Papillon

by Henri Charrière

  Shots rang out from the other sentry posts. Unnerved by the noise, we jumped from the wrong part of the wall; here the street was twenty-five feet below, whereas farther along to the right there was a street only fifteen feet below. As a result, Clousiot broke his right leg again. I couldn’t get up either. I had broken the arches of both feet. The Colombian dislocated his knee. The rifle shots brought out the guard on the street side. We were picked out by a big electric lantern and guns were aimed at us. I wept with anger. On top of that, the guards wouldn’t believe I couldn’t stand up. I crawled back to the prison on my knees, prodded on by rifle jabs. Clousiot and the Colombian hopped on one foot. My head was streaming blood from the whack of a rifle butt.

  The shots had waked Don Gregorio, who luckily was on duty that night and therefore sleeping in his office. Without him the guards would have finished us off. The one who had roughed me up the worst was the sergeant I had paid to post our two accomplices. Don Gregorio put a stop to it. He threatened to haul them up before the tribunal if they did us real harm. This magic word brought everyone to heel.

  The next day Clousiot’s leg was put in a cast at the hospital. The Colombian’s knee was set by a prisoner and strapped with an Ace bandage. During the night my feet swelled as big as my head and turned black and red from the clotted blood. The doctor made me soak my feet in warm salted water and applied leeches three times a day. When they were gorged with blood, the leeches let go by themselves and were put in vinegar to disgorge themselves. It took six stitches to close my head wound.

  As a result of all this, a journalist wrote an article about me. He said that I’d been the leader of the chapel revolt, that I had poisoned a guard, and, to top it off, that I had mounted a mass break with the help of accomplices from the outside, since someone had cut off the electricity by tampering with the transformer. “Let us hope that France relieves us as soon as possible of its public enemy number one,” he said in conclusion.

  Joseph Dega visited me with his wife, Annie. The sergeant and the guards had each come to claim the other half of their money. Annie wanted to know what she should do. I said they should be paid since they had stuck by their word. It was not their fault that we had failed.

  For a week now I’d been pushed around the yard in an iron wheelbarrow that also served as a couch. My feet were propped up on a length of material stretched taut between two sticks attached vertically to the handles of the wheelbarrow. It was the only position I could tolerate. Still swollen and congested with blood, my feet couldn’t stand the slightest pressure even when I was lying down. Fifteen days later the swelling was down about half and I was taken for X-rays. It was then that I learned that I had broken both arches. I’ve been flat-footed ever since.

  Today’s newspaper announced that the Mana was coming for us at the end of the month with an escort of French police. It was now the twelfth of October. We had eighteen days left. We must play our last card, but what could we do with me and my broken arches?

  Joseph was in despair. He told me that all the Frenchmen and the women of the Barrio Chino were dismayed at the thought of how hard I’d fought for my freedom and that in only a few days I’d be back in French hands. I drew comfort from the fact that so many people were on my side.

  I abandoned the idea of killing a Colombian policeman. I couldn’t bring myself to kill a man who had done nothing to me. Maybe he was helping out his mother and father, maybe he had a wife and children. I smiled at the prospect of having to search out an evil policeman with no family. How should I put it to him: “If I kill you, are you sure no one will miss you?” On the morning of the thirteenth I was really in the dumps. I examined the picric acid I was supposed to eat to get jaundice. If I was in the hospital, I might be able to escape with the help of some men Joseph would hire. The next day—the fourteenth—I was a beautiful lemon yellow. Don Gregorio came to see me in the yard. I was in the shade, lying in my wheelbarrow with my feet in the air.

  Without beating around the bush, I attacked. “Ten thousand pesos for you if you can get me into the hospital.”

  “I’ll try, Frenchie. Ten thousand pesos don’t matter that much, but it hurts me to see you fight so hard and not get anywhere. The trouble is I don’t think they’ll let you stay at the hospital on account of that story in the paper. They’d be scared.”

