Читать книгу: «Papillon»

First Exercise-Book Down the Drain
The Assizes

The blow was such a stunner that it was thirteen years before I could get back on to my feet again. It was not the usual kind of blow either, and they clubbed together to let me have it.

This was 26 October 1931. At eight in the morning they had taken me out of my cell in the Conciergerie – the cell I had been living in for the past year. I was well shaved and well dressed: I looked as smooth as they come in my made-to-measure suit and white shirt with a pale-blue bow-tie to add the finishing touch.

I was twenty-five and I looked twenty. The gendarmes were rather impressed by my posh clothes, and they treated me civilly. They even took off the handcuffs. There we were, all six of us, the five gendarmes and me, sitting on two benches in a bare room. A dreary sky outside. The door opposite us must lead into the assize-court, for this building, this Paris building, was the Palais de Justice of the Seine.

In a few moments I was to be indicted for wilful homicide. My counsel, Maître Raymond Hubert, came in to see me. ‘There’s no solid evidence against you: I fully expect us to be acquitted.’ That ‘us’ made me smile. Anyone would have thought that Maître Hubert was going to appear in the dock too, and that if the verdict was guilty he too would have to serve time.

An usher opened the door and told us to come in. With four gendarmes round me and the sergeant to one side, I made my entrance through the wide-open double doors into an enormous court-room. They had done the whole place up in red, blood red, so as to hand me out this crushing blow – all red, the carpets, the curtains at the big windows and even the robes of the judges who were going to deal with me in two or three minutes’ time.

‘Gentlemen, the court!’

In single file six men appeared through a door on the right. The president of the court and then five other lawyers with their official hats, their toques, on their heads. The presiding judge stopped at the seat in the middle and his colleagues arranged themselves to the right and the left. There was an impressive silence in the room, and everybody was standing up, including me. The court took its seat, and so did everybody else.

The president was a fat-faced man with pink cheeks and a cold eye; he looked straight at me without letting any sort of feeling show. His name was Bevin. When things were under way he ran the trial fairly and he made it clear to one and all that as a professional lawyer he was not sure that either the witnesses or the police were all that straight. No: he had no responsibility for the crusher: all he did was to pass it on to me.

The public prosecutor was a lawyer called Pradel, and all the barristers were frightened of him. He had the evil reputation of sending more victims to the guillotine and the convict prisons in France and overseas than any other man.

Pradel stood for the vindication of society. He was the official prosecutor and there was nothing human about him. He represented the Law, the scales of justice: he was the one who handled them, and he did everything he possibly could to make them come down on the right side for him. He lowered the lids over his vulturish eyes and stared at me piercingly from his full height. From the height of his rostrum in the first place, which made him tower over me, and then from his own natural height, an arrogant six feet. He did not take off his red robe, but he put his toque down in front of him, and he leaned on his two great ham-sized hands. There was a gold ring to show he was married, and a ring on his little finger made of a highly polished horseshoe nail.

He leant over a little so as to dominate me all the more, and he looked as though he were saying, ‘If you think you can get away from me, young cock, you’ve got it wrong. My hands may not look like talons, but there are claws in my heart that are going to rip you to pieces. And the reason why all the barristers are afraid of me, the reason why the judges think the world of me as a dangerous prosecutor, is that I never let my prey escape. It’s nothing to do with me whether you’re guilty or innocent: all I’m here for is to make use of everything that can be said against you – your disreputable, shiftless life in Montmartre, the evidence the police have worked up and the statements of the police themselves. What I am to do is to take hold of all the disgusting filth piled up by the investigating magistrate and manage to make you look so revolting that the jury will see that you vanish from the community.’ Either I was dreaming or I could hear him perfectly distinctly: this man-eater really shook me. ‘Prisoner at the bar, just you keep quiet, and above all don’t you attempt to defend yourself. I’ll send you down the drain, all right. And I trust you’ve no faith in the jury? Don’t you kid yourself. Those twelve men know nothing whatsoever about life. Look at them, lined up there opposite you. Twelve bastards brought up to Paris from some perishing village in the country: can you see them clearly? Small shopkeepers, pensioners, tradesmen. It’s not worth describing them to you in detail. Surely you don’t expect them to understand the life you lead in Montmartre or what it’s like to be twenty-five? As far as they’re concerned Pigalle and the Place Blanche are exactly the same as hell and all night-birds are the natural enemies of society. They are all unspeakably proud of being jurymen at the Seine Assizes. And what’s more, I can tell you that they loathe their status – they loathe belonging to the pinched, dreary lower middle class. And now you make your appearance here, all young and handsome. Do you really suppose for a moment that I’m not going to make them see you as a night-prowling Montmartre Don Juan? That will put them dead against you right away. You’re too well dressed: you ought to have come in something very modest indeed. That was a huge tactical error of yours. Can’t you see how jealous of your suit they are? They all buy their clothes off the peg – they’ve never even dreamt of having a suit made to measure by a tailor.’

Ten o’clock, and we were all ready for the trial to start. Six official lawyers there in front of me, one of them a fierce, driving prosecutor who was going to use all his Machiavellian strength and all his intelligence to convince these twelve innocents that in the first place I was guilty and in the second that the only proper sentence was either penal servitude or the guillotine.

