Papillon

by Henri Charrière

  “Papillon, I trust you, I’d really like to do a cavale with you. Do your damnedest to join me at the nuthouse. I realize it must be pretty grim to find yourself, a well man, in with all those nuts. But since I’d be an orderly, I’d be able to back you up and help you through the tough spots.”

  “You go to the asylum, Roméo. I’ll look into it and study the early symptoms of madness so I can convince the doctor. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have him class me as irresponsible.”

  I embarked on a serious study. There was no book on the subject in the bagne library, so at every opportunity I discussed it with men who had been sick. I gradually arrived at a pretty clear idea of what was involved:

  1. All lunatics had terrible pains in the cerebellum.

  2. Often they had buzzing sounds in the ears.

  3. Since they were very nervous, they couldn’t lie in the same position for any length of time. Their bodies were racked with nervous spasms, and the strain on them was intolerable.

  The important thing was to have them discover these symptoms, not to display them openly. My madness must be just dangerous enough to make the doctor commit me to the asylum, but not so violent that it justified the extreme measures of hair shirts, beatings, withholding of food, hot or cold baths, etc. If I played my cards right, I might manage to fool the doctor.

  I had one thing going for me: why would I want to fake madness? Since the doctor would not be able to think up a logical answer to this question, I might be able to get away with it. Anyway, it was my only chance. They had refused to send me to Diable, and I couldn’t stand the camp after my friend’s death. To hell with procrastination! I made my decision. I’d go to the doctor on Monday. No, I mustn’t report myself. Better if someone else did it, someone who could be trusted. I would do a couple of slightly strange things in our case. Then our guard would report it and put me down for a doctor’s visit.

  For three days I didn’t sleep, didn’t wash and didn’t shave. I masturbated several times each night and ate practically nothing. Yesterday I asked my neighbor why he’d removed a picture of mine that never existed. He swore he’d never touched any of my things. It made him so nervous he changed places. Our soup often sat for a while in the pot before being distributed. I walked up to the pot and pissed in it in front of everybody. The look on my face must have impressed everyone because there was absolute silence.

  My friend Grandet said, “Papillon, why did you do that?”

  “Because they forgot to salt it.” And paying no further attention to the others, I got my bowl and held it out for the guard to serve me.

  The silence continued while everybody watched me eat my soup.

  Those two things did it. I was taken to the doctor without my saying a word.

  I asked him, “Are you O.K., Doc?” Then I repeated the question. The doctor looked at me, stupefied. I looked at him perfectly naturally.

  “Yes, I’m O.K.,” the doctor said. “Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you come to me?”

  “For no reason. They told me you were sick. I’m glad to see it isn’t true. Good-by.”

  “Wait a minute, Papillon. Sit down. Now, look at me.” And the doctor examined my eyes with a lamp that gave off a small ray of light.

  “You didn’t see what you expected to, did you, Doc? Your lamp isn’t powerful enough, but I think you understand all the same, right? Tell me, did you see them?”

  “See what?” the doctor asked.

  “Don’t be an ass. Are you a doctor or a vet? You’re not going to tell me you didn’t see them before they hid? Maybe you don’t want to tell me, and you’re playing me for a fool.”

  My eyes glistened with fatigue. My appearance—unshaven, unwashed—helped. The guards listened, transfixed, but I refrained from any act that might have justified their intervention.

  The doctor went along with the game so as not to excite me. He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Yes, Papillon, I didn’t want to tell you, but I did see them.”

  “Doc, you lie with your goddam colonial self-control. You didn’t see a damn thing! You were looking for three black specks in my left eye. I see them only when I’m looking into space or reading. When I look in the mirror, I see my eye clearly, but not a sign of the three specks. They hide the second I pick up the mirror to look for them.”

  “Put him in the hospital,” the doctor said. “Take him there immediately without going back to camp. Papillon, you said you weren’t sick. Maybe so, but I think you’re very tired and I want you in the hospital for a few days’ rest. Is that all right with you?”

  “What’s the difference? Hospital or camp, it’s still the islands.”

