Two guards grabbed my left arm, two others my right. I was forced to the ground, face down, arms behind my back, hands touching my shoulder blades. Handcuffs were put on me and a thumb-screw joining the index finger of my left hand to the thumb of my right. Then the warden pulled me up by the hair like an animal.
No need to go into further details. All you need to know is that I wore the handcuffs behind my back for eleven days. I owe my life to Batton. Each day he threw me the regulation piece of bread, but without the use of my hands I couldn’t eat it. Even when I pushed it against the bars with my head it was no use. But in addition Batton threw in bite-size pieces of bread—enough to keep me alive. I made little piles with my feet; then, flat on my stomach, I ate them like a dog. I chewed each piece thoroughly so as to get the full value.
On the twelfth day they took off my handcuffs. The metal had cut into my flesh and it was covered in spots with rotten meat. This scared the warden, especially when I fainted from the pain. When I came to, I was taken to the infirmary and washed, with sterilized water. The attendant insisted they give me an anti-tetanus injection. My arms were paralyzed; I couldn’t get them back to their normal position. Only after a half hour’s massage with camphorated oil was I able to bring them down to my sides.
I went back to my cell, and when the warden noticed the eleven pieces of bread, he said, “You’re going to have a feast! It’s funny, but you don’t seem very thin after eleven days’ fasting …”
“I drank a lot of water, chief.”
“Oh, so that’s it! I get it. Better eat a lot now so you’ll get your strength back.” And he left.
The idiot. He thought I hadn’t eaten anything for eleven days and that if I ate it all in one gulp, I’d die of indigestion.
Toward evening Batton slipped me some tobacco and cigarette papers. I smoked and I smoked, blowing the smoke into the heating duct, which of course didn’t work. I was at least putting it to some purpose.
A little later I called Julot. He also thought I hadn’t eaten for eleven days and advised me to go slow. I was afraid to tell him the truth for fear some bastard might decipher the message. His arm was in a cast, he was in good spirits, and he congratulated me for holding out.
According to him, the convoy would be leaving soon. The orderly had told him that the vaccine for the departing convicts had arrived. It usually came a month before the departure. Foolishly, Julot also asked me if I’d held on to my plan.
Yes, I’d held on to it, but I won’t describe what I went through to do it. My anus was painfully sore.
Three weeks later we were taken out of our cells. What was up? We were given sensational showers with soap and hot water. I felt myself come back to life. Julot laughed like a kid, and Pierrot le Fou was radiant with joy.
As this was our first time out of the dungeon, we had no way of knowing what was going on. The barber wouldn’t answer the brief questions I whispered to him.
An unfamiliar prisoner with an ugly face said, “I think we’re out of the dungeon. Maybe they’re scared of an inspection. The important thing is to keep us alive.”
We were each led into a normal cell. At noon, in my first hot soup in forty-three days, I found a small piece of wood. On the bottom side I read: “Departure in eight days. Tomorrow vaccination.”
Who had sent me this? It must be some prisoner kind enough to give us the news. He was aware that if one of us knew, all would know. It was surely pure chance that the message had come to me.
I quickly notified Julot by telephone. “Pass the word along.”
All night long I heard the telephone going. Once I’d given the message, I stopped. I was too comfortable in my bed and I didn’t want to get into trouble. And I wanted no part of a return trip to the dungeon—that day least of all.
SECOND NOTEBOOK
EN ROUTE TO THE BAGNE
SAINT-MARTIN-DE-RÉ
DURING THE EVENING BATTON SLIPPED me three Gauloises and a piece of paper on which I read: “Papillon, I know you’re leaving with a pleasant memory of me. I may be a trusty, but I try to do the prisoners as little harm as possible. I took the job because I have nine children and I’m in a hurry to get out. I’m going to try to win my pardon without doing too much harm. Good-by. Good luck. The convoy leaves the day after tomorrow.”
The next day we were assembled in groups of thirty in the corridor of the disciplinary section. Medics had come from Caen to vaccinate us against tropical diseases. Each of us got three inoculations and two quarts of milk. Dega stood near me. We were no longer observing the rules of silence for we knew we couldn’t be put back in the dungeon once we’d been inoculated. We talked in low voices under the guards’ noses; they didn’t dare say anything in front of the medics from town.
Dega was troubled. “Are they going to have enough paddy wagons to take us all at one time?” he asked me.
“I don’t see how.”
“Saint-Martin-de-Ré is pretty far, and if they take sixty a day it’ll take ten days. There’re almost six hundred of us here alone.”
“The main thing is that we’ve been inoculated. That means we’re on the list and we’ll soon be in the bagne. Cheer up, Dega, we’re on a new lap. You can count on me; I’m counting on you.”
He looked at me and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction. He placed his hand on my arm and said, “In life or death, Papi.”
The convoy was not worth describing except that we suffocated in our little closets in the van. The guards refused to let in any air, even to leave the doors ajar. When we reached La Rochelle, two men were dead of asphyxiation.
The people strolling on the quay—for Saint-Martin-de-Ré was an island and we had to take a boat to cross the channel—witnessed the discovery of the poor devils. They showed us no ill will. The police put the corpses on board with us, for they were supposed to deliver us at the other end dead or alive.