I was to be tried for the killing of a pimp, a police-informer belonging to the Montmartre underworld. There was no proof, but the cops (who get credit every time they find out who has committed a crime) were going to swear blind that I was guilty. Seeing they had no proof, they said they had ‘confidential’ information that left the matter in no doubt. The strongest piece of the prosecution’s evidence was a witness they had primed, a human gramophone-record manufactured at 36 quai des Orfèvres, their headquarters – a guy by the name of Polein. At one point, when I was saying over and over again that I did not know him, the president very fairly asked me, ‘You say this witness is lying. Very well. But why should he want to lie?’

‘Monsieur le President, I’ve had sleepless nights ever since I was arrested, but not out of remorse for having killed Roland le Petit, because I never did it. It’s because I keep trying to make out what kind of motive this witness can have for attacking me so ferociously and for bringing fresh evidence to support the charge every time it seems to weaken. I’ve come to the conclusion, Monsieur le President, that the police picked him up in the act of committing some serious crime and that they made a bargain with him – we’ll forget it, so long as you denounce Papillon.’

At the time I didn’t think I was so close to the truth. A few years later this Polein, who had been held up at the assizes as an honest man with no criminal record, was arrested and found guilty of peddling cocaine.

Maître Hubert tried to defend me, but he was not up to the size of the prosecutor. Maître Bouffay, with his warm-hearted indignation, was the only one to make Pradel struggle for a while. But it didn’t last, and the prosecutor’s skill soon got him on top again. What’s more, he flattered the jury, who swelled with pride at being treated as equals and as colleagues by this awe-inspiring character.

By eleven o’clock at night the game of chess was over. It was checkmate for my counsel. And I, an innocent man – I was found guilty.

In the person of Pradel, the public prosecutor, Society wiped out a young man of twenty-five for the term of his natural life. And none of your reductions, thank you very much! It was the president, Bevin, who handed me out this overflowing dish.

‘Prisoner, stand up,’ he said in a toneless voice.

I got to my feet. There was a complete silence in the court; people were holding their breath, and my heart beat a little faster. Some jurymen watched me; others hung their heads; they looked ashamed.

‘Prisoner, since the jury has answered yes to all the questions except for that of premeditation, you are sentenced to undergo penal servitude for life. Have you anything to say?’

I did not flinch; I stood there naturally; all I did was to grip the bar of the dock a little harder. ‘Yes, Monsieur le President: what I have to say is that I am truly innocent and that I am the victim of a plot worked up by the police.’ I heard a murmur from the place where there were some fashionably-dressed women, distinguished visitors, sitting behind the judges. Without raising my voice I said to them, ‘Shut up, you rich women who come here for dirty thrills. The farce is over. A murder has been solved by your clever police and your system of justice – you’ve had what you came for.’

‘Warders,’ said the President, ‘take the prisoner away.’

Before I vanished I heard a voice calling out, ‘Don’t you worry, sweetheart. I’ll come out there and find you.’ It was my brave, splendid Nénette giving full voice to her love. In the body of the court my friends of the underworld applauded. They knew perfectly well what to think about this killing, and this was their way of showing me that they were proud I had not given anything away or put the blame on anybody else.

Once we were back in the little room where we had been before the trial the gendarmes put the handcuffs on me, and one of them arranged a short chain, fixing my right wrist to his left. Not a word. I asked for a cigarette. The sergeant gave me one and lit it for me. Every time I took it out or put it back to my mouth the gendarme had to raise his arm or lower it to follow my movement.

I stood there until I had smoked about three-quarters of the cigarette. No one uttered a sound. I was the one who looked at the sergeant and said, ‘Let’s go.’

Down the stairs, surrounded by a dozen gendarmes, and I came to the inner yard of the law-courts. Our black maria was waiting for us there. It was not the sort with compartments: we sat on benches, about ten of us. The sergeant said, ‘Conciergerie.’

Conciergerie

When we reached this last of Marie-Antoinette’s palaces, the gendarmes handed me over to the head warder, who signed a paper, their receipt. They went off without saying anything, but before they left the sergeant shook my two handcuffed hands. Surprise!

The head warder said to me, ‘What did they give you?’

‘Life.’

‘It’s not true?’ He looked at the gendarmes and saw that it was true. This fifty-year-old warder had seen plenty and he knew all about my business: he had the decency to say this to me – ‘The bastards! They must be out of their minds!’

Gently he took off my handcuffs, and he was good-hearted enough to take me to the padded cell himself, one of those kept specially for men condemned to death, for lunatics, very dangerous prisoners and those who have been given penal servitude.

‘Keep your heart up, Papillon,’ he said, closing the door on me. ‘We’ll send you some of your things and the food from your other cell. Cheer up!’

‘Thanks, chief. My heart’s all right, believe me; I hope their penal bleeding servitude will choke them.’

A few minutes later there was a scratching outside the door. ‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ said a voice. ‘It’s only me putting a card on the door.’

‘Why? What’s it say?’

‘Penal servitude for life. To be watched closely.’