  An hour later the doctor had me sent to the hospital. I was in and out in nothing flat. From the ambulance I was placed on a stretcher, and I was back in the prison two hours later after a detailed examination and urinalysis.

  It was now the nineteenth, a Thursday. Joseph’s wife, Annie, came to see me with the wife of a Corsican. They brought me cigarettes and candy. Their friendliness turned that dreary day into pure sunshine. I’ll never be able to express how much the support of these people of the Barranquilla underworld meant to me, or how much I owe to Joseph Dega for risking his job and his own freedom to help me escape.

  In the course of our conversation Annie said something that gave me an idea.

  “Dear Papillon,” she said, “you’ve done everything humanly possible to get back your freedom. Fate has been cruel to you. All that’s left for you is to blow up the prison!”

  “How about that! Why don’t I blow up this old prison? I’d be doing the Colombians a great service. If I blew it up, maybe they’d build a new and cleaner one.”

  I kissed the charming ladies good-by for the last time and said to Annie, “Ask Joseph to come see me Sunday.”

  On Sunday, the twenty-second, Joseph was there.

  “Listen, try to bring me a stick of dynamite, a detonator and a Bickford cord on Thursday. I’ll see if I can get hold of a drill for brick.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to blow the hell out of this prison wall. And in broad daylight. Promise five thousand pesos to that yellow taxi. He has to be in the street behind the Calle Medellin every day from eight in the morning until six in the evening. He’ll get five hundred pesos a day if nothing happens and five thousand if it does. I’ll be coming through on the back of a strong Colombian who’ll carry me to the taxi. If the taxi driver is willing, send the dynamite. If he’s not, then it’s the end. I give up.”

  “Count on me,” Joseph said.

  At five o’clock I had myself carried into the chapel, explaining that I wanted to pray alone. I asked for Don Gregorio to come and see me. He came.

  “It’s only eight days until you go.”

  “That’s why I wanted to see you. You have fifteen thousand pesos belonging to me. I want to give them to my friend before I go so that he can send the money to my family, and I want you to take three thousand pesos in thanks for the way you’ve protected me from the guards. You’d be doing me a great service if you could get me the money today along with a roll of gummed tape so that I can get it ready for my friend by next Thursday.” “I’ll do that.”

  He came back and handed me the twelve thousand pesos, still in halves, keeping three thousand for himself.

  Back in my wheelbarrow, I called my Colombian friend over to a quiet corner. I described my plan and asked him if he thought he could carry me on his back for the twenty or thirty yards to the taxi. He gave me his word. So that part was all right. I made my plans on the assumption that Joseph would come through. I took up a position in the washhouse early Monday morning, and Maturette—who shared with Clousiot the “chauffeuring” of my wheelbarrow—went to find the sergeant to whom I had given the three thousand pesos and who had paid me back with such a savage beating.

  “Sergeant Lopez, I’d like to talk to you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “For two thousand pesos, I want a strong three-speed brace and six drills for brick. Two one-tenth of an inch thick, two four-tenths and two one-half inch.”

  “I have no money.”

  “Here are five hundred pesos.”

  “You’ll have them tomorrow at one when the guard changes. Get the two thousand pesos ready.”

/>   The next day at one o’clock I received the tools in a wastepaper basket that was emptied when the guards changed. Pablo, my Colombian strong man, picked them up and hid them.

  On Thursday there was no sign of Joseph. Then, toward the end of visiting time, I was called in. Joseph had sent an old wrinkled Frenchman in his place.

  “The things you’re expecting are in this piece of bread.”

  “Here’s two thousand pesos for the taxi. Five hundred for each day.”

  “The driver of the taxi is an excitable old Peruvian. Don’t get into a fight with him.”

  They had put the bread in a big paper bag along with some cigarettes, matches, smoked sausages, a piece of butter and a flask of black olive oil. As the guard at the door was rummaging through the bag, I gave him a pack of cigarettes, some matches and two sausages. He said, “How about a piece of bread to go with it?”

