Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  The two other girls, Barbara and Mary Ellen, were awarded “B” classifications because they were “approvers,” state’s witnesses, having agreed to testify against Charles and Marie-Andrée. Their was a far better existence, and even though they were imprisoned several yards away from the Canadian woman and forbidden to speak with her, occasional visits were easily accomplished.

  At first there was a certain linkage, as all three of the young women were in the same awful predicament. But then, as the days and weeks and months passed, and autumn came, and their cases became ensnarled both in the snail’s pace of Indian justice and the MISA restrictions, a bitter falling out developed. Marie-Andrée made complaint that Mary Ellen Eather, “who is two times stronger than me and very tall,” came into the cell and beat her up, accusing the Canadian of helping bring on their arrest and imprisonment. “She banged my head against the wall,” wrote Marie-Andrée to a prison official, “and she told me that next time she would scratch my ‘horrible face.’ I was lucky there was a guard in the section and she came in time. They had to fight to get Mary out. I’m so very afraid. I always have a tear at the corner of my eye. And I feel so lonely …”

  Then, according to her complaint, the two girls tried to turn the entire women’s section against Marie-Andrée, insisting she was a mass murderess and thus dangerous. “Everyone looks at me like I was an enemy,” complained Marie-Andrée. “I am afraid to sleep for fear someone will kill me.”

  Questioned by prison officials, Mary Ellen and Barbara denied the accusation. “She’s loony,” said Barbara in dismissal. “We’ve got enough to worry about without trying to do her in.” When word reached Tuli about the friction, he ordered that special attention be paid to the women. His case rested heavily on the shoulders of the two prosecution witnesses.

  In Quebec, Marie-Andrée’s family engaged a criminal attorney who shrewdly realized that there was very little he could do from his end. But he could try and inject the case with the memory of Dreyfus, falsely accused. The lawyer’s name was Raymond d’Aoust, one of Canada’s most celebrated and flamboyant, a man who recognized a headline case if ever there was one. And, as it happened, he was in a position to more or less write his own copy. D’Aoust was part owner of a lurid tabloid called Photo Police, which leaped onto l’affaire Leclerc like a starving lion presented with a plump impala.

  Every week, in every issue, in headlines printed in blood red, there was a new scream:

  LE VRAI VISAGE DU MONSTRE SÉDUCTEUR

  QUI À IMPLIQUE MARIE-ANDRÉE LECLERC DANS 12 MEUTRES

  This one featured a sullen photograph of Charles at the top of the page, with an angelic, retouched picture of Marie-Andrée beneath, looking like a maiden about to be sacrificed.

  Then came:

  MARIE-ANDRÉE LECLERC EST DÉSESPÉRÉE: “Je n’en peux plus, je vais mourir.”

  And, in one of the most ghastly front pages ever printed anywhere, on September 11, 1976, Photo Police featured a full page photo of their heroine wearing a bikini and looking as tough as an aging tart, next to which were the burned and bloated faces of the Dutch murder victims in Bangkok. The headline announced “Quatre Nouveaux Cadavres—Marie-Andrée Détenue pour 16 Meutres.” Photo Police’s arithmetic was difficult to follow, as only twelve killings had been tied to the gang by Asian police departments. If the story were read carefully, it would turn out that India’s police were trying to link Sobhraj and Leclerc to four more. Tuli often said that there were “probably” more bodies buried in the vastness of Asia. But he had made no further official charges. Inside the newspaper, a disconsolate Marie-Andrée was pictured sitting in her cell, looking painfully thin, beggar-like, with a headline that screamed she was under attack from rats and was dying of hunger. It would have taken a brave stomach to get past the front page, however.

