The Guillotine Choice

by Michael J Malone

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ someone shouted from the other side of the barracks. ‘Some of us need to get our beauty sleep.’

  ‘There isn’t enough hours in the month for you, Dede,’ another man joined in and soon comments were flying back and forward.

  Eventually the din died down and the men relaxed into sleep. Except for Mohand, who continued his watch until the man with no name gave up his last halting breath.

  Being the first to notice, Mohand could loot the body of its belongings before anyone else stirred. He had a decent pair of trousers now that some money had arrived, but another pair would never go amiss. This fellow’s trousers were knee-length and still bore the red stripe. Mohand turned to the other side and feigned sleep. Someone else could have them. This was not the kind of man he was. Stealing from the dead was something he could never quite bring himself to do.

  The money, when it arrived, was desperately, fervently welcome. He had no idea how this would have affected the family as two hundred francs was a serious amount of cash. The letter that accompanied the money was a trial. He held it in his hands like it would contaminate. He guessed that it would start with the words, ‘My beloved son’. It would be in French so that the authorities would allow it through. It would be written by Caid Mezaine and it would talk about events at home, the family. Saada would be mentioned with reluctance as he would not want to cause his son pain. Mohand did not wish to know what had happened to his wife.

  He couldn’t bring himself to read it.

  He found a match and set the letter alight, watching as the flames ate hungrily at the paper.

  Smoke stinging his eyes and charcoal stains on his fingertips were the temporary and last remaining elements of his father’s words.

  ELEVEN

  The Morgue

  It began with a high fever, alternating with chills. Mohand’s muscles ached and whatever pathetic amount of food he was given was soon voided. Still he forced himself to move and to pick up his axe. Three years he had been working in the logging camps and each day he congratulated himself for surviving the last one.

  He felt moisture at his eyes and his nose. He lifted a hand to wipe it away and noticed a long streak of blood on the back of his wrist. The march that morning through the jungle from the barracks to the work site was the longest walk Mohand ever experienced. He did not have enough power left to carry the weight of his body. Nevertheless, there was nothing he could do; he had to make the effort. The guards didn’t bother with any of the men, as long as they were standing. A man needed to lose consciousness before receiving any help. By lunchtime he crumbled to the ground and could not move.

  He was aware of a guard leaning over him, shouting, ‘Get up you bastard.’

  He was aware that the man was kicking him, but he could feel nothing. Then all of his senses closed down.

  Realising that this convict was not shirking his duties after all, the guard in charge assigned two other convicts to carry him back to the infirmary.

  * * *

  Mohand rallied at one point and realised a doctor was leaning over him. The doctor prised open one of his eyelids while speaking to someone else.

  ‘You see,’ the doctor said, ‘the white of the eye is no longer white. It is yellow. The disease attacks the liver and this jaundice is the result. Yellow fever.’

  Mohand was aware of people around him, trying to force water down his throat. It was as if he was still of the world, but no longer a part of it. He was no longer in pain. Hunger was a remote memory. His body was shutting down, death was coming to claim him and his mind retreated to a dim corner where it could wait and see what the outcome might be.

  He lost all sense of time passing. He lost the ability to control any part of his body. All he could do was wait and think. About his life. About his choices. He felt some relief that death would bring some form of liberation.

  One moment when awareness did reach him was when nurses and doctors were talking around his bed.

  ‘This guy’s had it,’ a doctor said. ‘He’s dead. Arrange for a transfer to the morgue.’

  No, I am not dead, Mohand thought. I am still here. I am still here. No part of his body would obey his impulse to communicate his sudden desire to live.

  I am here was a scream without sound that echoed, unheard, in the eternity of his mind.

  * * *

  Mohand was moved to a room full of dead bodies and dumped on the floor like a sack of potatoes. This was the space where the dead were stored until they could be loaded on to a boat and used as breakfast for the sharks.