  That was all I needed!

  “No, buy your own bread. Here’s five pesos. Otherwise there won’t be enough for the six of us.”

  Jesus, that was a close one! Whatever made me offer the mec sausages! We ducked him as fast as possible. I’d been so unprepared for the bread episode that I was covered with sweat.

  “Tomorrow, the fireworks. Everything’s ready, Pablo. You must make the hole exactly under the overhanging tower so the cop on top won’t see you.”

  “But he’ll hear me.”

  “I’ve thought of that. At ten in the morning that side of the yard is in the shade. We have to get one of the metal workers to hammer on something against the wall near you and in the sun. Two men would be even better. I’ll give them five hundred pesos apiece. Try and find two men.”

  He found them.

  “Two friends of mine have agreed to stand there hammering as long as necessary. The guard won’t be able to hear the drill at all. You station yourself in your wheelbarrow a little away from the overhang and get into a discussion with the Frenchmen. That way you’ll screen me from the guard on the other corner of the wall.”

  In an hour the hole was drilled. Thanks to the hammering and the oil on the drill, the guard suspected nothing. The dynamite was wedged into the hole and the detonator attached to an eight-inch wick. We moved away. If everything went well, the explosion would blow open a big hole, the guard would fall with his sentry box, and I’d be through the hole on Pablo’s back and off to the taxi. The others would be on their own. Clousiot and Maturette would probably get to the taxi before me, even though I was going first.

  Just before we lit the fuse, Pablo alerted a group of Colombians. “If you want to make a break, there’ll be a nice hole in the wall in a few minutes.”

  That’s good, I thought. The police will concentrate on the last ones through.

  We lit the fuse. A terrific explosion shook the whole area. The tower fell. There were cracks over the whole wall, wide enough to see the street on the other side, but not one wide enough to let a man through.

  I was finally forced to admit that all was lost. Obviously it was my fate to return to Cayenne.

  The confusion that followed the explosion can’t be described. More than fifty policemen filled the yard.

  Don Gregorio had a pretty good idea who was responsible. “Well, Frenchie, I think this was your last try.”

  The head of the garrison was wild with exasperation: he could hardly order someone to hit a cripple lying in a wheelbarrow. I wanted to protect the others, so I declared in a loud voice that I had done it all by myself. Six guards were stationed in front of the wall, six in the prison yard, and six outside in the street. They stayed until the masons had repaired the damage. Fortunately the guard who fell with the tower was unhurt.

  RETURN TO THE BAGNE

  Three days later, at eleven in the morning on October 30, twelve white-uniformed guards from the bagne arrived to take possession of us. Before we left, there was a short official ceremony: each of us had to be identified. They had brought our descriptions, reports, photographs, fingerprints—the whole lot. Once they had verified our identities, the French consul stepped up to sign a document from the judge of the district—the official charged with giving us back to France. All of us were astonished at the friendly way we were treated by the guards. No animosity, no harsh words. The three in our group who had been there longest knew several of the bagne guards and joked with them like old buddies. The head of our escort, Commander Boursal, was worried about my condition. He looked at my feet and said he’d have them examined on the ship: there was a good orderly aboard.

  We were put in the bottom of the old tub’s hold, but the worst of it was the suffocating heat and the “bars of justice” to which our chains were attached. Only one interesting thing happened on the trip: the boat had to pick up coal in Trinidad. In port, a British naval officer demanded that our irons be removed. Apparently it was against British law to chain a man on board ship. I took advantage of the incident to slap a British officer in the face. I was trying to get myself arrested so they’d take me ashore. But the officer said, “I’m not going to have you punished for what you just did. Where you’re going you’ll get punishment enough.”

  Clearly, I was fated to go back to the bagne. It was very sad; eleven months of escapes, all that struggle, and all for nothing. But in spite of everything, my return to the bagne—no matter what happened there—could never wipe out the beautiful moments I had experienced.