  L’affaire Leclerc decorated the front pages of Photo Police for months, and indeed it did accomplish what d’Aoust had desired; the French-speaking citizens of Canada were stirred to protest. If one read only the accounts in this newspaper, it appeared that the young churchgoing woman from outside Quebec had been captured and enslaved by barbarians. Biographies were printed in great detail, attesting to Marie-Andrée’s religiosity, her family devotion, her diligence at work, her quiet and respectable life before she answered the siren call of the “monstre séducteur.” Hundreds of letters poured into Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s office in Ottawa, to Indira Gandhi in Delhi, to the United Nations, and to the heroine herself, whose plight and photographs in Photo Police wrenched the hearts of Canadian mothers. Marie-Andrée fanned the flames of public opinion by writing long letters herself and smuggling them out of prison. In each she swore her innocence and wrote dramatically of her torment.

  On September 17, 1976, approximately two months after their arrest, Charles, Marie-Andrée, and Jean Dhuisme were taken before a magistrate in Delhi and granted bonds of approximately $3,000 each. But the announcement was academic. Only a formality. As long as Indira Gandhi had the country under emergency rule, prisoners were not being released on bail. And the Indians were proud of having caught the suspects; they were not about to grant bond and risk having them skip across some border while the world press snickered.

  The most interesting event at the brief hearing was an outburst from Marie-Andrée, who was confronted with Charles for the first time in weeks. He was wearing not only handcuffs but chains that linked his arms, and on his legs were shackles. He had grown a beard, and his couturier suit was dusty and wrinkled. Charles smiled at Marie-Andrée and began an impetuous speech to the court pleading for better conditions. But she interrupted him with an outburst, drenched in tears, “I never want to speak to him again. He’s brought me nothing but problems for the past year. I never imagined I could get involved in anything like this … The year I spent with him was worse than my prison cell in Tihar.”

  A reporter for a Bangkok newspaper asked Marie-Andrée if she had anything to say against the accusations that she had committed murder. “All they can say against me is that I was there,” she said. “Nothing else.”

  But there was a public Marie-Andrée and a private one. In the loneliness of her cell, she wrote a long dozen-page letter and smuggled it to Charles in the men’s section. The document was exceptionally revealing, both of her character and emotions, and how she viewed her lover. And indeed she still loved him:

  Hello, my darling:

  I read your long letter over and over again … On many points I agree with you. As to your complaint that I “scream and cry” all the time, I am conscious of it. But if I had screamed louder before, maybe I wouldn’t be where I am. You understand that my nerves are raw. I must stay in jail for I don’t know how long—for doing nothing …

  You say I have a “tendency to conquest” … Yes, it is strong inside me, like most women, to be liked by people I meet … But you are not satisfied unless all the women are in love with you … Remember the women clients in Bangkok? You tried very hard to seduce them. Any woman that we have known together, you have tried to seduce. It’s known that you have women in all the countries of the Orient. And that’s not something I invented! …

  I am not a criminal, that you know very well … You may understand psychological principles, but to know them and to live them are two different matters. You do not respect the human being. For you, the human being is a thing at your service, to utilize at will … You obey your own desires and nothing else … Remember your behavior in the first week that we lived together? No understanding, no comprehension of what I wanted or needed … No delicate attention, only reproaches, only complaints about my “lack of manners,” my lack of knowledge, my inferiority … You live your “psychology” like Catholics live their religion. They know all the principles by heart, but they do not live them in every day life …

  … you say you never slept with married women. Maybe so. I can’t verify it. But in one year, you broke and tore apart the hearts of three women—May, Suzy, and myself …
you didn’t make anyone happy. All you gave was suffering. You played with love. And then you reject us like an old rag you don’t need anymore …

  I am stopping now. If you are hurting, I am hurting even more. It is true that I once loved you, and it is still true. But my eyes are more open than before …

  You frighten me … I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to give you this letter. I may tear it up … You talk about “change.” … The one of us who “must change” is not me … You must change yourself totally, change your mentality completely, learn to respect the human being. The day you understand that is the day you will become good … There must be a housecleaning inside your soul. Destroy everything that is old, only keep the beautiful and the new …

  I love you darling. But I must have the courage to speak to you this way …

  Your “little girl.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  For a full year the prisoners waited in Tihar Prison for their trials, the monotony broken only by regular trips into the very heart of Delhi for preliminary hearings at the Parliament Street Courts—a curious place that resembled both a legal bazaar and a minor Asian ruin. The courthouse itself is a U-shaped one-story building with a corrugated tin roof and tiny hearing rooms facing onto a courtyard where beggars importune, old men roast peanuts over smoky braziers, and the relatives of defendants sleep, cook, defecate, and wail at attorneys stalking about in starched black frock coats.

