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