Two hours later I had a very strong steel-handled scalpel. Its only fault was that it was rather big; but it was a formidable weapon.
I went and sat very near the latrines in the middle of the courtyard and I sent for Galgani to give him back his charger; but it was going to be very hard to find him in that milling crowd – a huge yard crammed with eight hundred men. We had never caught sight of Julot, Guittou or Suzini since we got there.
The advantage of communal life is that you belong to a new society, if this could be called a society – you live in it, talk in it, become part of it. There are so many things to say, to hear and to do that you no longer have any time to think. And it seemed to me, as I saw how the past faded away, growing less important in comparison with everyday life, it seemed to me that once you got to the penal settlement you must almost forget what you have been, how or why you had landed up there, and concentrate upon one thing alone – escape. I was wrong, because the most important and most engrossing thing is above all to keep yourself alive.
Where were the cops, the members of the jury, the assizes, the judges, my wife, my father, my friends? They were there all right, thoroughly alive, each one in his place in my heart; but what with the intense excitement of leaving, of this great leap into the unknown, these new friendships and new aspects of life, they seemed to have less importance than before. But that was only a mere impression. When I wanted, and whenever my mind chose to open each one’s file, they were all instantly alive once more.
Now here was Galgani, being led towards me, for even with his thick pebble-lenses he could scarcely see. He looked better. He came up to me and shook my hand without a word.
I said, ‘I want to give you back your charger. Now you’re well you can carry it yourself. It’s too much responsibility for me during the voyage; and then who knows whether we’ll be in touch at the settlement, or whether we’ll even see one another? So it’s better you should have it back.’ Galgani looked at me unhappily. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Come into the latrine and I’ll give it back to you.’
‘No, I don’t want it. You keep it – I give it to you. It’s yours.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I don’t want to get myself murdered for my charger. I’d rather live without money than have my throat slit for it. I give it to you, for after all there’s no reason why you should risk your life, looking after my lolly for me. If you run the risk it might as well be for your own sake.’
‘You’re scared, Galgani. Have you been threatened already? Does anyone suspect you’re loaded?’
‘Yes: there are three Arabs who follow me all the time. That’s why I’ve never come to see you, so they won’t suspect we’re in touch. Every time I go to the latrine, day or night, one of these three comes and puts himself next to me. Without making it obvious I’ve shown them absolutely plain that I’m not loaded, but in spite of all I can do they never let up. They think someone else has my charger; they don’t know who; and they keep behind me to see when I’ll get it back again.’
I looked hard at Galgani and I saw he was terror-stricken, really persecuted. I said, ‘What part of the courtyard do they keep to?’
He said, ‘Over towards the kitchen and the laundry.’
‘Right, you stay here. I’ll be back. But no, now I come to think of it, you come with me.’ With Galgani at my side I went over towards the Arabs. I’d taken the scalpel out of my cap and I had the blade up my right sleeve, with the handle in my palm. When we had crossed the court, sure enough I saw them. Four of them. Three Arabs and a Corsican, a character by the name of Girando. I grasped the situation right away. It was the Corsican who had been cold-shouldered by the real hard men and who had put the Arabs up to this job. He must have known that Galgani was Pascal Matra’s brother-in-law and that it wasn’t possible for him not to have a charger.
‘Hi, Mokrane. OK?’
‘OK, Papillon. You OK too?’
‘Hell, no. Far from it. I’ve come to see you guys to tell you Galgani is my friend. If anything happens to him, it’s you who cop it first, Girando. And then the rest of you. And you can take that just how you like.’
Mokrane stood up. He was as tall as me – about five foot eight – and as broad-shouldered. The words had needled him and he was on the point of moving in to start things when I flashed the scalpel and with it right there shining-new in my hand I said, ‘If you stir I’ll kill you like a dog.’
He was knocked sideways by seeing me armed in a place where everybody was searched all the time, and he was shaken by my attitude and the length of the blade. He said, ‘I got up to talk, not to fight.’
I knew it was not true, but it was to my advantage to save his face in front of his friends. I left the door open for him wide and handsome. ‘OK, since you just got up to talk … ‘
‘I didn’t know Galgani was your friend. I thought he was a square. And you know very well, Papillon, that when you’re skint you have to find cash somewhere to make a break.’
‘Fair enough. You certainly have the right to struggle for your life, Mokrane, like anyone else. Only keep away from Galgani, see? You’ve got to look somewhere else.’
He held out his hand: I shook it hard. Jesus, I was well out of that one; for looking at it rightly, if I had killed that guy, I should never have left the next day. A little later I realized I had made a bleeding error. Galgani and I walked away. I said, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this caper. I don’t want to have old Dega bawling me out.’
I tried to persuade Galgani to take the charger. He said, ‘Tomorrow, before we leave.’ The next day he lay so low that I set out for penal with two chargers aboard.
That night not one of us – and we were about eleven in the cell – not one of us said a word. For we all had more or less the same thought in our minds – this was the last day we should pass on French soil. Each of us was more or less filled with homesickness at the idea of leaving France for ever, with an unknown land and an unknown way of life at the end of our journey.
Dega did not speak. He sat next to me close to the barred door on to the corridor, where the air was a little fresher. I felt completely at sea. The information we had about what was coming was so contradictory that I did not know whether to be pleased or wretched or downright hopeless.
The other men in the cell were all genuine underworld characters. The only one who did not belong was the little Corsican who had been born in the settlement. All these men were in a grey, floating state of mind. The seriousness of the moment and its importance had made them almost entirely dumb. The cigarette-smoke wafted out of the cell into the corridor like a cloud, and if you didn’t want your eyes to sting you had to sit lower than the heavy fog-blanket. No one slept except for André Baillard; it was natural enough for him, since his life had already been lost, as it were. As far as he was concerned everything else could only be unlooked-for heaven.
My life passed before my eyes like a film – childhood in a family filled with love, affectionate discipline, decent ways and good-heartedness; the wild flowers, the murmur of streams, the taste of the walnuts, peaches and plums that our garden gave us in such quantities; the smell of the mimosa that flowered every spring in front of our door; the outside of our house, and the inside with my family there – all this ran by before my eyes. It was a talking picture, one in which I heard the voice of my mother (she had loved me so), and then my father’s – always affectionate and kind – and the barking of Clara, his gun-dog, calling me into the garden to play. The boys and girls of my childhood, the ones I had played with during the happiest days of my life. All this – this film I was watching without ever having meant to see it, this magic lantern that my subconscious had lit against my will – all this filled the night of waiting before the leap into the great unknown with sweet, gentle memories and