Papillon. Анри Шарьер

in too and I was about to follow when the superintendent held me back and said, ‘Get into my car next to the driver.’ We set out ahead of the van and very quickly we lost sight of it. We took proper macadamed roads and then came to the town with its Dutch-looking houses. Everything was very clean, and most of the people were on bicycles – there were hundreds of them coming and going in every direction. We reached the police-station. We went through a big office with a good many policemen in it, all dressed in white and each at his own desk, and we came to an inner room. It had air-conditioning, and it was cool. A big fat fair-haired man of about forty was sitting there in an armchair. He got up and spoke in Dutch. When their first remarks were over the superintendent, speaking French, said, ‘This is the chief of police of Curaçao. Chief, this Frenchman is the leader of the band of six we’ve just picked up.’

      ‘Very good, Superintendent. As shipwrecked men, you are welcome to Curaçao. What’s your name?’

      ‘Henri.’

      ‘Well, Henri, you have had a very unpleasant time with this business of the bag of money, but from your point of view it’s all for the best, because it certainly proves you are an honest man. I’ll give you a sunny room with a bunk in it so you can get some rest. Your case will be put before the governor and he will take appropriate measures. The superintendent and I will speak in your favour.’ He shook hands and we left. In the courtyard Dr. Naal apologized and promised to use his influence on our behalf. Two hours later we were all shut up in a very large kind of ward with a dozen beds in it and a long table and benches down the middle. Through the open window we asked a policeman to buy us tobacco, cigarette-paper and matches, with Trinidad dollars. He did not take the money and we didn’t understand his reply.

      ‘That coal-black character seems too devoted to his duty by half,’ said Clousiot. ‘We still haven’t got that tobacco.’

      I was just about to knock on the door when it opened. A little man looking something like a coolie and wearing prison uniform with a number on the chest so that there should be no mistake, said, ‘Money, cigarettes.’ ‘No. Tobacco, matches and paper.’ A few minutes later he came back with all these things and with a big steaming pot – chocolate or cocoa. He brought bowls too, and we each of us drank one full.

      I was sent for in the afternoon, and I went to the chief of police’s office again. ‘The governor has given me orders to let you walk about in the prison courtyard. Tell your companions not to try to escape, for that would lead to very serious consequences for all of you. Since you are the leader, you may go into the town for two hours every morning, from ten until twelve, and then in the afternoon from three until five. Have you any money?’

      ‘Yes. English and French.’

      ‘A plain-clothes policeman will go with you wherever you choose during your outings.’

      ‘What are they going to do to us?’

      ‘I think we’ll try to get you aboard tankers one by one – tankers of different nationalities. Curaçao has one of the biggest oil refineries in the world: it treats oil from Venezuela, and so there are twenty or twenty-five tankers from all countries coming and going every day. That would be the ideal solution for you, because then you would reach the other countries without any sort of difficulty.’

      ‘What countries, for example? Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, Canada, Cuba, the United States or the countries which have English laws?’

      ‘Impossible. Europe’s just as impossible too. Don’t you worry: just you rely on us and let us do our best to help you make a new start in life.’

      ‘Thank you, Chief.’

      I repeated all this very exactly to my companions. Clousiot, the sharpest crook of us all, said, ‘What do you think of it, Papillon?’

      ‘I don’t know yet. I’m afraid it may be a piece of soap so we’ll keep quiet and not escape.’

      ‘I’m afraid you may be right,’ he said.

      The Breton believed in this wonderful scheme. The flat-iron guy was delighted: he said, ‘No more boats, no more adventures, and that’s for sure. We each of us land up in some country or other aboard a big tanker and then we fade right away.’ Leblond was of the same opinion.

      ‘What about you, Maturette?’

      And this kid of nineteen, this little wet-leg who had accidentally been turned into a convict, this boy with features finer than a girl, raised his gentle voice and said, ‘And do you people really think these square-headed cops are going to produce bent papers for each one of us? Or even actually forge them? I don’t. At the most they might close their eyes if we went off one by one, and illegally got aboard a tanker on its way out: but nothing more. And even then they’d only do so to get rid of us without a headache. That’s what I think. I don’t believe a word of it.’

      I went out very little: just now and then in the mornings, to buy things. We had been here a week now, and nothing had happened. We were beginning to feel anxious. One evening we saw three priests accompanied by policemen going round the cells and wards. They stopped for a long while in the cell nearest to us, where a Negro accused of rape was shut up. We thought they might come to see us, so we went back into the ward and sat there, each on his bed. And indeed all three of them did come in, together with Dr. Naal, the chief of police and someone in a white uniform I took to be a naval officer.

      ‘Monseigneur, here are the Frenchmen,’ said the chief of police in French. ‘Their behaviour has been excellent.’

      ‘I congratulate you, my sons. Let us sit down on the benches round this table; we shall be able to talk better like that.’ Everyone sat down, including the people who were with the bishop. They brought a stool that stood by the door in the courtyard and put it at the head of the table. That way the bishop could see everybody. ‘Nearly all Frenchmen are Catholics: is there any one among you who is not?’ Nobody put up his hand. It seemed to me that I too ought to look upon myself as a Catholic. ‘My friends, I descend from a French family. My name is Irénée de Bruyne. My people were Huguenots, Protestants who fled to Holland at the time Catherine de Medicis was hunting them down. So I am a Frenchman by blood. I am the bishop of Curaçao, a town where there are more Protestants than Catholics, but where the Catholics are very zealous and attentive to their duties. What is your position?’