They’re crazy, I thought: do they really suppose that this ton of bricks falling on my head is going to worry me to the point of committing suicide? I am brave and I always shall be brave. I’ll fight everyone and everything. I’ll start right away, tomorrow.

As I drank my coffee the next day I wondered whether I should appeal. What was the point? Should I have any better luck coming up before another court? And how much time would it waste? A year: maybe eighteen months. And all for what – getting twenty years instead of life?

As I had thoroughly made up my mind to escape, the number of years did not count: I remembered what a sentenced prisoner had said to an assize judge. ‘Monsieur, how many years does penal servitude for life last in France?’

I paced up and down my cell. I had sent one wire to comfort my wife and another to a sister who, alone against the world, had done her best to defend her brother. It was over: the curtain had fallen. My people must suffer more than me, and far away in the country my poor father would find it very hard to bear so heavy a cross.

Suddenly my breath stopped: but I was innocent! I was indeed; but for whom? Yes, who was I innocent for? I said to myself, above all don’t you ever arse about telling people you’re innocent: you’ll only get laughed at. Getting life on account of a ponce and then saying it was somebody else that took him apart would be too bleeding comic. Just you keep your trap shut.

All the time I had been inside waiting for trial, both at the Santé and the Conciergerie, it had never occurred to me that I could possibly get a sentence like this, so I had never really thought about what ‘going down the drain’ might be like.

All right. The first thing to do was to get in touch with men who had already been sentenced, men who might later be companions in a break. I picked upon Dega, a guy from Marseilles. I’d certainly see him at the barber’s. He went there every day to get a shave. I asked to go too. Sure enough, when I came in I found him standing there with his nose to the wall. I saw him just as he was making another man move round him so as to have longer to wait for his turn. I got in right next to him, shoving someone else aside. Quickly I whispered, ‘You OK, Dega?’

‘OK, Papi. I got fifteen years. What about you? They say you really copped it.’

‘Yes: I got life.’

‘You’ll appeal?’

‘No. The thing to do is to eat well and to keep fit. Keep your strength up. Dega: we’ll certainly need good muscles. Are you loaded?’

‘Yes. I’ve got ten bags1 in pounds sterling. And you?’

‘No.’

‘Here’s a tip: get loaded quick. Your counsel was Hubert, wasn’t he? He’s a square and he’d never bring you in your charger. Send your wife with it, well filled, to Dante’s. Tell her to give it to Dominique le Riche and I guarantee it’ll reach you.’

‘Ssh. The screw’s watching us.’

‘So we’re having a break for gossip, are we?’ asked the screw.

‘Oh, nothing serious,’ said Dega. ‘He’s telling me he’s sick.’

‘What’s the matter with him? Assizes colic?’ And the fat-arsed screw choked with laughter.

That was life all right. I was on the way down the drain already. A place where you howl with laughter, making cracks about a boy of twenty-five who has been sentenced for the whole of the rest of his life.

I got the charger. It was a beautifully polished aluminium tube that unscrewed exactly in the middle. It had a male half and a female half. There was 5,600 francs in new notes inside. When it was passed to me I kissed it: yes, I kissed this three-and-a-half-inch thumb-thick tube before shoving it into my anus. I drew a deep breath so that it should get right up to my colon. It was my safe-deposit. They could strip me, make me open my legs, make me cough and bend double, but they could never find out whether I had anything. It went up very high into my big intestine. It was part of me. This was life and freedom that I was carrying inside me – the path to revenge. For I was thoroughly determined to have my revenge. Indeed, revenge was all I thought of.

It was dark outside. I was alone in the cell. A strong ceiling light let the screw see me through the little hole in the door. It dazzled me, this light. I laid my folded handkerchief over my eyes, for it really hurt. I was lying on a mattress on an iron bed – no pillow – and all the details of that horrible trial passed through my mind.

Now at this point perhaps I have to be a little tedious, but in order to make the rest of this long tale understandable and in order to thoroughly explain what kept me going in my struggle I must tell everything that came into my mind at that point, everything I really saw with my mind’s eye during those first days when I was a man who had been buried alive.

How was I going to set about things once I had escaped? Because now that I possessed my charger I hadn’t a second’s doubt that I was going to escape. In the first place I should get back to Paris as fast as possible. The first one to kill would be Polein, the false witness. Then the two cops in charge of the case. But just two cops was not enough: I ought to kill the lot. All the cops. Or at least as many as possible. Ah, I had the right idea. Once out, I would get back to Paris, I’d stuff a trunk with explosive. As much as it would hold. Ten, twenty, maybe forty pounds: I wasn’t sure quite how much. And I began working out what it would take to kill a great many people.

Dynamite? No, cheddite was better. And why not nitroglycerine? Right, I’d get advice from the people inside who knew more about it than me. But the cops could really rely upon me to provide what was coming to them, and no short measure, either.

I still had my eyes closed, with the handkerchief keeping them tight shut. Very clearly I could see the trunk, apparently innocent but really crammed with explosives, and the exactly set alarm-clock that would fire the detonator. Take care: it had to go off at ten in the morning in the assembly room of the Police Judiciaire2 on the first floor of 36, quai des Orfèvres. At that moment there would be at least a hundred and fifty cops gathered to hear the report and to get their orders. How many steps to go up? I mustn’t get it wrong.

