Papillon. Анри Шарьер

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      ‘No.’

      ‘Let’s forget it then.’

      We tried to get in touch with men who were being sent back after having made a break: Julot or Guittou, if possible. We were eager for information – what it was like over there, how you were treated, how you ought to set about things so as to be left paired with a friend, and so on. As luck would have it we chanced upon a very odd guy, a case entirely on his own. He was a Corsican who had been born in the penal settlement. His father had been a warder there, living with his mother on the Isles du Salut. He had been born on the Ile Royale, one of the three – the others are Saint-Joseph and Devil’s Island. And (irony of fate!) he was on his way back, not as a warder’s son but as a convict.

      He had copped twelve years for housebreaking. Nineteen: frank expression and open face. Both Dega and I saw at once that he had been sold down the river. He only had a vague notion of the underworld; but he would be useful to us because he could let us know about what was in store. He told us all about life on the islands, where he had lived for fourteen years. For example, he told us that his nurse on the islands had been a convict, a famous tough guy who had been sent down after a knife-fight in Montmartre, a duel for the love of the beautiful Casque d’Or. He gave us some very valuable advice – you had to make your break on the mainland, because on the islands it was no go at all: then again you mustn’t be listed dangerous, because with that against your name you would scarcely step ashore at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni before they shut you right away – interned you for a certain number of years or for life, according to how bad your label was. Generally speaking, less than five per cent of the convicts were interned on the islands. The others stayed on the mainland. The islands were healthy, but (as Dega had already told me) the mainland was a right mess that gradually ate the heart out of you with all sorts of diseases, death in various shapes, murder, etc.

      Dega and I hoped not to be interned on the islands. But there was a hell of a feeling there in my throat – what if I had been labelled dangerous? What with my lifer, the business with Tribouillard and that other one with the governor, I’d be lucky to get away with it.

      One day a rumour ran through the prison – don’t go to the sick-bay whatever happens, because everybody who is too weak or too ill to stand the voyage is poisoned. It was certainly all balls. And indeed a Parisian, Francis la Passe, told us there was nothing in it. There had been a type who died of poison there, but Francis’ own brother, who worked in the sick-bay, explained just what had happened.

      The guy had killed himself. He was one of the top safebreaking specialists, and it seems that during the war he had burgled the German embassy in Geneva or Lausanne for the French Intelligence. He had taken some very important papers and had given them to the French agents. The police had brought him out of prison, where he was doing five years, specially for this job. And ever since 1920 he had lived quietly, just operating once or twice a year. Every time he was picked up he brought out his little piece of blackmail and the Intelligence people hurriedly stepped in. But this time it hadn’t worked. He’d got twenty years and he was to go off with us. So as to miss the boat he had pretended to be sick and had gone into hospital. According to Francis la Passe’s brother a tablet of cyanide had put paid to his capers. Safe deposits and the Intelligence Service could sleep in peace.

      The courtyard was full of stories, some true, some false. We listened to them in either case – it passed the time.

      Whenever I went to the latrines, either in the courtyard or in the cell, Dega had to go with me, on account of the chargers. He stood in front of me while I was at it and shielded me from over-inquisitive eyes. A charger is a bleeding nuisance at any time, but I had two of the things still, for Galgani was getting sicker and sicker. And there was a mystery about the whole affair: the charger I shoved up last always came out last, and the first always first. I’ve no idea how they turned about in my guts, but that’s how it was.

      At the barber’s yesterday someone had a go at murdering Clousiot while he was being shaved. Two knife-stabs right next to his heart. By some miracle he didn’t die. I heard about the whole thing from a friend of his. It was an odd story and I’ll tell it one day. The attack was by way of settling accounts. The man who nearly got him died six years after this at Cayenne, having eaten bichromate of potassium in his lentils. He died in frightful agony. The attendant who helped the doctor at the post-mortem brought us five inches of gut. It had seventeen holes in it. Two months later this man’s murderer was found strangled in his hospital bed. We never knew who by.

      It was twelve days now that we had been at Saint-Martin-de-Ré. The fortress was crammed to overflowing. Sentries patrolled on the ramparts night and day.

      A fight broke out between two brothers, in the showers. They fought like wild-cats and one of them was put into our cell. André Baillard was his name. He couldn’t be punished, he told me, because it was the authorities’ fault: the screws had been ordered not to let the brothers meet on any account whatsoever. When you knew their story, you could see why.

      André had murdered an old woman with some money, and his brother Emile hid the proceeds. Emile was shopped for theft and got three years. One day, when he was in the punishment cell with some other men, he let the whole thing out: he was mad with his brother for not sending him in money for cigarettes and he told them everything – he’d get Andre, he said; and he explained how it was André who had done the old woman in and how it was he, Emile, who had hidden the money. What’s more, he said, when he got out he wouldn’t give André a sou. A prisoner hurried off to tell the governor what he had heard. Things moved fast. André was arrested and the two brothers were sentenced to death. In death alley at the Santé their condemned cells were next door to one another. Each put in for a reprieve. Emile’s was granted the forty-third day, but André’s was turned down. Yet out of consideration for André’s feelings Emile was kept in the condemned cell and the two brothers did their daily exercise together, the one behind the other, with chains on their legs.

      On the forty-sixth day at half-past four in the morning André’s door opened. They were all there, the governor, the registrar and the prosecuting counsel who had asked for his head. This was the execution. But just as the governor stepped forward to speak André’s lawyer appeared, running, followed by someone else who handed the prosecutor a paper. Everyone went back into the corridor. André’s throat was so tight and stiff he couldn’t swallow his spit. This wasn’t possible – executions were never interrupted once they had begun. And yet this one was. Not until the next day, after hours of dreadful doubt, did he hear from his lawyer that just before his execution President Doumer had been murdered by Gorguloff. But Doumer hadn’t died right away. The lawyer had stood there all night outside the hospital, having told the Minister of Justice that if the President died before the time of the execution (between half-past four and five in the morning) he would call for a postponement on the grounds that there was no head of state. Doumer died at two minutes past four. Just time to warn the ministry, jump into a cab, followed by the man with the order for putting it off; but he got there three minutes too late to stop them opening André’s door. The two brothers’ sentences were commuted to transportation and hard labour for life: for on the day of the new president’s election the lawyer went to Versailles, and as soon as Albert Lebrun was chosen, the lawyer handed him the petition for a reprieve. No president ever refuses the first reprieve he is asked for. ‘Lebrun signed,’ said Andre, ‘and here I am, mate, alive and well, on my way to Guiana.’ I looked at this character who had escaped the guillotine and I said to myself that in spite of all I had gone through it was nothing to what he must have suffered.

      Yet I never made friends with him. The idea of his killing a poor old woman to rob her made me feel sick. This André was always a very lucky man. He murdered his brother on the Ile Saint-Joseph some time later. Several convicts saw him. Emile was fishing, standing there on a rock and thinking about nothing but his rod. The noise of the heavy waves drowned СКАЧАТЬ