!”

“A friend of mine who’s a trustworthy guy saw his file and says the
mec
was scared stiff because he was a blueblood. The little kid’s mother was a servant in the castle, and his mother had kicked her out like a dog. Apparently the guy was dominated by his mother. The arrogant old bitch had humiliated him so much for having relations with a servant girl he didn’t know what he was doing. So he threw the kid in the water, although he had told his mother he was taking him to the welfare people.”

“What was his sentence?”

“Only ten years. I tell you, he’s not like the rest of us, Papillon. The mother told the magistrates that killing a servant’s kid wasn’t really such a serious offense if it was done by a count trying to protect his family’s honor.”

“So?”

“Well, I’m just a street Arab from Paris, but here’s what I think: basically this Count Jean de Bérac was a hick who had been brought up to think that the only thing that mattered was position. Maybe their servants weren’t exactly serfs, but they were certainly beneath consideration. And his monster of a mother had ground him down and terrorized him to the point where he’d become almost like one of the servants. It’s only in the
bagne
that this man with his
droits du seigneur
has become a true nobleman. It may sound crazy, but it’s only now that he’s really become Count Jean de Bérac.”

In a few minutes the Iles du Salut would no longer be an unknown quantity. All I knew now was that they were hard to escape from, but not impossible.... As I took in great gulps of the sea breeze, I thought: When will this head wind turn into a tail wind and carry me back to freedom?

We had arrived. The islands made a triangle, with Royale and Saint-Joseph at the base and Diable at the top. The sun was already low, but it picked them out with that intensity of light you find only in the tropics. Royale had a flat coastline, then rose six hundred feet to a plateau. It looked like a Mexican hat with its crown cut off, floating on the sea. And everywhere, very green coconut palms. Small houses with red roofs gave the island an unusual charm, and if you didn’t know what was there besides, you might want to live there the rest of your life. There was also a lighthouse on the coast to keep ships from breaking up on the rocks. Now that we were nearer, I could make out five large, long buildings. Titi told me that two of them were vast halls where four hundred cons lived. Then there was the maximum-security quarter with its cells and dungeons surrounded by a high white wall. The fourth building was the cons’ hospital, and the fifth was where most of the guards lived, the others being scattered over the slopes in the small houses with the red tile roofs. Farther on, but very near the tip of Royale, was Saint-Joseph. Fewer palms there, less greenery and, on the top, one large building. I guessed it must be the Réclusion [Solitary], and Titi confirmed it. He pointed out, near the water’s edge, the camp buildings where the cons with regular sentences lived. The watchtowers and battlements stood out clearly. It also had the tidy little white houses with red roofs.