said.
I heard telephoning all night long. As for me, once I’d sent it out I stopped. I was too comfortable in my bed. I didn’t want any sort of trouble. And the prospect of going back to the black-hole didn’t attract me at all. Today less than any other time.
1 10,000 francs
2 The branch of the police particularly concerned with crime.
3 The executioner in 1932.
4 1 lb. of bread and one-and-three-quarter pints of water.
Second Exercise-Book On the way to Guiana
Saint-Martin-de-Ré
That evening Batton sent me in three cigarettes and a piece of paper that read, ‘Papillon, I know you’ll remember me kindly when you go. I’m provost, but I try to hurt the prisoners as little as possible. I took the job because I’ve got nine children and I can’t wait for a pardon. I’m going to try to earn it without doing too much harm. Good-bye. Good luck. The convoy is for the day after tomorrow.’
And in fact the next day they assembled us in the corridor of the punishment-block in groups of thirty. Medical orderlies from Caen gave us shots against tropical diseases. Three shots for each man, and three and a half pints of milk. Dega was close to me: he looked thoughtful. We no longer paid any attention to the rules of silence for we knew they couldn’t put us in the punishment cell just after having our injections. We gossiped in an undertone right there in front of the screws, who dared not say anything because of the orderlies from the town.
Dega said to me, ‘Are they going to have enough cellular vans to take us all in one go?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s a good way off. Saint-Martin-de-Ré, and if they take sixty a day, it’ll last ten days, because we’re close on six hundred here alone.’
‘The great thing is to have the injections. That means you’re on the list and soon you’ll be in Guiana. Keep your chin up, Dega: the next stage is beginning now. Count on me, just as I count on you.’
He looked at me, his eyes shining with pleasure; he put his hand on my arm and once again he said, ‘Life or death, Papi.’
There was nothing really much to say about the convoy, except that each man very nearly stifled in his little cupboard in the cellular van. The warders wouldn’t let us have any air, not even by letting the doors stand just ajar. When we reached La Rochelle two of the people in our van were found dead, asphyxiated.
There were people standing around on the quay – for Saint-Martin-de-Re is an island and we had to take a boat to cross – and they saw those two poor unfortunate bastards being found. Not that they showed feelings of any sort for us, I may add. And since the gendarmes had to hand us over at the citadel, living or dead, they loaded the corpses on to the boat along with the rest of us.
It was not a long crossing, but it gave us a real breath of sea-air. I said to Dega, ‘It smells of a break.’ He smiled. And Julot, next to us, said, ‘Yes. It smells of a break. I’m on my way back to the place I escaped from five years ago. Like a silly bastard I let myself be picked up just as I was on the point of carving up the fence who’d done the Judas on me at the time of my little trouble ten years ago. Let’s try and stay together, because at Saint-Martin they put you ten to a cell in any old order, just as you come to hand.’
He’d got that one wrong, brother Julot. When we got there he and two others were called out and set apart from the rest. They were three men who had got away from the penal settlement: they had been retaken in France and now they were going back for the second time.
Grouped ten by ten in our cells, we began a life of waiting. We were allowed to talk and smoke, and we were very well fed. The only danger during this period was for your charger. You could never tell why, but suddenly you would be called up, stripped and very carefully searched. The whole of your body first, even the soles of your feet, and then all your clothes. ‘Get dressed again!’ And back you went to where you came from.
Cells: dining-hall: the courtyard where we spent hours and hours marching in single file. ‘Left, right! Left, right! Left, right!’ We marched in groups of five hundred convicts. A long, long crocodile; wooden shoes going clack-clack. Compulsory total silence. Then, ‘Fall out!’ Everyone would sit down on the ground, forming groups according to class or status. First came the men of the genuine underworld: with them it scarcely mattered where you came from, and there were Corsicans, men from Marseilles, Toulouse, Brittany, Paris and so on. There was even one from the Ardèche, and that was me. I must say this for the Ardèche – there were only two Ardèchois in the whole convoy of one thousand nine hundred men, a gamekeeper who had killed his wife, and me. Which proves that the Ardéchois are good guys. The other groups came together more or less anyhow, because more flats than sharps go to the penal settlements, more squares than wide boys. These days of waiting were called observation days. And it was true enough they observed us from every possible angle.
One afternoon I was sitting in the sun when a man came up to me. A little man, spectacled, thin. I tried to place him, but with our clothing all being the same it was very difficult.
‘You’re the one they call Papillon?’ He had a very strong Corsican accent.
‘That’s right. What do you want with me?’
‘Come to the latrine,’ he said. And he went off.
‘That guy,’ said Dega, ‘he’s some square from Corsica. A mountain bandit, for sure. What can he possibly want with you?’
‘I’m going to find out.’
I went towards the latrines in the middle of the courtyard and when I got there I pretended to piss. The man stood next to me, in the same attitude. Without looking round he said, ‘I’m Pascal Matra’s brother-in-law. In the visiting-room he told me to come to you if I needed help – to come in his name.’
‘Yes: Pascal’s a friend of mine. What do you want?’
‘I can’t keep my charger in any more. I’ve got dysentery. I don’t know who to trust and I’m afraid it’ll be stolen or the screws will find it. Please, Papillon, please carry it for me a few days.’ And he showed me a charger much bigger than mine. I was afraid he was setting a trap – asking me to find out whether I was carrying one myself. If I said I was not sure I could hold two, he’d know. Without any expression I said, ‘How much has it got in it?’
‘Twenty-five thousand francs.’
Without another word I took the charger – it was very clean, too – and there in front of him I shoved it up, wondering whether a man could hold two. I had no idea. I stood up, buttoned my trousers … it was all right. It did not worry me.
‘My name’s Ignace Galgani,’ he said, before going. ‘Thanks, Papillon.’
I went back to Dega