  I had taken the first step. A half-hour later I was in the hospital in a well-lighted cell with a clean bed and white sheets. The sign on the door said, “Under observation.” Little by little, helped by the power of suggestion, I became a lunatic. It was a dangerous game: I had worked up a tic that twisted my mouth, and I bit the inside of my lower lip. I studied how in a mirror and got so good at it that I found myself doing it without thinking. Mustn’t play this game too long, Papi. The effort to seem unbalanced could have serious consequences, even leave permanent damage. Still, I had to play the game with my whole soul if I was to achieve my goal. I had to get into that asylum, have myself classified as irresponsible and leave en cavale with my pal. Cavale! The magic word carried me away; I already saw myself astride my two barrels, being carried to Grande Terre with my buddy, the Italian orderly.

  The doctor stopped by every day. He took a long time examining me; we always spoke to each other politely and nicely. He was troubled, but not yet convinced. So I told him I had the first symptoms—the shooting pains in the neck.

  “How are you, Papillon? Slept well?”

  “Yes, thank you, Doctor. Pretty good. Thanks for lending me your copy of Match. But sleep, that’s something else again. The trouble is that in back of my cell there’s a pump for watering something, and the shaft goes pang-pang all night, right through the back of my neck, and there’s a kind of echo inside me going pang-pang too. It keeps going all night long. I can’t stand it. I’d be very grateful if you could get my cell changed.”

  The doctor turned to the orderly guard and muttered, “Is there a pump?”

  The guard shook his head.

  “Guard, put him in another cell. Where would you like to go?”

  “As far as possible form the damned pump. At the far end of the hall. Thanks, Doc.”

  The door closed; I was alone in my cell. But I was aware of an almost imperceptible sound. I was being watched through the spy hole. It had to be the doctor, for I hadn’t heard his steps moving off when he left. Quickly I stuck my fist out against the wall which my imaginary pump was behind and cried out—but not too loud: “Stop, stop, you filthy bastard! When will you finish that watering, asshole?” Then I threw myself on my bed and hid my head under the pillow.

  I didn’t hear the small brass plate close over the hole, but I made out the sound of retreating steps.

  I changed cells that afternoon. I must have put on a good show because two guards and two orderlies were assigned to accompany me the few feet to my new one. They didn’t say a word, so I didn’t speak to them. I just followed them silently. Two days later I produced the second symptom: noises in the ear.

  “How are you, Papillon? Did you finish the magazine I gave you?”

  “No, I couldn’t. I spent the whole day and most of the night trying to smother some mosquitoes or gnats or something. They’ve made their nest in my ear. I stuffed it with a piece of cotton, but it doesn’t work. I can’t seem to stop the zzin-zzin-zzin sound their wings make. But even worse is the buzzing. It never stops. It gets on your nerves, Doc. What do you think? Maybe asphyxiation, and if it doesn’t work, we could try to drown them. What do you say?”

  The tic in my mouth was working and the doctor made a note of it. Then he took my hand in his and look
ed into my eyes. I could feel that he was troubled.

  “Yes, my friend, we’ll drown them. Chatal, see that his ears are given a lavage.”

  I repeated these scenes every morning, with variations, but the doctor was still undecided about sending me to the asylum.

  While Chatal was giving me an injection of bromide, he warned me, “It’s going well for the moment. The doctor is definitely worried about you, but it could still be a long time before he sends you to the asylum. If you want to speed things up, show him you can be dangerous.”

  “How are you, Papillon?” The doctor was accompanied by Chatal and a couple of infirmary orderlies and greeted me in his friendly way as he opened the door to my cell.

  “Don’t give me that crap, Doctor!” I was very aggressive. “You know damn well how I am. I want to know which of you is in cahoots with my torturer?”

  “Who’s torturing you? When? How?”

  “Doc, do you know the works of Dr. d’Asonval?”

  “I should hope so.”

