the green wall of Sabir’s imagination, sliding slowly along the bank as the boat steams towards Saint-Laurent. The immensity of the forest frightens him, because he knows that from now on he’ll have to live surrounded by it, and that one day soon he’ll have to escape through it.
When the engine cuts out, the silence is extraordinary. Sabir can hear the river lapping at the side of the boat. His blue cloth uniform, which had offered so little protection against the European winter, now suffocates him and he has to resist the temptation to rip it off. Sabir sets his cloth cap carefully on his head. Strange how you feel some vanity even in such circumstances. The town lies ahead, quite still in the dead of the noonday sun. They have been twenty-four days at sea. The air shimmers in the dripping heat. The date is 29 February 1928. It’s Ash Wednesday.
The march to the penitentiary takes only minutes. Sabir is struck by the colourful headdresses of the Creole women among the crowd lining the boulevard, curious to see the new convoy. Some of these women are laughing, calling out to the convicts: ‘Allez, les gars … bonne chance … t’es beau, toi!’The banter sounds too spontaneous, too unnatural; it’s a peculiar counterpart to the scenes on the other side of the Atlantic, just a few weeks before, as the men boarded the ship. Then, the women were weeping, not laughing. Then, Sabir vainly searched the crowd of female faces for a glimpse of his fiancée. Was she there? Most likely not. Sabir had asked her to stay away. Nonetheless a violent feeling, almost hate, grips him now as he thinks of her probable absence that day. It’s practically the first time he’s thought of her since boarding the ship.
To the right, colonial buildings with wide, inviting verandas. To the left, a statue of a man staring imperiously into the river, two black men crouching down beside him. As he marches, Sabir follows the statue’s gaze, beyond the river to the other side. The Dutch bank, according to Bonifacio. There, too, is a smart, whitewashed colonial village: the mirror image of Saint-Laurent. It, too, is completely surrounded by jungle, perched uncertainly by the water as if cornered by an invading army. Although it looks exactly the same, this other side of the river is in fact like a photographic negative, Sabir realises. Because it’s not French. Not a penal colony. Its jungle looks seductive, alive with possibility. A man might disappear into it and emerge on the other side completely changed, a different person.
Little knots of convicts stand idly by the penitentiary gates; they appear to be totally unsupervised. In their red and white striped uniforms and wide straw hats, they remind Sabir of the vaudeville clowns in the shows his mother used to take him to as a boy. As the new convoy are marched through the gates, one of the convicts shouts out: ‘Anyone from Lyons in your cage?’ No one dares answer. Another convict sidles up to the tall man marching beside Sabir – the one who spent the whole trip staring at his tattered map. Apparently they know each other. ‘I’ll send you a note tonight,’ Sabir overhears the convict whisper. ‘I’m working in the botanical gardens. It’s a good job. We’re a man short. When they ask what you do, say you’re a gardener.’
Even once the convoy are inside, the gates of the penitentiary stay open. Convicts seem to wander in and out as they please. This laxness perplexes Sabir because it makes escape look easy, when he’s heard that it isn’t at all. They’re herded into a vast hall with an array of equipment: height gauges, scales, a camera mounted on a tripod, a table with ink-pads for fingerprinting. While Sabir strips, a clerk makes an inventory of the various marks on his body, every wart and mole. Sabir has a small flower tattooed on his left shoulder blade, dating from his army days. The clerk – who Sabir only now realises is actually another convict – examines it very carefully, devotes a short paragraph to it in the registre matricule. ‘What sort of flower is it? What’s its name?’ Flummoxed, Sabir has no response. But later, when he’s asked what his profession is, Bonifacio’s warning about what happens to unskilled prisoners comes back to him. He remembers the convict at the gates and says: ‘Gardener.’
Before lock-up, an officer issues everyone with a sheet of writing paper and a stamped envelope. He tells them that there’s no postal service out in the forest camps, and that, in any case, in future they’ll have to buy their own stamps and paper. Sabir spends the rest of the afternoon earning a couple of francs writing letters for the illiterate convicts. Pleas to wives to stay faithful; to come to Guiana; to on no account come to Guiana. Letters begging lovers not to forget them; to brothers commending the care of their wives and children to them; to parents asking for money, assuring them that everything’s all right, that they’re doing well. Appeals to the Ministry of Justice for pardons; instructions to lawyers in the hope of last-minute miracles; threats of vengeance; last wills and testaments …
Those with money have already bought coffee and cigarettes from one of the turnkeys. One prisoner has bought a fresh supply of cigarettes for Bonifacio as well. He has crouched down, wetted his finger and traced a rough map of the river and coastline on the dirt floor. He’s explaining the three routes out of Saint-Laurent: west, across the river; east, through the jungle; and north, down the river and into the sea.
‘Across the river gets you out of French territory and into Dutch Guiana. Opposite you’ve got the town of Albina. From there, there’s a road to the capital, Paramaribo, on the coast. But your uniform’ll give you away. The Dutch will send you back across the river. So you need false papers and workman’s clothes. That way you can pretend you’re working in one of the mines down the river. Even then, they’ll check back with Saint-Laurent if they think you’re French.
‘Or you can try the jungle. It looks the easiest way, but it’s the hardest. I don’t know anyone who’s made it through to Brazil. Jungle’s so thick you can only do a couple of kilometres in a day. There are huge rivers to cross. Without a gun there’s nothing you can catch. You’ll poison yourself eating the fruit. Or the Indians will find you. They’re paid ten francs for each convict they bring back. Or you’ll go crazy with hunger and come back after a few days. If you can find your way back.
‘Then there’s the sea. It’s the riskiest way. The hardest to organise. But it’s your best bet. You need a lot of dough. You need a boat with a sail, food and water for at least ten days. You paddle down the river at night, to catch the dawn tide. Then you’re in open sea. Because of the winds you can’t go south. So you have to head north-west till you get to Trinidad. The English won’t let you stay. But they won’t hand you back to the French either. They give you a few days to sort yourself out and find fresh supplies. Then you have to sail on. You can’t put to shore in Venezuela, because they’ll send you back to Saint-Laurent. But if you make it to Colombia, you’re free.’
In the tropics, night approaches with almost visible speed, sweeping across the forest like a black tide. Within the barracks a feeble night-light casts spindly shadows: everything is obscure, humid. The night brings no particular relief from the heat and the smallest movement seems to take an enormous effort. Unfamiliar noises reach Sabir through the bars, but in the barracks itself there’s silence. It’s as if the strain and shame of their arrival has exhausted everyone to the point where there’s no room for any further emotion. It’s not just the silence that’s different, but the stillness too. Sabir had got used to the gentle rocking of the boat, and the knot in his gut is like a reverse seasickness. For Sabir, this absolute stillness feels as though something that had once been faintly alive has now finally died.
The barracks holds sixty men – roughly the same ones as in Sabir’s cage on the prison boat, minus those already admitted to hospital. Unconsciously, they’ve reconstructed the cage in the barracks, as if afraid of what novelty might bring. To Sabir’s right lies Bonifacio; to his left Gaspard the country lad – who has tearfully dictated a wrenching letter to his parents begging forgiveness. Despite the heat and humidity, he’s shivering and curled up in foetal position:
