Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon (41 page)

But I was in Paris. I was there. I went and danced at the little places round the Bastille. At Boucastel’s and at the Bal.à-Jo I shoved my hat back and took off my tie. I even had the nerve to ask a skirt to dance just as I used to do when I was twenty, and in the same way. And as we waltzed to the sound of an accordion almost as good as Mimile Vacher’s when I was young, the chick asked me what I did for a living and I told her I kept a house in the provinces: so I was looked upon with great respect.

I went and had lunch at La Coupole, and as if I had returned from another world I was simpleminded enough to ask a waiter whether they still bowled on the flat roof. He had been there twenty-five years, but my question absolutely stunned him.

At La Rotonde I looked for the painter Foujiya’s corner, but in vain: my eyes gazed hopelessly at the furniture, the layout of the tables and the bar, looking for something that belonged to the past: disgusted at seeing that everything had been turned upsidedown and that they had destroyed everything I had known and loved, I walked straight out, forgetting to pay. The waiter grabbed my arm at the entrance to the Vavin Metro just by, and, as manners have been forgotten in France, he bawled the amount of the bill into my face and told me to pay up quick if I didn’t want him to call a cop. Of course I paid, but I gave him such a paltry tip that as he left he threw it at me. “You can keep that for your mother-in-law. She must need it more than me!”

But Paris is Paris. As brisk as a young man, I walked right up the Champs-Elysées and then right down again, the Champs-Elysées lit with thousands of lights, with that light of Paris that warms you through and through and casts its wonderful spell, giving you a song in your heart. Ah, life is sweet in Paris!

There was not the least overexcitement in me, not the least longing for violence, as I stood there at the Porte Saint-Denis or in front of the old
L’Auto
office in the Faubourg Montmartre, where Rigoulot, then champion of the world, used to lift a huge roll of newsprint. My heart was quiet as I passed in front of the chub where I used to play baccarat with Stavisky; and I went to watch the Lido show alone and perfectly calm. Quietly I mixed in the turmoil of Les Halles for a few hours--they, at least, were more or hess the same as before. It was only when I was in Montmartre that bitter words rose in my heart.

I stayed eight days in Paris. Eight times I went back to the scene of that famous murder.

Eight times I stroked the tree and then sat on the bench.

Eight times, with closed eyes, I put together all I knew of the inquiry and my two trials.

Eight times I saw the ugly faces of all those swine who manufactured my conviction.

Eight times I whispered, “This is where it all began, the theft of those fourteen years of your youth.”

Eight times I repeated, “You have given up your revenge; that’s fine; but never will you be able to forgive.”

Eight times I asked God that as a reward for my giving up my revenge the same kind of thing should never happen to anyone else.

Eight times I asked the bench whether the false witness and the shifty pig had cooked up their next statement in this very place.

Eight times I went away, less and less bowed down, so that the last time I walked off as straight and supple as a young man, whispering to myself, “You won after all, man, since you’re here, free, fit, beloved and master of your future. Don’t go trying to find out what has happened to those others--they belong to your past. You’re here, and that’s chose to a miracle. And you can be sure that of all the people involved in this business, you’re the happiest.”

Henri Charriere (“Papillon”) was born in the south of France in 1906. In 1933, having been convicted of a murder of which he steadfastly insisted he was innocent, he was transported to the French penal colony of Guiana. In the course of the next twelve years he made nine escape attempts--the last from the dread Devil’s Island--and was finally granted sanctuary in Venezuela in 1945. His first volume of autobiography,
Papillon
, published in France in 1969, has since been translatede into every major language and has been a phenomenal best seller all around the world. The motion picture version stars Steve McQueen (as Papillon) and Dustin Hoffman.

Henri Charriere died in Madrid July 29, 1973.