  * * *

  The next morning, he was aware of movement around him. Two convicts had arrived and were loading the bodies on to a barrow. When they got to Mohand, one held his arms while the other grabbed his legs.

  Reality stumbled towards him through the fog of his disease. He tried to speak. Not a sound issued from him. His jaw remained firmly closed.

  He was picked up and sacking thrown around him.

  I’m alive, he wanted to scream. I’m alive.

  Again nothing happened.

  He willed his hands to move. His eyes to open. He begged his lips to part. Everything was glued shut.

  The men began to sew the rough material closed.

  I’m alive.

  One of the men paused in his sewing motions.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  His friend grunted and carried on sewing.

  Help. I’m alive. Mohand willed some part of his body to move with a long silent scream of desperation.

  Just as the men reached his head one of the men started.

  ‘He moved. My god, he moved.’

  ‘Shut up, you fool, and pick him up. We don’t have all day,’ his friend shouted at him and picked up the sacking.

  ‘He’s alive, you moron.’

  ‘Don’t be…’

  ‘I’m telling you he’s alive. I just saw his chest move.’

  ‘That’s because you wobble as you walk, moron.’

  ‘Have you got a mirror?’

  ‘Yes. It’s in my pocket along with my shaving brush and my open razor.’ There was a slapping sound and a note of outrage. ‘Wait and I’ll check my pockets. Or my vanity case. Of course I don’t have a fucking mirror.’

  ‘A piece of glass, then?’

  ‘Oh for…’ Mohand was dropped to the floor none too gently. He heard feet slapping the floor as they moved into the distance. Then they returned.

  ‘Bugger me,’ he heard someone say a few moments later. ‘You’re right. This one is still alive.’

  As if this discovery gave the convicts fresh life, Mohand was rushed back through to the ward and placed gently in a clean bed. While they did so, the two convicts relayed to everyone within hearing distance just what had happened. They had witnessed a miracle in a room full of death and it almost more than they could bear.

  A hand that was rough with calluses stroked his forehead and a voice choking with emotion sounded above him in a whisper.

  ‘It’s a miracle. A fucking miracle.’

  TWELVE

  The Eagle

  A familiar face was hanging over his bed for a few moments before Mohand recognised who it was.

  ‘Dr Vignon, is it time for my weekly check?’ He sat up and knuckled the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘Good morning, Mohand,’ the doctor smiled. He put a hand on the sheet as if to pull it back. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Dr Vignon listened to Mohand’s chest, pushed his hands into his abdomen and peered into Mohand’s eyes and, as he did so, made small satisfied sounds.

  ‘It’s amazing how some people can recover from yellow fever,’ Vignon smiled and raised an eyebrow, ‘when they are being fed proper food and not being worked to death in the jungle.’

  ‘Is my doctor preaching sedition?’ asked Mohand with a face full of mock horror.

  ‘Just as well no one is listening, eh?’ Vignon asked and sat on the bed. His face grew serious. �
��You know I can’t keep you here forever?’ he said quietly.

  Mohand nodded and acid flared in his gut. Another doctor would have prescribed him as ready for work again months ago, but Vignon had allowed him the time to recover fully. His weight was back up to the way it was when he arrived at the colony, thanks to being able to get some rest and real food. There had even been some fruit and vegetables in his meals. His strength was not quite there yet, but some more walking and perhaps some swimming would see him improve.

  ‘I have asked that you be kept nearby for another month or so and given only light duties around the infirmary. Thereafter…’ he let the rest of his sentence hang in the air.

  ‘Inshallah,’ Mohand said with more confidence than he really felt.

  ‘I hope Allah has better plans for you now.’ Vignon recognised Mohand’s saying as the Muslim acceptance of Allah’s will.

  Allah’s will is obscured to me, thought Mohand. Prayer brings no answers. Being near death brought me no answers.

  ‘You had a cousin, didn’t you?’ The doctor’s face was screwed up in the effort of trying to force a memory.