  “You know that he invented a multiple-wave oscillator for ionizing the air around a patient with duodenal ulcers. The oscillator gives off electric waves. Well, I think some enemy of mine filched one from the Cayenne hospital. Each time I go to sleep, he pushes the button and the charge hits me right in my gut. In one swoop I’m lifted five-inches off my bed. How do you expect me to sleep with that thing? It doesn’t leave off the whole night long. The minute I close my eyes—pang—the current is on. My whole body lets go like a spring. I can’t stand it any more, Doc! You tell everybody that the first man I suspect, I kill. It’s true I don’t have a weapon, but I’ve got enough strength to strangle him, whoever he is. They’re warned! So to hell with you and your hypocritical ‘How are you, Papillon?’ I repeat, don’t give me any of that crap!”

  The incident bore fruit. Chatal told me that the doctor had warned the guards to watch me closely. They must never open my cell door unless there were two or three of them, and they were always to talk to me gently. I was suffering from a persecution complex, and I should go to the asylum immediately.

  “With one guard I can take charge of moving him to the asylum,” Chatal suggested, to keep me out of a straitjacket.

  “Did you eat well, Papi?”

  “Yes, Chatal, it was very tasty.”

  “You want to come with me and Monsieur Jeannus?”

  “Where we going?”

  “We’re taking medicine up to the asylum. It will be a nice walk for you.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  And the three of us set off toward the asylum. We were almost there when Chatal asked, “Aren’t you tired of camp, Papillon?”

  “I’m sick to death of it, especially since my buddy Carbonieri isn’t there any more.”

  “Why don’t you spend a few days at the asylum? Maybe that way the mec with the machine won’t be able to find you.”

  “It’s not a bad idea, but do you think they’ll accept me when there’s nothing wrong with me?”

  “Leave it to me. I’ll do the talking,” said the guard, all too happy to see me fall into Chatal’s supposed trap.

  So I found myself in the asylum with one hundred lunatics. Living with nuts is no bed of roses. We got an airing in the yard in groups of thirty or forty while the orderlies cleaned the cells. Everybody was stark naked, day and night. Luckily it was hot. They let me wear socks.

  An orderly had just handed me a lighted cigarette. I sat in the sun and reflected on the fact that I had been there five days and had not yet been able to make contact with Salvidia.

  A lunatic came up to me. I knew his story. His name was Fouchet. His mother had sold her house in order to send him fifteen thousand francs through a guard so he could make his escape. The guard was to keep five and give him ten, but instead the guard took the lot and left for Cayenne. When Fouchet found out that his mother had sacrificed everything for nothing, he went off his rocker and attacked some guards. They subdued him before he could do any harm. That was three or four years ago. He had been in the madhouse ever since.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  I looked at the poor bastard standing there in front of me. “Who am I? A man, like you, nothing more, nothing less.”

  “That’s a stupid answer. I can see you’re a man because you’ve got a prick and balls. If you were a woman you’d have a hole. I’m asking who you are. That means, what’s your name?”

  “Papillon.”

  “Papillon? You’re a butterfly? Well, you’re a lousy butterfly. A butterfly flies, it has wings. Where are yours?”

  “I lost them.”

  “You’ve got to find them. That way you can escape. The guards don’t have wings. That way you play them for suckers. Give me your cigarette.” He grabbed it from me before I had time to hand it to him. Then he sat down and smoked it with a look of rapture.

  “They gypped me. Every time I’m supposed to get something, they gyp me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. I’ve been killing a lot of guards. I hanged two last night. But don’t tell anybody.”

  “Why did you hang them?”

  “They stole my mother’s house from me. D’you know, my mother sent me her house and they thought it was pretty so they kept it and moved in. I was right to hang them, eh?”

  “Right. That way they won’t be able to use your mother’s house.”

  “You see that fat guard over there, behind the grill? He lives in the house. And you see that other guard over there? I’m going to bust him up, too, you can believe it.” Then he got up and left.

  Christ! It’s no joke living with lunatics, and it’s not very safe either. They shout and yell all night, and during the full moon it’s even worse. Why the moon agitates a lunatic, I don’t know. But I’ve noticed it often.

  The guards made reports on the men under observation. With me they double-checked. For instance, they’d deliberately forget to let me out in the yard and wait to see if I complained. Or they’d forget a meal.

