Papillon. Анри Шарьер

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СКАЧАТЬ doesn’t matter, my son: I’ll pray for you. God loves all His children, whether they are christened or not. Repeat each word as I say it, won’t you?’ His eyes were so gentle, and such kindness beamed from his round face that I was ashamed to refuse; and as he had gone down on his knees I did the same. ‘Our Father which art in heaven …’ Tears came into my eyes: the dear priest saw them and with his plump finger he gathered a big drop as it ran down my cheek. He put it to his mouth and drank it. ‘My son,’ he said, ‘these tears are the greatest reward God could ever have sent me today, and it comes to me through you. Thank you.’ And as he got up he kissed me on the forehead.

      We sat there, side by side on the bed again. ‘How long is it since you wept?’

      ‘Fourteen years.’

      ‘Why fourteen years ago?’

      ‘It was the day Mum died.’

      He took my hand in his and said, ‘Forgive those who have made you suffer so.’

      I snatched it away and sprang into the middle of my cell – an instinctive reaction. ‘Not on your life! I’ll never forgive them. And I’ll tell you something, Father. There’s not a day, not a night, not an hour or minute when I’m not busy working out how I’ll kill the guys that sent me here – how, when and what with.’

      ‘You say that, my son, and you believe it. You’re young, very young. As you grow older you’ll give up the thought of punishment and revenge.’ Thirty-four years have passed now, and I am of his opinion. ‘What can I do for you?’ asked the priest again.

      ‘A crime, Father.’

      ‘What crime?’

      ‘Going to cell 37 and telling Dega to get his lawyer to ask for him to be sent to the central prison at Caen – tell him I’ve done the same today. We have to get out of the Conciergerie quick and leave for one of the centrals where they make up the Guiana convoys. Because if you miss the first boat you have to wait another two years in solitary before there’s another. And when you’ve seen him, Father, will you come back here?’

      ‘What reason could I give?’

      ‘You could say that you forgot your breviary. I’ll be waiting for the answer.’

      ‘And why are you in such a hurry to go off to such a hideous place as the penal settlement?’

      I looked at him hard, this great-hearted salesman of the good word, and I was certain he would not betray me. ‘So as to escape all the sooner, Father.’

      ‘God will help you, my boy, I am sure of it; and I feel that you will remake your life. I can see in your eyes that you are a decent fellow and that your heart is in the right place. I’ll go to cell 37 for you. You can expect an answer.’

      He was back very soon. Dega agreed. The curé left me his breviary until the next day.

      What a ray of sunlight that was! Thanks to that dear good man my cell was filled with it – all lit up. If God exists why does He allow such different sorts of human being on earth? Creatures like the prosecuting counsel, the police, Polein – and then this chaplain, the chaplain of the Conciergerie?

      That truly good man’s visit set me up, healed me: and it was useful, too. Our requests went through quickly and a week later there we were, seven of us lined up in the corridor of the Conciergerie at four in the morning. All the screws were there too, a full parade.

      ‘Strip!’ Everybody slowly took off his clothes. It was cold and I had goose-pimples.

      ‘Leave your things in front of you. About turn. One pace backwards.’ And there in front of each of us was a heap of clothes.

      ‘Dress yourselves.’ The good linen shirt I had been wearing a few moments earlier was replaced by a rough undyed canvas job and my lovely suit by a coarse jacket and trousers. No more shoes: instead of them I put my feet into a pair of wooden sabots. Up until then I’d looked like any other ordinary type. I glanced at the other six – Jesus, what a shock! No individuality left at all: they had turned us into convicts in two minutes.

      ‘By the right, dress. Forward march!’ With a escort of twenty warders we reached the courtyard and there, one after another, each man was shoved into a narrow cupboard in the cellular van. All aboard for Beaulieu – Beaulieu being the name of the prison at Caen,

      Caen Prison

      The moment we got there we were taken into the governor’s office. He was sitting in pomp behind an Empire desk on a dais some three feet high.

      ‘Shun! The governor is going to speak to you.’

      ‘Prisoners, you are here in transit until you can be sent off to the penal settlement. This is not an ordinary prison. Compulsory silence all the time: no visits: no letters from anyone. You obey or you are broken. There are two doors you can go out by. One leads to the penal settlement, if you behave well. The other to the graveyard. And just let me tell you about bad behaviour: the slightest error will get you sixty days in the punishment-cell on bread and water. No one has yet survived two consecutive sentences to the black-hole. You get my meaning?’ He turned to Pierrot le Fou, who had been extradited from Spain. ‘What was your calling in civil life?’

      ‘Bullfighter, Monsieur le Directeur.’

      The reply infuriated the governor and he bawled out ‘Take him away! Double-quick time!’ Before you could blink, the bullfighter had been knocked down, clubbed by four or five screws and hurried away from us. He could be heard shouting ‘You bastards – five against one. With clubs too, you cowardly shits!’ Then an ah like an animal given its death-wound: and nothing more. Only the sound of something being dragged along the concrete floor.

      If we did not get the governor’s meaning after that performance we should never get it at all. Dega was next to me. He moved one finger, just one, and touched my trousers. I understood his signal: ‘Look out for yourself if you want to reach Guiana alive.’ Ten minutes later each one of us was in a cell in the punishment block – each one of us except for Pierrot le Fou, who had been taken down below ground-level to a vile black-hole.

      As luck would have it Dega was in the next cell to mine. Before this we had been shown to a kind of red-headed, one-eyed ogre, well over six feet tall, with a brand-new bull’s pizzle in his right hand. This was the provost, a prisoner who acted as torturer under the orders of the screws. He was the terror of the convicts. With him at hand the warders could beat and flog the prisoners not only without tiring themselves out but also without getting blamed by the authorities in case anyone died of it.

      Later, when I was doing a short spell in the hospital, I learnt the story of this human brute. The governor really ought to have been congratulated on choosing his executioner so well. This guy was a quarryman by trade. He lived in a little town up in Flanders, and one day he made up his mind to do away with himself and to kill his wife at the same time. He used a fair-sized stick of dynamite for the job. He lay down next to his wife, who was in their bedroom on the second floor of a six-storey building. She was asleep. He lit a cigarette and used it to light the fuse, holding the stick in his left hand between his own head and his wife’s. God-almighty bang. Result: wife had to be scooped up with a spoon – she was literally mincemeat. Part of the house collapsed, killing three children and a seventy-year-old woman. And everybody else in it more or less dangerously hurt. СКАЧАТЬ