Papillon (60 page)

Only one wave out of every seven was as large as the monster that had flung my sack back against the rocks. The others were little more than half its size. From noon to sundown I watched to see if this was always so, if there wasn’t an occasional shift or whim that altered the regularity.

There wasn’t. The ground swell never came sooner, never came later. There were six waves about twenty feet high, then, forming about three hundred yards from shore, the ground swell. It came in straight as a cannonball, growing in size and height as it approached. There was hardly any spray on its crest compared to the other six, very little, in fact. It had its own special noise, like far-off thunder. When it broke on the two rocks and hurled itself into the passage between them, crashing against the cliff, its great mass caused it to choke and turn on itself. Then, after ten or fifteen seconds, the eddies would work their way out with a wild churning, tearing off huge stones and rolling them back and forth, making a rumble like a hundred wagonloads of stones being dumped.

I put a dozen coconuts in a sack and added a fifty-pound rock. As the ground swell broke, I threw the sack in. I couldn’t follow it with my eyes because of the spray, but I saw it for a second as the water was sucked back to the sea. It did not return. The next six waves lacked the strength to throw it back on shore, and by the time the seventh had formed three hundred yards out, the sack must have drifted beyond it, for I didn’t see it again.

Bursting with excitement, I went back to camp. I had it! I had found the perfect launching. No question of luck here. Still I would do another trial run, this time under the conditions of the real
cavale:
two sacks of coconuts tied together and; on top, two or three rocks weighing a total of a hundred and fifty-five pounds. I told Chang about it and he listened closely.

“It’s good, Papillon. I think you got it. I help you for real thing. Wait for high tide twenty-five feet. Soon equinox.”

With Chang’s help and that of the twenty-five-foot equinoctial tide, we threw the two sacks and three rocks into the famous wave.

“What was name of little girl you tried save on Saint Joseph?”

“Lisette.”

“We call wave that take you away Lisette. O.K.?”

“O.K.”

Lisette arrived with the roar of an express train pulling into a station. Standing straight as a rampart, she grew larger with every second. It was an impressive sight. She broke with such power that Chang and I were swept off the rock and the sacks fell into the chasm. In the flash of a second we realized we couldn’t hold onto the rock, so we threw ourselves back—which didn’t protect us from a mighty soaking but did prevent our falling into the chasm. This happened at ten in the morning. We weren’t taking any risk because the three guards were busy doing inventory at the other end of the island. The sacks were carried off—we could see them clearly far out from shore. Were they beyond the ground swell? We waited. The six waves that followed Lisette were not able to catch them. Lisette came and went a second time, but still no sacks. They were beyond her reach.

We climbed quickly up to Dreyfus’ bench to see if we could see them again and, to our joy, we caught sight of them four different times riding the crest of the waves. And these waves were not coming toward Diable but heading west. We had the proof. I would sail toward the great adventure on the back of Lisette.

“Look, there she comes.” One, two, three, four, five, six … then Lisette.

The sea was always heavy below Dreyfus’ bench, but it was especially bad today. Lisette was advancing with her usual noise. She seemed even bigger, carrying more water than ever. Her monstrous mass struck the two rocks faster and straighter than ever before. And when she crashed against them, the noise was even more deafening, if that was possible. “That’s where you want us to jump from? Well, pal, you sure found a great spot! But not for me. I want to go on a
cavale
, not commit suicide.”

Sylvain was impressed with my description of Lisette. He had come to Diable three days before and, naturally, I suggested we leave together, each of us on our own raft. If he accepted, I’d have a companion on Grande Terre to help with the second stage of the
cavale
. Being alone in the bush was no picnic.

“There’s no point in being scared ahead of time. I realize that on first thought any man might hesitate a little. But it’s the only wave that’ll take us far enough out.”

“Calm down. Look, we tried it,” Chang said. “It’s sure thing. Once off, you never pushed back on Diable or Royale.”

