Papillon. Анри Шарьер

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘That’s right,’ said the leper. ‘Last time I only stood out two days, so I ended up in British Guiana. With three days standing on, you’ll go north past Trinidad or Barbados, and then you go right by Venezuela without noticing it and land up in Curaçao or Colombia.’

      Jean sans Peur said, ‘Toussaint, what did you sell your boat for?’

      ‘Three thousand,’ said Toussaint. ‘Was that dear?’

      ‘No, that wasn’t why I asked. Just to know, that’s all. Can you pay, Papillon?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Will you have any money left?’

      ‘No. That’s all we’ve got – exactly the three thousand my friend Clousiot has on him.’

      ‘Toussaint,’ said Jean sans Peur, ‘I’ll let you have my revolver. I’d like to help these guys. What’ll you give me for it?’

      ‘A thousand francs,’ said Toussaint. ‘I’d like to help them too.’

      ‘Thanks for everything,’ said Maturette, looking at Jean sans Peur.

      ‘Thanks,’ said Clousiot.

      Now I was ashamed of having lied and I said, ‘No. I can’t take it. There’s no reason why you should give us anything.’

      He looked at me and said, ‘Yes, there is a reason all right. Three thousand francs is a lot of money; but even so, Toussaint’s dropping two thousand at least on the deal, because it’s a hell of a good boat he’s letting you have. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t do something for you too.’

      And then something very moving happened. La Chouette put a hat on the ground and the lepers began throwing notes or coins into it. Lepers appeared from everywhere, and every one of them put something in. I was overcome with shame. Yet it just wasn’t possible to say I still had money left. Christ, what was I to do? Here was this great-hearted conduct and I was behaving like a shit. I said, ‘Please, please don’t sacrifice all this.’ A coal-black Negro, terribly mutilated – two stumps for hands, no fingers at all – said, ‘We don’t use the money for living. Don’t be ashamed to take it. We only use it for gambling or for stuffing the leper-women who come over from Albina now and then.’ What he said was a relief to me and it stopped me confessing I still had some money.

      The lepers had boiled two hundred eggs. They brought them in a wooden box with a red cross on it. It was the box they had had that morning with the day’s medicines. They also brought two live turtles weighing at least half a hundredweight each, carefully laid on their backs, tobacco in leaves and two bottles full of matches and strikers; a sack of at least a hundredweight of rice, two bags of charcoal; the Primus from the infirmary and a wicker bottle of paraffin. The whole community, all these terribly unfortunate men, felt for us; they all wanted to help us succeed. Anyone would have said this was their escape rather than ours. We hauled the boat down near to the place where we had landed. They counted the money in the hat: eight hundred and ten francs. I only had to give Toussaint one thousand two hundred. Clousiot passed me his charger. I opened it there in front of everybody. It held a thousand-franc note and four five hundreds. I gave Toussaint one thousand five hundred. He gave me three hundred change and then he said, ‘Here. Take the revolver – it’s a present. You’re staking everything you’ve got, and it mustn’t go wrong at the last moment just for want of a weapon. I hope you won’t have to use it.’

      I didn’t know how to say thank you, to Toussaint first and then to all the others. The medical orderly had put up a little tin with cotton-wool, alcohol, aspirin, bandages, iodine, a pair of scissors and some sticking-plaster. Another leper brought two slim, well-planed pieces of wood and two strips of antiseptic binding still in its packet, perfectly new. They were a present so that I could change Clousiot’s splints.

      About five it began to rain. Jean sans Peur said, ‘You’re lucky. There’s no danger of your being seen, so you can get off right away and gain at least half an hour. That way you’ll be nearer the mouth when you start again at half-past four in the morning.’

      ‘How shall I know the time?’ I asked him.

      ‘The tide’ll tell you, coming in or out.’

      We launched the boat. It was not like the canoe at all. Even with us and all our things aboard, the gunwale was a good eighteen inches from the water. The mast, wrapped in the sail, lay flat fore and aft, because we were not to put it up until we were about to run out of the river. We shipped the rudder, with its safety-bar and tiller, and put a pad of creepers for me to sit on. We made a comfortable place in the bottom of the boat with the blankets for Clousiot, who had not wanted to have his bandages changed. He lay at my feet, between me and the water-barrel. Maturette was in the bottom too, but up forward. Straight away I had a feeling of safety and solidity that I had never had in the canoe.

      It was still raining. I was to go down the middle of the river, but rather to the left, over on the Dutch side. Jean sans Peur said, ‘Good-bye. Push off quick.’

      ‘Good luck,’ said Toussaint, and he gave the boat a great shove with his foot.

      ‘Thanks, Toussaint. Thanks, Jean. Thanks, everybody, thanks a thousand times over!’ And we vanished at great speed, swept along by the ebb-tide that had begun quite two and a half hours ago and that was now running at an unbelievable pace.

      It rained steadily: we couldn’t see ten yards in front of us. There were two little islands lower down, so Maturette leant out over the bows, staring ahead so we shouldn’t run on their rocks. Night fell. For a moment we were half caught in the branches of a big tree that was going down the river with us, but fortunately not quite so fast. We quickly got free and carried on at something like twenty miles an hour. We smoked: we drank rum. The lepers had given us half a dozen of those straw-covered Chianti bottles, but filled with tafia. It was odd, but not one of us mentioned the hideous mutilations we had seen among the lepers. The only thing we talked about was their kindness, their generosity, their straightness and our good luck in having met the Masked Breton, who took us to Pigeon Island. It rained harder and harder and I was wet through: but those woollen jackets were such good quality they kept you warm even when they were soaked. We were not cold. The only thing was my hand on the tiller – the rain made it go stiff.

      ‘We’re running at more than twenty-five miles an hour now,’ said Maturette, ‘How long do you think we’ve been gone for?’

      ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Clousiot. ‘Just a moment. Three and a quarter hours.’

      ‘Are you crazy, man? How can you possibly tell?’

      ‘I’ve been counting ever since we left and at each three hundred seconds I’ve torn off a piece of cardboard. There’re thirty-nine bits now. At five minutes a go, that makes three hours and a quarter. Unless I’ve got it wrong, in fifteen or twenty minutes we shan’t be running down any more, but going back to where we came from.’

      I thrust the tiller over to my right to slant across the stream and get into the bank on the Dutch side. Before we reached the shore the current had stopped. We were no longer going down; and we weren’t going up, either. It was still raining. We no longer smoked; we no longer talked – we whispered. ‘Take the paddle and shove.’ I paddled too, holding the tiller wedged under my right leg. Gently we came up against the bush: we seized branches and pulled, sheltering beneath them. We were in the darkness of the vegetation. The river was grey, quite covered with thick СКАЧАТЬ