I should have to work out the exact time it would take for the trunk to get up from the street to the place where it was to explode – work it out to the second. And who was going to carry it? OK: I’d get it in by bluff. I’d take a cab to the door of the Police Judiciaire and in a commanding voice I’d say to the two slops on guard, ‘Take this trunk up to the assembly room for me: I’ll follow. Tell Commissaire Dupont that it’s from Inspecteur chef Dubois, and that I’ll be there right away.’

But would they obey? What if I chanced upon the only two intelligent types among all those idiots? In that case it was no go. I’d have to find something else. Again and again I racked my brains. Deep inside I had no doubt that I should succeed in finding some hundred per cent certain way of doing it.

I got up for a drink of water. All that thinking had given me a headache. I lay down again without the cloth over my eyes: slowly the minutes dropped by. That light, dear God above, that light! I wetted the handkerchief and put it on again. The cold water felt good, and being heavier now the handkerchief fitted better over my eyelids. I would always do it that way from now on.

Those long hours during which I worked out my future revenge were so vivid that I could see myself carrying it out exactly as though the thing was actually being done. All through those nights and even during part of every day, there I was, moving about Paris, as though my escape was something that had already happened. I was dead certain that I should escape and that I should get back to Paris. And of course the first thing to do was to square the account with Polein: and after him, the cops. And what about the members of the jury? Were those bastards to go on living in peace? The poor silly bastards must have gone home very pleased with themselves for having carried out their duty with a capital D. Stuffed with their own importance, they would lord it over their neighbours and their drabble-tailed wives, who would have kept supper back for them.

OK. What was I to do about the jurymen? Nothing. They were poor dreary half-wits. They were in no way fitted to be judges. If one of them was a retired gendarme or a customs-man, he would react like a gendarme or a customs-man. And if he was a milkman, then he’d act like any other dim-wit pedlar. They had gone right along with the public prosecutor and he had had no sort of difficulty in bowling them over. They weren’t really answerable. So that was settled: I’d do them no harm whatsoever.

As I write these thoughts that came to me so vividly all those years ago and that now come crowding back with such terrible clarity, I remember how intensely total silence and complete solitariness can stimulate an imaginary life, when it is inflicted upon a young man shut up in a cell – how it can stimulate the imagination before the whole thing turns to madness. So intense and vivid a life that a man literally divides himself into two people. He takes wing and he quite genuinely wanders wherever he feels inclined to go. His home, his father, mother, family, his childhood – all the various stages of his life. And then even more, there are all those castles in Spain that appear in his fertile mind with such an unbelievable vividness that he really comes to believe that he is living through everything that he dreams.

Thirty-six years have passed, and yet recording everything that came into my head at that moment of my life does not need the slightest effort.

No: I should do the members of the jury no harm: my pen races along. But what about the prosecuting counsel? I must not miss him, not at any cost. In any case, I had a ready-made recipe for him, straight out of AlexAndré Dumas. Just like in The Count of Monte Cristo, and the guy they shoved into the cellar and let die of hunger.

As for that lawyer, yes, he was answerable all right. That red-robed vulture – there was everything in favour of putting him to death in the most hideous manner possible. Yes, that was what I should do: after Polein and the cops, I should devote my whole time to dealing with this creep. I’d rent a villa. It’d have to have a really deep cellar with thick walls and a very solid door. If the door wasn’t thick enough I should sound-proof it myself with a mattress and tow. Once I had the villa I’d work out his movements and then kidnap him. The rings would be all ready in the wall, so I’d chain him up straight away. And then which of us was going to have fun?

I had him directly opposite me: under my closed eyelids I could see him with extraordinary exactness. Yes, I looked at him just as he had looked at me in court. The scene was so clear and distinct that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face; for I was very close, face to face, almost touching him. His hawk’s eyes were dazzled and terrified by the beam of a very powerful headlight I had focused on him. Great drops of sweat ran down his red, swollen face. I could hear my questions and I listened to his replies. I experienced that moment very vividly.

‘Do you recognize me, you sod? I’m Papillon. Papillon, the guy you so cheerfully sent down the line for life. You sweated over your books for years and years so as to be a highly educated man; you spent your nights doing Roman law and all that jazz; you learnt Latin and Greek and you sacrificed your youth so as to become a great speaker. Do you think it was worth it? Where did it get you, you silly bastard? What did it help you do? To work out new, decent laws for the community? To persuade the people that peace is the finest thing on earth? To preach the philosophy of some terrific religion? Or even to use your influence, your superior college education, to persuade others to be better people or at least stop being wicked? Tell me, have you used your knowledge to pull men out of the water or to drown them? You’ve never helped a soul: you’ve only had one single motive – ambition! Up, up. Up the steps of your lousy career. The penal settlements’ best provider, the unlimited supplier of the executioner and the guillotine – that’s your glory. If Deibler3 had any sense of gratitude he’d send you a case of the best champagne every New Year. Isn’t it thanks to you, you bleeding son of a bitch, that he’s been able to lop off five or 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. And what about you? Can you really see yourself doing ten years hard? Even if they do give you five off, which is not at all sure, do you really think you could do it without being driven crazy by the solitary? Take me now, all alone in that cell with no books, no going out, no being able to talk to anyone twenty-four hours every god-damned day – it’s not sixty minutes you have to count in each hour but six hundred: and even then you’re far short of the truth.’

