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.
Second Exercise-Book On the way to Guiana
Saint-Martin-de-Ré
That evening Batton sent me in three cigarettes and a piece of paper that read, ‘Papillon, I know you’ll remember me kindly when you go. I’m provost, but I try to hurt the prisoners as little as possible. I took the job because I’ve got nine children and I can’t wait for a pardon. I’m going to try to earn it without doing too much harm. Good-bye. Good luck. The convoy is for the day after tomorrow.’
And in fact the next day they assembled us in the corridor of the punishment-block in groups of thirty. Medical orderlies from Caen gave us shots against tropical diseases. Three shots for each man, and three and a half pints of milk. Dega was close to me: he looked thoughtful. We no longer paid any attention to the rules of silence for we knew they couldn’t put us in the punishment cell just after having our injections. We gossiped in an undertone right there in front of the screws, who dared not say anything because of the orderlies from the town.
Dega said to me, ‘Are they going to have enough cellular vans to take us all in one go?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s a good way off. Saint-Martin-de-Ré, and if they take sixty a day, it’ll last ten days, because we’re close on six hundred here alone.’
‘The great thing is to have the injections. That means you’re on the list and soon you’ll be in Guiana. Keep your chin up, Dega: the next stage is beginning now. Count on me, just as I count on you.’
He looked at me, his eyes shining with pleasure; he put his hand on my arm and once again he said, ‘Life or death, Papi.’
There was nothing really much to say about the convoy, except that each man very nearly stifled in his little cupboard in the cellular van. The warders wouldn’t let us have any air, not even by letting the doors stand just ajar. When we reached La Rochelle two of the people in our van were found dead, asphyxiated.
There were people standing around on the quay – for Saint-Martin-de-Re is an island and we had to take a boat to cross – and they saw those two poor unfortunate bastards being found. Not that they showed feelings of any sort for us, I may add. And since the gendarmes had to hand us over at the citadel, living or dead, they loaded the corpses on to the boat along with the rest of us.
It was not a long crossing, but it gave us a real breath of sea-air. I said to Dega, ‘It smells of a break.’ He smiled. And Julot, next to us, said, ‘Yes. It smells of a break. I’m on my way back to the place I escaped from five years ago. Like a silly bastard I let myself be picked up just as I was on the point of carving up the fence who’d done the Judas on me at the time of my little trouble ten years ago. Let’s try and stay together, because at Saint-Martin they put you ten to a cell in any old order, just as you come to hand.’
He’d got that one wrong, brother Julot. When we got there he and two others were called out and set apart from the rest. They were three men who had got away from the penal settlement: they had been retaken in France and now they were going back for the second time.
Grouped ten by ten in our cells, we began a life of waiting. We were allowed to talk and smoke, and we were very well fed. The only danger during this period was for your charger. You could never tell why, but suddenly you would be called up, stripped and very carefully searched. The whole of your body first, even the soles of your feet, and then all your clothes. ‘Get dressed again!’ And back you went to where you came from.
Cells: dining-hall: the courtyard where we spent hours and hours marching in single file. ‘Left, right! Left, right! Left,