  I had a stick with a string hanging from it and made motions as if I were fishing.

  The head guard would say, “Are they biting, Papillon?”

  “They can’t. There’s this little fish following me around, and when a big one comes to bite, the little one warns him, ‘Watch out, don’t bite. That’s Papillon fishing.’ So I never catch anything. But I go on fishing all the same. Maybe one day there’ll be a fish that doesn’t believe him.”

  I heard the guard say to an orderly. “That guy’s really got it!”

  When they made me sit at the communal table in the dining hall, I was never able to eat my lentils. A giant at least six feet eight, with arms, legs and torso covered with hair like a monkey, had picked me out for his victim. He always sat next to me. The lentils were served very hot so you had to wait until they’d cooled off. I’d take up a few in my wooden spoon and blow on them. That way I got down a few spoonfuls. Meanwhile Ivanhoe—he thought he was Ivanhoe—picked up his plate, made a funnel of his hands and swallowed the lot in five gulps. Then he grabbed mine and did the same, after which he banged the plate down in front of me and looked at me with his enormous bloodshot eyes as if to say, “See how I eat lentils?” I was beginning to get pissed off at Ivanhoe, and since I hadn’t yet been classified mad, I decided to let him have it.

  It was another lentil day. Ivanhoe was sitting there next to me, his batty face ecstatic at the prospect of downing my lentils after his. I pulled a big heavy jug of water toward me. The giant had just begun to lift my plate to his mouth when I stood up and with all my strength brought the jug down on his head. He screamed like a wounded animal and collapsed on the floor. Immediately all the lunatics jumped on each other, armed with their plates. There was a ghastly hassle to the accompaniment of screams and yells.

  I was picked up bodily by four husky orderlies and returned to my cell with speed and few courtesies. I shouted that Ivanhoe had stolen my wallet with my card of identity. That did it. The d
octor decided to classify me as not responsible for my actions. The guards agreed that I was a peaceful nut but with occasional dangerous moments. Ivanhoe had a splendid dressing on his head. Apparently I’d opened up more than five inches of his skull. It’s a good thing we didn’t take our walks at the same time.

  I finally managed to talk to Salvidia. He’d already got hold of a duplicate key to the storeroom where the barrels were kept and was trying to find enough wire to tie them together. I told him I was afraid that, once we were afloat, the tugging of the barrels would break the wire; rope would be better since it had more give. I would try to get some and we could use both—wire and rope. He also needed three keys: one for my cell, one for the corridor that led to it, and one for the main door of the asylum. We weren’t heavily guarded. One lone guard went on duty every four hours, from nine to one at night and from one to five. Two of the guards slept through their rounds. They counted on the convict-orderly who was on duty at the same time to cover for them. So everything was fine; we had only to be patient. A month at most and we’d be off.

  The head guard gave me a terrible cigar as I was going into the yard. But terrible as it was, it seemed delicious. I looked at the herd of naked men, singing, weeping, making convulsive motions, talking to themselves. They were still wet from the showers they had to take before coming into the yard; their pathetic bodies were battered from the beatings they’d received or had inflicted on themselves, or from the marks left by straitjackets. This was the last circle of hell all right. I wondered how many of these crazy bastards had been unfairly held responsible for their actions in France.

  Titin had been in my convoy in 1933. He had killed a guy in Marseilles, hailed a cab, put his victim inside and driven to the hospital where he announced, “Take care of him. I think he’s sick.” He had been arrested immediately, and the jury had had the gall to hold him responsible. But clearly he must have been mad already to do a thing like that. Only a madman wouldn’t have known he’d get arrested. So here Titin was, sitting next to me. With his chronic dysentery he was a walking corpse. He looked at me with his blank, iron-gray eyes. “I got little monkeys in my belly, pal. The bad ones bite my gut and then I bleed. That’s when they’re angry. The other ones are covered with hair and have hands as soft as feathers. They caress me gently and keep the bad ones from biting me. When the gentle little monkeys defend me, there’s no blood.”