‘Maybe. But you’re young and I’m forty-two.’

‘Listen, Dega, tell me straight: what is it you’re scared of most? The other lags, isn’t it?’

‘To tell you straight, Papi, yes it is. Everyone knows I’m a millionaire, and there’s no distance between that and cutting my throat because they think I’m carrying fifty or a hundred thousand on me.’

‘Listen, do you want us to make a pact? You promise me not to go crazy and I’ll promise to keep right next to you all the time. Each can support the other. I’m strong and I move quick: I learnt how to fight when I was a kid and I’m terrific with a knife. So as far as the other lags are concerned you can rest easy: we’ll be respected, and more than that we’ll be feared. As for the break, we don’t need anyone else. You’ve got cash, I’ve got cash: I know how to use a compass and I can sail a boat. What more do you want?’

He looked at me hard, right in the eye … We embraced one another. The pact was signed.

A few moments later the door opened. He went off with his pack in one direction and I in the other. We were not very far apart and we saw one another from time to time at the barber’s or the doctor’s or in chapel on Sundays.

Dega had been sent down for the business of the phony National Defence bonds. A bright forger had produced them in a very unusual way: he bleached the five hundred franc bonds and overprinted them with the ten thousand franc text, absolutely perfectly. As the paper was the same, banks and businessmen accepted them just like that. It had been going on for years and the government’s financial section was all at sea until the day they picked up a character named Brioulet – caught him red-handed.

Louis Dega was sitting there calmly, keeping an eye on his bar in Marseilles, where the pick of the southern underworld came every night and where the really hard guys from all over the world met one another – an international rendezvous. That was 1929 and he was a millionaire. Then one night a young, pretty, well-dressed woman turned up. She asked for Monsieur Louis Dega.

‘That’s me, Madame. What can I do for you? Come into the next room.’

‘Look, I’m Brioulet’s wife. He’s in Paris in prison for passing forged bonds. I saw him in the visiting-room at the Santé: he gave me the address of this bar and told me to come and ask you for twenty thousand francs to pay the lawyer.’

It was at this point, faced with the danger of a woman who knew his part in the business, that Dega, one of the most esteemed crooks in France, made the one remark he never should have made. ‘Listen, Madame, I don’t know your husband from Adam, and if you need money, go on the streets. You’re young and pretty and you’ll make more than you need.’ Furious, the poor woman ran out in tears. She told her husband. Brioulet was mad and the next day he told the investigating magistrate everything he knew, directly accusing Dega of being the man who produced the forged bonds. A team of the most intelligent detectives in the country got on to Dega’s trail. One month later Dega, the forger, the engraver and eleven accomplices were all arrested at the same moment in different places and put behind bars. They came up at the Seine Assizes and the trial lasted fourteen days. Each prisoner was defended by a famous lawyer. Brioulet would never take back a single word. And the result was that for a piddling twenty thousand francs and a damn-fool crack the biggest crook in France got fifteen years hard labour. There he was, ten years older than his age, and completely ruined. And this was the man I had just signed a treaty with – a life and death pact.

Maître Raymond Hubert came to see me. He wasn’t very pleased with himself. I never uttered a word of blame.

One, two, three, four, five, about turn … One, two, three, four, five, about turn. It was a good many hours now that I had been walking up and down between the door and the window of my cell. I smoked: I felt I was well in control, steady-handed and able to cope with anything at all. I promised myself not to think about revenge for the time being. Let’s leave the prosecuting counsel just there where I left him, chained to the rings in the wall, opposite me, without yet making up my mind exactly how I’d do him in.

Suddenly a shriek, a desperate, high-pitched, hideously dying shriek made its way through the door of my cell. What was it? It was like the sound of a man under torture. But this was not the Police Judiciaire. No way of telling what was going on. They turned me right up, those shrieks in the night. And what strength they must have had, to pierce through that padded door. Maybe it was a lunatic. It’s so easy to go mad in these cells where nothing ever gets through to you. I talked aloud there all by myself: I said to myself what the hell’s it got to do with you? Keep your mind on yourself, nothing but yourself and your new side-kick Dega. I bent down, straightened up and hit myself hard on the chest. It really hurt: so everything was all right – the muscles of my arms were working perfectly. And what about your legs, man? You can congratulate them, because you’ve been walking more than sixteen hours now and you’re not even beginning to feel tired.

The Chinese discovered the drop of water that falls on your head. The French discovered silence. They do away with everything that might occupy your mind. No books, no paper, no pencil: the heavily-barred window entirely boarded up: only a very little light filtering through a few small holes.

That piercing shriek had really shaken me, and I went up and down like an animal in a cage, I had the dreadful feeling that I had been left there, abandoned by everybody, and that I was literally buried alive. I was alone, absolutely alone: the only thing that could ever get through to me was a shriek.

The door opened. An old priest appeared. Suddenly you’re not alone: there’s a priest there, standing in front of you.

