Papillon. Анри Шарьер

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СКАЧАТЬ had gone over and over all this valuable information. For his part, he was quite ready. He knew that he was going straight to the punishment cell, because he was an escaped man who had been retaken. So he had a very small blade, not much more than a penknife, in his charger. When we got there he was going to take it out and rip his knee open. As we came down the gangway he was going to fall, right there in front of everyone. He thought he’d be taken straight from the quay to the hospital. And that indeed was exactly what happened.

      Saint-Laurent-Du-Maroni

      The warders had gone off in relays to change. Each in turn came back dressed in white with a sun-helmet instead of a kepi. Julot said. ‘We’re almost there.’ It was appallingly hot, for they had shut the port-holes. Through the glass you could see the bush. So we were in the Maroni. The water was muddy. Untouched virgin forest, green and impressive. Disturbed by the ship’s siren, birds rose and flew across the sky. We went very slowly, and that allowed us to pay close attention to the thick, dark-green, overflowing vegetation. We saw the first wooden houses, with their corrugated iron roofs. Black men and women stood at their doors, watching the ship go by. They were quite used to seeing it unload its human cargo, and so they never even bothered to wave as it passed. Three blasts on the siren and the churning of the propeller told us that we were there, and then the engines stopped entirely. Not a sound: you could have heard the buzzing of a fly.

      Nobody spoke. Julot had his knife open and he was cutting his trousers at the knee, making the edges of the slash look like a tear. It was only on deck that he was going to cut his knee, so as not to leave a trail of blood. The warders opened the door of the cage and lined us up in threes. We were in the fourth rank, with Julot between Dega and me. Up on deck. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and suddenly the blazing sun hit my cropped head and my eyes. We were formed up on the deck and then we moved towards the gangway. When the column hesitated for a moment, just as the first man stepped on to the gangway. I held Julot’s kitbag in place on his shoulder while he used both hands to stretch the skin of his knee, drive the knife in and slash through three or four inches of flesh in one sweep. He passed me the knife and held the kitbag himself. The moment we set foot on the gangway he fell and rolled right down to the bottom. They picked him up, and finding that he was hurt they called the stretcher-bearers. Everything ran just as he had worked it out, and he disappeared, carried by two men on a stretcher.

      A motley crowd watched us with some curiosity. Negroes, half-castes, Indians, Chinese and wrecks of white men (they were certainly freed convicts) stared at each one of us as he set foot on land and lined up behind the others. On the other side there were warders, well-dressed civilians, women in summer dresses and children, all with sun-helmets on. They too watched the new arrivals. When there were two hundred of us ashore, the column moved off. We marched for some ten minutes and came to a very high gate made of massive beams, with the words Penitentiary of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. Capacity, 3,000 men. The gate opened and we went in by ranks of ten. ‘Left, right. Left, right. Left, right!’ A good many convicts watched us come in. They had climbed up on the windows or on big stones to see us better.

      When we reached the middle of the court a voice shouted, ‘Halt. Put your bags down in front of you. You there, hand out the hats.’ They gave us each a straw hat, and we needed it – two or three men had already dropped from sunstroke. Dega and I exchanged a glance, for a screw with stripes had a list in his hand. We thought of what Julot had told us. Guittou was called. ‘Here!’ he said. Two warders took him away. Suzuni, the same: Girasol likewise.

      ‘Jules Pignard!’

      ‘Jules Pignard (that was our Julot) has been hurt. He’s gone to hospital.’

      ‘Right.’ Those were the internees for the islands. Then the warder went on, ‘Listen carefully. Each man whose name I call is to step from the ranks with his kitbag on his shoulder and go and line up in front of that yellow hut, number one.’

      The roll-call went on, with So-and-so – Present, etc., and Dega, Carrier and I ended up with the others, in line over against the hut. They opened the door and we went into a rectangular hall some twenty yards long. Down the middle ran a passage about two yards wide with an iron bar on either side, the whole length of the room. Canvas hammocks were slung between the bar and the wall, and each held a blanket. Every man chose his own place. Dega, Pierrot le Fou, Santori, Grandet and I moved in all next to one another, and little groups began to take shape at once. I went down to the far end of the room: showers on the right, latrines on the left: no running water.

      The men who had left the ship after us began to arrive, and we watched them, clinging to the bars over the windows. Louis Dega, Pierrot le Fou and I were delighted – since we were in an ordinary barrack-room it meant we weren’t going to be interned. Otherwise we’d already have been put into a cell, as Julot had explained. Everybody was very pleased until about five o’clock, when it was all over; but then Grandet said, ‘It’s funny, but they haven’t called out a single man for internment in this whole convoy. Odd. Still, so much the better, as far as I’m concerned.’ Grandet was the man who stole the safe from one of the central prisons, a job that had made the whole country laugh.

      In the tropics day and night come without any sort of twilight. You go straight from the one to the other, and at the same time all through the year. Suddenly, at half-past six, it’s night. And at half-past six two old convicts brought two oil lamps that they hung on a hook in the ceiling and that gave a very little light. Three-quarters of the room was perfectly dark. By nine o’clock everybody was asleep, for now that the excitement of our arrival was over, we were quite overcome by the heat. Not a breath of air, and everyone was stripped to his drawers. My hammock was between Dega and Pierrot le Fou: we whispered a while and then went back to sleep.

      It was still dark the next morning when the bugle blew. Everyone got up, washed and dressed. They gave us coffee and a hunk of bread. There was a plank fixed to the wall for your bread, mug and other belongings. At nine o’clock two warders came in, together with a young convict dressed in white without stripes. The two screws were Corsicans, and they talked Corsican to the convicts from their country. Meanwhile the medical orderly walked about the room. When he reached me he said, ‘How goes it, Papi? Don’t you recognize me?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I’m Sierra l’Algérois: I knew you in Paris, at Dante’s.’

      ‘Oh, yes, I recognize you now. But you were sent down in ’29. It’s ’33 now: how come you’re still here?’

      ‘Yes. There’s no getting out of here in a hurry. You report sick, will you? Who’s this guy?’

      ‘He’s Dega, a friend of mine.’

      ‘I’ll put you down for the doctor too, Dega. Papi, you’ve got dysentery. And you, dad, you’ve got fits of asthma. I’ll see you at the medical at eleven o’clock. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’ He went on his way, calling out ‘Who’s sick there?’, going over to those who held up their hands, and writing down their names. When he came back he had a warder with him, an elderly sunburnt man. ‘Papillon, let me introduce my boss, Medical-Warder Bartiloni. Monsieur Bartiloni, these two are the friends I told you about.’

      ‘OK, Sierra, we’ll see to that at the medical: rely on me.’

      At eleven they came for us. There were nine men going sick. We walked through the camp among the hutments. When we reached a newer building than the rest, the only one painted white with a red cross on it, we went in and found a waiting-room with about sixty men in it. Two warders in each corner. Sierra appeared, in spotless medical overalls. He said, ‘You, you and you: go in.’ We went into a room that was obviously the doctor’s. He talked to the three older men in Spanish. There СКАЧАТЬ