Papillon (42 page)

“The next day the watch repairer’s hair was white, as white as it is today. His lawyer, a guard from Calvi, wrote the Minister of Justice, telling him about the incident and asking for a new pardon. The
mec
was pardoned and given a life sentence instead. Since then he spends his time fixing the guards’ watches. It’s his passion. He tests them endlessly; that’s why he’s got them hanging from his shelf. Now you understand why he’s a little peculiar?”

Every day I learned a little more about my new life.
Case
A was a concentration of really formidable men because of what they had done in the past and also because of the way they acted around the camp.

One morning they called out Jean Castelli’s name on the list of people to work in the coconut plantation. He stepped out of ranks and asked, “What goes on here? You’re putting me to work?”

“Yes,” said the guard in charge of the work gang. “Here, take this pickaxe.”

Castelli looked at him coldly. “You must be crazy. You have to come from the sticks to know how to use those things. I’m a Corsican from Marseilles. In Corsica we throw work tools into the sea. In Marseilles they don’t even know they exist. Keep your pickaxe and leave me alone.”

The young guard didn’t know about our group yet and started to raise the handle of the pickaxe over Castelli’s head. With one voice a hundred and twenty men shouted, “Asshole, touch him and you’re dead.”

“Break ranks!” Grandet called out, and ignoring the guards who had taken up attack positions, we went back into our
case
.

Case
B filed by on its way to work, followed by
Case
C. A dozen guards came to ours and closed the grill. An hour later we had forty guards flanking the door, submachine guns in hand. The assistant warden, the head guard, the guards, everybody was there except the head warden, who had left at six for an inspection tour of Diable.

The second-in-command said, “Dacelli, call up the men one by one.”

“Grandet?”

“Present.”

“Come out here.”

He went out into the middle of the forty guards.

Dacelli said, “Go to your work.”

“I can’t.”

“You refuse?”

“No, I’m not refusing. I’m sick.”

“Since when? You didn’t report sick at roll call.”

“I wasn’t sick this morning. But I am now.”

The first sixty called up all said the same thing. Only one man refused without giving an excuse. He probably hoped to be taken to Saint-Laurent in order to go before the tribunal. When he was asked, “You refuse?” he answered, “Yes, I refuse.”

“Why?”

“Because you make me puke. I refuse absolutely to work for shits like you.”

The tension was mounting. The guards, especially the young ones, couldn’t take being humiliated by
bagnards
. They were waiting for the one threatening gesture that would justify their going into action with their guns.

“Everybody who was called up, strip! Then go to your cells.” As our clothes hit the ground, you could hear the occasional clatter of a knife. Then the doctor arrived.

“O.K. Stop. Doctor, please examine these men. Those who are not really sick will go to the dungeons. The others will stay in their
case
.”

“You have sixty sick?”

“Yes, Doctor, except for that one there who refuses to work.” To the first in line the doctor said, “Grandet, what’s wrong with you?”

“I’ve got indigestion, Doctor. The guards make me sick to my stomach. All of us here have got long sentences, most of them life. We’ve got no hope of escaping, and there’s no way we can stand it unless there’s some give-and-take in the regulations. This morning a guard threatened a friend with a pickaxe handle. It wasn’t a question of self-defense; the man hadn’t lifted a finger. All he said was he didn’t want to use the pickaxe. And that’s the reason for this indigestion epidemic. You judge.”

The doctor looked down, thought for a minute, then said, “Orderly, write down the following: ‘Due to a widespread alimentary infection, I direct that the infirmary guard give twenty grams of sulfate of soda as a purgative to all those who reported sick this morning. As for convict X, place him under observation in the hospital so we may determine if his refusal to work was made when in full possession of his faculties.”

Then he turned on his heel and was gone.