‘Good evening, my son. Forgive me for not having come before, but I was on holiday. How are you?’ And the good old curé walked calmly into the cell and sat right down on my pad. ‘Where do you come from?’

‘The Ardèche.’

‘And your people?’

‘Mum died when I was eleven. Dad was very good to me.’

‘What did he do?’

‘School-teacher.’

‘Is he alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you speak of him in the past if he is still alive?’

‘Because although he’s alive all right, I’m dead.’

‘Oh, don’t say that! What did you do?’

In a flash I thought how square it would sound to say I was innocent: I replied, ‘The police say I killed a man; and if they say it, it must be true.’

‘Was it a tradesman?’

‘No. A ponce.’

‘And they’ve sentenced you to hard labour for life for something that happened in the underworld? I don’t understand. Was it murder?’

‘No. Manslaughter.’

‘My poor boy, it’s unbelievable. What can I do for you? Would you like to pray with me?’

‘I never had any religious instruction. I don’t know how to pray.’

‘That 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. As for this Tribouillard, the guy in question, he lost some of his left hand (only his little finger and half his thumb remaining) and his left eye and ear. His head was bashed badly enough to need trepanning. After his conviction they made him provost in the punishment block of the central prison. This half-maniac had complete power over the wretched prisoners who landed up there.

One, two, three, four, five, about turn … one, two, three, four, five, about turn … the unending to-and-fro between the door of the cell and the wall had begun.

You were not allowed to lie down during the daytime. At five in the morning everyone was woken by a piercing blast on a whistle. You had to get up, make your bed, wash, and then either walk about or sit on a stool clamped to the wall. You were not allowed to lie down all day long. And to put the last touch to the penal system the bed was made to fold up against the wall and hook there. That way the prisoner was unable to stretch himself out and he could be watched all the easier.

One, two, three, four, five … fourteen hours of pacing. To get into the way of this unceasing, mechanical rhythm you have to learn to keep your head down, your hands behind your back, and to walk neither too fast nor too slow, paces all the same length, turning automatically at each end of the cell, left foot one end, right the other.

One, two, three, four, five … The cells were better lit than at the Conciergerie and noises from outside could be heard – some noises from the punishment block and some that reached us from the countryside. At night you could make out the whistling or the singing as the farm-workers went home, happy after their cider.

I had my Christmas present. There was a crack in the plants blocking the window and through it I saw the snowy fields and a few tall black trees with the full moon lighting them up. Anyone would have said it was one of those cards you send at Christmas. The trees had been shaken by the wind and they had got rid of their covering of snow, so you could distinguish them quite clearly. They stood out as great dark patches against all the rest.

It was Christmas for everybody: it was even Christmas in one part of the prison. The authorities had made an effort for the convicts in transit – we were allowed to buy two bars of chocolate. I really mean two bars and not two slabs. My 1931 Christmas dinner consisted of these two bits of Aiguebelle chocolate.

One, two, three, four, five … The Law’s repression had turned me into a pendulum: my whole world was this going to and fro in a cell. It had been scientifically worked out. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was allowed to remain in the cell. Above all the prisoner must never be allowed to turn his mind to other things. If I were caught looking through that crack in the window planks I should be severely punished. And after all, weren’t they right, since as far as they were concerned I was merely a living corpse? What right had I to delight in the landscape?

There was a butterfly, a pale blue butterfly with a little black stripe, flying close to the window, and a bee humming not far from the butterfly. What on earth were they looking for in this place? They seemed to have gone out of their wits at the sight of the winter sun: unless maybe they were cold and wanted to get into the prison. A butterfly in winter is something that has come to life again. How come it wasn’t dead? And how come that bee had left its hive? What a nerve – if only they had known it – to come here! Fortunately the provost had no wings, or they wouldn’t be alive for long.

This Tribouillard was a bleeding sadist and I had a strong feeling there would be trouble with him. I wasn’t wrong either, more’s the pity. The day after those lovely insects came to see me I reported sick. I couldn’t bear it any more – the loneliness was smothering me and I had to see a face and hear a voice, even an unpleasant one. For it would still be a voice; and something I just had to hear.

Stark naked in the icy corridor I stood there facing the wall, my nose three inches from it: I was the last but one in a line of eight, and I was waiting my turn to go in front of the doctor. I had wanted to see people: and I succeeded all right! The provost caught us just as I was whispering a few words to Julot, the one they called the hammer-man. The red-headed maniac’s reaction was appalling. He half knocked me out with a punch on the back of my head, and as I’d not seen the blow coming my nose went smash against the wall. The blood spurted out, and as I got up – for I had fallen – I shook myself, trying to grasp what had happened. I made a faint movement of protest. That was the very thing the huge brute had been waiting for and with a kick in the belly he flattened me again and started flogging me with his bull’s pizzle. Julot couldn’t bear this. He jumped on him and a frightful dog-fight began: as Julot was getting the worst of it the warders stood calmly looking on. I got up. No one took any notice of me. I glanced round to see whether I could see anything to use as a weapon. Suddenly I saw the doctor leaning over his armchair in his surgery, trying to make out what was going on in the corridor: and at the same moment I caught sight of a saucepan-lid rising under the push of the steam. The big enamel saucepan was sitting on a stove that warmed the doctor’s room. The steam was meant to purify the air, no doubt.