  We had just left Trinidad, which brought back memories of the incomparable Bowen family, and we passed near Curaçao, where that great man, Irénée de Bruyne, served as bishop. We must also have skirted the territory of the Guajiros Indians, where I’d known love in its purest and most spontaneous form. They saw things with the clarity of children, those Indians, and they were rich in human understanding and simple love.

  And the lepers of the Ile aux Pigeons! Those wretched convicts with their terrible scourge, who still had the nobility to help us!

  And, finally, the spontaneous goodness of the Belgian consul and Joseph Dega, who, without knowing me, constantly risked everything on my behalf! These people had made the cavale worth doing. Even though it was a failure, my escape was also a victory because of the way these extraordinary people had enriched my life. No, I didn’t regret any part of it.

  Now we were back on the Maroni and its muddy waters. It was nine in the morning and we were standing on the Mana’s bridge. The tropical sun was already burning the earth. We were sailing gently up the estuary I had left with such urgency. My comrades and I were silent. The guards were glad to be back. The sea had been rough during the trip, and they were happy to be in calm waters.

  November 16, 1934

  There was a wild crush at the landing. Perhaps everyone was just curious to see men who had been unafraid to make such a long trip. Also it was Sunday, and we were providing some distraction for people who didn’t get much of it. I could hear people saying, “The one who can’t walk is Papillon. That one’s Clousiot. There, that’s Maturette....” And so on.

  In the penitentiary camp six hundred men were lined up in front of their barracks. Guards stood beside each group. The first one I recognized was François Sierra. He was leaning from an infirmary window and looking straight at me. He was crying and making no attempt to hide the fact. It was plain that his grief was real. We were brought to a halt in the middle of the camp. The chief warden picked up a loudspeaker:

  “Transportees, I hope this is proof that it is useless to try to escape. There is no country that will not arrest you and return you to France. Nobody wants any part of you. So it’s better to stay here quietly and behave. What lies in store for these men? A heavy sentence in solitary on Saint-Joseph and then internment for life on the lies du Salut. That’s what their escape got them. I trust you get the idea. Guards, take these men to the disciplinary quarter.”

  A few minutes later we were in a special cell in the maximum-security section. As soon as we arrived, I asked them to look after my swollen feet, and Clousiot complained of the pla
ster cast on his leg. We could give it one more try. As if they’d ever send us to the hospital again! François Sierra arrived with his guard.

  “Here’s the orderly,” the guard said.

  “How goes it, Papi?”

  “I’m sick. I want to go to the hospital.”

  “I’ll try to get you in, but after what you did there it’ll be just about impossible. Same goes for Clousiot.”

  He massaged my feet, rubbed them with ointment, checked Clousiot’s cast and went on his way. We couldn’t talk because of the guards, but his eyes were so full of sympathy that I was touched.

  “No. Nothing doing,” he told me the next day when he came to give me another massage. “Want me to get you into a communal cell? Do they chain your feet at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s better you go into a communal cell. You’ll still be chained, but you won’t be alone. It must be terrible for you to be in isolation at a time like this.”

  It was. Isolation was harder to bear than ever. I was in such a sorry state that I didn’t even need to close my eyes to have my mind wander in either the past or the present. And not being able to walk made it that much worse.

  So there I was right back on the road of the condemned. But hadn’t I managed to get away once—and sail toward freedom, toward the joy of being a man again, and toward my revenge too? For I mustn’t forget the debt I owed that trio—Polein, those pigs of policemen, and the prosecutor. As for the trunk, there was no need to hand it over to the police at the entrance to Headquarters. I would do it myself, dressed as an employee of Wagon-Lits-Cook, with the fancy company cap on my head. There would be a big tag on the trunk saying, “Commissioner Benoit, 36 Quai des Orfèvres, Paris (Seine).” I’d carry it up to the briefing room myself, having fixed it so the alarm wouldn’t go off until I’d left. It couldn’t possibly fail.