  ‘Two,’ answered Mohand. ‘One died here. The other was sent to Kourou.’

  ‘Kourou,’ echoed Vignon. ‘Hellish place.’

  Mohand wondered what sort of hell it must be if it merited a special mention in this colony.

  * * *

  That weekend, Mohand was allowed to go into the town. Again, the guards recognised that he was not about to jeopardise what small freedoms he had and he was left very much to his own devices. At first, while he walked from the bagne and into town, his muscles were warmed through with contentment. He had faced the worst that the system could throw at him and he was still alive. And right there, right then, being alive felt good. He had strength, a full belly and the realisation that he had won a victory in the Frenchman’s attempt to punish him.

  Two more steps and this feeling all but abandoned him. He was still alive when so many others had died. Was this something to celebrate? Did they die so that he could live? Did Allah have a plan for him that he should be allowed to continue to breathe? He stopped walking and stared up into the empty dome of the sky. It was a blue so bright it dazzled and the sun was a howl that shone on into forever.

  A void. No answers.

  He kept walking, the occasional shriek of a bird and the slap of his shoe on the ground were the only noises he could hear. He had no plan, no activity that called him that day and, as he looked around himself, he realised he was heading in the direction of the bar ran by the libéré called Michel Lacroix. Like all the other convicts who managed to scrape together a few sous, along with some free time, there was nothing else to do except escape into the local rum.

  ‘Tafia, my good man,’ he said to Lacroix, who was leaning over the window ledge that passed for a bar.

  Lacroix immediately lifted up a bottle and a small wooden tumbler. He poured a little out and handed it to Mohand. He made no attempt at conversation or to acknowledge that they had spoken briefly before. This suited Mohand perfectly, so he picked up his glass and moved across to a table under the canopy and sat down with his thoughts and his drink.

  A few drinks later and he realised that he had gone over almost every conversation he had ever had with anyone he had ever loved and he was not coming out very well.

  He had let everyone down. Again his mind turned to those who were dead and the question, why had he been spared?

  The tafia didn’t burn quite so much on the way down now and he ordered some more. As he leaned across the bar to order he spotted a calendar.

  Lacroix examined him from under his thick, black eyebrows. ‘Did I not tell you never to come back?’

  Mohand ignored the question. ‘You have a wonderful sense of the ironic, my friend. A calendar?’

  ‘Some people like to count the days.’ He gestured at the calendar. ‘Others prefer to forget.’ He shook the bottle of rum.

  Mohand looked at the date and made a quick calculation.

  ‘If my son had survived,’ he thought aloud, ‘he would be eight years old now.’ He picked up his glass and downed the shot in one. ‘Here’s to forgetting.’

  He had been here for four years. In this slice of hell, he had survived four years. And there was thirty-six to go. He shook his head and slumped forward onto the table. Hopelessness weighed down on his shoulders so hard that it forced his forehead on to the rough wood of the table. He could smell rum and timber and other more unsavoury notes coming from the wood, but he couldn’t lift his head up. Just a few minutes ago he was grateful to be alive and here he was wishing he were dead.

  ‘It could be worse,’ Lacroix chuckled, standing over Mohand with a bottle in his hand.

  ‘Yeah,’ Mohand lifted his head up and offered a weak grin. ‘I could be French.’

  ‘I like you, kid,’ the man said with a smile. ‘But don’t be going around saying that too much. Might not go down well with certain individuals.’ As he said this he reached across with his left hand to scratch his right shoulder. His sleeve rode up exposing some skin and a tattoo in blue ink.

  ‘We have a Berber custom,’ Mohand said. ‘To mark your body to remind you of an important event in your life. It’s called thimeshrats. It can be a scar. It can be a tattoo.’

  ‘We have a French Guiana custom. When you get bored out of your tits, get a tattoo.’

  Mohand said nothing, he simply looked at the older man.

  ‘So how does it work?’ Lacroix asked, sitting down beside him.