Then, moving very fast, I caught the pot by the handles – it burnt but I didn’t drop it – and in one swing I flung all the boiling water into the provost’s face. He was so busy with Julot he never saw me coming. The big bastard uttered a hideous, tearing shriek. He had really copped it. There he was writhing on the ground, trying to tear off his three woollen vests, one after the other. When at last he got to the third his skin came off with it. It was a narrow-necked vest and as he ripped it off the skin of his chest, part of the skin of his neck and all on his cheek came too, sticking to the wool. His one eye had been scalded as well, and he was blind. At last he got up, hideous, oozing with blood, flayed; and Julot took advantage of it to give him a terrible kick right in the balls. The huge brute went down, vomiting and frothing at the mouth. He was finished. As for us, we lost nothing by waiting for what was coming to us. The two warders who had been watching this performance hadn’t the guts to tackle us. They sounded the alarm for reinforcements. They came in from all sides and the truncheon-blows rained down on us thick as hail. I had the luck to be knocked out very early, which prevented me from feeling much.

I woke up two storeys lower down, stark naked, in a flooded black-hole. Slowly I came to. I ran my hand all over my aching body. There were at least fourteen or fifteen lumps on my head. What was the time? I couldn’t tell. Down here there was neither night nor day: no light of any kind. I heard a knocking on the wall, a knocking that came from a great way off.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. This knocking was how we communicated with each other. I had to knock twice if I wanted to answer. Knock: but what with? In the darkness I couldn’t make out anything I could use. Fists were no good – their blows were not sharp or distinct enough. I moved over to where I imagined the door was, for it was a little less dark over there. I came up hard against bars I had not seen. Reaching out in the darkness I came to understand that the cell was closed by a door about a yard from me, and that these bars I was touching prevented me from getting to it. This way, when anyone wants to go into a dangerous prisoner’s cell he is in no danger of being touched, because the prisoner is in a cage. You can talk to him, soak him, throw his food in and insult him without the least risk. But there’s this advantage – he can’t be hit without danger, because in order to hit him you have to open the bars.

From time to time the knocking was repeated. Who could it be that was calling me? The guy deserved to be answered, because he was running a diabolical risk if he was caught. As I moved about I very nearly came down on my face. I had trodden on something hard and round. I felt for it: a wooden spoon. I grabbed it and got ready to answer. I waited there, with my ear hard up against the wall. Thump, thump, thump, thump, pause: thump, thump. Thump-thump, I replied. These two knocks meant to the man the other end, Go ahead, I’m taking the call. The knocking began again: thump, thump, thump … The alphabet ran by quickly – a b c d e f g h i j k I m n o p: stop. He was stopping at the letter p. I struck one hard blow. Thump. So he knew I had got the letter. Then came an a, a p, an i, and so on. He was saying, ‘Papi, you OK? You got it bad. I have a broken arm.’ It was Julot.

We talked to one another in this way for more than two hours without worrying about being caught. We were absolutely delighted, exchanging our messages. I told him I had nothing broken, that my head was covered with lumps, but that I was not wounded anywhere.

He had seen me going down, dragged by one foot, and he told me that at each stair my head had banged on the step before. He had never lost consciousness. He thought that Tribouillard had been very seriously scalded and that with the help of the wool the burns had gone deep – he was not going to get over it in a hurry.

Three very fast, repeated knocks told me there was something up. I stopped. And indeed a few moments later the door opened. There was a shout, ‘Get to the back, you sod! Get to the back of your cell and stand to attention.’ It was the new provost speaking. ‘Batton’s my name, my real name. I’ve got the name of the job, you see.’ He lit up the black-hole and my naked body with a big ship’s lantern. ‘Here’s something to put on. Don’t you stir from back there. Here’s some bread and water.4 Don’t stuff it all down at one go: you won’t get anything more for another twenty-four hours.’

He shouted at me like a brute and then he raised the lantern to his face. I saw he was smiling, but not wickedly. He laid a finger on his lips and pointed at the things he had left. There must have been a warder in the passage, but he wanted to make me understand he was not an enemy.

True enough, inside the hunk of bread I found a big piece of boiled meat and in the pocket of the trousers – Christ, what wealth! – a packet of cigarettes and a dry lighter – a tinder lighter with a bit of tinderwick in it. Presents like this were worth millions here. Two shirts instead of one, and woollen drawers that came down to my ankles. I’ll never forget him, that Batton. He was rewarding me for having wiped out Tribouillard. Before the dust-up he had only been assistant-provost. Now, thanks to me, he had risen to be the great man himself. In a word, he owed his promotion to me and he was showing his gratitude. And because we were safe with Batton, Julot and I sent one another telegrams all day long. I learnt from him that our departure for the penal settlement was no great way off – three or four months.

Two days later we were brought out of the punishment cells and taken up to the governor’s office, two warders to each of us. There were three men sitting there opposite the door, behind a table. It was a kind of court. The governor acted as president, and the deputy-governor and chief warders as assessors.