It took me a week to convince Sylvain, a man with the body of an athlete, all solid muscle and six feet tall.

“O.K. I can see we’ll be carried far enough out. But after that, how long will it take us to get to Grande Terre?”

“To be honest, Sylvain, I don’t know. The speed of the drift depends on the weather. The wind’ll have little effect because we’ll be so low in the water. But if we have heavy weather, the waves will be bigger and push us faster. Seven, eight, ten tides at the most and we should reach the mainland. It could take anywhere between forty-eight and sixty hours.”

“How do you figure?”

“From the islands to the mainland isn’t more than twenty-four miles. The drift is the hypotenuse of the triangle. Look at the direction of the waves. We have to do between seventy-five and ninety miles maximum. The nearer we get to shore, the more directly the waves aim us at the coast. Wouldn’t you guess that a piece of driftwood at this distance from the coast would travel at least three miles an hour?”

He listened very attentively to my explanations. The big guy was pretty intelligent.

“It sounds all right to me. If it wasn’t for the low tides, which will pull us back, it wouldn’t take more than thirty hours to reach the coast. Taking them into account, I think you’re right—it’ll take somewhere between forty-eight and sixty hours.”

“Are you convinced?”

“Almost. But once we’re on Grande Terre, in the bush, what then?”

“We have to find our way to the outskirts of Kourou. It’s a fairly big fishing village, and there are also people there searching for gold and balata trees. You have to be careful, though, because it has a camp for
bagnards
. There’ll be some kind of path going toward Cayenne, and also toward the Chinese camp called Inini. We’ll have to force a con or a black civilian to take us to Inini. If he behaves himself, we’ll give him five hundred francs—then make him beat it. If it’s a con, we’ll make him join our
cavale
.”

“What do we do in Inini in a camp for Chinese?”

“Chang’s brother is there.”

“Yes, my brother there. He leave on
cavale
with you. He find boat and food. When you meet Cuic-Cuic, you got everything for
cavale
. Chinese never squeal. Any Annamite you find in bush, tell him to tell Cuic-Cuic.”

“Why’s your brother called Cuic-Cuic?” Sylvain asked.

“Don’t know. French baptized him Cuic-Cuic.” Then he added, “Be careful. When you almost Grande Terre, there’s quicksand. Never walk on quicksand; it bad, it suck you up. Wait next tide to push you in bush so you grab liana and branches. If not, you finished.”

Sylvain said, “O.K., Papillon. I’m going with you.”

“All right, then. Our rafts will be alike and weigh about the same—we shouldn’t be separated by much. But you never know. If we do get separated, we’ve got to have a way of finding each other. You can’t see Kourou from here. But when you were on Royale you must have noticed that to the right of Kourou, about twelve miles away, there are some white rocks—they stand out clearly when the sun hits them.”

“Yes.”

“They’re the only rocks on the whole coast. To the right and left, for miles and miles, there’s nothing but quicksand. The rocks are white because of bird shit. There are thousands of birds, and since no man ever goes near it, it’s a good place to catch our breath before we start into the bush. We can eat eggs and our coconuts. We mustn’t make a fire. The first one there waits for the other.”

“How many days?”

“Five. It won’t take more than five days, not possibly.”

The rafts were ready. We lined the sacks to make them stronger and then decided to take the next ten days to practice riding them. We soon realized that it would take a special effort to keep the sacks from turning over. Whenever possible, we would have to lie flat but be careful not to fall asleep. If we fell off, we might not be able to get back on. Chang made me a small waterproof bag to hold cigarettes and a lighter to hang around my neck. We would grate ten coconuts for each of us. The pulp would take care of thirst as well as hunger. Santini had some kind of skin for carrying wine. Chang, who occasionally visited the guard, was going to pinch it.

It was all set for Sunday at ten in the evening. There would be a full moon, hence a twenty-five-foot tide, and Lisette would be at full strength. Chang was going to feed the pigs alone that Sunday morning. I would sleep all of Saturday and Sunday. Departure at ten—the tide would have started to ebb two hours before.

