six more heads in the past twelve months? Anyhow, now I’m the one that’s got you, chained good and hard to this wall. I can just see the way you grinned, yes, I can see your triumphant look when they read out my sentence after your speech for the prosecution. It seems only yesterday, and yet it was years ago. How many? Ten years? Twenty?’
But what was happening to me? Why ten years? Why twenty? Get a hold on yourself, Papillon; you’re young, you’re strong, and you’ve got five thousand six hundred francs in your gut. Two years, yes. I’d do two years out of my life sentence, and no more: I swore that to myself.
Snap out of it, Papillon, you’re going crazy. The silence and this cell are driving you out of your mind. I’ve got no cigarettes. Finished the last yesterday. I’ll start walking. After all, I don’t have to have my eyes closed or my handkerchief over them to see what goes on. That’s it; I’m on my feet. The cell’s four yards long from the door to the wall – this is to say five short paces. I began walking, my hands behind my back. And I went on again, ‘All right. As I was saying, I can see your triumphant look quite distinctly. Well, I’m going to change it for you: into something quite different. In one way it’s easier for you than it was for me. I couldn’t shout out, but you can. Shout just as much as you like; shout as loud as you like. What am I going to do to you? Dumas’ recipe? Let you die of hunger, you sod? No: that’s not enough. To start with I’ll just put out your eyes. Eh? You still look triumphant, do you? You think that if I put your eyes out at least you’ll have the advantage of not seeing me any longer, and that I’ll be deprived of the pleasure of seeing the terror in them. Yes, you’re right: I mustn’t put them out. At least not right away. That’ll be for later. I’ll cut your tongue out, though, that terrible cutting tongue of yours, sharp as a knife; no, sharper – as sharp as a razor. The tongue that you prostituted to your splendid career. The same tongue that says pretty things to your wife, your kids and your girl-friend. Girl-friend? Boy-friend, more likely. Much more likely. You couldn’t be anything but a passive, flabby pouffe. That’s right: I must begin by doing away with your tongue, because next to your brain that’s what does the damage. You see it very well, you know: so well you could persuade the jury to answer yes to the questions put to them. So well that you could make the cops look like they were straight and devoted to their duty: so well that that witness’s cock and balls seemed to hold water. So well that those twelve bastards thought I was the most dangerous man in Paris. If you hadn’t possessed this false, skilful, persuasive tongue, so practised at distorting people and facts and things, I should still be sitting there on the terrace of the Grand Cafe in the Place Blanche, and I’d never have had to stir. So we’re all agreed, then, that I’m going to rip this tongue of yours right out. But what’ll I do it with?’
I paced on and on and on. My head was spinning, but there I was, still face to face with him, when suddenly the electricity went out and a very faint ray of daylight made its way into the cell through the boarded window.
What? Morning already? Had I spent the whole night with my revenge? What splendid hours they had been! How that long, long night had flown by!
Sitting on my bed, I listened. Nothing. The most total silence. Now and then a little click at my door. It was the warder, wearing slippers so as to make no sound, opening the little metal flap and putting his eye to the peep-hole that let him see me without my being able to see him.
The machinery that the Republic of France had thought up was now entering its second phase. It was working splendidly: in its first run it had wiped out a man that might be a nuisance to it. But that was not enough. The man was not to die too quickly: he mustn’t manage to get out of it by way of suicide. He was wanted. Where would the prison service be if there weren’t any prisoners? In the shit. So he was to be watched. He had to go off alive to the penal settlements, where he would provide a living for still more state employees. I heard the click again, and it made me smile.
Don’t you worry, you sod: I shan’t escape. At least not the way you’re afraid of – not by suicide. There’s only one thing I want, and that’s to keep alive and as fit as possible and to leave as soon as I can for that French Guiana where you’re sending me, bloody fools that you are: thank God.
This old warder with his perpetual clicking was a fairy godmother in comparison with the screws over there: they were no choir-boys, not by any means. I’d always known that; for when Napoleon set up the penal settlements and they said to him. ‘Who are you going to have to look after these hard cases?’ he answered, ‘Harder cases still.’ Afterwards I found that the inventor of the penal settlements had not lied.
Clang clang: an eight-inch-square hole opened in the middle of my door. They passed me in coffee and a pound and a half of bread. Now I was sentenced I was no longer allowed to have things sent in from the restaurant, but if I could pay I could still buy cigarettes and a certain amount of food from the little canteen. That would last a few days more, then after that nothing. The Conciergerie was the stage just before penal internment. I smoked a Lucky Strike, enjoying it enormously: six francs sixty a packet they cost. I bought two. I was spending my official prison money because soon they would be confiscating it for the costs of the trial.
Dega sent a little note in my bread to tell me to go to the de-lousing centre. ‘There are three lice in the matchbox.’ I took out the matches and I found his fine healthy cooties. I knew what it meant. I showed them to the warder so that the next day he should send me and all my things, including the mattress, to a steam-room where all the parasites would be killed – except us, of course. And there the next day I met Dega. No warder in the steam-room. We were alone.
‘You’re a good guy, Dega. Thanks to you I’ve got my charger.’
‘It doesn’t bother you?’
‘No.’
‘Every time you go to the latrine, wash it well before you put it back.’
‘Yes. I think it’s completely water-tight. The folded notes are perfect, though I’ve had it in this last week.’
‘That means it’s all right, then.’
‘What do you think you’ll do, Dega?’
‘I’m going to pretend to be mad. I don’t want to go to Guiana. I’ll do maybe eight or ten years here in France. I’ve got contacts and I can get five years remission at least.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Forty-two.’
‘Then you’re out of your mind! If you do ten out of your fifteen you’ll come out an old man. Are you scared of penal?’
‘Yes. I’m not ashamed of saying it to you, Papillon, but I’m scared. It’s terrible in Guiana. Eighty per cent mortality every year. One convoy takes the place of the last, and each convoy has between eighteen hundred and two thousand men. If you don’t get leprosy you get yellow fever or one of those kinds of dysentery there’s no recovering from, or else consumption or malaria. And if you escape all that then it’s very likely you’ll get murdered for your charger, or else you’ll die trying to make a break. Believe me, Papillon, I’m not trying to discourage you; but I’ve known a good many lags who’ve come back to France after doing short stretches – five to seven years – and I know what I’m talking about. They are absolute complete bleeding wrecks. They spend nine months of the year in hospital; and they say that making a break is nothing like what people think – not a piece of cake at all.’
‘I believe you, Dega. But I believe in myself, too. I won’t waste much time there. That’s something you can be sure of. I’m a sailor and I understand the sea, and you can trust me when I say I shall make a break very soon.
