Book 204: French Guiana (French) – Papillon (Henri CHARRIÈRE)

We didn’t heave [the warders] into the ward: we went straight off with the three rifles. Clousiot first, then the kid, then me: down the stairs, half-lit by a lantern. Clousiot had dropped his iron; I still had mine in my left hand, and in my right the rifle. At the bottom of the stairs, nothing. Ink-black night all round us. We had to look hard to make out the wall over on the river side. We hurried towards it. Once we were there, I bent down. Clousiot climbed up, straddled the top, hauled Maturette up and then me. We let ourselves drop into the darkness on the far side. Clousiot fell badly into a hole, twisting his foot. Maturette and I landed properly. We two got up: we had left the rifles before we went over. Clousiot tried to get to his feet but couldn’t: he said his leg was broken. I left Maturette with Clousiot and ran towards the corner of the wall, feeling it all the way with my hand. It was so dark that when I got to the end of the wall I didn’t know it, and with my hand reaching out into emptiness I fell flat on my face. Over on the river side I heard a voice saying, ‘Is that you?’  

From one country where a small island (Príncipe) was used as a cruel prison to another…

Sadly, French Guiana is one of the few countries in South America that I haven’t visited. From Porsche’s take on Cayenne, I assume that the capital has very bad roads on which the locals drive very fast…

I’m sure that Papillon (Charrière) would have loved to have a Porsche Cayenne. It would have helped him on his escape attempts, of which there were so many that I lost count!

In reading all the independent nations of the world, I stuck to novels. Although I’ll still try to preference novels when reading the non-independent ones, I might occasionally be a bit more liberal. In Papillon, Charrière claims to be telling the true story of his life. Though it is substantially true, it subsequently turned out that he had fictionalised it somewhat (or quite a lot), which is why I’ve included it here – apart from the fact that it’s one of the greatest adventure stories ever told. (Wikipedia describes it as an ‘autobiographical novel’ and discusses its authenticity). Papillon spent a total of 13 years in prison (between 1931 and 1945), in Colombia and Venezuela as well as in France and French Guiana (including on Devil’s Island), and they all seem to have been brutally inhumane. What kept him going (when so many others died), apart from the help of his friends, was his burning desire for revenge, and yet, once free, he gives that up and is determined to prove his goodness by living as a model citizen.

If we can believe what he tells of himself, Papillon comes across as an honest and honourable man, towards his fellow prisoners, the outsiders, and even his jailers. He passes over his life before his sentencing, but he admits (at the end) that he was part of the Paris underworld and a criminal, though he always insisted that he was innocent of the murder for which he was convicted and transported to French Guiana.

When I read Papillon, it was a bit of a jolt to realise that France was still transporting convicts to its colony until 1945 (Britain sent its last convicts to Australia in 1868), and that the European Space Agency spaceport in Kourou was then one of the prison camps – the description of it here was fascinating.

I did feel that some of the reported conversations were slightly unbelievable (sometimes a bit too moralising). But they must surely be reconstructed rather than remembered verbatim.

Papillon comes across as a man almost addicted to escaping. Even when there is nothing to escape from, he has to get away – most stupidly, to my mind, from the paradisaical sojourn with the Guajiro American Indians in Colombia with two lovers (sisters), one of whom is pregnant with his children (did he ever meet them?) Again, we don’t know whether life among them is truly as idyllic as he portrays – it feels like part of the long French tradition of admiring the ‘noble savages’ and contrasting them with the corruption of Western society, which goes back to Rousseau. But I have no reason to doubt it. In any case, he abandons them with barely a thought, as he does later to his equally lovely (Asian) Indian wife – not to mention the wife he already had in France. Still escaping.

Papillon’s lauding of his adopted homeland Venezuela seems a bit at odds with what he witnessed there (and was it really so much better than Colombia, for example?) I couldn’t help feeling that he was trying to ingratiate himself with his new countrymen. I would have thought that he would have learnt good Spanish while living in Venezuela, but there are still lots of mistakes in his reported Spanish conversations from the escape attempts.

I won’t spoil the tale by repeating any more of what happens, you have to read the story for yourself if you haven’t already. (By the way, the plots of the two movies are quite different from what Papillon relates). Charrière is a great writer and story-teller, and unlike most prisoner memoirs his book counts as great literature too. It is enthralling. (I’m now reading the sequel, Banco).

Charrière, Henri (1906 – 1973), Papillon, Paris, Pocket, 2002, ISBN 9782266118354

(originally published 1969)

English translation:

Papillon, translated from French by Patrick O’Brian, London, Panther, 1970