My two sacks couldn’t possibly rip apart. They were bound together with braided hemp rope and brass wire and sewn with the heavy thread used for making sails. We had found some unusually large sacks and joined them at the neck so the coconuts couldn’t possibly work their way out.

Sylvain was forever doing exercises, and I lay in the sea for long hours for the little waves to massage my thighs. The continuous pounding and the contractions necessary to resist the pull gave me legs and thighs of iron.

I found a chain about three yards long in a dried-up well and wove it in and out of the rope that held my sacks together. Then I attached a bolt to one of the links. If I reached the point where I’d had it, I would chain myself to my sacks. That way I could sleep without falling into the water and losing my raft. If the sacks turned over, the water would automatically wake me up and I’d be able to right the raft.

“Papillon, just three more days.” We were sitting on Dreyfus’ bench watching Lisette.

“Yes, just three more days. I really believe we’re going to make it. Don’t you?”

“I’m sure of it, Papillon. Tuesday night or Wednesday morning we’ll be in the bush. Then we’re all set!”

Chang was to grate our coconuts—ten each. Besides our knives, we had two machetes we’d lifted from the tool house.

The Inini camp was east of Kourou. We must walk into the morning sun to be sure of our direction.

Chang said, “Monday morning we fool Santini. I say nothing; only Papillon and Sylvain disappear before Monday three o’clock in afternoon when guard have siesta.”

“But why can’t you say a wave swept us away while we were fishing?”

“No. Want no complications. I say, ‘Boss, Papillon and Sylvain not come work today. Me all alone feed pigs.’ No more, no less.”

It was Sunday, seven o’clock in the evening. I had just waked up. I’d been asleep since Saturday morning. The moon would be rising at nine. It was blackest night, with very few stars, and large clouds heavy with rain rushing overhead. We had just left the barracks. Since we often sneaked out to fish at night or take a walk around the island, the others thought this perfectly normal.

A queer was going into the barracks with his lover, a big, hairy Arab. They must have been making love in some dark corner. As I watched them raise the plank to go back into the room, it crossed my mind how, for the Arab, being able to screw his friend two or three times a day must be the last word in bliss. The fact that he could satisfy his erotic needs transformed prison into paradise. Same for the fairy. He must have been twenty-four or -five, but his body had lost its youthful beauty. For all that he probably spent the whole day in the shade to protect his milk-white skin, he was no longer any Adonis. But here in the
bagne
he had more lovers than he had ever dreamed of when he was free. In addition to the Arab, he took on others at twenty-five francs a lay, exactly like a whore on the Boulevard Rochechouart in Montmartre. So, besides the pleasure his clients gave him, he made enough dough to live a comfortable life with his “husband.” From the day they first set foot in the
bagne
, he and his clients had given themselves entirely to this occupation. They had only one thing on their minds: sex.

The prosecutor who had got them convicted came out the loser if he thought he was punishing them by heading them down the road of the condemned. Here they’d found their real happiness.

Once the plank had closed behind the kid’s pretty ass, we were alone—Chang, Sylvain and I.

“Let’s go!” We quickly made for the northern tip of the island.

We took the two rafts out of the cave. In no time all three of us were drenched. The wind howled with hurricane force. Sylvain and Chang helped me push my raft to the top of the rock. At the last moment I had the idea of tying my left wrist to the rope around the sack. I was suddenly frightened at the thought of losing my sack and being carried off without it. Sylvain, with Chang’s help, climbed up onto the rock opposite. The moon was already quite high. We could see clearly.

I tied a towel around my head. We had to wait out six waves. More than thirty minutes.

Chang came back to me. He hugged me around the neck and kissed my cheek. Then he stretched out flat on the rock and, wedged in a crack, prepared to hold my legs to help me resist the shock when Lisette broke.