“Everybody inside!” the second-in-command called out. “Pick up your clothes. Don’t forget your knives.” For the rest of the day everybody stayed in the
case
. Nobody was allowed out, not even the man who sold us our bread. Toward noon the infirmary guard and two convict-orderlies came around with a wooden bucket full of the purgative instead of soup. Only three men swallowed the stuff. The fourth fell over the bucket in a perfect imitation of an epileptic fit, and the purgative, bucket and all, flew off in all directions. Our guard mopped up the mess and the incident was ended.

Jean Castelli came over to eat with us and I spent the afternoon talking with him. He was in a
gourbi
with a man from Toulon called Louis Gravon who had been convicted for stealing furs. When I brought up the subject of a
cavale
, his eyes glistened.

“I almost escaped last year,” he said, “but it fizzled. I didn’t think you were the type to stay here indefinitely. But talk
cavale
here and you might as well be talking Hebrew. I don’t think you understand the
bagnards
on the islands yet; ninety percent are relatively happy here. But nobody will squeal on you, whatever you decide to do. Even if you kill somebody, there’s never a witness. Whatever a man does, everybody comes to his rescue. The island
bagnards
are scared of only one thing: that a
cavale
might succeed. When that happens, there’s just no peace: there are constant searches, no more cards, no more music—instruments are destroyed during the searches—no more checkers or chess, no books, no nothing. Not even making
camelote
. Everything stops. They search all the time. Sugar, oil, steak, butter, all that disappears. Every time a
cavale
has made it from the islands, the men have been picked up on Grande Terre. But in the eyes of the Administration, the
cavale
was successful: the
mecs
got away. And so the guards get hell and they in turn take it out on us.”

I listened closely and didn’t bring the subject up again. I had never thought of it that way.

“In short,” Castelli said, “the day you decide to prepare a
cavale
, beware. Unless it’s with a close friend, think twice before discussing it with anybody.”

Jean Castelli was a professional burglar and a man of unusual guts and intelligence. He loathed violence. His nickname was “the Antique.” He washed only with Marseilles soap. If I happened to wash with Palmolive, he’d say to me, “Say, you smell like a queer! You washed with whore’s soap!” Unfortunately he was fifty-two, but his iron will was a joy to see. He told me one day, “Papillon, you’re like my son. Life on the islands isn’t for you. You eat well because you want to keep in shape, but you’re never going to settle down and accept island life. I congratulate you. Among all these cons there aren’t half a dozen like you. It’s perfectly true that a lot of them would pay a fortune to get disinterned so they could go to Grande Terre and escape from there. But here nobody even gives it a thought.”

Old Castelli gave me some good advice. He said I should learn English, and talk Spanish with a Spaniard as often as possible. He lent me a book that was supposed to teach me Spanish in twenty-four lessons, and a French-English dictionary. He had a very good friend, a man from Marseilles called Gardès who was nearly fifty and knew volumes about
cavales
. He’d done two, one from a Portuguese
bagne
and one from Grande Terre. He had one point of view on the subject, Jean Castelli another, Gravon yet another, all of them different. From that day on I decided to make up my own mind and stop talking about it.

The only thing they agreed on was that gambling was interesting only as a way to make money and that it was very dangerous: at any moment you could be forced into a battle of knives with the first troublemaker who came along.

Last night I gave my
case
a demonstration of the way I saw things. A little guy from Toulouse was challenged by a man from Nîmes. The little fellow’s nickname was Sardine and the bully from Nîmes was called Mouton. Mouton, bare from the waist up, was standing in the middle of the alley with his knife in his hand: “You pay me twenty-five francs a hand or you don’t play.” Sardine answered, “Nobody’s ever had to pay to play poker. Why take it out on me? Go fight the bankers.”

“Never mind about that. Pay, don’t play, or fight.”

“I’m not fighting.”

“You’re chicken?”

“Yes. I don’t want to risk being chopped up by someone like you who’s never even been on a
cavale
. I’m a
cavale
man. I’m not here to kill or get killed.”