  ‘It’s something that’s there as a permanent reminder of what you’ve gone through. It reminds you that no matter the suffering you experienced, the mistakes you made… the choices you made… you survived and were stronger because of it.’ He looked away from Lacroix as tears stung his eyes. Having reached some kind of control, he turned back to face the big man.

  ‘You people talk about “forgive and forget”. We know the first is possible. Forget? No. How can you learn?’ He paused as if collecting his thoughts. As if wondering how much to say. ‘Things happened. People betrayed me because of greed. A greed that they thought of as being a need. And because of that I ended up in this…’ He swallowed. ‘So thimeshrats for me means the past will not affect my future. I will learn, never speak of it again and move on.’

  Lacroix said nothing for a moment, merely looking deep into Mohand’s eyes.

  ‘Spirit. Whatever spirit is, kid, you’re full of it.’ He poured some more rum into the glass. ‘So what will you get done?’

  ‘I want it on my chest…’ Mohand sipped and thought. ‘Something big and powerful. Regal.’

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Mohand was in a shop where the owner could perform the service he was looking for.

  A small man stepped towards him from his seat with his hand outstretched.

  ‘Call me Anouk,’ he announced, taking a firm grip of Mohand’s hand. ‘And what can I do for a presentable young man like you?’ He was dressed in pale linen trousers that had obviously seen better days, but were spotless and pressed. His face was sharp, clean-shaven and his eyes scanned Mohand in judgement. He nodded once as if he was happy with what he saw.

  ‘Thimeshrats,’ said Mohand, wondering why he had said that. To his surprise the small man nodded again.

  ‘I understand. You mark the event. You move on.’ The little fellow peered into Mohand’s face and at first he was discomfited by the attention. He was not used to such close scrutiny. Most people looked without really seeing, while this man was fully taking his measure.

  Suddenly he gave a small bark.

  ‘Strength. Authority.’ He pursed his lips. ‘And something that can rise above its troubles.’

  Mohand couldn’t help but smile. Despite himself, he was pleased at passing this little man’s assessment.

  ‘I was thinking of an eagle,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Exactly,’ Anouk clapped his hands. ‘Right across your chest.’
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  Mohand felt a surge of excitement. ‘Exactly.’

  Anouk bustled over to a table and placed a small pair of spectacles on his nose. Then he put on an apron and placed some paper and a pencil on the tabletop. Without another word he began to draw and several minutes later he held a drawing up for Mohand’s inspection.

  ‘You can have any colour as long as it’s blue,’ Anouk grinned.

  ‘Fantastic.’

  Several uncomfortable hours later and it was done.

  Getting to his feet Mohand, walked across to a full-length mirror that sat in a corner. A thrill ran through him when he saw what the little maestro had achieved.

  The head of the eagle was just under his neck, its sharp beak lined along his collarbone. Its powerful wings were folded back as if all it would take was a little thermal to give them flight. The body was lean and muscular, and the talons were sharp enough to tear the skin from just above Mohand’s belly button.

  It was perfect.

  PART THREE

  ‘WE LIVE AND HOPE’

  ONE

  Wind of Change

  Just five minutes under the sun and Mohand was covered in a gloss of sweat. Standing with a group of around a dozen other convicts, he was wondering if he would ever get used to this humidity and heat.

  Dr Vignon was true to his word and he was sent to work at an office that dealt with work that was required in the town of St Laurent. As he walked to where he had been directed, Mohand sent a silent prayer of thanks to Allah for the intervention of the good doctor. Not all of the French were bastards, he thought ruefully.

  Outside of the office a group of around six men waited for instructions. They were all thin and weak as if they too had just recovered from some terrible illness. No one spoke or even acknowledged any of the others. As they waited for a guard to tell them what they were about to do, they were each lost in their own thoughts, possibly sending similar prayers to their god, thought Mohand. Each and every one of them would be grateful beyond measure that they were not being sent straight back out to the green and fertile hell they had just survived.