Papillon

The girl spoke very good French, like her father, with no accent or faulty pronunciation. She had fair hair and she was covered with freckles; she was between seventeen and twenty – I did not like to ask her age. She said, ‘You’re very young and your life is ahead of you: I don’t know what you were sentenced for and I don’t want to know, but the fact of having taken to sea in such a small boat for this long, dangerous voyage proves that you’re willing to pay absolutely anything for your freedom; and that is something I admire very much.’

We slept until eight the next morning. When we got up we found the table laid. The two ladies calmly told us that Mr. Bowen had left for Port of Spain and would only be back that afternoon, bringing the information he needed to see what could be done for us.

By leaving his house to three escaped convicts like this he gave us a lesson that couldn’t have been bettered: it was as though he were saying, ‘You are normal decent human beings; you can see for yourselves how much I trust you, since I am leaving you alone in my house with my wife and daughter.’

We were very deeply moved by this silent way of saying, ‘Now that I’ve talked to you, I see that you are perfectly trustworthy – so much so that I leave you here in my home like old friends, not supposing for a moment that you could possibly do or say anything wrong.’

Reader – supposing this book has readers some day – I am not clever and I don’t possess the vivid style, the living power, that is needed to describe this immense feeling of self-respect – no, of rehabilitation, or even of a new life. This figurative baptism, this bath of cleanliness, this raising of me above the filth I had sunk in, this way of bringing me overnight face to face with true responsibility, quite simply changed my whole being. I had been a convict, a man who could hear his chains even when he was free and who always felt that someone was watching over him; I had been all the things I had seen, experienced, undergone, suffered; all the things that had urged me to become a marked, evil man, dangerous at all times, superficially docile yet terribly dangerous when he broke out: but all this had vanished – disappeared as though by magic. Thank you, Mr. Bowen, barrister in His Majesty’s courts of law, thank you for having made another man of me in so short a time!

This modern Alsatia made me laugh, but it also made me realize that in fact earning a living was by no means easy. Someone turned on the radio at the bar: it was de Gaulle making a speech. A French voice from London, encouraging the French overseas and in the colonies: everyone listened. It was a moving appeal and nobody uttered a sound. All at once one of the lags who’d had too many Free Cubas sprang up and said, ‘Brothers, this is terrific! All of a sudden I understand English! I followed every word Churchill said!’ Everyone burst out laughing: not a man there tried to make him see he’d got
it wrong.

A man who’s been a prisoner as long as that, without having to worry about food, rent or clothing, a man who’s been put on a lead, managed, shoved around, and who’s grown used to doing nothing off his own bat and to obeying every kind of order without thinking about it, a man who’s grown used to being given food and drink at set hours – this man has to re-learn how to live when all of a sudden he finds himself in the middle of a big town, no longer knowing how to walk on a pavement without bumping into people or crossing a road without getting himself run over. And then again there are some reactions you’d never expect: for example, among all those different kinds of lags, all talking French sprinkled with English or Spanish words, I was listening as hard as ever I could when suddenly I wanted to go to the lavatory there in that English pub. Well, you’ll scarcely believe it, but for a fleeting second I looked round for the warder whose permission I ought to ask. It was very short: but it was also very funny when I understood what was the matter and said to myself, ‘Papillon, when you want to have a piss or do anything else, from now onwards there’s no one whose permission you have to ask.’