  Most of the real action, however, takes place next door in the rubble of what was once a multistory building occupied by lawyers. The building did not fall down from earthquake or poor construction. One morning when the lawyers arrived routinely to begin their day, bulldozers were preparing to level their building. The lawyers had but a few hours to frantically remove files and books from their chambers before the structure was smashed into gravel. Nobody could find out precisely why the lawyers’ office building was so suddenly condemned and toppled, other than some vague muttering by authorities that it violated the building code. A more likely reason, the lawyers came to believe, was the wrath of Indira Gandhi. Lawyers had been bedeviling her; they had led the campaign to have her election as Prime Minister invalidated. “Our mother decided to punish her children,” said one prominent attorney, “so she knocked our house down and forced us to set up shop outside. I’m sure she is delighted each time it rains.”

  Deprived of shelter, lawyers were forced to find space in and around an enormous pipal tree whose branches offered shade to those sweltering below, and a home to hundreds of screeching bluebirds and ravens who from time to time dropped mementos onto both attorneys and their documents.

  Each morning, some of Delhi’s most prominent members of the legal profession brought portable tables and chairs and signs advertising their specialties: “K. L. Vacher, Advocate. Oath Commissioner. Attested Here.” Or, “C. S. Ashwalia, B.A., LLB, Advocate, High Court. Ex-Prosecuting Deputy Supt. Police. Decorations: President’s Medal, Police & Fire Services Medal.” Around these alfresco offices worked stenographers in brilliantly colored saris, clacking away at ancient typewriters, and servants who ran errands, fetched tea, and occasionally carried their masters piggyback across swampy, oozing ground to the courthouse. “It’s a flea market of the law,” remarked a startled French reporter who had come to write of Charles Sobhraj. “But somehow it’s wonderful to anyone who ever got screwed by a lawyer.”

  The prisoners were delivered in the black bus with thick steel mesh at the windows and were placed in an adjoining police lockup that had once been a military barracks. Ordinarily Marie-Andrée sat quietly in a corner of the yard in the company of two stout prison matrons, both of whom she called “Mommy” and both of whom seemed both tolerant and kind to the Canadian. Charles, however, was always the center of a carnival. Squatting on his haunches because the chains made it painful to sit down, he was surrounded by a forest of guards and rifles, yet somehow he managed to conduct business. Activity swirled about him. His minions eluded the security precautions and danced attendance, receiving orders to buy this lawbook or that little necessity. His lawyers often encountered difficulty in obtaining permission for a conference with Charles, but either through bribes or exceptionally eloquent persuasion, the famous prisoner rarely lacked the opportunity of speaking with his flunkies, some of whom were out on bail themselves.

  They were stars. Celebrities. India’s newspapers, subdued and fearful under Indira Gandhi’s dictatorial powers, relished a story that had no political overtones. The “notorious gang” and “international killers” were profiled endlessly, mug shots decorating Sunday feature pages. And both in and out of Tihar Prison, a curious and motley array of people danced about them.

  In December 1976, Marie-Andrée passed Christmas in predictable despair. She weighed less than ninety pounds. On her back were festering sores from insect bites. Her eyes were weak and she feared she was going blind. Her sister Denise had brought happiness and love from Canada on a brief visit, but now she was gone. For a time it had seemed that the authorities would not permit Denise to visit, but Marie-Andrée threw a hysterical tantrum in her cell that so worried the prison administration that two meetings were allowed, both with guards in attendance, the rule being that the sisters had to speak in English.

  Denise had been shocked at her sister’s appearance. Marie-Andrée was not only thin, her face was as pale as a wintry Quebec sun, her hair chopped off to keep the bugs from nesting. Her old limp had returned and she fell awkwardly into Denise’s embrace. They wept together. “Why did you come?” asked Marie-Andrée with a note of sternness. “You don’t have that kind of money.”

