our messages. I told him I had nothing broken, that my head was covered with lumps, but that I was not wounded anywhere.
He had seen me going down, dragged by one foot, and he told me that at each stair my head had banged on the step before. He had never lost consciousness. He thought that Tribouillard had been very seriously scalded and that with the help of the wool the burns had gone deep – he was not going to get over it in a hurry.
Three very fast, repeated knocks told me there was something up. I stopped. And indeed a few moments later the door opened. There was a shout, ‘Get to the back, you sod! Get to the back of your cell and stand to attention.’ It was the new provost speaking. ‘Batton’s my name, my real name. I’ve got the name of the job, you see.’ He lit up the black-hole and my naked body with a big ship’s lantern. ‘Here’s something to put on. Don’t you stir from back there. Here’s some bread and water.4 Don’t stuff it all down at one go: you won’t get anything more for another twenty-four hours.’
He shouted at me like a brute and then he raised the lantern to his face. I saw he was smiling, but not wickedly. He laid a finger on his lips and pointed at the things he had left. There must have been a warder in the passage, but he wanted to make me understand he was not an enemy.
True enough, inside the hunk of bread I found a big piece of boiled meat and in the pocket of the trousers – Christ, what wealth! – a packet of cigarettes and a dry lighter – a tinder lighter with a bit of tinderwick in it. Presents like this were worth millions here. Two shirts instead of one, and woollen drawers that came down to my ankles. I’ll never forget him, that Batton. He was rewarding me for having wiped out Tribouillard. Before the dust-up he had only been assistant-provost. Now, thanks to me, he had risen to be the great man himself. In a word, he owed his promotion to me and he was showing his gratitude. And because we were safe with Batton, Julot and I sent one another telegrams all day long. I learnt from him that our departure for the penal settlement was no great way off – three or four months.
Two days later we were brought out of the punishment cells and taken up to the governor’s office, two warders to each of us. There were three men sitting there opposite the door, behind a table. It was a kind of court. The governor acted as president, and the deputy-governor and chief warders as assessors.
‘Ah-ha, my young friends, so here you are! What have you got to say?’
Julot was very white and his eyes were swollen: he certainly had a temperature. His arm had been broken three days ago, and he must have been in shocking pain. Quietly he said, ‘My arm’s broken.’
‘You asked for it. That’ll teach you to fly at people. You’ll see the doctor when he comes. I hope it will be within a week. The waiting will be good for you, because the pain will perhaps be a lesson. But you don’t think I’m going to send for a doctor especially for a fellow like you? You can just wait until the prison doctor has time to come, and he will look after you. But nevertheless I sentence you both to the black-hole until further orders.’
Julot looked full at me, right in the eye. He seemed to be saying, ‘This well-dressed gent disposes of other people’s lives very easily.’
I turned towards the governor again and looked at him. He thought I meant to speak. He said, ‘And what about you? The sentence doesn’t seem to be to your liking? Have you anything to say against it?’
I said, ‘Absolutely nothing, Monsieur le Directeur. The only thing I feel is an urge to spit in your eye; but I don’t like to do so, in case it should dirty my spit.’
He was taken aback, he reddened and for a moment he couldn’t grasp what I’d said. But the chief warder grasped it all right. He roared at the screws, ‘Take him out and look after him properly. I want to see him here again in an hour’s time, begging pardon on his hands and knees. We’ll tame him! I’ll make him polish my boots with his tongue, soles and all. Don’t be lenient with him – he’s all yours.’
Two warders twisted my right arm, two others my left. I was flat on my face with my hands right up against my shoulder-blades. They put on handcuffs with a thumb-piece, fixing my left forefinger to the thumb of my right hand, and the top warder picked me up by the hair like an animal.
There’s no point telling you what they did to me. I’ll just say I had the handcuffs on behind my back for eleven days. I owed my life to Batton. Every day he tossed the regulation hunk of bread into my cell, but since I couldn’t use my hands it was impossible to eat it. Even when I had it wedged up against the bars I couldn’t manage to bite into the lump. But Batton also tossed in bits the size of a mouthful, and he tossed in enough to keep me alive. I heaped them up with my foot and flat on my belly I ate them like a dog. I chewed each bit very thoroughly, so as not to lose anything at all.
When they took the handcuffs off me on the twelfth day the steel had eaten in, and in some places the metal was covered with bruised flesh. The head warder got scared, particularly as I fainted away with the pain. After they had brought me round they took me to the hospital, where they cleaned me up with hydrogen peroxide. The attendant insisted on my being given an anti-tetanus shot. My arms had stiffened and could not go back to their natural position. It took more than half an hour of rubbing them with camphorated oil before I could bring them down to my sides.
I went back to the black-hole, and the chief warder, seeing the eleven hunks of bread, said, ‘You can have a proper banquet now! But it’s funny – you haven’t got all that thin after eleven days of starving.’
‘I drank plenty of water, chief.’
‘Ah, so that’s it. I get you. Well, now eat plenty to get your strength back.’ And he went away.
The poor bloody half-wit! He said that because he was sure I hadn’t eaten anything for eleven days and because if I stuffed myself all at once I should die of it. Not bleeding likely. Towards nightfall Batton sent me in some tobacco and cigarette-paper. I smoked and smoked, breathing out into the central-heating pipe – it never worked, of course, but at least it served that purpose.
Later I called up Julot. He too thought I had eaten nothing for eleven days and he advised me to go easy. I did not like to let him know the truth, because I was afraid of some bastard picking up the message. His arm was in plaster; he was in good form; he congratulated me on holding out. According to him the convoy was close at hand. The medical orderly had told him the shots the convicts were to be given before they left had already arrived. They usually came a month before the convoy left. Julot wasn’t very cautious, for he also asked me whether I had managed to keep my charger.
Yes, I had kept it all right, but I can’t describe what I had had to do not to lose it. There were some cruel wounds in my anus.
Three weeks later they took us out of the punishment cells. What was up? They gave us a marvellous shower with soap and hot water. I felt myself coming to life again. Julot was laughing like a child and Pierrot le Fou beamed all over himself with happiness.
Since we had come straight out of the black-hole we knew nothing about what was happening. The barber wouldn’t answer when I whispered, ‘What’s up?’ A wicked-looking character I didn’t know said, ‘I think we’re amnestied from the punishment cells. Maybe they’re scared of an inspector who’s coming by. The great thing is they have to show us alive.’ Each of us was taken to an ordinary cell. At noon, as I ate my first bowl of hot soup for forty-three days, I found a bit of wood. On it I read ‘Leave in a week’s time. Shots tomorrow.’
Who had sent it? I never knew. It must have been some convict who was
