with a single push. The place was stiff with sharks and precious soon Emile had become their lunch. He wasn’t there at the evening roll-call and he was put down as having disappeared during an attempt to escape. No one talked about him any more. Only four or five convicts gathering coconuts high up on the island had seen what happened. Everyone knew, of course, except for the screws. André Baillard never heard another word about it.
He was let out of internment for ‘good conduct’ and he had a privileged status at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. They gave him a little cell to himself. He had a disagreement with another convict and one day he treacherously asked him into this cell: there he killed him with a stab right to the heart. They wore his plea of self-defence and he was acquitted. Then, when the penal settlement was abolished, he was pardoned, still on account of his ‘good conduct’.
Saint-Martin-de-Ré was stuffed with prisoners. Two quite different sorts: eight hundred or a thousand real convicts and nine relégués – men in preventive detention. To be a convict you have to have done something serious or at least to have been accused of an important crime. The mildest sentence is seven years hard labour and then it goes up by stages to life, or perpetuity, as they say. A commuted death-sentence automatically means perpetuity. Preventive detention, or relegation, that’s something quite different. If he’s sentenced from three to seven times, a man can be relegated. It’s true they’re all incorrigible thieves and you can see that society has to protect itself. But still it’s shameful that a civilized nation should have this extra sentence of preventive detention. They are small-time thieves – clumsy operators, since they are shopped so often – who get relegation (and in my time that meant the same as life) and who have never stolen as much as ten thousand francs in their whole career as thieves. That’s the greatest bit of meaningless balls French civilization has to offer. A nation has no right to revenge itself nor to wipe out the people who hinder the workings of society. They are people who ought to be treated rather than be punished in such an inhuman way.
Now we had been seventeen days at Saint-Martin-de-Ré. We knew the name of the ship that was to carry us to the settlement: she was the Martinière. She was going to take one thousand eight hundred and seventy prisoners aboard. That morning eight or nine hundred convicts were assembled in the inner court of the fortress. We had been standing there for about an hour, lined up in ranks of ten, filling the square. A gate opened and in came men who were not dressed like the warders we were used to. They wore good, military kind of clothes: sky-blue. It wasn’t the same as a gendarme and it wasn’t the same as a soldier. They each had a broad belt with a holster; the revolver grip showed. There were about eighty of them. Some had stripes. They were all sunburnt and they were of any age between thirty-five and fifty. The old ones looked pleasanter than the young, who threw a chest and looked important – gave themselves airs. Along with these men’s officers there came the governor of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, a gendarmerie colonel, three or four quacks in overseas army uniform and two priests in white cassocks. The gendarmerie colonel picked up a speaking-trumpet and put it to his mouth. We expected shun! but nothing of the kind. He said, ‘Listen carefully, all of you. From this moment on you are taken over by the authorities of the Ministry of Justice, representing the penitentiary administration of French Guiana, whose administrative centre is the town of Cayenne. Major Barrot, I hereby hand over to you the eight hundred and sixteen convicts now present, and this is the list of their names. Be so good as to check that they are all here.’
The roll-call began straight away. ‘So-and-so, present. So-and-so …’ etc. It lasted two hours and everything was correct. Then we watched the two authorities exchanging signatures on a little table brought for the purpose.
Major Barrot had as many stripes as the colonel, but they were gold and not the gendarmerie’s silver: he took his turn at the megaphone.
‘Transportees, from now on that is the name you’ll always be called by – transportee so-and-so or transportee such-and-such a number – the number that will be allotted to you. From now on you are under the special penal settlement laws and regulations: you come under its own particular tribunals which will take the necessary decision with regard to you as the case arises. For crimes committed in the penal settlement these courts can condemn you to anything from imprisonment to death. These disciplinary sentences, such as prison or solitary confinement, are of course served in different establishments that belong to the administration. The officers you see opposite you are called supervisors. When you speak to them you will say “Monsieur le surveillant” After you have eaten you will be given a kitbag containing the settlement uniform. Everything has been provided for and you will not need anything but what is in the bag. Tomorrow you will go aboard the Martinière. We shall travel together. Don’t lose heart at leaving this country: you will be better off in the settlement than in solitary confinement in France. You can talk, amuse yourselves, sing and smoke; and you needn’t be afraid of being treated roughly so long as you behave yourselves. I ask you to leave the settling of your private disagreements until we reach Guiana. During the voyage discipline has to be very strict, as I hope you will understand. If there are any men among you who don’t feel up to making the voyage, they may report to the infirmary, where they will be examined by the medical officers who are accompanying the convoy. I wish you all a pleasant trip.’ The ceremony was over.
‘Well, Dega, what do you think about it?’
‘Papillon, old cock, I see I was right when I told you that the other convicts were the worst danger we’d have to cope with. That piece of his about “leave the settling of your private disagreements until we reach Guiana” meant plenty. Christ, what killings and murdering must go on there!’
‘Never worry about that: just rely on me.’
I found Francis la Passe and said, ‘Is your brother still a medical attendant?’
‘Yes. He’s not a real convict, only a bleeding relégué.’
‘Get into touch with him as quick as possible: ask him to give you a scalpel. If he wants money for it, tell me how much. I’ll pay.’
Two hours later I had a very strong steel-handled scalpel. Its only fault was that it was rather big; but it was a formidable weapon.
I went and sat very near the latrines in the middle of the courtyard and I sent for Galgani to give him back his charger; but it was going to be very hard to find him in that milling crowd – a huge yard crammed with eight hundred men. We had never caught sight of Julot, Guittou or Suzini since we got there.
The advantage of communal life is that you belong to a new society, if this could be called a society – you live in it, talk in it, become part of it. There are so many things to say, to hear and to do that you no longer have any time to think. And it seemed to me, as I saw how the past faded away, growing less important in comparison with everyday life, it seemed to me that once you got to the penal settlement you must almost forget what you have been, how or why you had landed up there, and concentrate upon one thing alone – escape. I was wrong, because the most important and most engrossing thing is above all to keep yourself alive.
Where were the cops, the members of the jury, the assizes, the judges, my wife, my father, my friends? They were there all right, thoroughly alive, each one in his place in my heart; but what with the intense excitement of leaving, of this great leap into the unknown, these new friendships and new aspects of life, they seemed to have less importance than before. But that was only a mere impression. When I wanted, and whenever my mind chose to open each one’s file, they were all instantly alive once more.
Now here was Galgani, being led towards me, for even with his thick pebble-lenses he could scarcely see. He looked better. He came up to me and shook my hand without a word.
I said, ‘I want to give you back your charger. Now you’re well you can carry it yourself. It’s too much responsibility