  “I’m here because you are my sister and I love you,” answered Denise. She was young and pert and so resembled her older sister that Inspector Tuli had done a double take when introduced. “I told the bank I had to have $2,500 and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. If you need me to come back, I’ll borrow $2,500 more.” She assured her sister that the family supported Marie-Andrée one hundred per cent. “Daddy has given up wine until the day you come home,” she said.

  Denise was permitted to attend one of the hearings in the Parliament Street Courts at which both Marie-Andrée and Charles were present. The courtroom was a tiny place, scarcely twelve feet square, with whitewashed stucco walls, an armoire atop which rested buckets and bottles, and several cane-backed chairs scattered about at random. Had a waitress appeared with a tray of beer, the chamber would have made an excellent Mexican cantina. A young judge sat in another cane chair and before him was a long shelf, where lawyers rested their elbows and books and about which formed a jumble of those involved—counsel, defendants, guards, press, and relatives. It was Denise’s first glimpse of the man who had wrecked her sister’s life, and she looked at Charles Sobhraj with both fury and fascination. She found him menacing, yet “cute,” “childish,” and “chic” even in irons and chains. His allure remained. After the hearing, Charles edged close to Denise and he bowed and said, in whispered French, “I regret that Marie-Andrée has these problems. I will try and help her out of this. Believe me.”

  Denise nodded. “I should hope so,” she said, with unhidden sarcasm.

  But then Denise returned to Canada, and the year ended, and the emotional nourishment of her sister’s visit was gone. Marie-Andrée was left to her dwindling resources. From childhood, she resurrected the fancy of being a Carmelite nun, and now she once again pretended, spending the days in prayer and deprivation. “This must have a purpose,” she said. “It was meant to be, and I cannot question the will of God.”

  “What a dump!” brayed a raucous voice in best Bette Davis impersonation. Marie-Andrée looked up to encounter a young woman being escorted into her cell. The new arrival was tiny, barely five feet tall, but so bursting with energy and vivacity as to resemble an over-packed suitcase. She shook herself free of the matrons’ arms. “Okay, end of the line,” she snapped. “I know my way from here. Beat it.” The guards giggled and turned her loose, rather
gratefully.

  “I’m Checkers,” announced the new prisoner, who, upon hearing Marie-Andrée’s response in accented English, switched immediately to French. Marie-Andrée’s mood lifted, this being the first cellmate she had encountered who spoke her language.

  “You’ve been here before?” ventured Marie-Andrée.

  “Oh, hell yes, honey,” said Checkers, already busily stepping off the cell’s dimensions. It was eight feet by ten, with a dirt floor, a hole cut in the earth for a toilet, and a rusty pipe that on infrequent occasions belched forth dirty water that was valued more highly than food. The prisoners had to be ready to rush to the pipe and catch the water, no matter what time of day or night it abruptly sprang into life. In one corner of the tiny room sat the crumpled figure of a third young prisoner. Her name was Dharma, a girl from North Africa who had been arrested on a currency violation. Already in Tihar for a year, she had apparently fallen through a legal crack. Nobody seemed to know the status of her case—or care—and no one spoke her language. Dharma was going insane. She spent her waking hours either moaning an eerie chant that was driving Marie-Andrée up the wall, or else she sat blankly, staring at nothing with dead eyes, fondling her breasts and allowing flies to congregate on her body without bothering to brush them away. Kneeling before her, Checkers smiled tenderly and made as if to stroke her forehead in friendship. But Dharma drew back and snarled like a trapped dog. “Excuse me,” said Checkers. “If you want anything, just rattle your cage.”

  Checkers felt it important that she deliver her biography to the others—and an astonishing one it was. Though barely twenty years old, Checkers had lived what seemed to be a hundred lives. If one tenth of it was true, Checkers had already accomplished more than Zelda Fitzgerald, the Empress Josephine, and Bonnie Parker.