The crossing didn’t take long, but it gave us a chance to take in some good gulps of sea air. I said to Dega, “It smells of cavale.” He smiled. And Julot, who stood next to us, said:
“Yes, it sure does smell of cavale. Let’s try to stick together. At Saint-Martin they pick ten people at random for each cell.”
Julot was wrong. When we arrived, he and two others were summoned and placed apart. They were all escaped prisoners from the bagne; they’d been picked up in France and were going back for the second time.
In our cells, in groups of ten, we began a life of waiting. We were allowed to talk, to smoke, and they fed us well. The only danger was to the plan. For no reason you might suddenly be told to undress, then you were closely examined. First, every inch of your body down to the soles of your feet, then your clothes. Finally, “Get dressed!” then back to the cell.
That was our life: the cell, the mess hall, the yard where we spent long hours marching in line. One, two! One, two! One, two! … We marched in groups of one hundred and fifty. The queue was long, our wooden shoes clattered. Silence was obligatory. Then, “Break ranks!” Everybody sat on the ground; groups formed according to social categories. First, the men of the real underworld from all over—Corsica, Marseilles, Toulouse, Brittany, Paris, etc. There was even one man from Ardèche—me. And I must say in Ardèche’s favor that there were only two in that convoy of nineteen hundred men: a policeman who had killed his wife, and me. Conclusion: men from Ardèche are good men. The other groups just happened, for there were more amateurs going to the bagne than members of the underworld. Those days of waiting were called “observation” days. And they were; we were watched all the time.
One afternoon I was sitting in the sun when a man came up to me. He was small and thin and wore glasses. I tried to place him, but in our uniforms it was hard.
“Are you Papillon?”
“Yes, that’s me. What do you want?”
“Come to the toilets,” he said and left.
“That’s some Corsican square,” Dega said. “Most likely a mountain bandit. What does he want?”
> “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
I went to the toilets in the middle of the yard and pretended to urinate. The man stood next to me, in the same position. Without looking at me he said, “I’m Pascal Matra’s brother-in-law. When he came to visit me, he told me that if I needed help, I was to come to you and use his name.”
“Yes, Pascal is a friend of mine. What do you want?”
“I can’t carry my plan any more. I’ve got dysentery. I don’t know who to trust and I’m scared someone will steal it or the guards will find it. Please, Papillon, carry it for me for a few days.” And he showed me a plan much bigger than mine. I was afraid it was a trap, that he was asking me this to find out if I had one. If I told him I wasn’t sure I could carry two, he’d know. So I asked him coldly, “How much is in it?”
“Twenty-five thousand francs.”
Without another word I took his plan. Very clean it was, too, and right there in front of him I pushed it up my anus, wondering if it was possible for a man to carry two. I had no idea. I stood up, put my pants back on.... It was all right. It didn’t bother me.
“My name is Ignace Galgani,” he said before leaving. “Thanks, Papillon.”
I went back to Dega and told him the story.
“It’s not too heavy?”
“No.”
“O.K. then.”
We tried to get in touch with the men who had escaped before, if possible with Julot or Le Guittou. We were hungry for information: what it was like over there, how they treated you, how to keep your plan, etc. As luck would have it, we fell in with a very unusual character. He was a Corsican who had been born in the bagne. His father was a guard and lived with his wife on the Iles du Salut. He had been born on the Ile Royale, one of the three islands, the others being Saint-Joseph and Diable (Devil’s Island), and—oh destiny!—he was going back not as a guard’s son but as a convict.
He had been given twelve years at hard labor for burglary with forced entry. He was nineteen, open-faced, with clear bright eyes. We could tell right away that he was a victim of circumstance. He knew very little about the underworld, but he would be useful in giving us information on what lay ahead. He told us about life on the islands where he had lived for fourteen years. We learned, for example, that his nurse on the islands had been a convict, a famous gangster who got his on the Butte in a duel with knives over the beautiful eyes of Casque d’Or.
He gave us some invaluable advice: we must plan our escape from Grande Terre; from the islands it would be impossible. Then, we mustn’t get listed as dangerous, for with this label we’d no sooner land at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, our destination, than we’d be interned for years or for life, depending on how dangerous they thought we were. In general, fewer than 5 percent were interned on the islands. The others stayed on Grande Terre. The islands were healthy, but Grande Terre—as Dega had already told us—was a real bitch of a place: all sorts of diseases gradually drained a con, or he met with various forms of sudden death.
We hoped we wouldn’t be interned on the islands. But I felt a knot in my throat: what if I had already been labeled dangerous? With my life sentence, the business with Tribouillard and the director, I was not in good shape.
Saint-Martin-de-Ré was bursting at the seams with prisoners. There were two categories: between eight hundred and a thousand convicts, and nine hundred relégués. To be a convict, you had to have done something serious or, at least, been accused of having done something serious. The sentences ranged from seven years of hard labor to life. A convict granted a reprieve from the death penalty automatically got life. With the relégués it was different. A man became a relégué after three to five convictions. It’s true they were incorrigible thieves and you could understand why society had to protect itself. On the other hand, it was shameful for a civilized people to employ this extra form of punishment. The relégués were small-time thieves—and clumsy ones, since they were caught so often—and being a relégué in my time came to the same thing as a life sentence. No nation has the right to revenge itself or rush to eliminate people just because they cause society anxiety. They should be healed instead of given such inhuman punishment.