‘Ah-ha, my young friends, so here you are! What have you got to say?’

Julot was very white and his eyes were swollen: he certainly had a temperature. His arm had been broken three days ago, and he must have been in shocking pain. Quietly he said, ‘My arm’s broken.’

‘You asked for it. That’ll teach you to fly at people. You’ll see the doctor when he comes. I hope it will be within a week. The waiting will be good for you, because the pain will perhaps be a lesson. But you don’t think I’m going to send for a doctor especially for a fellow like you? You can just wait until the prison doctor has time to come, and he will look after you. But nevertheless I sentence you both to the black-hole until further orders.’

Julot looked full at me, right in the eye. He seemed to be saying, ‘This well-dressed gent disposes of other people’s lives very easily.’

I turned towards the governor again and looked at him. He thought I meant to speak. He said, ‘And what about you? The sentence doesn’t seem to be to your liking? Have you anything to say against it?’

I said, ‘Absolutely nothing, Monsieur le Directeur. The only thing I feel is an urge to spit in your eye; but I don’t like to do so, in case it should dirty my spit.’

He was taken aback, he reddened and for a moment he couldn’t grasp what I’d said. But the chief warder grasped it all right. He roared at the screws, ‘Take him out and look after him properly. I want to see him here again in an hour’s time, begging pardon on his hands and knees. We’ll tame him! I’ll make him polish my boots with his tongue, soles and all. Don’t be lenient with him – he’s all yours.’

Two warders twisted my right arm, two others my left. I was flat on my face with my hands right up against my shoulder-blades. They put on handcuffs with a thumb-piece, fixing my left forefinger to the thumb of my right hand, and the top warder picked me up by the hair like an animal.

There’s no point telling you what they did to me. I’ll just say I had the handcuffs on behind my back for eleven days. I owed my life to Batton. Every day he tossed the regulation hunk of bread into my cell, but since I couldn’t use my hands it was impossible to eat it. Even when I had it wedged up against the bars I couldn’t manage to bite into the lump. But Batton also tossed in bits the size of a mouthful, and he tossed in enough to keep me alive. I heaped them up with my foot and flat on my belly I ate them like a dog. I chewed each bit very thoroughly, so as not to lose anything at all.

When they took the handcuffs off me on the twelfth day the steel had eaten in, and in some places the metal was covered with bruised flesh. The head warder got scared, particularly as I fainted away with the pain. After they had brought me round they took me to the hospital, where they cleaned me up with hydrogen peroxide. The attendant insisted on my being given an anti-tetanus shot. My arms had stiffened and could not go back to their natural position. It took more than half an hour of rubbing them with camphorated oil before I could bring them down to my sides.

I went back to the black-hole, and the chief warder, seeing the eleven hunks of bread, said, ‘You can have a proper banquet now! But it’s funny – you haven’t got all that thin after eleven days of starving.’

‘I drank plenty of water, chief.’

‘Ah, so that’s it. I get you. Well, now eat plenty to get your strength back.’ And he went away.

The poor bloody half-wit! He said that because he was sure I hadn’t eaten anything for eleven days and because if I stuffed myself all at once I should die of it. Not bleeding likely. Towards nightfall Batton sent me in some tobacco and cigarette-paper. I smoked and smoked, breathing out into the central-heating pipe – it never worked, of course, but at least it served that purpose.

Later I called up Julot. He too thought I had eaten nothing for eleven days and he advised me to go easy. I did not like to let him know the truth, because I was afraid of some bastard picking up the message. His arm was in plaster; he was in good form; he congratulated me on holding out. According to him the convoy was close at hand. The medical orderly had told him the shots the convicts were to be given before they left had already arrived. They usually came a month before the convoy left. Julot wasn’t very cautious, for he also asked me whether I had managed to keep my charger.

Yes, I had kept it all right, but I can’t describe what I had had to do not to lose it. There were some cruel wounds in my anus.

Three weeks later they took us out of the punishment cells. What was up? They gave us a marvellous shower with soap and hot water. I felt myself coming to life again. Julot was laughing like a child and Pierrot le Fou beamed all over himself with happiness.

Since we had come straight out of the black-hole we knew nothing about what was happening. The barber wouldn’t answer when I whispered, ‘What’s up?’ A wicked-looking character I didn’t know said, ‘I think we’re amnestied from the punishment cells. Maybe they’re scared of an inspector who’s coming by. The great thing is they have to show us alive.’ Each of us was taken to an ordinary cell. At noon, as I ate my first bowl of hot soup for forty-three days, I found a bit of wood. On it I read ‘Leave in a week’s time. Shots tomorrow.’

Who had sent it? I never knew. It must have been some convict who was decent enough to give us warning. He knew that if one of us knew it we all should. It was just chance that the message came to me. I called Julot right away and told him. ‘Pass it on,’ I said.

I heard telephoning all night long. As for me, once I’d sent it out I stopped. I was too comfortable in my bed. I didn’t want any sort of trouble. And the prospect of going back to the black-hole didn’t attract me at all. Today less than any other time.

1 10,000 francs

2 The branch of the police particularly concerned with crime.

3 The executioner in 1932.

4 1 lb. of bread and one-and-three-quarter pints of water.