We were all waiting to see what happened next. Grandet said, “The little guy’s got guts. It’s too bad we can’t interfere.” I opened my knife and placed it under my thigh. I was sitting on Grandet’s hammock.

“O.K., chicken,” the man from Nîmes continued. “What do you say?” He moved a step nearer Sardine.

I said, “Shut up, Mouton. Leave the guy alone!”

“You crazy, Papillon?” Grandet said.

Still sitting with the open knife under my left leg, my hand on the handle, I said, “No, I’m not crazy.” Then in a louder voice, “Listen to me, Mouton. Before I fight you—which I’m prepared to do as soon as I’ve had my say—I want to get something off my chest. Since I’ve been in this case, I’ve come to realize that the most beautiful, the most important, the only true thing—yes, a
cavale—
is not respected here. I think every man who’s given proof that he’s a
cavale
man, who’s got enough guts to risk his life in a
cavale
, deserves respect. Does anybody here disagree?” Silence. “You’ve got a lot of rules, but you lack the most important one: the obligation not only to respect but to aid and abet the
cavale
man. Nobody has to go, and I know most of you have decided to make your life here. But if you don’t have the courage to start a new life, at least have some respect for the men who do. And I can guarantee serious consequences for anyone who forgets this rule. O.K., Mouton. Let’s go!”

I jumped into the middle of the room, my knife in my hand.

But Mouton threw his knife down and said, “You’re right, Papillon. But I don’t want to fight with knives; I’ll fist fight you to prove I’m not chicken.”

I gave my knife to Grandet and we fought like wild dogs for almost twenty minutes. Thanks to a lucky jab to his head, I managed to beat him. We were standing next to each other over the washstands, washing the blood off our faces, when Mouton said, “It’s a fact. We go to pieces here on the islands. I’ve been here fifteen years and I haven’t even spent the thousand francs for a disinternment. That’s not good.”

When I returned to my
gourbi
, Grandet and Galgani jumped on me. “Are you crazy to insult everybody that way? It’s a miracle somebody didn’t jump into the alley and cut you up right there.”

“It was no miracle. Our gang always goes along when they know you’re right.”

“That may be,” Grandet said. “But I wouldn’t fool around this volcano too much.” All evening long, cons came by to talk to me. They dropped in as if by chance, talked of this and that, then, as they left, said, “You were right, Papi.” After this incident the men had a higher opinion of me. From then on, although I was still considered one of the gang, my friends realized that I accepted nothing without first analyzing it and discussing the pros and cons. I also noticed that when I was croupier, there were fewer disputes, and when I gave an order, it was quickly obeyed.

One evening an Italian named Carlino was killed. He lived with a young kid as man and wife. They were both gardeners. Carlino must have known his life was in danger, for when he was asleep the kid watched over him, and vice versa. They had put some empty boxes under their hammock so nobody could sneak up without making a noise. But they got him anyway. We heard him scream and, right afterward, a wild racket of empty boxes.

Grandet was running a game with over thirty players sitting around him. I was talking to someone nearby. The scream and the noise of the boxes stopped the game. Everybody got up, asking what had happened. Carlino’s friend had seen nothing. The leader of our
case
asked if he should call in the guards. No. Since Carlino was dead, there was nothing to be done. Guards could be summoned in the morning at roll call.

Then Grandet spoke up. “Nobody heard a thing, right? Not even you, kid. Tomorrow at reveille you notice he’s dead.”

Everybody went back to the game.

I was curious to see what would happen when the guards discovered there’d been a murder. The first bell rang at five-thirty. At six came the second bell and coffee. At six-thirty the third bell, and usually we went out for roll call. But today it was different. At the second bell our trusty said to the guard who accompanied the prisoner with our coffee, “Chief, a man’s been murdered.”

“Who?”

“Carlino.”

“O.K.”

Ten minutes later six guards appeared with a stretcher.

“Where’s the dead man?”