We had now been on Saint-Martin-de-Ré seventeen days. We knew that the name of the ship taking us to the bagne was La Martinière. It was to carry eighteen hundred convicts. Eight or nine hundred of us were gathered in the courtyard of the fortress. We had been standing in rows of ten for about an hour, filling the courtyard. A door opened and out came a group of men dressed very differently from the guards we had known. They wore sky-blue suits of a military cut and looked well dressed. They weren’t police and they weren’t soldiers. They all wore wide belts with holsters hanging from them; we could see the handles of their guns. There were about eighty of them. Some wore stripes on their sleeves. All were sunburned and looked to be between thirty-five and fifty. The older men seemed sympathetic; the young ones stuck out their chests with an air of importance. The commanding officer of the group was accompanied by the director of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, a police colonel, three or four army doctors in colonial dress and two priests in white cassocks. The police colonel put a loudspeaker to his mouth. We expected an “Attention!” but not at all.
“Listen carefully,” the colonel said. “From here on you are under the jurisdiction of the officials of the Ministry of Justice representing the Penal Administration of French Guiana, whose administrative center is the city of Cayenne. Warden Barrot, I transfer to you the eight hundred prisoners present and listed here. Will you certify that they are all present.”
The roll call began: “So and so, present; so and so, present, etc.” It took two hours; everything was in order. Then we watched the exchange of signatures by the two administrations on a small table provided for the occasion.
Warden Barrot (he had as many stripes as the colonel, though his were colored instead of silver) took his turn at the loudspeaker. “Transportees, from here on that’s what you’ll be called—Transportee so and so, or Transportee such and such a number, whichever you are given. From this moment on you are under the special laws of the bagne, its regulations, its internal tribunals which, when called upon, will make the decisions they think necessary. These autonomous tribunals can punish you, depending on the offense you commit in the bagne, with anything from a simple prison sentence to the death penalty. These disciplinary sentences, whether for prison or solitary confinement, may be carried out in any one of the places that belong to the Administration. The police you see before you are called wardens. When you address them, you must call them ‘Mister Warden.’ After supper each of you will receive a navy pack with your clothing for the bagne. Everything has been anticipated; these are all you’ll need. Tomorrow you will board La Martinière. We will make the trip together. Don’t feel sorry to leave; you’ll be better off at the bagne than in a penitentiary in France. You can talk, play cards, sing, smoke. Don’t worry about being mistreated so long as you behave. I ask that you wait until you’re in the bagne to settle any personal differences you may have. Discipline during the trip must be very severe and I trust you understand why. If there are any of you who don’t feel well enough to undertake the trip, go to the infirmary, where you’ll be examined by the medical captains who are accompanying the convoy. I wish you ‘bon voyage.’” The ceremony was over.
“So, Dega, what do you think?”
“Papillon, old man, I see I was right when I told you the biggest danger was the other cons. That thing he said about ‘wait until you’re in the bagne to settle any personal differences’ spoke volumes. There must be a lot of killings!”
“Don’t worry about it. Just trust me.”
I sought out François la Passe and asked, “Is your brother still an orderly?”
“Yes, he’s a relégué.”
“Go see him as soon as you can and ask him to give you a lancet. If he wants money, tell me how much and I’ll pay him.”
Two hours later I was the owner of a lance
t with a very strong steel handle. Its only drawback was that it was a little too long, but it was a fearsome weapon.
I sat down near the toilets in the middle of the courtyard and sent for Galgani so that I could give him back his plan, but it must have been hard to find him in the shifting mob of eight hundred men filling the enormous yard. We hadn’t seen Julot, Le Guittou or Santini since we’d arrived.
The advantage of communal life was that we lived, talked and belonged to a new society, if you could call it a society. There was so much to say, to listen to, to do that there was no time to think. When I realized how much the past had blurred and been relegated to second place in relation to my present life, I figured that once you arrived at the bagne, you probably forgot who you were and why you were there because you concentrated on only one thing—escape. But I was wrong. By far the most absorbing thing was to stay alive. Where were the cops, the jury, the court, the judges, my wife, my father, my friends? They were back there, very much alive, and each one had a place in my heart, but because of the excitement of departure, the great leap into the unknown, the new friends and acquaintances, they didn’t have the same importance as before. But it only seemed that way. Once I willed it, when my brain was ready to open the drawer where each of them belonged, they’d all be there again.
They were leading Galgani to me, for even with his thick glasses he could barely see. He seemed in better health. He came up and without speaking squeezed my hand.
“I want to give you back your plan,” I said. “Now that you’re well, you can carry it yourself. It’s too much responsibility for me during the trip, and who knows if we’ll be anywhere near each other or even if we’ll see each other at the bagne. So it’s better if you take it.”
Galgani looked unhappy.
“Come on. Come to the toilets and let me give you your plan.”